London Sinfonietta/Benjamin - Boulez, 5 October 2025

 

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Mémoriale; …explosante-fixe…

Michael Cox (flute)
Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble

Sound Intermedia (sound projection)

London Sinfonietta

George Benjamin (conductor)

Pierre Boulez’s centenary celebrations are far from over. Here, the opening concert of the London Sinfonietta’s 2025-26 season presented the complex relationship between the 1985 Mémoriale, written in memory of flautist Laurence Beauregard, and …explosante-fixe…, initially a Stravinsky memorial, which both furnished material for Mémoriale and, in its final form, of 1993, written once technology permitted, in turn drew on the earlier (and later) work. 

First came the shorter Mémoriale (following an introduction to the composer in the Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer by Jonathan Cross and Gillian Moore). Knowing …explosante-fixe… better – also having heard it more recently, at this year’s Salzburg Festival – I immediately began to notice and reflect on the differences and points in common, perhaps most obviously that Mémoriale is very much a piece for solo flute and small ensemble, whereas the later work seems increasingly to derive its larger ensemble, not only electronics, from a flute at its physical and conceptual centre. It sounded akin to a flute concerto in miniature, Michael Cox here and later the expert soloist, euphonious, virtuosic, and much more. Boulezian proliferation was experienced as vividly as anyone might imagine, perhaps more so, surrounding, ornamenting, and in turn shaping an unmistakeable, almost Classical line at its centre, albeit very much haunted and inspired, like so much of Boulez’s music, by Debussy. 

There followed an enlightening discussion between Moore and, first Andrew Gerzso, with whom Boulez worked on the realisation of …explosante-fixe…, among other works, followed by George Benjamin, who would conduct the work this evening, armed with players of the London Sinfonietta and their side-by-side Royal Academy Manson Ensemble colleagues to illustrate with musical examples. Gerzso clearly explained Boulez’s dissatisfaction with earlier attempts to integrate acoustic and electronic music, needing ‘score-following’ technology such as he first heard in Philippe Manoury’s Jupiter, so as to avoid the players’ enslavement to the tape. Boulez’s longterm interest in music as commentary upon itself, multiphonics, the airiness of ‘Aeolian’ sounds, the importance of Paul Klee, and much more were rendered vividly comprehensible. Benjamin in turn attended to the work’s musical content and form, Boulez’s melismatic writing but one of many telling links between the two commentaries (as, one might say, in his composition too). 

For …explosante-fixe…, Cox was joined by co-soloists Karen Jones and Sofia Patterson Guttierez. Whether it was the particularity of performance, that particularity integral to Boulez’s use of electronics, the contextualisation afforded by prior discussion, or something else, much sounded strangely, if hardly surprisingly, post-Stravinskian, flute lines included. The Rite of Spring can rarely have seemed so present, so haunting. Benjamin imparted an urgency to the opening perhaps greater than I have previously heard, instigating a frenetic, delirious outpouring of sound. He soon relaxed, though, in a notably fluid reading, enabling éclat to transform itself into sensuality, both of course hallmarks of Boulez’s music. In composer, conductor, and players’ bending of time, rubato and performance seemed reborn before our ears. I was struck anew by the nerviness of some of the string writing and its proliferating consequences, but equally later by exquisite, frankly erotic longing. All manner of other detail emerged as if for the first time: perhaps, in some cases, it was. Electronics assumed their rightful role as another section, here almost in place of percussion though that need not be so, of the organism we know as the orchestra. In its three-movement form, the ‘modern classicism’ (Arnold Whittall) of this phase in Boulez’s career courted comparison with Mozart: a sinfonia concertante reimagined. The clarity Benjamin brought to the score would surely have impressed the composer himself. It was difficult also not to feel that melancholic, even elegiac quality to the close, as all returned to E-flat (Es/S for Stravinsky), might have moved him as it did us.

BBC SO/Oramo - Mahler, 4 October 2025

Barbican Hall

Symphony no.9

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Mahler’s Ninth Symphony is not a young person’s work—a young person as conductor, that is, not as listener or indeed orchestral musician. There will be exceptions; there always are. It is not, though, a work to be rushed into; frankly, no Mahler symphony is, though that has not stopped many. That is not, of course, to say it need be an old person’s work; Mahler, after all, was in his later forties when he wrote it. Coincidentally or otherwise, Claudio Abbado was more or less – very slightly less, I think – the same age when he first conducted it. It benefits, at least, from a degree of maturity: musical, but also emotional and intellectual. Serious musician that he is, Sakari Oramo has wisely left it until last. There was no doubting, though, the preparation that had gone into this, his first time conducting the work. He had its measure and communicated it well to a packed Barbican audience, drawing out the best from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, of which he is now its longest serving conductor. I hope we shall hear it again from him before long, but this was an auspicious, well-considered, and well-timed debut, taking nothing for granted and thereby resulting in a fresh, convincing performance of a work whose confrontation with mortality and what might lie beyond can, given the present state of the world, rarely have spoken more personally or necessarily. 

The opening was tentative and uncertain in the right way: that is, such was its mood, not a characterisation of the playing. The vast Andante comodo, often accounted Mahler’s single finest sonata-form achievement, built slowly and, by contrast, certainly. Yet, almost before one knew it, there came the first great orchestral cri de cœur, with all its multivalence and complex ambiguities. The music continued to sing, as it must. Variegated string playing, articulation in particular, was detailed – Mahler’s instructions are nothing if not detailed – and yet without fuss. How malevolent the darker timbres and harmonies sounded. I was put in mind of an observation by Adorno concerning Parsifal, so rich in implication for late Mahler in particular, of ‘eine düstere Abblendung des Klangs’, a ‘lugubrious dimming of sound’ that yet left space, even necessity, for agonies, such as those of Parsifal in and after Wagner’s second act, to play out. This was especially the case for the wind – shades of Kundry as ‘rose of Hell’ – even to the extent of according to an edge, in context rather than by design, to the purity of Daniel Pailthorpe’s flute solos, and certainly to those harp phrases (Elizabeth Bass and Elin Samuel) on the threshold of the Second Viennese School. The greater trajectory was all there, but it was properly built from detail; a broad brush, if every appropriate, could hardly be less so. Form and, if one may call it this, musical narrative unfolded with an urgency that had everything to do with understanding and nothing to do with minutes on the clock. Urgency does not and never should equate to mere speed. If, just occasionally, I felt that climaxes might have opened up further, in retrospect that single-mindedness was amply justified; far better that than sentimentalism, and there is no single way here. More importantly, the music peaked neither too early nor too frequently. Grief-laden, yet anything but mawkish, it seemed to suggest, even to say: this is how the world is. And it is, is it not? When consolation came, it had been earned and came from within. A sense of return at the movement’s close was not a case of full circle, but of revisitation given what had passed in the meantime. 

Oramo and the orchestra offered a splendidly deliberate foundation, its strength and integrity almost Klemperer-like, on which the ambiguities of the scherzo could rest, and/or from which they could grow. Overused it may be, but it is difficult not to reach for the word sardonic. Puppets danced above the abyss, somehow suspended from something that would not let them fall, something or even someone that may not, perhaps cannot, be named. Bruckner night at Wozzeck’s tavern ceded, or at least shared the stage with, sounds of the Prater and, more distant, more insidious, strains of Götterdämmerung. A Ländler corroded and transformed: what did it mean? And again, who might say? Yet, that it had meaning, whether or no it could be put into words, could hardly be doubted: a Viennese dream that not only permitted but demanded interpretation. 

The Rondo-Burleske, ‘sehr trotzig’, raged with a malevolence that may have been intrinsic or may have reflected a world to which the music ‘itself’ reacted. There was, at times, especially earlier on, a smile too, though by the close it would be but a bitter memory. Again, there was an impression of marionettes playing out their drama, or it being played out for them, through them. Who pulls the strings? Driven equally by harmony and counterpoint, it offered a final Mahlerian tribute, beleaguered and yet in its way triumphant, to Bach. Marching bands would not, could not fall silent. Indeed, for a few heartrending moments, the world of the Third Symphony seemed if not to return, then to be fondly recalled, only to be banished by something closer to the spirit of the Sixth. 

The finale followed attacca, its opening as rich in compassion as in texture and in string sentiment expressed with – not dependent on – vibrato. There were still daemons to be exercised, but there was, it seemed, a God—and He might just aid us. Clear reminiscences of the first movement made clear the nature of the journey we had taken. Violin tone was transmuted from gold into silver, even for a moment into ice that chilled the bones. There would be no easy to path, yet we could trust that there was one. Stoically, Mahler summoned the reserves to keep going. For the lights might be going off – one could hear and almost see them, one by one – but there was no alternative. The Mahlerian subject somehow, somewhere remained, a voice of humanity, the hymn’s ‘still small voice of calm’, or even a peace that passed all understanding. Having passed through a weird twilight zone, metaphysical (Wagner, Schoenberg, and others) and even political (Nono, I fancied, might have divined the Gramscian ‘Now is the time of monsters’), and having refused to let go, humanity spoke—and sang. In a ghostly revisitation of Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, there was a flicker: maybe of hope, maybe even of peace, unquestionably of something. Music bore witness.

(The performance will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Thursday 16 October at 7.30 p.m.; it will be available for thirty days thereafter on BBC Sounds.)

 

Iphigénie en Tauride, Blackheath Halls Opera, 28 September 2025

Blackheath Halls

Images: Julian Guidera
Iphigenia (Francesca Chiejina) 

Iphigénie – Francesca Chiejina
Thoas – Dan D’Souza
Oreste – Dan Shelvey
Pylade – Michael Lafferty
Priestesses – Emily Williams, Ava Reineke, Eva Hutchins
Scythians – Byron Davis-Hughes, Zac Conibear

Director – Laura Attridge
Designs – Peiyao Wang
Lighting – Charly Dunford
Movement – Corina Würsch
Fight director – Mark Ruddick

Students from Greenvale School and Charlton Park Academy

Blackheath Halls Chorus and Youth Company

Blackheath Halls Orchestra

Chris Stark (conductor)

Priestesses as Diana (Emily Williams, Ava Reineke, Eva Hutchins)

Unquestionably Gluck’s greatest opera and, to my mind, the greatest eighteenth-century opera whose composer is neither Rameau nor Mozart, possibly even that is simply not by Mozart, Iphigénie en Tauride needs to come across as such. In a sense, all is secondary to that. Hats off, then, to Blackheath Halls Opera, employing a mixture of professional soloists, conservatoire students, and local residents of all ages, that the results should be quite so compelling, a vindication of community opera in itself and as dramatic experience. No attentive viewer and listener would have been in any doubt as to the work’s stature in a vividly direct performance and production that displayed not only commitment, but resourcefulness and imagination too. 

Laura Attridge’s production stood at the heart of this, neither imposing something extraneous on the work nor shying away from interpretation, rooted in the work but not confined by it: a metaphor and, I suspect, a foundation for the enterprise as a whole. (The idea that there can be a performance or indeed a reading without interpretation is self-evident nonsense, although it proves curiously persistent.) The drama grabbed and did not relinquish us: Euripides re-created, partly reimagined, but above all given new life; Gluck and librettist Nicolas-François Guillard recreated in turn. Stories, dramas, and their meanings change over time, but a core remains, endures, and in some ways is even strengthened. I am sure this would have been the case whether new to it, as many would have been, or a fervent Gluckian (as a few eccentrics might think ourselves). Such is the magic of human creation—and its riddle, as Marx for instance puzzled over, asking how, in his abidingly historical world-view, the art of the Greeks could continue so directly to speak to us Peiyao Wang’s set made excellent use of the space: on two levels, though not in the fashionable way of large theatres, in which too often those in the less expensive seats struggle even to see the higher level of action. Here, action extended downwards from the raised stage, affording a perfect view to everyone. An upside down house, hanging from the ceiling, served as a constant reminder that, in the aftermath of war and other ‘conflict’, all many involved want is to go home, yet are unable to do so. It may no longer exist or have been so transformed (destroyed) as to render the dream impossible. Iphigenia, worlds away from Mycenae, was foremost among those people onstage, though after the interval, the advent of children playing with smaller houses below reminded us she was far from alone. Beyond the stage, refugees remain on all our minds. And it was clear, quite without fuss, that Orestes and Pylades have not only the most intense, meaningful of male friendships, but are truly in love, sealed with a reuniting kiss at the close. The libretto may say ‘amitié’ rather than ‘amour’, but how could it otherwise? This opera has always been a special case; here, the English ‘love’ conquered all. 

Pylade (Michael Lafferty),Thoas (Dan D'Souza),Oreste (Dan Shelvey)

So too did much of the singing. Francesca Chiejina was a wonderful Iphigenia: compassionate, vulnerable, inwardly (and outwardly) strong, her clarity of diction as noteworthy as that of dramatic purpose. Dan Shelvey and Michael Lafferty offered noble and yet similarly, deeply human portrayals of Orestes and Pylades, oppressed and resurrected by Fate—or Diana, strikingly portrayed by three High Priestesses together: Emily Williams, Ava Reineke, Eva Hutchins. Dan D’Souza brought Thoas, the Taurian king, vividly to life with cruelty and not a little charm. Byron Davis-Hughes and Zac Conibear stepped forward to make the most of their time in the vocal spotlight as two Scythians. Various crowds assumed their parts, vocal and dramatic, presenting individuals who together were considerably more than the sum of their parts. Chris Stark led the musical side, the Blackheath Halls Orchestra included, with a keen ear both for dramatic purpose and for what was desirable in this particular situation. Orchestral drama, of which there is much, unfolded as keenly as that onstage, ballet music considered from all quarters integral to the drama in a venerable line of descent from Rameau and ultimately Lully. 

Thoas

Given in English as Iphigenie in Tauris, in a new translation commissioned from Martin Pickard, this knocked spots off my previous evening’s Cenerentola at ENO, which had fallen victim not only to half-baked staging and conducting but to an often excruciatingly unmusical translation. Opera in translation, even from French, can work—and was clearly the right decision in this context. It is, moreover, not only what Gluck would have expected, but what he did when presenting the opera in Vienna for the visit of Russia’s Grand Duke Paul in 1781, only two years after the Paris premiere. (An Italian version would be given in the same theatre only two years later, in light of the failure of the National Singspiel, in a translation by one Lorenzo da Ponte.) One sensed, moreover, a strong partnership between Pickard and Attridge, herself a poet (as well as someone who speaks great sense about what the role of an opera director is—and is not). A memorable occasion, then, all in all: dare we hope for more Gluck in London, and even in Blackheath?

La Cenerentola, English National Opera, 27 September 2025

Coliseum

Images copyright: Mark Douet

Angelina – Deepa Johnny
Don Ramiro – Aaron Godfrey-Mays
Dandini – Charles Rice
Don Magnifico – Simon Bailey
Alidoro – David Ireland
Clorinda – Isabelle Peters
Tisbe – Grace Durham

Director – Julia Burbach
Set designs – Herbert Murauer
Costumes – Sussie Juhlin-Wallén
Lighting – Malcolm Rippeth
Video – Hayley Egan
Choreography – Cameron McMillan

Dancers

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus director: Matthew Quinn)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Yi-Chen Lin (conductor)

Cinderella (Deepa Johnny), Don Ramiro (Aaron Godfrey-Mayes)

For the more Teutonically inclined of us, Rossini is an interesting case. He would doubtless have scoffed at the very idea, itself deeply German, of offering a ‘case’ at all: surely more the province of Wagner and his endless stream of interpreters. Interpreting Rossini might even seem beside the point; as Carl Dahlhaus put it, setting up his guiding twin style and culture contrast between Beethoven and Rossini, for him ‘a far-reaching rift in the concept of music’, there was ‘nothing to “understand” about the magic that emanated from Rossini’s music’. That is far from straightforwardly a pejorative observation, though it is difficult to avoid the implication of lesser, secondary status vis-à-vis Beethoven (and his successors). It might even be made to stand with Nietzsche’s celebrated elevation of Carmen over Wagner, though that even more so is ‘really’ about Wagner, not Bizet. At some level, though, one knows what Dahlhaus means, irrespective of one’s own particular stance or preference. There is something immediate, even unreflective to much of this music; one does not engage in a search for music, or if one does, one is readily confounded, given the way the same music can be made to suffer quite different purposes, brazenly un-textbound, attesting to the truth, if not the whole truth, in Wagner’s oft-misunderstood observation of ‘absolute melody’. 

There needs, though, to be magic (as doubtless there does, in a very different way, in Wagner). It will suspend disbelief, transform the at-times disturbingly formulaic into an intriguing formalism, and among other things, simply delight. That was not absent on the first night of ENO’s new Cenerentola, but nor was it as present as it might have been. Yi-Chen Lin’s stewardship of the score proved surprisingly tentative, highlighting rather than transmuting potential longueurs, too often feeling and sometimes being oddly slow. I suspect that was partly to be attributed to the requirements of singing in English – a very wordy English at that – but it was not only that. The Overture, for instance, came across as a random assemblage of unconnected musical ideas, with little attempt to weld them into something that was more than the sum of its parts. Too often, the music, some splendid playing from the ENO Orchestra notwithstanding, lacked contrast, be it dynamic or of tempo; all was too much of a muchness. There were a few too many cases of discrepancy between pit and stage – one in particular lasting several bars – but such things tend to iron themselves out during a run. 

In that context, the singers could only be expected to shine intermittently, which they did. Deepa Johnny’s Angelina/Cinderella was in general beautifully sung, with an accurate if not necessarily expressive line in coloratura. She did much to fashion an attractive character of sincerity; if there were no hidden depths, that might be said of everyone else and is more a reflection of the work than anything else. Her accent sometimes veered awkwardly between different sides of the Atlantic: one of several reasons why Italian will generally prove the better choice for such repertoire. Aaron Godfrey-Mayers offered a Ramiro, tender and ardent by turn, who again had one long to hear what he might have done in Italian, without in this case feeling unduly shortchanged: a significant achievement. Charles Rice’s Dandini was similarly well sung and acted, alive in the moment in a properly Rossinian sense, and fearless in his trickier vocal moments. David Ireland and Simon Bailey gave the strongest sense of commitment to the translation, the former as Alidoro almost giving one the impression it might have been written that way, the latter as Don Magnifico spinning and relishing a fine, old-school ENO line in patter. As the sisters Clorinda and Tisbe, Isabelle Peters and Grace Durham steered a judicious line between opera and pantomime, though could often have projected and enunciated more strongly in the cavernous Coliseum. Chorus and dancers offered variety, scenic diversion, and a welcome degree of greater framing. 

That might have been developed further had Julia Burbach’s production not felt quite so caught between two (or more) stools. A few doses of more detailed as opposed to surface realism, be it grimy or ‘traditional’, and/or of glitter, magic, and, dare I say, of spectacle might have helped. Herbert Murauer’s set could not have been cheap, yet a central lift that did not go up or down served little purpose; if two levels were desirable, a staircase might have done a better job of linking them. Burbach’s staging also imparted a sense of having failed to establish – in reality, probably having failed to communicate – quite what its guiding principles were and how they played out in the drama, which came across as less than it does on the page, though Christoper Cowell’s relentlessly self-regarding translation – often more a paraphrase – did not help. Many in the audience, though, seemed to find the startlingly novel concept of rhyme hilarious, especially when mixed with increasingly tedious demotic anachronism. 

Cinderella, Dandini (Charles Rice)

If, despite the shortcomings, this made for an enjoyable enough evening, it could readily have offered more. The opera’s general trajectory and Rossini’s musical formalism could and surely should have been conveyed more consistently, with both greater polish and a stronger sense of what ‘it’, be it the opera ‘itself’ or its staging, was actually about. Children dressed as miniature versions of Don Magnifico (in his case, with beard) and his daughters, appeared on stage for a while, eliciting mirth and bewilderment. Alas, I cannot tell you why. A woman who often, though not always, accompanied Simon Bailey turned out, according to the programme, to be Angelina’s mother. It is a reasonable enough idea, but needed greater attention to communication and implication. Mice ran around for a while, without really doing anything beyond that. Even a promising sense of literal framing, members of the chorus stepping out of the prince’s ancestral pictures, led nowhere in particular. That seemed in retrospect, alas, a little too accurate a snapshot of the action as a whole.

 

La locandiera, Bampton Classical Opera, 16 September 2025

St John’s, Smith Square

Mirandolina – Siân Dicker
Fabrizio – Samuel Pantcheff
Lena – Rosalind Dobson
Baron Ripafratta – Osian Wyn Bowen
Count of Albafiorita – David Horton
Marquis of Forlimpopoli – Aidan Edwards

Director, designer – Jeremy Gray
Assistant director – Harriet Cameron
Movement – Karen Halliday
Costumes – Pauline Smith, Anne Baldwin
Lighting – Ian Chandler

CHROMA

Andrew Griffiths (conductor)

Images: Bampton Classical Opera
Baron Ripafratta (Osian Wyn Bowen) and Mirandolina (Siân Dicker)

My second Salieri opera of the year: it is not so often one has opportunity to say that, although (depending how one counts) it is arguably not my first time either. At any rate, the bicentenary of the composer’s death has afforded opportunities one can only hope will lead to others after this year. Bampton Classical Opera has long been an advocate for Salieri, this its fifth production of one of his operas. This spring, the Salzburg Landestheater’s revival of the 1795 Il mondo alla rovescia proved a revelation. Now BCO has turned to a considerably earlier dramma giocoso, the 1773 La locandiera, written with Domenico Poggi, after Goldoni, when the composer was but a Mozartian 22. (I know I should try to avoid mentioning him in this context, but it rarely proves possible.) Truth be told, this early work is far from a masterpiece, nor do I think it compares with any of his operas, however early, though it may simply be that I know them better and/or am reflecting mere personal preference. La locandiera is, however, competently written, was more than competently performed, and, with what I presume to have been judicious cuts, certainly did not outstay its welcome, affording a cold September London evening a reminder of the departed Cotswold summer in which Jeremy Gray’s production would have seen the light of day at the Bampton Deanery. 

Moreover, musical comparisons with Bohuslav Martinů’s frankly trivial Mirandolina, based on the same play and seen at Garsington in 2009, stand very much in Salieri’s favour. I shall admit to having wondered to begin with, both with respect to work and orchestral sound. Whether it was my ears adjusting or something akin to an objective improvement, I am not entirely sure; perhaps it was a little of both. At any rate, it would be churlish to harrumph unduly at the small number of CHROMA players, since the alternative would likewise have been not to hear the opera at all. For the most part, Andrew Griffiths set reasonable and varied tempi, proved supportive to the singers, and vigorous playing imparted a keen sense of drama and onward motion. At least as important, a sense of increasing musico-dramatic involvement, as we got to ‘know’ the characters and their predicament, that sense doubtless born of a duly operatic combination of virtues: work, singing, staging, and orchestral/overall direction.  

Count of Albafiorita (David Horton), Marquis of Forlimpopoli (Aidan Edwards)

Gray’s production stood in a recognisably Bampton line, without in any way seeming off-the-shelf. I suspect the English country environment helps suggest something of its own ilk: the world of Agatha Christie, blazers, tennis, and witty one-liners (rather, in Gray and Gilly French’s translation, rhyming couplets). The transposition fitted well the noble-and-servant world of Goldoni; it enabled plentiful colour, action – never a dull moment – and reference in a nicely resourceful staging. A momentary visitation from the future, ‘Se vuol ballare, signor barone’, rightly raised a few chortles and reminded us how many opere buffe sprang ultimately from similar soil. That ‘other’ composer probably came closest, if with considerably greater musical sophistication, in La finta giardiniera, and the dramatic situation itself probably stands closest there too. I could not help but think a little more might have been done with gender and sexuality, as was certainly the case in the Salzburg Mondo alla rovescia. Baron Ripafratta, suspicious to an absurd degree of women, might have been ‘unpacked’ a little, as we now like to say. Perhaps, though, there is something to be said for treating a little-known work more or less straight, as it were. 

Lena (Rosalind Dobson), Fabrizio (Samuel Pantcheff)

I have stressed ‘situation’, because that felt like the beating heart of the evening’s entertainment: not entirely unlike a ‘situation comedy’, albeit without the reruns. From that, though, stock characters could not only step forth, which in able vocal performances they certainly did; they could also perhaps shed a little of their stock nature in the specific magic of actual performance. At the hub was the landlady herself, Mirandolina, in a spirited, properly knowing portrayal by Siân Dicker, well matched in every respect by Samuel Pantcheff’s Fabrizio. Our not-quite, not-yet Susanna and Figaro – ok, I give up for now; teleology wins – displayed excellent chemistry, born equally of stage encounter and lyricism, as well as duly outwitting a trio of male aristocratic buffoons. In their vocalism, though, Osian Wyn Bowen, David Horton, and Aidan Edwards all hinted – without over-egging their respective puddings – at greater frames of reference, not least through excellent line and phrasing. Only on one occasion did one of them sound parted, and that was soon forgotten. Rosalind Dobson’s Lena offered a fine animating presence too; my only regret was that she did not have more to sing. Here, then, on the cusp of autumnal blues, was served a landlady’s lyrical tonic—and far from only that.

BBC SSO/Volkov - Gabrieli, Stravinsky, and Brahms, 11 September 2025

Royal Albert Hall

Gabrieli, arr. Maderna: In ecclesiis
Stravinsky: Requiem Canticles
Gabrieli, arr. Maderna: Canzone a tre cori
Brahms: Symphony no.2 in D major, op.73

Jess Dandy (contralto)

Ashley Riches (bass-baritone)

National Youth Choir

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Ilan Volkov (conductor)

Images: BBC / Andy Paradise

A splendid Prom, whose programming was not only fascinating on paper, but grew in fascination, connection, and meaning as the evening progressed, aided no end by fine performances from soloists, the National Youth Choir, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and Ilan Volkov. Both halves opened with Bruno Maderna orchestral arrangements of works by Giovanni Gabrieli. First was the polychoral motet In ecclesiis, published posthumously in 1615, and arranged by Maderna in 1966. The variety yet consequential nature of Maderna’s choices concerning antiphonal responses shone through in ravishing performance. A Monteverdian sultriness to chamber passages, the grandeur of a fuller orchestra, adept handling and communication of metrical changes, and the sheer wonder of hearing this music – at long last – on modern instruments made for a wonderful curtain-opener resounding in Venetian splendour. Less ‘faithful’ passages with woodwind, harp, and eventually tubular bells brought similar joy to the ears. It built magnificently and subsided with discernment. Those sectional and consequential qualities were also to be heard in Maderna’s 1972 revisiting of the Conzon XVI à 12. Warm, lively, and highly rhythmical, it was again full of colour, not in an over-the-top Respighi-like way, which has its place, but in an unquestionable effort to communicate the essential qualities of the music to a modern audience. The intrinsic qualities of Gabrielian brass, married to warm, incisive strings and unfailingly well-chosen tempi, would have given pleasure to all but the most narrow-minded of authenticists. 

In between came one of the greatest jewels not only of Stravinsky’s late, serial period, but of his career, the Requiem Canticles heard at the composer’s Venetian funeral in 1971: of the same time, then, as Maderna’s arrangements and hailing from a less dissimilar musical world than some might suspect, old and new similarly united and inseparable. Intensity of drama and excellence of playing marked the opening Prelude: a clear indication of ‘serialism, Jim, but not as we know it’. It could only ever be Stravinsky, of course, and so it sounded, with fresh energy and commitment. The ‘Exaudi’ came to our ears as the Symphony of Psalms heard through a prism of Webern. There was something also of a musical object, even of a religious icon, to it: fitting in so many ways. The National Youth Choir’s warmth, diction, and intonation here and elsewhere were striking, as for instance in the distilled, almost homeopathic power of the following ‘Dies irae’. Ashley Riches joined trumpets and bassoons for an implacable yet human ‘Tuba mirum’, bassoon duetting continuing, amongst a quartet of flutes, and others in a duly hieratic ‘Interlude’ that unmistakeably echoed the music of Gabrieli (at least in this context). The ‘Rex tremendae’ said or sang all that need be said or sung, serial process joyously apparent. Was that Mother Goose putting in a guest appearance, courtesy of a rich-toned Jess Dandy, in the ‘Lacrimosa’? The composer’s direct Verdian homage in the ‘Libera me’, partly fragmented through unforgettable chatter of choral souls, brought us to a world of crystalline, celestial perfection in the ‘Postlude’, Messiaen a closer kindred spirit than I had ever previously imagined. 

The final work on the programme was Brahms’s Second Symphony, here given a thoughtful, striking, never less than coherent reconsideration by Volkov. It was fascinating to hear the lines of its opening texture after – in more than one sense – Gabrieli, whose music Brahms programmed amongst much alte Musik in his Wiener Singakademie concerts. The first movement unfolded relatively swiftly, though never unreasonably so; indeed, the composer’s marking ‘Allegro non troppo’ would be a pretty good summary of what we heard. Volkov handled the many tempo changes convincingly, likewise other, related changes of mood. Here, quite rightly, was a world of perpetual motivic transformation, always ‘becoming’ in developing variation: Schoenberg rather than Schenker, one might say. This was not an especially autumnal Brahms, but rather vernal music – horn calls and all – with decidedly darker undercurrents. It surprised, though never for the sake of surprise – telling phrasing here, a sudden diminuendo there – and cohered throughout, the BBC SSO’s multifaceted strings an ever-shifting backbone, if such a thing can be imagined. 

An involved (emotionally, intellectually, and texturally) second movement again brought the quality of Brahms’s counterpoint to the fore, the composer moving closer still to Schoenberg, yet also to Mozart. I am not sure I have heard this music sound more volatile, ever threatening to bubble over, its deep melancholy and Innigkeit part and parcel of a greater humanism. The third movement’s inheritance from Mendelssohn and Schumann was beautifully clear, though the other side of the coin was a tale of twists and turns, of continued suppression of darker truths. Its darkness was quite different, say, from Furtwängler’s, yet I could not help but think the older conductor might have appreciated it and nodded approvingly. And for all its ambiguity and complexity, there was a not entirely dissimilar overall clarity, even simplicity, to it. When the final movement erupted, hard driven at times yet always flexible, it proved thrilling and satisfying in equal measure, conceived both dramatically and symphonically, yet perhaps closer in scale and even temperament to a homage to Haydn rather than to Beethoven. It made, at any rate, for a winning, boisterous way to close a concert full of treasure.

And yet, meaning no disrespect to this excellent concert, the most electrifying and necessary item was yet to come: not an encore, though a return to the podium by Volkov, in which, visibly and audibly anxious, he, as an Israeli, addressed the audience in heartrending fashion concerning the genocide in Gaza. He gave those who did not wish to hear opportunity to leave, even in the face of abuse from malcontents. It would be remiss of me not to report this, though the BBC, it seems, has declined to do so. (The broadcast had by that time finished, it seems, although footage is widely available from elsewhere.) By the same token, I do not think this is quite the place to enter into any discussion of his words, other than to say I marvelled at and was inspired by his courage and stand in solidarity with him. His words (I hope I have transcribed them correctly) should now speak for themselves: 

In my heart there is great pain now, every day for months. I come from Israel and live there. I love it: it’s my home. But what’s happening is atrocious and horrific on a scale that’s unimaginable. I know that many of us feel completely helpless in front of it. Innocent Palestinians being killed in thousands, displaced again and again, without hospitals and schools, not knowing when's the next meal. Israeli hostages are kept in terrible conditions for almost two years and political prisoners are languishing in Israeli jails. Israelis – Jews and Palestinians – won’t be able to stop this alone. I ask you, I beg you all, to do whatever is in your power to stop this madness. Every little action counts while governments hesitate and wait. We cannot let this go on any longer; every moment that passes puts the safety of millions in risk. Thank you.

Thank you, Ilan (if I may). The conductor has since announced that he will no longer work in Israel.

VPO/Welser-Möst - Berg and Bruckner, 8 September 2025

Royal Albert Hall

Berg: Lulu-Suite (extracts)
Bruckner: Symphony no.9 in D minor

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Franz Welser-Möst (conductor)

Images: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou

Returning to the ‘cavernous’ (typical euphemism) acoustic of the Royal Albert Hall from the better suited venues of the Salzburg Festival takes some getting used to: for the listener and doubtless for the Vienna Philharmonic too. Still, it was heartening to be part of what approached a capacity audience despite severe transport disruption owed to Tube workers’ industrial action, and the ears – expectations, at least – adjusted as I was drawn in to fine performances of Berg and Bruckner, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. 

It was perhaps a little odd only to hear three Lulu movements (without soloist): the Rondo, Variations, and Adagio. If the music felt slightly listless to begin with – Boulez, for instance, would have imparted a greater sense of forward impetus – Welser-Möst’s paths through the VPO’s silken-smooth Rondo-labyrinth contributed in its different way to a sense of connection throughout the work as a whole and indeed with Bruckner’s writing too. It flowed at first almost imperceptibly but with increasing inexorability. Darker undercurrents occasionally flowed over, but solo instruments in particular proved the principal voices of different threads in quasi-chamber music that highlighted points in common with, say, the Lyric Suite and indeed with Mozart and Schubert, a duly post-Mahlerian close to the movement notwithstanding. A new burst of energy heralded the Variations, well balanced and directed in a more obviously urban soundscape: both more overtly of the interwar years, of ‘Weimar culture’ broadly construed, and also more overtly Classical-Romantic in form and expression. The final movement brought greater and more tragic malevolence from the off, already offering presentiments of the darkness at the heart of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony (and the path Europe would take following Berg’s death). Open, serial lines pointed to the musical future, but also to a close that, not unlike Wozzeck, stops rather than concludes. ‘Lulu! Mein Engel!’ could only be voiced by strings, yet was no less moving for that, as if the epilogue to the hopes and possibilities not only of a woman, but of an age grimly consonant with our own. 

Following music from Lulu, another celebrated unfinished work—although, likewise, important attempts have been made at completion (not heard here). If Berg and Webern – perhaps Friedrich Cerha, should one venture into the postwar world – sound as some of the last, epilogic gasps of the Austrian Catholic Baroque in music, Bruckner perhaps offers the final full instalment, if not so unmediated as some might have one believe. At any rate, Berg and Webern – their great Jewish-Lutheran teacher too – were present as ghosts, as immanent as those of earlier Austro-German Romanticism. Sonic combination of translucency and depth brought the Vienna Philharmonic’s character, and that of a Bruckner inclined to modernity, even modernism, to the fore. Was it in the shadows, though, and in other liminal passages, that the truest ‘meaning’ lay, here in the first movement and beyond? Poisonous offshoots from the Ring suggested Bruckner’s own response to his touchingly naïve Bayreuth question: why does Brünnhilde burn? Or was it in the unisons, in the approach to the dedicatee of the symphony, Bruckner’s ‘dear God’? In the wayward yet consequential melodic and harmonic twists and turns, or in the orchestral colours that at times seemed to pre-empt Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces? There was no definitive answer: far from a bad thing. Yes, of course even this music, Bruckner at its greatest, does not develop like Brahms or Beethoven. It takes its own path(s), though; here they sounded unerring, unlike the sometimes unfortunate attempts of his earlier symphonies. Welser-Möst may not have been so ferociously possessed as Furtwängler – who is? – but this performance had its own dramatic trajectory, at times fragile, even threatening to fragment, yet never doing so and quite clear after the event. The movement’s close was hair-raising, without the slightest over-egging. 

The Scherzo sounded as if Schubert, even Bruckner himself, were celebrating a black mass. It was not all malevolence, but, as if in anticipation of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder confrontation with the Almighty, the standpoint was clear in a drama of belief. The Trio offered, beautifully, nervily, and not a little frighteningly keen contrast in some of the most outstanding orchestral playing London will hear this year.  And the Scherzo’s reprise was heard through that contrast in greater ambiguity and sheer terror, an Upper Austrian Devil stomping his foot to create before our ears an Oberammergau passion within a passion. When sunshine emerged from behind the clouds, one could not but ask, without ready answer, how and why. If the close slightly disappointed, that was because convincing tonal conclusion no longer seemed possible; the world of Lulu and others now seemed inevitable. 

That slightly forced conclusion was nonetheless offset by the coming of the ‘final’ Adagio in all its Wagnerian richness, eloquence, and grandeur. For whilst this was unquestionably a symphonic performance of what is unquestionably a symphony, it was informed by the deepest immersion in music drama too, above all that of Parsifal; how could it not be, given the orchestra? That was combined with a world that lay eerily ‘beyond’, historically and metaphysically, less unlike that of Mahler than we might often think, although the nature of its subjectivity remained close to diametrically opposed. Welser-Möst built the movement patiently, without evident moulding. What a welcome contrast with the flailing incomprehension of a Klaus Mäkelä in his recent Mahler Fifth. And it was striking how many presentiments of Mahler, from Das klagende Lied to his incomplete Tenth, were to be heard. The realm into which we were led disoriented and disconcerted, irrespective of how much one might ‘know’ the work. There was a sense of having attempted to reach something we could – and should – not, Wagner’s Grail meeting something more traditionally transcendental, before a necessary turn aside so as, if not to conclude, then to end.

Salzburg Festival (7) - Three Sisters, 24 August 2025

Felsenreitschule

Irina – Dennis Orellana
Masha – Cameron Shahbazi
Natasha – Kangmin Justin Kim
Tuzenbach – Mikołaj Trąbka
Vershinin – Ivan Ludlow
Andrei – Jacques Imbrailo
Kulygin – Andrei Valentiy
Anfisa – Aleksander Teliga
Solyony – Anthony Robin Schneider
Doctor – Jörg Schneider
Rode – Seiyoung Kim
Fedotik – Kristofer Lundin
Mother – Eva Christine Just
Protopopov – Henry Diaz
Girl – Johanna Lehfeldt

Director – Evgeny Titov
Set designs – Rufus Didwiszus
Costumes – Emma Ryott
Lighting – Urs Schönebaum
Sound design – Paul Jeukendrup
Dramaturgy – Christian Arseni  

Klangforum Wien

Maxime Pascal, Alphonse Cemin (conductors)

Images: © SF/Monika Rittershaus
Masha (Cameron Shahbazi), Solyony (Anthony Robin Schneider), Vershinin (Ivan Ludlow)

Chekhov operas are distinctly thin on the ground. I am not sure that is a bad thing. Adaptations that end up being little more – at least dramatically – than abridgements with music are rarely the most convincing of operas. There are splendid cases of plays more or less set to music and thereby transformed, but they are not especially common—and with good reason. Whatever one might say of Pelléas et Mélisande, it is an exceedingly uncommon work (with apologies to Mr Kipling). Some transformations much more than that, of course, yet remain strangely misunderstood. I cannot help but think, one year on from his death, of Alexander Goehr’s Brechtian reworking of King Lear, Promised End. Yet cases in which a work is truly rethought as a musical drama are fewer than one might hope for. Peter Eötvös’s first opera Three Sisters (Три сестры/Tri Sestry) triumphantly succeeds in that respect and in others, not only ‘in itself’ as a work but also in this estimable Salzburg production, a fine cast and Klangforum Wien conducted by Maxime Pascal (and Alphonse Cemin offstage) and directed by Evgeny Titov. 

I was interested to learn after the event that librettist and dramaturge Claus H. Henneberg had initially presented Eötvös with ‘a pared-down version … able to offer us an overview of the play’s dense content in just a few dozen pages’. It was, Eötvös went on, ‘a respectable piece of work. But as I read it, I realised that this was absolutely not the kind of thing I wanted. His endeavours to abridge Chekhov’s play had robbed it of all his drama. The subtle tensions between its characters had been completely lost. The drama had become empty.’ To the great credit of both composer and librettist, they started again, Henneberg affording Eötvös ‘complete freedom to change any aspect of his libretto at my own discretion, even if it meant writing a completely new text for the work I wanted to compose.’ That is what happened with ‘an utterly different approach’ that instead focused on different ‘sequences’ of events in the play, organised around three of the characters, Irina, Andrei, and Masha. It worked – and works – both as a drama in itself and indeed as a metadrama on the original Three Sisters, without ever falling into the trap of mostly being the latter. How so? Partly through skilful re-adaptation by Henneberg; partly through the drama’s coming into being as a musical drama, music integral to the text just as it would be in Mozart, Wagner, Debussy, Berg, or any other opera composer worthy of the name; and partly, of course, through staging and performance. Ultimately faithful to Chekhov through infidelity, the adaptation presents human relationships, missed opportunities, their detail, and their sadness, reimagined with great power and humanity, in and through the bleakness. 

Olga (Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen), Masha, Irina (Dennis Orellana)

Indeed, the opening Prologue impressed upon us not only the bleakness – though it did, in ineffably ‘Russian’ sound – but also the way suffering becomes memory, as the three sisters (not, be it noted, identical to the persons of the ensuing three Sequences) imagined themselves about, once more, to start again. There was an unmistakeably – if impossible to define – ‘Russian’ sound, both from the musicians in the pit and from the offstage orchestra. It complemented, was complemented by, and seemed almost to be in a state of co-creation with the memories turned to Felsenreitschule stone of Rufus Didwiszus’s set designs, as well as what we heard. And in one important sense, despite it all, this was a starting point, for the opera, as we moved first to Irina, the Baron, the fire and so on, leaving that first sequence with the Baron’s death—thus returning us to where we started, undermining it, and preparing the way for a different sequence. Triangular relationships – for Eötvös, the ‘primary construct’ for play and opera alike’ – characterise what we see and hear, transforming before us, but also offering a foundation for the composer’s dramaturgically generative use of triadic harmonies, ‘constantly changing … internal structure’. A post-Webern world of intervallic construction, even constructivism, merges with a sort of modern (in some ways, even pre-modern) world of Affekt, whilst instrumentation mirrors and contributes to characterisation: Olga ‘represented’ – to use Eötvös’s own term – by flute, Irina by oboe, Masha by clarinet, and Andrei by bassoon; likewise their spouses, in variants of those instrumental timbres, Natasha, for instance by saxophone, related to, yet perhaps mocking or holding in outrage Andrei’s essence. ‘Representation’ is not a static matter, of course; one follows their instrumental lines just as one does their words, vocal lines, and gestures. That is the performing text—and it is far from a reduction. 

The element of Japanese theatre often strong in Eötvös’s music, overtly dramatic or otherwise, is also pervasive here, not least in the use of male singers for all parts. Eötvös settled on the idea having originally intended to cast conventionally, then deciding to have all roles sung by women, an option rejected since he thought it would ‘come across as fetishism’. Here, the very different vocal qualities of the different counter-tenors, nonetheless retaining adherence to a certain vocal type that can suggest abstraction, felt as if it were performing a role not entirely dissimilar to use of masks. (Eötvös wrote the three sisters’ parts so they could be sung by men or women, but had his preference for male singers confirmed by experience.) Titov’s staging took a different route, rubble and memory all around, highly ‘dramatic’ in a more conventional Western sense, yet also alert to moments of humour, crisis, and much else. Indeed, homing in on the expressive and dramatic content of particular aspects of the sequences fulfilled a quasi-musical role of its own. There was something deeply moving, for instance, to Andrei’s difficult emergence from his fat suit, like a butterfly from its (in this case cruelly imposed) chrysalis, albeit shorn of hope at either end. Olga’s celebrated observation that her brother had grown fat and slothful had marked him until now (in his sequence, if not previously). Was this now an opportunity for him to sing or at least to lament freely? Yes and no. He was naked, literally and figuratively, onstage; inevitably, though, it changed nothing. We could not be in the business of happy endings. 

Kulygin (Andri Valentiy), Vershinin, Irina, Masha,
Tuzenbach (Mikołaj Trąbka), Doctor (Jörg Schneider)

None of this would have amounted to much without a set of excellent, often outstanding musical – and acted – performances. Klangforum Wien, with its two conductors, led us into a musical labyrinth that, whilst hardly Boulezian, certainly showed many points of contact, following the mini-series ‘À Pierre’, which had finished the afternoon prior to this performance. Pascal’s timing, whether of moments, sections, or the greater span of the constructed drama, had a sense of ‘rightness’ to it: both in itself and in combination with Titov’s staging. Balance, atmosphere, momentum, and magical moments of reflection all contributed to the greater whole. 

As our first ‘featured’ sister, Irina, Dennis Orellana offered a deeply sympathetic, emotionally complex reading, setting the stall, as it were, for further explorations and in fine counterpoint with Mikołaj Trąbka’s ardent Baron Tuzenbach. Cameron Shahbazi’s alluring, compelling Masha – neither quite drag-like or entirely un-drag-like – and the poignantly wise (if only up to a point) Olga of Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen were equally well drawn, both in themselves and in the constantly shifting ‘triangles’ of the work. Kangmin Justin Kim’s increasingly outrageous Natasha, at one point pulling her lover Protopopov (Henry Diaz) along with a leash, was perhaps all the more monstrous, all the more hateful than in Chekhov. Jacques Imbrailo’s Andrei both deserved better and yet did not, given a reading that helped explain, rather than simply depict, his personal tragedy. Aleksander Teliga made an outsize impression as the Prozorovs’ old nurse. Ivan Ludlow’s Vershinin did much to convey a hinterland that in context could often only be suggested. All contributed to the success of a production which deserves to be seen elsewhere. Let us hope other houses will take it up, thereby proving more than a melancholic memory.

This image: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Salzburg Festival (6) - Aristidou/Klangforum Wien/Cambreling: Ravel, Boulez, and Varèse, 23 August 2025

Haus für Mozart

Ravel: Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé
Boulez: Improvisation sur Mallarmé III
Boulez: Éclat/Multiples
Varèse: Déserts

Sarah Aristidou

Klangforum Wien

Sylvain Cambreling (conductor)

Images: © SF/Jan Friese

Sarah Aristidou, Klangforum Wien, and Sylvain Cambreling presented another splendidly Boulezian programme for the concluding concert of the Salzburg Festival’s ‘À Pierre’ series. In one sense, it helped complete – with due provisos concerning eternal work-in-progress – Boulez’s Salzburg 1960 debut, which included the first two Improvisations sur Mallarmé, by presenting the third, alongside Eclat/Multiples, Varèse’s Déserts (with tape sections), and Ravel’s response to Pierrot lunaire, the Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé.

Quasi-Symbolist harmonies fashioned a magical portal to the concert as a whole, instrumental opening responded to by Aristidou in a deeply sympathetic performance attentive to words, music, and an alchemy that involved ‘meaning’ but went considerably beyond it. In all three songs, we heard Ravel as if through Schoenberg, the second song ‘Placet futile’ seemingly approaching Debussy too, though the melodic impulse could only ever have been Ravel’s. Klangforum Wien’s approach, perhaps unsurprisingly, sounded all the more fashioned from a new music standpoint—which is not to say that it lacked warmth, any more than Boulez’s own music-making did, far from it. The suspended song – to borrow from Nono – of ‘Surgi de la croupe et du bond’ seemed to offer a further opening to the explorations ahead as a conclusion to those so far.

Nowadays, we are more likely – when we have chance at all – to hear Pli selon pli as a whole; it was interesting to step back and hear it in part, like this as part of such a varied, yet coherent programme. Moreover, Klangforum Wien and Cambreling seemed to approach it more as an ‘early’ performance, closer to Boulez at the time of composition or not long after, as opposed to his increasingly luxuriant, even Romantic way with the score in the twenty-first century. Bar some early stiffness in Cambreling’s direction, it worked well, with initial contrast between something more rebarbative – these things are relative – and Aristidou’s spinning of the vocal line, ravishing melismata and all, in itself instructive. Ensemble tapestry grew before our ears, four flutes crucial to that proliferation. It was, moreover, very much an ensemble rather than orchestral sound. Nevertheless, there was no denying that sultry heat, nor the sublimated frenzy.

Éclat/Multiples offered as much contrast as complement, though the two necessarily involve one another-pli selon pli, as it were. The initial éclat to Éclat could be missed by none; all the more remarkable, was its subsequent dissolution in proliferation (resonance included). Here was responsorial Boulez already, in timbre – piano and various instruments and combinations – and much else. Webern’s example was readily apparent, probably more so than in the preceding piece. There were all manner of wonderful moments: combination of mandolin, harp, and piano lingered long in the mind. It was ultimately, though in their connection, their progress, and the magical surprises of diversion, if only in retrospect, that the substance of the musical journey was truly instantiated. Once fully within the labyrinth, even part of its fabric, one could only be mesmerised, albeit actively so.

 Certain sounds at the opening of Déserts – percussion especially, but wind too – seemed familiar yet also unfamiliar from what had gone before. Hieratic, primaeval, yet urban, here was the uncompromising voice of Varèse. Noise, sound, or music? Why choose? Partly, the work suggests that we ought, or at least might, or does it? At this distance, it seemed to suggest awe in the face of what was yet historically to come, but also foreboding. One found patterns, progression, even ‘meaning’ or the illusion thereof, both in the tape music and in its relationship to other material: an endless and endlessly fascinating task. Grand yet fragile, abstract yet evocative, it cast quite a spell as sounds ricocheted around the Haus für Mozart.

Salzburg Festival (5) - Concertgebouw/Mäkelä: Schubert-Berio and Mahler, 21 August 2025

Grosses Festspielhaus

Schubert-Berio: Rendering
Mahler: Symphony no.5

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Klaus Mäkelä (conductor)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Klaus Mäkelä’s multiple orchestral appointments have ignited animated discussion among those preoccupied with such matters. Never having heard him before, I was curious to hear which was (more justified): the sky-high praise or, well, the opposite. On this basis, I am afraid to say the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra does not appear to have chosen well for its artistic partner and chief conductor designate. Not only were Mäkela’s readings of two symphonic works half-baked at (very) best; his flattening effect on the orchestral sound, robbing it of so much of what should have one reaching for superlatives, suggests still more serious problems ahead. A single concert can only give an impression, but it was saddening, even maddening simply to have to wait for the end. Herbert von Karajan would have said he needed a few years away in Ulm, away from the spotlight. There seems, alas, little prospect of that, so Mäkelä’s orchestras will have to work with what they have. I wish them luck. 

Berio’s Rendering showed little at length, other than that Mäkelä’s apparent lack of feeling for either Berio or Schubert, on whose symphonic fragments the work is founded. The first movement opened freshly enough with commendable precision, yet also presented a stiffness that did not augur well. As Schubert ceded to Berio, the latter’s timbral and harmonic invasions were well handled, suggestive of uncertainty and unease, the orchestra’s long pedigree in music written for it evident. The music sounded more and more faceless, though, as time went on. Grave trombones made their presence keenly, magically felt in their big ‘moment’, but this was at best a collection of moments, with mere ‘filling’ in between. The opening of the second movement promised something more, Mäkelä largely letting the music take its course, the orchestra well balanced and pointed. But again, it lost its way—and not in the way Berio intended. A gorgeous oboe solo and, in general, gorgeous wind playing offered some compensation. This, though, was a listless affair that seemed as though it would never end. Strangely thin string sound marked the onset of the finale; it seemed intentional, thoughI could not tell you why. It moved more or less as it ‘should’, albeit without any ear for harmony. Vaguely Mahlerian counterpoint suggested a connection with what was to come, but it was not enough. By the end, it felt as if an hour had passed rather than just over thirty minutes. 

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is an extremely difficult piece to bring off. I have heard more than a few conductors come unstuck in it; this was to be no exception. Mäkelä again presented a succession of episodes that not only had little connection with one another; they even lacked sharp characterisation on their own terms. The orchestra, steeped in this music since the composer himself, played well enough, but there is only so much one can do in Mahler with such rudderless direction. At first, it sounded as though we might have Mahler as Shostakovich: not the way I hear the music, but a point of view, even a guiding principle, at least. Mäkelä soon began to mould the first movement a bit too obviously and, more to the point, incoherently: unconnected, so far as I could hear, either to what had passed or to what was to come. The storm, when it came, was merely petulant. Tempo changes in general were arbitrary; long passages seemed pretty much to grind to a halt. Very much in the line of his Schubert-Berio, there was little to no sense of harmony, let alone harmonic motion. 

The second movement proceeded similarly, in fits and starts, however admirable the playing in itself. It either felt too fast or too slow; not that there is a ‘correct answer’ for tempo matters, but tempo relationships made no sense, still less relation of tempo to other aspects of the score. Balance was often so askew as to sound uninterestingly bizarre. ‘Much the same’ would, I am afraid, be the verdict for an increasingly laboured attempt at the third movement too. The ‘Adagietto’ fared better, at least begin with. If on the moulded side, it held together for quite a while, with genuinely fascinating echoes of Wagner’s string writing, prior to the masturbatory meal Mäkelä made of the close. The disconnected string of aural images, for want of a better phrase, that made up the finale simply had me long for the concert to be over. Eventually it was, in a performance that lasted about 74 minutes. Again, it felt not far off twice that. What a contrast with this same orchestra, almost exactly two years ago, in Mahler’s Seventh Symphony under Iván Fischer. A depressing evening, all the more so since it was acclaimed by the audience to the rafters.