Barbican Hall
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| Images: Mark Allan |
Roussel: Le Festin de l’araignée (symphonic fragments)
Ravel, arr. Anthony Girard: Histoires naturelles
Britten: Les Illuminations
Haydn: Symphony no.104, ‘London’
Stéphane Degout (baritone)
London Symphony Orchestra
Barbara Hannigan (soprano/conductor)
Barbara Hannigan is unquestionably a star in today’s musical firmament. Anyone who has heard (and seen) her Ligeti Mysteries of the Macabre, live or recorded, would neither doubt nor forget that. I have been an admirer, even a devotee since I first heard her, singing songs by Berg and Webern with the Scharoun Ensemble and none other than Pierre Boulez in 2008. Her more recent, yet by now established, forays into conducting, often in combination with song, have never failed to interest and to excite. And she clearly has a deep fondness for Haydn, regularly conducting symphonies from across his œuvre. What, then, is not to like, especially in combination with the LSO and another outstanding artist, Stéphane Degout?
Very little, in fact, though I found myself somewhat disappointed by the Haydn symphony this time around, it seeming not yet really to have settled. Proceedings nonetheless got off to a fine start with the suite, once popular yet now somewhat out of fashion, from Roussel’s 1913 Diaghilev ballet Le Festin de l’araignée. The parade of animal victims for the spider in his web had a keen narrative thrust, full of character, and vividly but far from only pictorial. Hannigan and the LSO above all imparted a sense of how it ‘moved’, even without dancers. It may not have the magic of, say, Ravel and Debussy, but it charmed, without overstaying its welcome. However different it may be in most respects from more celebrated Ballet russes commissions, there was kinship to be sensed, both in work and performance. It was far-sighted, moreover, of Roussel wittily to write a part for mobile telephone to coincide with nightfall on the lonely garden. Who would have imagined? To quote Edward Bhesania’s programme note on the music itself, ‘Nothing has changed and yet everything has changed.’
A piece Ravel did not orchestrate will probably always be too tempting for composers to resist, even if others have had a shot before them. I wish I could say Anthony Girard’s orchestration of Histoire naturelles offered revelations, but it sounded more workaday than that. It was skilful enough and could hardly fail when it came closer to what Ravel himself might have done, but the somewhat heavy string writing (doubtless a sense of mock-gravity to depict the peacock, but was it quite the right sense?) at the opening of the first song, ‘Le Paon’) gave a distinctly odd impression, especially given Degout’s seemingly effortless way with words and music alike. Indeed, his performance offered a masterclass in French song, all the supposed difficulties (they are real enough) with the language melting away. Again, I could hear Girard’s intent in the percussive clatter of ‘Le Grillon’, but it did not seem quite right. I was more persuaded by the closing guinea-fowl song, whose orchestration seemed genuinely to have one see, even to feel, with her. So too of course did Degout’s vividly communicative vocalism: not a million miles from the theatre, yet subtly distinct.
Hannigan both sang and conducted for Britten’s Les Illuminations, the Rimbaud text making it seem more at home with its predecessors than otherwise it might have done. Lucy Walker’s point, in her programme note, that ‘perhaps sheltered by the non-English language here, Britten seems to be letting his hair down and channelling some of Rimbaud’s … spirit,’ seemed to me very well captured by the performance, Hannigan clearly inspired rather than inhibited by the exigencies of her dual role. The LSO, never less than very good, seemed a few notches more incisive here, doubtless partly as a result. From the opening bars, richness of string sound seemed to take us to a different level. Hannigan as soloist proved just as communicative as Degout, as were other, instrumental soloists, first among equals leader Benjamin Gilmore in ‘Phrase et Antique’. Rhythms were tight or swung, as required. A well-nigh operatic ‘Marine’ proved key to necessary transformation of mood. ‘Being Beauteous’ captured its particular qualities, not least the sense of a young heart racing. Throughout, Britten and his interpreters permitted Rimbaud to speak: not unmediated, for that would be a nonsense, but heightened, or at least a little transformed. ‘Assez connu. Les arrêts de la vie. Ô Rumeurs et Visions! Départ dans l’affection et le bruit neufs!’ Indeed.
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The first movement of Haydn’s final London
Symphony, no.104, augured well. It had grandeur in its introduction, nowadays
too often missed, as if Hannigan recalled Boulez’s extraordinary recording with
the Vienna Philharmonic. (Perhaps she did.) It had no tedious mannerisms and
was very well balanced, inner string parts sounding as if in a quartet. Tempo –
not only speed, but mood – was similarly well judged. A dignified account of
the slow movement offered generally good command of line and detail, held
nicely in balance, though there were a couple of occasions in which tempo
seemed to slip rather than to be knowingly modified. The minuet, taken fast,
had a fine swagger. Alas, an excessive, almost endless holding back at the
beginning of the trio and in several cognate passages made a mess of that (at
least for me). The finale seemed to me just too fast, lacking in that grandeur
that older conductors, not only Boulez, brought to the work. Playing, though,
was excellent, and Haydn’s invention could still be relished.
