Horton - Chopin and Bach, 29 October 2025

Wigmore Hall

Chopin: Prelude in C-sharp minor, op.45
Bach: English Suite no.2 in A minor, BWV 807
Chopin: Waltz in A minor, op.34 no.2; Fantasy in F minor, op.49; Polonaise in C-sharp minor, op.26 no.1; Polonaise in E-flat minor, op.26 no.2; Mazurka in B major, op.63 no.1; Mazurka in F minor, op.63 no.2; Mazurka in C-sharp minor, op.63 no.3; Polonaise-fantaisie in A-flat major, op.61

Tim Horton (piano)

Tim Horton’s Wigmore Hall residency, in which he presents Chopin’s music alongside important predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, has reached Bach, offering the second English Suite and an illuminating Chopin selection. The C-sharp minor Prelude – Chopin’s, not Bach’s – opened and proceeded in a way that set the tone for the entire recital: both muscular and melting, clarity and direction likewise two sides to the same musical coin. The notes mattered, and one felt that; so too did Chopin’s harmonic surprises. Not for the last time here, without necessarily sounding Lisztian, the playing made one keen to hear Horton’s Liszt. At the opposite end of the first half, the A minor Waltz, op.34 no.2, explored its tonality with a sadness emerging from its material, rather than applied to it, and thus all the stronger for it. Rubato here, as elsewhere, was unexaggerated yet telling. Chopin’s harmonic transformations and much else stood in Bach’s line, whilst remaining ineffably the composer’s own. 

In between came the English Suite, its A minor presaging the Waltz. This was not Chopinesque Bach as such; it had its own validity. It was, though, a validity that drew connections and created a properly satisfying musical programme, reminding us that Bach’s may be the greatest piano music of all (with absolutely no apology to devotees of other keyboard instruments). The Prelude, rhythms tightly sprung, offered a fine framework for melodic and harmonic exploration and expression, striking an excellent balance between dynamic contrasts that were of the moment and structurally conceived, in fact showing the distinction ultimately to be illusory. Following its relative extraversion, the Allemande turned inwards, again relatively speaking, leading to a Courante that was both robust and subtle, its lineage unmistakeably French, albeit with equally unmistakeable German colouring and grounding. A beautifully dignified, even luxuriant Sarabande led us into the harmonic labyrinth, but also guided us through it. The Bourrées and Gigue offered both intensification and release, just as they should. 

The F minor Fantasy, op.49, opened the second half, inheriting and extending the recital’s preceding virtues, whilst delineating this piece’s decidedly particular character and form. Echoes of Schumann, however fleeting, registered clearly in a musical kaleidoscope that again, if not exactly Lisztian, was not exactly un-Lisztian either. This music can readily fall apart when presented according to pre-conceived structural ideas that are not Chopin’s; not so here, quite the contrary. The two op.26 Polonaises and the were eloquently presented in relation to one another, harmonic foundations key to that conception. The anger and grief of the latter, in E-flat minor, spoke with a sensibility it was difficult not to think tragic, albeit finely differentiated. (But then, is not Hamlet?) I found it deeply moving. 

So too were the three op.63 Mazurkas, similarly conceived as a set, yet ever alert to individual qualities. A particularly Chopinesque sadness to the second contrasted with and in its way confirmed both the well-sprung first and the syncretic, unifying qualities of the third. Counterpoint and harmony, as with Bach, were indivisible. The Polonaise-fantaisie is not my favourite Chopin, but this attentively painted performance had me listen and, I fancied, understand its structure as rarely before. Unfailingly eloquent, it unfolded both on its own terms and in light of what had gone before. As Jim Samson points out in his typically excellent programme note, examination of Chopin’s sketches shows that Chopin was ‘really composing a Fantasy, similar in conception and even in tonal organisation to the other Fantasy performed thius evening, and that he added the polonaise rhythm … to the principal melody as an afterthought.’ Compositional origins sounded here with musical immanence. As an encore, we heard a characteristic op.9 no.2 Nocturne, direct and sensitive in equal measure. Once again, I look forward to future instalments in this fascinating series.

Takács Quartet/Ridout - Mozart, 20 October 2025

Wigmore Hall

String Quintet in C major, KV 515; String Quintet in G minor, KV 516

Edward Dusinberre

Harumi Rhodes (violins)

Richard O’Neill, Timothy Ridout (violas)

András Fejér (cello)
 

Visits from the Takács Quartet are always a highlight, for me, of a Wigmore Hall season. To be joined by Timothy Ridout for two Mozart string quintets made this one, if anything, still more so. Both works from spring 1787, falling between Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, they breathe the air of those operas. It was difficult not to think of them from time to time during these performances—and why would one try? Also characteristic of both was a sense of ‘rightness’ to tempo. Rarely, if ever, will there be a ‘correct’ answer in absolute terms, though there may sometimes be something closer to that in proportionality; but this spoke of knowledge of and ease with the works, as a springboard to further exploration. It was clear that the players relished the fuller texture of a viola quintet, equally clear that this was shared by a receptive audience. 

In any case, the C major Quintet opened as one sensed it ‘should’, cello and first violin duet presaging many other such passages, shared between the entire quintet, other entries propelling the first movement’s opening rhythmically and harmonically and its development thereafter. Mozart’s developing variation of the opening arpeggio figure was neither more nor less prominent than balance and motivic coherence and consequence required. Formal expectations and surprises were, similarly, equally fulfilled, simplicity and complexity shown to be not only in balance but two sides to the same coin. Pairs of instruments again came to the fore delightfully in the minuet, the two violas perhaps a special joy. Its trio threw everything up into the air, music resettling in magically restored order. Echoes of orchestral dances, both passed and to come, resounded. Taken third as it usually though not always is, the Andante benefited from judicious balance between space and momentum, harmony and counterpoint. Instrumental drama played out as if this were a scene from Figaro. Above all, the finale smiled: not in spite of the cares and tears, but on their account. As light as it was rich as it was deep, it again permitted all to fall into place, however much that were a case of art concealing art. 

The turn from major to minor in the guise of the G minor Quintet was less a turn from happy to sad – Mozart is rarely without sadness – than from comedy to tragedy, at least to begin with. A Shakespearean realm, or perhaps better a different such realm, had been entered, inevitably foreshadowing the great G minor Symphony, though this particular tonality has much wider resonance than that with Mozart. Pamina too, came to mind in a first movement both light yet involved, seemingly effortlessly generative. If the performance occasionally approached Beethoven, as indeed did that of its counterpart in the C major Quintet, that is only because Mozart does. The development was full of surprises, even – especially? – when they were expected. There have been more vehement returns, but there are many ways to accomplish this, and relative lightness of touch was not to be confused with lightness of attitude. The radicalism of the minuet was furthered rather than effaced by the ambiguity of its consolations. Its trio emerged as a dramatic necessity, instrumental necessities ‘speaking’, or perhaps better singing, as if dramatic asides. If Beethoven came to mind again in the slow movement, the contrasts were as striking as any similarities, both in any case a matter of substance rather than mere ‘style’. Its veiled quality – literally muted – seemed to hark back to older consorts, only for an inner sigh to change everything, prophetic as much of a Schubert song as of opera. There was likewise a far from inappropriate hint of Schubert to the mysteries of the finale’s introduction, before new vistas both delighted and chilled. If transition to the Allegro partly suggested Haydn, the emergence of the first subject ‘proper’ attested to twin fragility and strength that could be none other than Mozart’s, both born of and liberated by the very texture of the viola quintet.

Barenboim/Nouno - Boulez, Attahir, Manoury, Chaker, and Roustom, 12 October 2025

Purcell Room

Boulez: Anthèmes 1
Benjamin Attahir: Retour à Tipasa
Philippe Manoury: Partita II
Layale Chaker: Before bloom
Kareem Roustom: Pavane (pour les enfantes défuntes) (UK premiere)
Boulez: Anthèmes 2

Michael Barenboim (violin, viola)

Gilbert Nouno (live electronics)

Michael Barenboim’s Sunday afternoon Purcell Room concert, given with Gilbert Nouno, offered not only a welcome new standpoint to the Boulez centenary celebrations, but also the United Kingdom premiere of Kareem Roustom’s Pavane (pour les enfantes défuntes), for viola and live electronics, Barenboim’s own commission for ‘something for the children of Gaza’. Words, music, money, anything at all may seem hopelessly insufficient in the face of genocide, and of course they are. That does not mean, though, that we should not bear witness as we can. Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw does not efface, let alone undo, what was done, nor does it intend to. Extending his father’s humanitarianism and indeed as much in the tradition of Edward Said, co-founder of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Michael Barenboim, the orchestra’s longstanding concertmaster, has consistently shown great courage in doing so in the face of implacable opposition from German media and the German state. Indeed, to have given the work’s world premiere in Berlin just under a year ago, in the rare friendly space of the city’s Pierre Boulez Saal, was itself an act of witness. 

An opening cry, far from histrionics, yet all the more powerful for it, spoke of something more fundamental—in more than one sense. Roustom’s piece takes its leave, of course, from Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, and specifically the absurdism of its title, an absurdism we have seen and heard, via Beckett and the debris of post-Holocaust art, inflicted on children in Gaza and beyond. Neither overtly representational nor overtly abstract, its hope in some sense to speak, perhaps to sing, despite and through trauma seemed woven into both piece and performance, as well as to our necessary reactions. That it ultimately approached Ravel and his piece themselves, without the slightest incongruence, itself seemed both absurd and necessary, electronics creating a strange piano echo of their own.   

In a carefully planned programme, this Pavane stood as a counterpart to the first-half Retour á Tipasa for violin and electronics, by Boulez pupil (at the Lucerne Festival Academy) Benjamin Attahir, also following on meaningfully from Layale Chaker’s Before a bloom for solo viola. Both works bridged, like Roustom’s, ‘East’ and ‘West’, not in a banal cross- or inter-culturalism, but as a natural form of expression. The opening éclat – that indispensable Boulezian quality – of Attahir’s work, a dazzling pizzicato figure, was immediately bathed, magnified, and transformed in dialogue with an electronic penumbra that offered more of a sense of aural landscape, though not only that, than Boulez would have been likely to consider. North African melodic and rhythmic inflections – to our ears, they may sound Scottish, but that is our problem – evoke or hail, again without mere representation, the Punic-Roman-Algerian port of Tipasa. Shifting relationships between solo instrument and electronics, as well as a clear, dramatic overall trajectory bore their own witness: not necessarily one to be put into words, but no less important for that. Likewise, in Chaker’s solo piece, whose pizzicato ‘accompaniment’ and solo arco line – it is more complicated than that, but perhaps not entirely – seemed to me strangely, expressively to echo the world of Bartók’s rhapsodies for violin and piano. Originally composed for cello, it showed no obvious sign of transcription, benefiting from rich, variegated viola playing and, again, unfailing sense of overall line. 

Philippe Manoury’s Partita II for violin and electronics came across as effortlessly – however much art conceals art – conceived for violin, electronics, and their joint capabilities: as ‘natural’ as Chopin writing for piano, or Mahler for orchestra. A magical realm of precision, consequence, and highly expressive potential and achievement radiated, Boulez-like, from the ‘solo’ instrument, although it is far from clear that  ‘influence’ or at least inspiration, may not have run as much in the opposite direction.  Both like and unlike a violin concerto, its nine stands’ worth of music was full of surprises that were anything but arbitrary, Barenboim’s virtuosity here as elsewhere so clearly in the service of the music one might readily overlook it—yet should not. 

Opening and closing the programme were Boulez’s own Anthèmes 1 and Anthèmes 2, the former for solo violin, the latter its expansion for violin and electronics. In both, Barenboim – and Boulez – made crystal clear from the outset the nature and contrasts of the musical material: the figure from his …explosante-fixe… ‘kit’, treated in almost sequential yet never predictable variation, and single notes of long duration. It was their story, told in illuminated style that recalled old ‘anthems’ on the acrostic Lamentations of Jeremiah, consecutive Hebrew letters beginning each verse. (Recall also Stravinsky’s Threni.) Performed with a keen, yet never remotely flashy sense of drama, the works’ structure became form before our eyes and ears. Serial-Bachian procedures redolent of the Musical Offering and Art of Fugue, especially in Anthèmes 2, evoked the instrument’s past and perhaps its future, proliferation pointing toward an apparent eternity. Musical rays shone outwards from the violin; at other times, the instrument sounded as if a single ray, albeit the brightest, from within a spectrum. This is not spectralist music, far from it, yet the distance may not prove so great as many of us may have thought. I was struck anew by surprisingly Messiaenesque harmony at its centre, by the singular use of electronics in ‘real time’, by the music’s multi-dimensionality. It felt as if the pages of Anthèmes 1 had been opened, their notes, numbers, metaphorical flowers turning to the sun—and then away from it, inspired, emboldened, given new life. There may or may not be hope, but there is still music.

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?