Dubois/Raës - Massenet, Fauré, Dubois, Godard, and Saint-Saëns, 28 October 2024

Wigmore Hall

Massenet: Elégie; Nuit d’Espagne; Sonnet
Fauré: Aubade, op.6 no.1; Chant d’automne, op.5 no.1; Dans les ruines d’une Abbaye, op.2 no.1; Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre; L’Absent, op.5 no.3; Tristesse d’Olympio
Théodore Dubois: Musiques sur l’eau
Benjamin Godard: Fleur d’exil, op.19 no.5
Camille Saint-Saëns: Mélodies persanes, op.26

Cyrille Dubois (tenor)

Tristan Raës (piano)

Tenor Cyrille Dubois and pianist Tristan Raës are to make Wigmore Hall history in a five-year series of the complete songs of Gabriel Fauré. Dubois will be the first artist to perform all of them at the hall; I presume, though do not know for certain, that Raës will be with him throughout. In this, the first concert which dovetailed neatly with 2024’s commemoration of the centenary of Fauré’s death, Dubois and Raës gave voice to ‘Young Fauré and his masters’, six of Fauré’s early songs heard with mélodies by Jules Massenet, Théodore Dubois, Benjamin Godard, and Camille Saint-Saëns. If there were a few, mostly by Dubois, I could happily live without hearing again, there were discoveries aplenty; it is hard and indeed would be foolish to begrudge outings for songs many of us will not have heard before, certainly in concert and quite likely at all. 

For me, the opening Massenet songs were quite a discovery. I have never been much of a fan, but that has been founded on the operas. These three songs from around 1870 offered a spur to reassessment. Whereas much of the operatic talk of Wagnerism has left me a little bemused, it was certainly present in the opening Elégie, from the harmonies of Raës’s striking piano introduction onwards. Their pairing, on Dubois’s entry, with Gallic elegance of vocal line made for a striking, even passionate mode of expression. ‘Nuit d’Espagne’ offered winning contrast and obstinate determination to prove the old saw, however fallacious, of the best ‘Spanish music’ having been written by Frenchmen. Affinity with Carmen was noteworthy; so too was the song’s composition having preceded that of Bizet’s opera. Enchantment of various kinds, eroticism without the Nietzschean decadence one might have expected, characterised Sonnet, which shared with its predecessor a frankly operatic climax chez Dubois. 

The Fauré songs initially inhabited stiller waters, yet already at the beginning of his œuvre, the closer one listened, the more varied the palette and the emotions, both within and between songs. Chant d’automne emerged as a splendidly Romantic response to Baudelaire, Dans les ruines d’une abbaye and, still more so, Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre (as early as 1862) acting in not dissimilar fashion to Hugo. The passionate climax of another Hugo setting, L’Absent, was finely judged by singer and pianist alike, whilst the turbulence of the last in the set (also Hugo), Tristesse d’Olympio grew ‘naturally’, art concealing art, from the preceding verse and music. Few will need reminding of the difficulties attendant to French word endings in song; no one would have guessed so from Dubois’s seemingly effortless command of idiom. 

The tenor’s namesake – no relation – Théodore Dubois close the first half. I cannot say I really ‘got’ his (considerably later: 1904-10) cycle, Musiques sur l’eau, the musical material coming across as rather characterless. Despite committed performances, (Cyrille) Dubois here suffered from a persistent catch in his throat. If it were to happen anywhere, it was probably better here, and he soon recovered, maintaining line and style. Raës’s performances were at least the equal of his partner’s. I was a little confused regarding one song, ‘Promenade à l’étang’, whose text differed from that printed in the programme; checking afterwards, it would certainly seem to have been included correctly, so perhaps the wrong text was inadvertently included. No matter. 

There was no doubting the sincerity of responses, nor to Benjamin Godard’s songs, which followed the interval. One would hardly call them adventurous, but they seemed more comfortable in their skin than Dubois’s, and were again given with a fine command of idiom and, where appropriate, as in Fleur d’exil, delectable vocal hush. The turbulence of Amour fatal, piano scalic passages and all, built to tumultuous climax, Je respire où tu palpates falling somewhere in between. I shall admit to wishing at one point that I might hear Dubois’s Don José or Samson instead, but full marks for his keenness to explore little-known corners of the repertoire. 

Finally, we heard Saint-Saëns’s outrageously Orientalist Mélodies persanes from 1870. Problematic nature aside, they offered a welcome change not only in mood but in compositional ambition and, for the most part, achievement. A vigorous yet subtle account of ‘La Brise’ showed the way for what was to come, patient attention to detail paying off handsomely in painting a larger picture. Ringing top notes (‘La Solitaire’) and Orientalist melismata (‘Sabre en main’) rested firmly on the foundations of rock-solid piano rhythm. A haunted visit ‘Au cimetière’ prepared us, in contrast as much as complement, for the étude-like piano blizzard of ‘Tournoiement’. 

By way of a calling-card for what is to come, the musicians gave Fauré’s op.1 no.1 as an encore. Le Papillon et La Fleur received a performance both buoyant and seductive. A smallish yet enthusiastic audience certainly appreciated the endeavour as a whole and seemed keen to hear more. Dubois and Raës merit following in this journey. Watch, or rather listen, out for the new year’s next instalment, devoted to the theme of Fauré and Nature.

Tiberghien - Illean and Beethoven, 25 October 2024

Wigmore Hall

Lisa Illean: Sonata in ten parts (world premiere)
Beethoven: 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, op.120

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)

How to present the Diabelli Variations? What better way than commissioning a new, related piano work to precede them? I should never have guessed that Lisa Illean’s Sonata in ten parts was her first work for solo piano, so assured was the writing, realised beautifully and meaningfully, as if a classic work, by Cédric Tiberghien. Each of the ten ‘parts’, which I think we might consider in some sense variations – the interesting question being variations on what? – is derived from a short passage, often as little as a bar, from Beethoven’s set. Interconnections in Illean’s own work were sometimes clear even on a first hearing; I suspect there will be more to be discovered on levels subterranean and subliminal. The opening seemed designed, both in work and performance, to invite us in, questing and uncertain (in a positive sense), full of potential. It was not Beethoven so much as Debussy and Schoenberg who initially came to my ears, though his ghost certainly visited the feast later on, perhaps as much through passages of unmistakeable dignity as through thematic connection. So too did others, Chopin and Brahms included. Not that these were necessarily overt references or even reminiscences, more points in common via, for instance, exquisite voice-leading (again both Illean’s and Tiberghien’s), use of the sustaining pedal, or horizontal employment of chords. Here was a splendidly old-school beauty of pianistic sonority put to contemporary musical ends, to the distinct benefit of both. 

Tiberghien elected to offer his engaging spoken introduction to the Diabelli Variations immediately after Illean’s Sonata, leaving us to ponder during the interval before launching into the fabled Schusterfleck. That worked very well, I thought, both in forging a greater whole and in rejuvenating a Beethovenian shock of the new. The Waltz, at any rate, was delectably sprung, without affectation, the first variation an excellent alternative beginning, as if Beethoven were saying – and surely he is – ‘that aside, now let us begin afresh’. As soon as its successor, we were in definably ‘late’ territory, kinship to the composer’s early years apparent in the third, for a distinct virtue of Tiberghien’s performance was sympathy to the multiplicity of voices, letting them sing to combine in the unmistakeable single voice of Beethoven. Here were humour, vigour, sheer élan, the knowingly wayward, and so much more, stretching in reference from the beguiling contrapuntal legacy of Bach, through heartfelt Mozartian equipoise, to Boulezian ‘organised delirium’ (to borrow the title of Caroline Potter’s new book). Formal command and communication were crucial, however lightly worn: one experienced groups of variations as something akin to sonata movements, whether in the rapt hush of a slow movement or the display of a finale. Overall balance and individual character were equally well judged, a Beethovenian hour passing in the twinkling of an eye. The composer’s apparent, readily explicable unwillingness to let go for (almost) the last time was captured to near perfection, as heart-rending as it was truthful. We had come home, though home would never be quite the same again.

Burkhard/London Sinfonietta/Berman - Schoenberg, Lutyens, and Webern, 20 October 2024

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Schoenberg: Serenade, op.24
Lutyens: Six Tempi, for 10 instruments
Schoenberg: Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, op.41
Schoenberg: Six Little Piano Pieces, op.19
Webern: Symphony, op.21
Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony no.1, op.9

Andrew Zolinsky (piano)

Richard Burkhard (baritone, speaker)

London Sinfonietta

Jonathan Berman (conductor)

Concert images: Monika S Jakubowska

Much nonsense is spoken about all composers, all artists, all celebrated historical and contemporary figures. There can be few, save perhaps for Wagner, who at least bears a share of responsibility for the nonsense spoken about him, about whom more and greater nonsense is spoken than Schoenberg. A Queen Elizabeth Hall concert devoted to his music, with further contributions from Webern and Elisabeth Lutyens, sold out, once again disproving the claim that no one wishes to hear this music. Even if that were true, it demands nonetheless be performed. Whether readings from Schoenberg and others, and changes in lighting – a tricolore for the Ode to Napoleon – added up to anything much may have been a matter of taste. In the greater sum of things, they did no harm either, and perhaps offered a way in for some. So too will have an excellent pre-concert discussion from conductor Jonathan Berman and musicologists Jonathan Cross and Julie Brown. 

The problem is not that there is no audience for Schoenberg’s music, but rather that certain interests in the musical world wish us not to, as with modernist music of subsequent generations. There is more than a hint of the trendy vicar to (largely US American) neotonal evangelists insisting on the ‘popularity’ and ‘relevance’ of something that at best has long since had its day and probably never had one, whilst the Second Viennese School and what was once called the ‘postwar avant garde’ continue to nourish performers, audiences, and indeed composers alike. If, like many other cities, London has done culpably little to celebrate the 150th birthday of the most important composer of the twentieth century, this London Sinfonietta concert helped make amends. Its dedicatee, the late Alexander Goehr, would surely both have applauded this contribution and rightly deplored the establishment’s ongoing hostility. 

More important, these performances will surely have made fresh converts from a pleasingly mixed audience—save, alas, for those who more or less obliterated stretches of Webern’s Symphony with their coughs, shuffles, and worse. It was not entirely clear which was the chicken and which the egg in a surprisingly tentative performance, at least in terms of expression. We certainly heard pitches and timbres, various symmetries and their implications readily apparent. Yet the whole in combination fell somewhat flat, beautiful moments never quite combining to make the symphony the work is claimed to be—and is. For perhaps the first time in my life, I began to think a Webern piece too long. The music, however, sang more as time went on, Webern’s second movement a considerable improvement on the first. 

Lutyens’s 1957 Six Tempi for ten instruments had fared much better, as did all else that we heard. The influence of Schoenberg and Webern was certainly apparent in this, Lutyens’s breakthrough work, though nothing was to be reduced to mere precedent in utterances and performances of great integrity. The six movements’ varied quality, whether in approach to melody, emotional quality, and other aspects of character shone through. Scintillating piano writing, a strong sense of representation or embodiment, one movement that even suggested serial miniature Bruckner (one might say Webern does that too in the first movement of his Symphony), and much more combined to leave me keen to explore further. More please, London Sinfonietta.

The rest was Schoenberg, beginning with the Serenade, op.24, which received an outstanding performance from the opening viola line onwards. In its combination of precision and lilt, it indeed proved prophetic of much that was to come. ‘Serenade’ covers a multitude of sins, and a particular virtue of Berman’s knowing, idiomatic performance was its understanding of roots in more popular music, again without in any sense indulging in reductionism. One could hear, perhaps even see, the days of Schrammelmusik; I could not help but think, particularly in this first movement, of a 1900 Reichenau photograph of Schoenberg, Fritz Kreisler, and two others (Louis Savart, Carl Redlich, and Eduard Gärtner). So much was toe-tapping, here and beyond. Much was haunted, not only by the past, but also by the future. Even without knowing the first Chamber Symphony was coming, one felt that it was present in method, sonority, and harmony: both as complement and as contrast. 

Image: Arnold Schönberg Center

For Schoenbergian dialectical method, or better that multiplicity of dialectical methods, was the progenitor of dance and delight: doubtless no surprise to those who knew, but the most welcome of introductions on the cusp of dodecaphony for those who might not have done. A rich, flexible performance took us through Wozzeck-like dances, fantastic arabesque flights in multiple directions, nostalgia, resolution (in one sense, anyway), density, and lightness of being, in a flow as inevitable as it was endless imaginative. Command of detail from the Sinfonietta proved key to liberation of the Schoenbergian imagination; so too did seemingly effortless command of idiom and formal articulation. Here was a Viennese serenade and no mistake, yet it never fell prey to lesser composers’ confusion of sentiment and sentimentality. 

Richard Burkhard, baritone for the Serenade, shone equally as reciter in the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, which took its leave from Roosevelt’s ‘Day of Infamy’ speech in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, as well of course from Byron—and Hitler. Present-day comparisons will surely have come to many minds; but here, rightly, this emerged in melodramatic expansion of the piano quintet. ‘Expression’ of all kinds was intense, but it was founded in the notes, not least in Schoenberg’s inheritance from the chamber music of Beethoven and Brahms. We heard and felt the ghosts of earlier forms, not only genres, combining to form something both old and new: truly visionary and ultimately defiant. 

In a very different way, so we did in Andrew Zolinsky’s account of the op.19 Six Little Piano Pieces, Brahms the starting point and never vanquished, Wagner the purveyor of unendliche Melodie, Schoenberg the architect of an ever-transforming constellation in the musical skies. Zolinsky certainly had his own ideas, the third taken slower than one generally hears and gaining in weight of utterance. As with other performances of the evening, they were rooted in the score and in its potentialities, in letter and in spirit: in both style and idea. 

The First Chamber Symphony was long the Sinfonietta’s calling card. Let us hope that it might become so again, given so intriguing and satisfying a performance as we heard here. Berman approached it symphonically, in the sense of a Brahms symphony’s motivic working that requires a great deal of flexibility in elucidation, so as to sound the most natural thing in the world—which it both is and is not. Unshowy warmth and security in line and direction brought Brahms masters of old to mind and, not for the first time, had one regret more of them did not show such devotion to Schoenberg. Musical line horizontal and vertical flowed beautifully, without a hint of the problems of balance that bedevil so many performances. If the Sinfonietta’s long history with the work was part of the key to that, so too surely was something new brought to the party—and it was a party of Haydnesque joy, tonality (not neotonality) in context both relativised and rejuvenated. Happy belated birthday, Arnold Schoenberg.

The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera, 16 October 2024

Coliseum

Images: © Manuel Harlan
Peter Quint (Robert Murray), Flora (Victoria Nekhaenko),
Miles (Jerry Louth), The Governess (Ailish Tynan)

Governess – Ailish Tynan
Flora – Victoria Nekhaenko
Mrs Grose – Gweneth Ann Rand
Miles – Jerry Louth
Miss Jessel – Eleanor Dennis
Peter Quint – Robert Murray
Prologue – Alan Oke

Director, designs – Isabella Bywater
Lighting – Paul Anderson
Projections – Jon Driscoll

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Duncan Ward (conductor)

It had been a while since I last saw The Turn of the Screw, though there was a time when it seemed quite a regular . To my mind the strongest of Britten’s operas, it was last seen at the Coliseum in an excellent staging by David McVicar: again to my mind, one of his strongest. It now returns in a new ENO production by Isabella Bywater, also designed by her, with an impressive cast conducted by Duncan Ward. 

Flora, Miles, Mrs Grose (Gweneth Ann Rand), Governess

Bywater’s production seems generally to have been well received. Whilst acknowledging her effort to bring a new standpoint to the work, I am not convinced it succeeds; at least, it did not succeed so well for me as it apparently has for many. The drama is presented in the Governess’s flashbacks from a psychiatric hospital, events at Bly presumably at least having contributed to her committal. Scenic projections onto the hospital set lead us back to the house and its grounds: to my eyes, a little clumsily. This was clearly a traumatic, horrific experience for the Governess, all the more so as presented in a finely observed, deeply compassionate performance from Ailish Tynan. There is splendidly creepy – and chillingly meaningful – children’s play, for instance with Flora and her doll.

The problem – and I am not sure this was Bywater’s intention – is that in giving the impression the events may straightforwardly have been imagined by the Governess, the drama veers in a one-sided direction that has one ultimately question what the point of it might be. Asking ‘did the Governess see the ghosts’ is of course a reasonable and indeed necessary question; proceeding as Bywater does in her programme note and also, so it seems, onstage, to ask ‘Did she have a personality disorder?’ risks missing the point. ‘Ambiguity is what makes it unsettling,’ Bywater adds. Precisely, which is why it seems an odd move to rid it of most of that ambiguity; more disturbingly, it comes close to turning the Governess’s distress into a spectacle, and eclipsing the ‘real’ question of what has been done to the children. Having the Governess imagine so much seems both implausible and undesirable. It is perfectly possible, of course, to adopt a partial standpoint; many stagings of all manner of works do, with greater and lesser success. The Turn of the Screw, however, emerges somewhat shortchanged—whilst at the same time, to be fair, far from fruitlessly interrogated. 

Tynan’s performance was absolutely central to those fruits, both detailed and skilfully sketching the broader picture. Eleanor Dennis’s Miss Jessel and Robert Murray’s Peter Quint were similarly detailed portrayals, highly commendable, though the underlying premise perhaps worked all the more against them. Gweneth Ann Rand’s Mrs Grose, by turn warm and distanced, was permitted to offer greater ambiguity. Victoria Nekhaenko’s Flora and Jerry Louth’s Miles were both excellent too, walking dramatic tightropes with great skill and credibility, the latter’s icy delivery in particular both bringing home and into question the theme of innocence’s loss in work and staging. Alan Oke’s Prologue as medical consultant offered a masterclass in diction and framing, surtitles in fact proving unnecessary throughout.

Prologue (Alan Oke)

Ward’s musical interpretation seemed to have been formulated with Bywater’s concept in mind. Especially in the first act, a looser, more rhapsodic approach, suggestive of psychological disorder and even a shift from ghost story into outright horror, was prevalent. What I missed was a stronger sense of line, of the workings of scenic and longer-term construction, so crucial to this opera’s dramaturgy. Perhaps by design, this fell into clearer focus after the interval, suggesting a conflict between freedom and determinism far from irrelevant to the musical as well as stage action. Moments of horror registered in vividly pictorial fashion, at times presaging the desiccated late world of Death in Venice; their integration in this, perhaps Britten’s most constructivist score, was less clear.

Ultimately, then, Bywater’s production did not for me cohere as well as McVicar’s more straightforward yet deeply committed production or Anneliese McKimmon’s thoughtful, more properly ambiguous staging for Opera Holland Park in 2014. Likewise, the conducting of Charles Mackerras and Steuart Bedford on those occasions did more to enable and elucidate Britten’s turning of the musical screw. I was grateful nonetheless for the opportunity to have experienced it, not least for Tynan’s gripping Governess.

Miss Jessel (Eleanor Dennis), Peter Quint, Governess

The Snowmaiden, English Touring Opera, 29 September 2024

Hackney Empire

Snowmaiden – Ffion Edwards
Lel – Kitty Whately
Kupava – Katherine McIndoe
Mizgir – Edmund Danon
Spring Beauty – Hannah Sandison
Grandfather Frost, Bermyata – Edward Hawkins
Tsar Berendey – Joseph Doody
Bobyl – Jack Dolan
Bobylikha – Amy J Payne
Spirit of the Wood – David Horton
Masienitsa – Neil Balfour
Tsar’s Page – Alexandra Meier

Director – Olivia Fuchs
Designs – Eleanor Bull
Lighting – Jamie Platt

Choral Ensemble
Orchestra of English Touring Opera
Hannah Quinn (conductor)

Images: Richard Hubert Smith
Snowmaiden (Ffion Edwards)

English Touring Opera’s new season opened, as is now customary, at the Hackney Empire, with an excellent follow up to its 2022 production of The Golden Cockerel in the guise of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snowmaiden, both given in English and sharing some of their casts. Although there were, unsurprisingly, other points held in common, these ultimately proved very different works and productions, one from the early years of his operatic career (written 1880-81), the other his final completed opera (1906-7). Together, they pointed once again to the treasure trove awaiting curious audiences and performers in works that tend, admittedly, to be uneven in their achievement, yet are rarely if ever without interest. Here we saw – and heard – a folkloric passage from winter to spring that inevitably brought to mind Rimsky’s greatest pupil and his cataclysmic Rite, with a more tender heart than many might have come to expect. 

In ETO’s new version, Rimsky’s setting of Alexander Ostrovsky’s play is considerably cut, so that if one could hardly compare it to the concision of Janáček’s later Ostrovsky setting, Katya Kabanova, it certainly does not outstay its welcome. Interestingly, Tchaikovsky composed incidental music for the 1873 premiere of the play, sometimes employing the same folksong melodies. The work is reduced in another, perhaps even more fundamental way; instead of the typical large orchestra – no one would deny Rimsky’s mastery of orchestration – it is given by a very small one, with two strings per part (only one double bass), mostly single wind (two clarinets and horns), timpani, harp, percussion and keyboard instruments. In many ways, it offers a different standpoint on the composer. Some of this is doubtless the orchestral reduction, but some, I think, is a matter of earlier style. It was often a more Tchaikovskian Rimsky, a composer closer to earlier rather than later Wagner, with some characteristics difficult to place, yet, aside from somewhat characterless arioso writing early on, always of musical interest, if not always as we might have expected from later works. 

Snowmaiden, Lel (Kitty Whately)

Clarinet solos (Sascha Rattle) especially caught the ear: again, partly the writing, but partly the excellence of playing. And the folk derivation of some material intrigues without the undue repetition that can sometimes be the case when it makes its way into art music. Throughout, Hannah Quinn led orchestral and vocal forces in a fresh, direct account of the score. If big moments such as the third-act betrothal kiss necessarily lost some of their sensual quality, dramatic loss was surprisingly small. By that stage, we had listened our way in, and the fundamental musical method of structuring had firmly implanted itself in our consciousness. It may not be a ‘symphonic’ work in the way we understand that idea from Wagner – though nor is it trying to be – but there is interesting motivic development, as well as a good deal of ‘Russian’ lyricism. 

Alasdair Middleton’s English translation served the singers and audience comprehension well. Ffion Edwards gave a touching account, warm and precise, of the title role, with Katherine McIndoe a true, characterful foil as her friend-turned-rival Kupava. Kitty Whately made a fine impression as Lel, whether in expression of his youthful temperament or his role as conduit for song. Edmund Danon’s darker portrayal of Mizgir, keenly alert to his moodswings and their larger import, was equally successful. Joseph Doody’s Tsar Berendey, eye-catchingly frock-clad, presided over proceedings with graceful presence and elegance of line. Hannah Sandison’s compassionate Spring Beauty (Snowmaiden’s mother), Jack Dolan’s bluff Bobyl, and Edward Hawkins’s versatile dual turn as Grandfather Frost and Bermyata also stood out, but there were no weak links in the cast, who worked very well together. 

Olivia Fuchs navigated well the twin demands of telling what to most would be an unfamiliar tale whilst saying something with and about it. Russian, fairytale, and ultimately human lines of development came together in the figure of the Snowmaiden who yearns to love, yet cannot since her heart is made of ice. A strong sense was imparted of roots in the strife of her parents, Spring Beauty and Grandfather Frost, justifying at least dramatically what was perhaps less interesting in ‘purely’ musical terms. It merged more or less seamlessly with the long-desired passage of winter into spring and also, as Fuchs noted in the programme, allowed us to ‘reflect on our changed relationship with, and societal alienation from, nature’s cycles as well as our interference with them’. This was accomplished lightly rather than with overt didacticism, in a resourceful, suggestive staging that will travel to theatres of different sizes across the country. On top of that, a more feminist – or less misogynistic – twist was given, so as to save the central protagonist from merely being ‘rescued’ by a man who had ill-treated her. Here, then, was a tale of transformation in multiple, connected ways.