Prom 17 - BBC SSO/Volkov - Walshe and Brahms, 28 July 2022

Royal Albert Hall

Jennifer Walshe: The Site of an Investigation (London premiere)

Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem, op.45

Jennifer Walshe (voice)

Elena Tsallagova (soprano)

Shenyang (bass-baritone)

National Youth Choir of Great Britain (chorus director: Ben Parry)

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Ilan Volkov (conductor)

I am sure one could find something these two works had in common if one tried; one always can. The question is whether it would be anything more than a parlour game trick to do so. For instance, does saying that both composers, Jennifer Walshe and Johannes Brahms, assembled (many of) the words they set from pre-existing texts shed light on anything? Not really. Perhaps there is something less tenuous in regarding both as having a memorial element, Walshe’s The Site of an Investigation being dedicated to the memory of a friend, the actor Stephen Swift. Again, though, I am not sure that helps connect Walshe and Brahms’s music. It is probably better to treat this Prom as a performance of two contrasting works and leave it at that. 

The Site of an Investigation, from 2018, presents a more eclectic range of texts and responds to them in similarly eclectic fashion. From tweets to NASA’s plans for Mars: there is certainly a world (and beyond) to choose from, and that kaleidoscopic intent seems to be part of the point, perhaps unified only in Walshe’s own highly varied, amplified vocal delivery. I am tempted to call it performance art, given ‘events’ such as percussionists wrapping a giraffe in brown paper, twirling ribbons, and building a little tower with plastic boxes, the final act set against a pop-minimalist orchestral backdrop. ‘My horizon goal/is a surface landing/on MARS!’ and—all fall down. Tonal music, deliberately (I think) banal, is soon invaded or derided in the ‘Normal person’ section, in which we hear of someone’s need to receive 200 social media likes. It is all highly anarchic, though also (again, I think) directed at contemporary mores, often used in themselves as found material. Its big-heartedness is inviting, likewise its sheer fearlessness (surely allied). Was that an initial reference to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony? It is now too long ago for me to be sure either way, but perhaps it is more important to think of John Cage’s deconstructionism, a post-Andy Warhol pop aesthetic, or even a Charles Ives-like orchestral riot in between ‘it’s hard ot tell exactly where the hate is coming from’ and the first advent of the wind machine. Perhaps, or perhaps not. Rather than seek for antecedents, I suspect it is better simply to listen here in the moment and take what you will—if anything. I rather enjoyed the half-hour or so it took and afterwards felt perplexed as to what to make of it. Over to you. 

If I say that I feel more at home with Brahms, that is not necessarily a value judgement, simply a statement of fact. I certainly liked this performance from the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and Ilan Volkov. What struck me, in addition to a startlingly slow tempo, in the opening chorus was the cultivated quality of the BBC SSO strings, as if a chamber group—or perhaps a small Bach orchestra, writ a little larger. It was not all maudlin, though, far from it; rarely have I heard such joy (aptly enough on ‘Freuden’) as in these young voices’ rendition under Volkov, both sides clearly responding to one another. This movement very much set the scene for what was to come: not only dark yet consoling, but also with moments of Baroque joy such as Bach, Handel, and the many earlier composers in whom Brahms so immersed himself both as composer and as choral director might well have recognised (at least in ahistorical fantasy). 

The sarabande that followed flowed beautifully without rushing; choral singing was nicely responsorial. Volkov kept a tight rein on dynamic contrasts, exercising them to maximum effect. A special words should be said for the BBC SSO’s angelic harps. (It probably helped that I was seated near them.) At any rate, this was a properly severe apostolic pronouncement that yet consoled, even prior to the uplift wrought by Isiaiah’s return of the ransomed. That final section was taken at quite a lick, but it worked. It also contrasted well with the confiding intimacy of ‘Herr, lehre doch mich,’ bass-baritone Shenyang contributing with keen intelligence to the sense of cumulative power in a moving homily. Patience, as Brahms certainly knew, is a virtue. Release at its close, the souls of the righteous in God’s hands, where no torment shall touch them, both paralleled and took further that at the close of the preceding number. 

‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen’ and ‘Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit’ exuded sweetness without saccharine, the first bringing (however silly this may sound) summer strawberries to my mind. It was brisk, yet breathed, Volkov ensuring a fine sense of the longer line. Elena Tsallagova sometimes sounded tremulous in the latter, but at her best imparted a fine sense of a maternal angel leading us (Brahms included) on. There was no doubting our role as band of pilgrims in ‘Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt’. Seeking that city to come, we were in need of a guide and received one, the Royal Albert Hall organ (Richard Gowers) underlining that in a highly physical, again consoling, way. The struggle to come both terrified and thrilled, St Paul, Bach, and the rest personally yet universally synthesised for us in the here and now. (There are many ways to be contemporary.) Its final words from Revelation, Brahms’s music summoning up memories of Handel and Mendelssohn, without ever sounding ‘like’ them, brought us close to completion, though it was no easy journey. There was, however, one chorus still to go, the final step—tonal as well as theological, any such distinction meaningless. This may not be liturgical music, but it strongly conveyed the sense of a closing, seraphic benediction. It bade us good night and fortified us softly yet surely, as Brahms often does.

Margot la Rouge and Le Villi, Opera Holland Park, 23 July 2022

Margot, Anna – Anne Sophie Duprels
Sergeant Thibault – Samuel Sakker
L’Artiste – Paul Carey Jones
Lili Béguin – Sarah Minns
Nini – Laura Lolita Perešivana
La Patronne – Laura Woods
First Soldier – George von Bergen
La Poigne – Jack Holton
Second Soldier – Alistair Sutherland
Totor – David Woloszko
First Woman – Chloé Pardoe
First Drinker – Sean Webster
Second Drinker – Matthew Duncan
Third Drinker, A Man – Peter Lidbetter
Waiter – Richard Moore
Police Inspector – Dragoş Andrei Ionel
Roberto – Peter Auty
Guglielmo – Stephen Gadd
Dancers – Fern Grimbley, Isabel Le Cras, Gabriella Schmidt

Martin Lloyd-Evans (director)
takis (designs)
Jake Wiltshire (lighting)

Jami Reid-Quarrell (movement)

City of London Sinfonia

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus director: Dominic Ellis-Peckham)

Francesco Cilluffo (conductor)

Images: Ali Wright
Chorus, Le Villi

Opera Holland Park’s new double-bill of operatic rarities proves a great success, highly recommended to anyone slightly curious to hear works off the beaten track. Delius’s Margot la Rouge, written from 1901-2 but unperformed until 1983, and Puccini’s first opera, Le Villi, here given in its 1884 two-act revision, were both unsuccessful entrants in the Milan publisher Sonzogno’s competition for new one-act operas. In Martin Lloyd-Evans’s production, both open with a father and his daughter, the unfortunate tales to follow initiated by the latter leaving the former. (Make of that what you will.)

Delius’s 45 minutes or so tell a straightforward story in which the woman Marguerite/Margot, fallen into Parisian prostitution, has a chance meeting with her childhood sweetheart, Thibauld, which rekindles their relationship, only for her pimp-lover, L’Artiste, to explode with anger, stab Thibauld, and in turn be stabbed by Margot, who is arrested. There is little in the way of dramatic conflict or surprise; people act precisely as one might expect them to. There is a frankly absurd number of cast-members for a work so short. But it is musically interesting, Delius not only at his most Wagnerian, but far more directed (or conventionally directed) than many of the composer’s more wandering scores. Lloyd Evans and his team summon up a seedy Paris bar, a storm, and various comings and goings with a gutsy verismo spirit that matches what one hears from orchestra and singers alike. If ultimately Margot la Rouge comes across more as a sketch in search of expansion, it certainly does not outstay its welcome and has much to fascinate audiences of various tastes.

Le Villi is, unsurprisingly, the more accomplished, finished work, the level of craftsmanship from Puccini at so early a stage in his career little short of astonishing. The Gothic tale has more in common with French and, perhaps still more, German Romanticism than one might expect. Here, takis’s shell of a bar transformed into a woodland house, Roberto and Anna, celebrating their betrothal, are separated by Roberto’s journey to Mainz to collect his inheritance. Waylaid by a Mainz ‘siren’, he fails to return, choosing instead a city life of debauchery, and Anna dies, her father calling for supernatural vengeance from the Villi who inhabit the forest. Roberto, having finally resolved to return home, meets these fairies instead of his beloved; they do as the legend foretells, dancing him to death.

Puccini is likewise not without Wagnerian influence here, but his truer predecessors seem to be earlier German (and again French) Romantics, as well as the purveyors of French grand opéra and ballet. For, in this early opera-ballet, what surprises most is just how much Puccini sounds like himself. Melodies, harmonies, scoring, if not so much characterisation: so much of his later mastery is already close—and sometimes more than close. Lloyd-Evans’s resourceful production takes full advantage of the magical descent into darkness an evening at Holland Park offers. Again, it tells the story directly, with a sharp eye for detail, and offers plenty for one to consider after the event, as indeed does the work itself.

Both orchestral reductions, by Andreas Luca Beraldo, seemed to me highly successful, in that I pretty much forgot we were not hearing quite the real thing. That success must also of course be attributed to Francesco Cilluffo and the City of London Sinfonia.  Cilluffo’s conducting, energetic yet long-breathed, was imbued with every inch of the conviction necessary to lift such scores off the page. The CLS sounded fuller of tone than many an opera house orchestra of twice the size. It drove the action as much as supported the singers in a true partnership between pit and stage. The Opera Holland Park Chorus, finely trained by Dominic Ellis-Peckham, proved both polished and enthusiastic in its singing—and game in its dancing too. Jami Reid-Quarrell’s choreography, whether for the chorus or the three Villi dancing, was sharp, illustrative, and dramatically conceived.

At the heart of both operas lay the outstanding singing of Anne Sophie Duprels: heartfelt, incisive, and variegated. She was poignantly partnered by Samuel Sakker as Thibauld in Margot la Rouge, Paul Carey Jones’s Artiste offering a contrasting, commanding, and vicious stage presence. The size of the cast offered a host of young singers opportunities to shine, all of them well taken. As Le Villi’s Roberto, Peter Auty might have graced any operatic stage. His marriage of vocal heft, lyricism, and command of detail fully complemented Duprels. Stephen Gadd’s performance as Anna’s father Guglielmo should also be commended. As so often at Holland Park, this was a fine company achievement.

Indeed, I think it was worth drawing attention to the achievement of the greater team at Holland Park. From Director of Opera James Clutton down (not to forget recently departed colleague Michael Volpe), or perhaps better, from a committed team of volunteers up, this is a friendly, welcoming, high-achieving company, crucial both to this country’s operatic ecology, past, present, and future, and also playing its part in building a more sustainable theatre in the broader, ecological sense. Since the pandemic, OHP has taken still greater care to work in partnership with local suppliers; a wonderful array of upscaled furniture provides audience seating; the auditorium has been constructed from reclaimed wood and recycled shipping containers. Art for art’s sake matters; let no one tell you otherwise. But art is never solely for art’s sake. To survive, it must assume and further social, environmental, and political responsibility. When everything goes right artistically, as it does here, that is even better, but human striving, artistic and social, matters greatly in itself and will only do so more as our world belatedly confronts a host of crises that never should have been permitted to reach this stage. Every theatre company, every orchestra, every artist, every partner organisation will have its/his/her/their own solutions, but they must work together too; that includes us as audiences. What better place to learn from hard work, effort, and example than here in Holland Park?

 

Prom 10: BBC Concert Orchestra/Wordsworth - ‘Music for Royal Occasions’, 22 July 2022

Royal Albert Hall

Bliss: Jubilant Fanfare no.1
Handel: Coronation Anthem no.1, ‘Zadok the Priest
Walton: Coronation March: ‘Orb and Sceptre’
Elgar: O hearken thou, op.64
William Henry Harris, arr. Jonathan Manners: The Windsor Dances
Henry VIII: Pastime with good companie
Britten: Gloriana: Courtly Dances
Parry: Coronation Anthem: ‘I was glad’
John Ireland: Epic March
Judith Weir: I love all beauteous things
Byrd: O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth our Queen
Handel, arr. Hamilton Harty: Water Music: excerpts from Suite no.1
Vaughan Williams: Silence and Music
Cheryl Frances-Hoad: Your servant, Elizabeth (world premiere)
Elgar: ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ March no.4 in G major

BBC Singers (chorus master: Martin Fitzpatrick)
BBC Concert Orchestra
Barry Wordsworth (conductor)

 

Copyright: BBC/Chris Christodoulou 

Having gone to this Prom with an open mind, buoyed by the sight of Handel, Byrd, and Elgar among the rest, I am tempted to conclude so much the worse for open minds. Should one keep an open mind about ‘Brexit’ as living standards plunge, goods disappear from shops, stations and airports overflow, vehicles pile up en route (sorry, ‘on the way’) to Dover, and so on? Of course not, though the Foreign Secretary Liz ‘Pork Markets’ Truss’s ‘innovative’ demand that France should sort things out is doubtless worth considering. Certainly France could have sorted out some of this programme: if ‘Music for Royal Occasions’, where was Versailles, let alone Vienna, Dresden, or Berlin? But really, even were one to take the English/British restriction at face, non-political value, a ‘Music for Royal Occasions’ that excluded Purcell in favour of William Henry Harris? The programming looked eccentric, but perhaps we should ‘make Harris work’, ‘get Parry done’, and so on?

Perhaps. There were, to be fair, some better moments, a good few of them, although the BBC Singers seemed an odd match for the repertoire. A local choral society might have been more apt. The brass and percussion of Arthur Bliss’s Jubilant Fanfare no.1, apparently composed for a BBC broadcast of George VI’s Christmas speech, made for an effective, even anticipatory curtain-raiser. The contrast with those celebrated anticipatory strings of Zadok the Priest, mercifully free of ‘period’ affectation from the BBC Concert Orchestra and Barry Wordsworth, worked well and if the performance was on the small side for the Royal Albert Hall, one could hear the words, largely thanks to excellent articulation from the BBC Singers. I could have done without the weird twirling crowns behind them, though, presumably set up for Sunday’s television broadcast but increasingly aggravating in the hall. Elgar’s O hearken thou, written for the coronation of George V, was far more interesting than its monarch. It may be a ‘minor’ work, but it is a finely crafted one: a prayer, rather than a public profession, and moved through its mastery of harmonic progression both in work and performance. If there is little that cannot be traced back to Mendelssohn or, if not, to Wagner, these are two masters worthy of the utmost respect, and what Elgar does can be reduced neither to influence nor to function. Drums, woodwind, and voices made for a refreshing Pastime with good companie from Henry VIII (so far as we know). 

Moreover, in the second half, Byrd’s O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth our Queen, from about the time of his appointment to Elizabeth I’s Chapel Royal, came as a relief in every sense: neither simpler nor more complex, shorter nor longer, than needed be, a jewel that gleamed even in a setting to which it was hardly suited. In the circumstances, a relatively ‘neutral’ performance from the BBC Singers was no bad decision, more or less allowing the illusion of words and music ‘speaking for itself’. A little later, the evening’s commission, Cheryl Frances Hoad’s Your servant, Elizabeth, took Byrd’s words and music and refracted them through a twentieth-century aural lens, various elements, different tonalities included, intelligently set in counterpoint (literal and metaphorical) with one another, imparting also a sense of Anglican versicle and response. More of this spirit would have been welcome. In between, an outing for Vaughan Williams’s Silence and Music, written for an Arts Council set of part-songs for Elizabeth II’s coronation, revealed harmonic oscillation and persistence in happy alliance with thoughtful English word-setting. 

One could even have waved through Walton’s Orb and Sceptre Coronation March. Its opening, after all, breathed the air of a postwar, televisual age. The reprise, however, of that opening more than outstayed its welcome, and the composer’s typical self-satisfaction soon had one realise this was music that, a certain technical skill notwithstanding, was all surface—without that surface ever approaching that of, say, a Ravel. Walton came across as a kindred spirit to Webern, though, by comparison with the aforementioned William Henry Harris, whose Windsor Dances, receiving their first and, let us hope, last performance at the Proms, barely attempted, let alone achieved musical interest. It was plausible enough to imagine them ‘inspired’ by our current Head of State. The titles of these mercifully brief orchestral arrangements from piano duet pieces—‘Castle Walls’, ‘Down by the River’, ‘At a Canter’—said it all. 

The same drum used to announce Henry VIII’s contribution did so for Britten’s ‘Courtly Dances’ from Gloriana. The opera has its devotees, I know, making typically extravagant claims for it, but these dances are thin gruel, far from helped by a pretension that the material cannot and does not justify. I thought the Pavane would never end. The Lavolta was at least a little more colourful, though a programme description of it as ‘fiery’ bewildered. Maybe the performance was lacking, for it sounded about as fiery as, well, Elizabeth II. Alas, Judith Weir’s strangely inconsequential I love all beauteous things, written for the Queen’s ninetieth birthday, also seemed to have its dedicatee in mind. Harris, I suppose, had not even managed the ‘strangely’ part. 

John Ireland was certainly capable of writing music of interest, especially for the piano. His Epic March, though seemingly played well, proved utterly devoid of musical interest. Intended, apparently, as wartime propaganda music, it semeed more likely to disillusion those poor souls on the Home Front fated to endure it. And where—I should have asked this earlier—was even a desultory nod towards decolonisation? Place these pieces in some sort of counterpoint with a wider world, especially a wider world brutalised by the empire they (often) hymned, contrast them with other ‘royal’ music, even simply choose better examples: but this, really? Did anyone seriously think it worth of revival; and, if so, why? 

Hamilton Harty’s Handel may sound intriguing on paper, but rarely has it emerged with the courage of convictions. Wordsworth here seemed curiously tentative, as did the orchestra. The abiding impression left would probably have been that the ‘authentic’ movement had a point, which is surely to have missed the point. If one wants Handel-Harty, one should go to Georg Szell. Even Elgar’s Fourth Pomp and Circumstance March was treated with kid-gloves. What initially sounded as though it might have offered a fresh look, inspired by Mendelssohn-like lightness, turned out merely to be glib and, reading between the lines, a little embarrassed by it all. Lack of sentimentality was welcome; what stood positively in the performance’s favour remained unclear. 

I have saved nearly the worst (after Harris) until last: Parry’s execrable I was glad, which manages somehow to be both vulgar and tedious. (I see it was revived for the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton, which again makes a sort of grimly apt sense.) Here the clash with the BBC Singers seemed strangest, a mismatch that certainly did not reflect badly on them. What empty, shop-worn rhetoric, and to what end? Pierre Boulez once referred to Shostakovich’s music by way of an olive-oil metaphor: a third pressing of Mahler. This sounded like a fifth of an already bowdlerised Victorian-Edwardian Brahms. It was as dull as ditchwater. All hail the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha/Windsor.

Prom 9: Finch/BBC NOW/Matiakh - Ravel, Beamish, and Rimsky-Korsakov, 21 July 2022

Royal Albert Hall

Ravel: Shéhérazade – ouverture de féerie
Sally Beamish: Hive (world premiere)
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade

Catrin Finch (harp)

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Ariane Matiakh (conductor)

Copyright: BBC/Chris Christodoulou 

Two responses to the Persian legend of Scheherazade, the first clearly influenced by the second, sandwiched a new work (seemingly intended to be danced, though not here) for harp and orchestra in this, the first of my visits to this year’s BBC Proms. Ravel’s early overture Shéhérazade—not his song-cycle of the same name—was heard first in an excellent performance from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Ariane Matiakh. Steven Hudson’s warmly inviting oboe solo, free yet directed, swiftly joined by other fine woodwind soloists, imparted a fitting air of fantasy, of unfolding, Ravel’s motivic working—whatever prejudices one might hear concerning ‘national’ styles—crucial to the piece’s success and that of its performance too. Without ventriloquising the sound of a French orchestra, the BBC NOW assumed its spirit. If Matiakh could not quite conceal all the corners, a strong case was made. And if a certain sectional quality inherent to the piece endured, it was nicely sectional, as it were, suggesting both variety and a narrative path. This was a well-shaped reading, whose hothouse passages were relished, albeit integrated within a greater whole. Intervention from an audience member’s mobile telephone over several bars was less welcome, though just as apparent. 

Sally Beamish’s Hive, a BBC co-commission with the World Harp Congress, was at first a pandemic casualty, due for its premiere in the dread year of 2020. Its belated first performance was received enthusiastically, taking us through the four seasons of a beehive. ‘Winter: Inside the Hive’ opened promisingly: a non-hackneyed yet evocative impression of the season, here (to quote the composer) depicting ‘a close mass of bees, all shivering their flight muscles to keep their body temperature constant’. There was cold, yes, as there was shivering; but there was also a muscular strength, married to and in some cases expressed through orchestral colour. If the language were relatively ‘traditional’, it was definitely ‘traditional plus’, no mere resting on laurels (or honeycombs). Rhythmic drive increased as the movement progressed, interspersed with or, perhaps better, punctuated by passages of wonder. 

Spring brought well-nigh onomatopoeic birdsong, renewed energy, and dance, a bee’s ‘waggle dance’ included. Lightly scored—this is music for harp and orchestra, after all—there was nonetheless variety within that lightness, Catrin Finch’s harp playing surely definitive here (and elsewhere). One could readily visualise the drama throughout. Summer I found somewhat filmic, though it began in darker fashion. Again, the music’s representative character was evident as rival potential queens fought for their title and drones subsequently seized their moment. Autumn, for me at least, proved the most intriguing, both concluding and offering an uncertain future. With character and events of its own, its fade into the unknown had one stop, pause, think, and question whether this necessary cycle would continue forever. 

Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite Scheherazade had the second half to itself. I rather liked Matiakh’s unassuming performance, determined to give the work something of that ‘symphonic’ stature rather than simply wallowing, but the Royal Albert Hall’s notorious acoustic proved less than ideal, swallowing up much sound before ever it could reach us. A severe opening, immediately balanced by post-Mendelssohnian woodwind and then the Scheherazade violin solo itself (leader Lesley Hatfield sweet and sinuous throughout) seemed a little flattened by the wall of sound that followed in the first movement. Others proved more variegated—or perhaps it was my ears that adapted to the acoustic. At any rate, all four movements flowed well, the first boasting lovely duetting between violin and various woodwind soloists. They too shone in ‘The Tale of the Kalendar Prince’, winningly pictorial, even swashbuckling, but never only that, always musical. 

One could take ‘The Young Prince and Princess’ as an object lesson in orientalism, but this sympathetic performance brought one as close to ‘true’ sentiment as Rimsky comes here. It was spun gorgeously, yet languor was never excessive. Its metrical transformations, Liszt never far away, charmed. Like the fourth movement of Beamish’s Hive, the finale here sounded from the outset as a last chapter. Indeed, a keen sense of narrative was a hallmark of Matiakh’s performance throughout, revisiting and rehearing past material included. ‘Symphonic’? Yes, if you will, though perhaps ‘cyclical’ would be better. Ultimately, who cares? It was enjoyable and, at times, delectable.

The Blue Woman, Royal Opera, 6 July 2022

Image:Camilla Greenwell, ROH

Linbury Studio Theatre

Woman 1 – Elaine Mitchener
Woman 2 – Lucy Schaufer
Woman 3 – Gweneth Ann Rand
Woman 4 – Rosie Middleton
Cellos – Louise McMonagle, Su-a Lee, Tamaki Sugimoto, Clare O’ConnellPercussionist – Angela Wai-Nok Hui
Actor – Eve Ponsonby
Voice-over Artist – Eleanor Henderson

Katie Mitchell (director)
Lizzie Clachan (designs)
Emma Doherty (assistant director)
James Farncombe (lighting)
Grant Gee (video)
Ellie Horne (dramaturgy)

Matthew Fairclough (sound design)
Jessica Cottis (music director)
Jamie Man (conductor)

What is opera? It may seem self-indulgent to begin by repeating, rehearsing, even reheating that question. It both matters and does not. The Tête a Tête Festival has surely shown London opera-goers that opera can be pretty much anything one wants it to be. And that, I think, is the point here. One may think The Blue Woman as much a theatre piece or even an installation as an opera, but does it matter? In some cases, it might—or at least might be interesting. This collaboration between composer Laura Bowler, librettist Laura Lomas, director Katie Mitchell, and a fine creative team of live musicians and electronics makes the question seem somewhat beside the point.

Images and narration, words and music come together to represent—or something akin to representing—the aftermath of a rape. Postdramatic in more than one sense, the fractures of memory, the circular tricks it plays are apparent. Time, which may or may not qualify as action, passes between unbearable, empty desolation of an abandoned south London flat—where it happened, where it is remembered, both, or a metaphor?—and beyond its horrible, familiar suffocation. Walking the streets leading from Clapham Junction to Clapham Common—uncanny enough for to see it pass the end of my old street in Battersea, rather more than uncanny for women in the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder—the woman’s psyche is rent asunder, awareness both heightened and dulled by rupture. Four outstanding women singers, shadowed neither sequentially nor arbitrarily by four outstanding female cellists, bring that home. Witnesses yet also participants, their commanding performance is clearly inspired by Mitchell’s guiding hand, Lomas’s evocative broken verse, and the sounds, transformations, and connections Bowler summons ‘live’ and otherwise.

Music, poetry, image, gesture present ‘the room I was raised in/Hard edges/Brick walls…’ and yet ‘In the splintered light/… I am dancing’. It is not hope, at least I do not think it is, but rather reality, beyond good and evil in an almost Nietzschean sense, although, for obvious reasons, this is not the place to pursue such philosophy. Perhaps I cannot help myself. I even began to wonder whether, as a man, I should be there, let alone comment. But then, it would surely be too easy a way out simply to absent oneself. Rape is not a ‘women’s problem’, but a men’s problem. There is a search going on here, for the woman she was before: if we cannot help, and surely I cannot, then at least we owe this woman an hour or so of our time. Observing and, ultimately, experiencing some fellow-feeling, engenders solidarity and maybe—I am not sure—defiance. I did not feel it was for me to define the piece’s terms. Song, speech, face, hands, solo, ensemble: things never quite come together, for they cannot, whilst remaining clearly, even fatally connected. There is no escape, least of all in escape. 

If it were all the more real and hallucinatory for those of us who knew the streets concerned, how much more must it have been for those who knew something akin to what this women knew. At the close, I might have found myself asking once more what opera is (and is not), but I did not. Instead, I felt a degree of necessary numbness: not enough, yet not nothing. It was the artists’ achievement, not mine. Opera may not be witness, but bearing witness is something it does, or should do.

Prohaska/Gerhaher/Bushakevitz - Wolf, Mörike-Lieder, 30 June 2022

 

Wigmore Hall

Verborgenheit; Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchen; Das verlassene Mägdlein; Lied eines Verliebten; Bei einer Trauung; Ein Stündlein wohl vor Tag; Zitronenfalter im April; In der Frühe; Er ist’s; An den Schlaf; Im Frühling; Auf einer Wanderung; Um Mitternacht; Peregrina I; An eine Aölsharfe; Peregrina II; Begegnung; Denk’ es, o Seele!; Auf ein altes Bild; Auf eine Christblume I; Schlafendes Jesuskind; Auf eine Christblume II; Karwoche; Seufzer; Wo find ich Trost?; An die Geliebte; Gesang Weylas; Der Tambour; Die Geister am Mummelsee; Der Jäger; Nixe Binsefuss; Der Feuerreiter; Lied vom Winde. 

Anna Prohaska (soprano)
Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Ammiel Bushakevitz (piano)

A decidedly superior Liederabend, in terms of verse, musical setting, and performance. Hugo Wolf remains a connoisseur’s composer: slightly perplexing, perhaps, but then there is no playing to the gallery, no folkish dalliance, nothing that might strain toward the evidently popular. This is song born above all in verse and perhaps, especially for a non-German audience, that will never vie with the more obvious, which is not to say lesser, charms of Schubert or even Schumann. Be that as it may, it is difficult not to imagine Wolf—and Eduard Mörike—gaining a few converts among audience members who may initially have been attracted by the starry pairing of Anna Prohaska and Christian Gerhaher. Many, the present writer included, will have been equally impressed by the performances of the sensitive, comprehending pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz. 

There is all manner of ways to programme such a selection, most with something to recommend them. This was intelligently ordered to provide coherence and contrast without didacticism. Gerhaher’s opening Verborgenheit came recognisably from the Wolfram we know and love, albeit definitely song rather than opera, even in the more dramatic second stanza. Wolf’s Lisztian harmonies were relished by Bushakevitz, again setting up expectations and prospects for subsequent development. A breathless (in mood, not technique!) Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens introduced Prohaska in impetuous contrast, her subsequent Das verlassene Mägdlein offering piano (and pianist) the opportunity for something more Wagnerian, whilst the Lied eines Verliebten that followed gave Gerhaher a counterpart to that Liebesleid, in neo-Schubertian vein. Moving from a love-song to a wedding, Prohaska was able to ‘tell it as it is’ in a sardonic Bei einer Trauung: ‘Denn leider freilich, freilich, keine Lieb’ ist nicht dabei’. Whether there were a note of bitterness here remained fruitfully ambiguous.

Ambiguities arising from the text, be that verbal, musical, or both were frequent, whether in the complex, ambiguous peace with which Gerhaher and Bushakevitz left us at the close of Um Mitternacht, the day now ended, the springs murmuring on. We heard—and felt—eery darkness, progressing to relative light (Gerhaher, In der Frühe), which led in turn to a spring-like Er ist’s (Prohaska), full of life, even hope. Though commendably detailed, as Wolf performances must surely be, there was no missing the wood for the trees; this was a pictorialism of the spirit rather than mere tone-painting. Wolf—and his interpreters—could be ardent too: take Gerhaher’s ecstatic climax in Peregrina I, the invitation to ‘consume us both in fire’ and to partake of the ‘chalice of sin’ followed by a splendid pianistic afterglow. Haunted, rich in potential meaning, Gerhaher’s Auf ein altes Bild, which opened the second half, was nicely open to interpretation, as if ‘reading’ that old painting itself. 

Shaping of individual songs, whether short or ballad-like (e.g. Prohaska’s Der Tambour and Die Geister am Mummelsee) was a particular strength; likewise their integration into a greater recital whole. Phrasing, such as that of Prohaska and Bushakevitz, in a beautiful Zitronenfalter im April, told without exaggeration. Variety within unity was certainly present between, but in many respects also within, songs. Bushakevitz knew where to lean into dissonances, for instance in the extraordinary, brief Seufzer (‘Sighs’). Harp-music, verbally explicit in An eine Äolsharfe, and implicit in Gesang Weylas, offered another set of strings to the pianist’s bow. A final trio that brought other-worldliness (a post-Mendelssohn Nixe Binsefuss, Prohaska), urgent vehemence and much else (Gerhaher), and windswept virtuosity (Lied vom Winde, Prohaska) was shaped at least as much by Bushakevitz as his partners: truly collaborative music-making.