Mittwoch, Deutsche Oper, 19 September 2026 (German premiere)

President – Jeremy Bines
Substitute President – Rachel Pinevska
Caretaker’s Voice – Jörg Schörner
Operator – Robin Adams
Performers – Marie Groothof, Tarren Johnson, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández, Dominic Santia, Laurie Young

Director – Susanne Kennedy
Conception – Markus Selg, Susanne Kennedy
Set design – Markus Seig
Lighting – Marcel Weber/MFO
Video – Warja Rybakova, Markus Seig
Costumes – Andra Dumitrascu
Dramaturgy – Beate Breidenbach

String Quartet of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Anna Matz, Monia Rizkallah (violins), Kirsikka de Leval Jezierski (viola), Arne-Christian Pelz (cello))

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (director: Jeremy Bines)

Florent Derex (sound projection)

Augustin Müller (computer music design)

Ensemble Le Balcon

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

Mittwoch aus Licht von Karlheinz Stockhausen, Regie: Susanne Kennedy, Premiere: 19.9.2026 Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright: Julian Roeder

Is it really fourteen years since Lucicamel, intergalactic, camelious emanation of the fallen angel Lucifer, trod (and danced) the Birmingham boards? Apparently so. At any rate, stagings of Stockhausen’s Mittwoch have been non-existent since that 2012 staged premiere, so this overture to Aviel Cahn’s Deutsche Oper intendancy marked its first appearance in a German house. (In 2003, the opera had its radio premiere on SWR2 under Stockhausen’s supervision.) The late Graham Vick’s Birmingham Oper Company’s production at the disused Argyle Works was a heroic one-off; some of us may have feared literally, never to be repeated. Does this return to the last completed of the composer’s vast Licht cycle mark the beginning of its entry into the repertoire? We can but hope so, alongside the other six days of creation, all of which have now been given by Maxime Pascal and Le Balcon, here joined by Deutsche Oper forces for another unforgettable evening, which, if not without flaws, will surely long be remembered by all present. 

It began in the foyer. So, one might say, does every evening at the Deutsche Oper—and yes, unless one were to be dropped by helicopter into a newly roofless auditorium, that will be the case. But here it began more emphatically, with the purely electronic ‘greeting’, ‘Mittwochs-Gruß’, whilst some were chatting, some drinking, some consulting the programme, some staring into space, and so on. That, I think, is important, because it acted as something akin to a call to worship, or to whatever mysterious rite Licht is or has become. It continued, sound design by Florent Derex, as we took our seats, and would be paralleled by ‘Mittwochs-Abschied’ at the close. As Mittwoch entered the opera house for the first time, it helped frame questions as to whether it belongs here, will and should it be assimilated, and what consequences will that hold for the future. Parsifal has long since entered the repertoire—and much for the better. But do conventional houses, such as even Stockhausen has generally been premiered and performed in, offer an appropriate setting, facilities, musicians, and even audience?

As boundaries dissolved between sacred and secular, rite and performance, ideal and reality, the frustration who was once Stockhausen’s closest contemporaries, Pierre Boulez, inspired by Bayreuth and depressed by the day-to-day business of other houses came to mind: ‘like cafés where … you can hear waiters calling out their orders: “One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!”’ Or, less temperately: ‘New German opera houses certainly look very modern—from the outside; on the inside, they have remained extremely old-fashioned. To a theatre in which mostly repertory pieces are performed one can only with the greatest difficulty bring a modern opera—it is unthinkable. The most expensive solution would be to blow the opera houses into the air. But do you not think that that might also be the most elegant solution?’ 

Less concerned with the works of others – he occasionally conducted them, but usually as a frame for his own music, for instance incorporating his own cadenzas – Stockhausen was nonetheless given to not dissimilar flights of fancy, or so at the time they seemed: less playful or angry, more mystical-visionary or, according to taste, absurd. ‘I remember a music festival in Vienna at the beginning of the 1950s,’ Hans Werner Henze would recall: ‘We were driving back to the city with publishers from Universal Edition after an evening’s drinking in Grinzing, when Stockhausen said on seeing the still somewhat sparsely lit city: “Look, down there you can see the ocean of light that is Vienna. In a few years’ time I will have progressed so far that, with a single electronic bang, I’ll be able to blow the whole city sky-high!”’ Henze ‘pointed out that there were already perfectly adequate explosives for such purposes and that musicians might therefore do better to turn their attention to other matters.’ When I first read that passage many years ago, my inclination was to smile and nod with Henze. Now I am not so sure—partly because the world has changed, but partly on account of greater experience of a work such as Mittwoch. Did it explode Charlottenburg? Not as such, nor did it even blow the opera house in the air, after Boulez. However, it attested to a vision that was yet not only a vision, and one in which we could participate.

 

The opera ‘proper’ – is that a meaningful designation? – opened with the extraordinary Welt-Parlament, polyphonic in every sense, cosmic in more than the merely hippyish (admittedly far from absent here). Jeremy Bines presided (literally, as President with gavel, doubling thereby as conductor) in an international discussion, some languages familiar, some new. Its ‘theme’ of love and particular exploration may seem dated, far more so, perhaps, than that of The Magic Flute, but it charmed with a similar wide-eyed wonder, Stockhausen’s particular brand of harmonious polyphony similarly beguiling from the Deutsche Oper chorus, Rachel Pinevska’s coloratura as substitute President (when her superior was called away by the caretaker to move his car) crowning her a decidedly more chilled successor to Mozart’s nocturnal queen. This was an extraordinary achievement for an opera house chorus and its director. Its enchantment will surely have brought more converts. Susanne Kennedy’s staging was generally straightforward and, in most ways, all the better for that. It did not look that dissimilar from Vick’s, which may – here I am speculating – have been a stipulation of the composer’s estate. Hearing it in a vastly superior acoustic made the experience a more musical one, although various spatial and mobile aspects were lost. Video from Warja Rybakova and Markus Selg was here, as elsewhere (the Helicopter-Quartet a welcome exception), a little tiring at times—all the more so when it encompassed ‘AI’. However, having experienced the recent Bayreuth Ring, anything else would offer relief. It was possible to ignore it for the most part, since it remained at the back of the stage. A recurring, all-seeing eye reminded us of the ultimate Divinity.

‘Orchester-Finalisten’ and the Quartet scene followed the first interval, essentially forming a second act. In a spirit of collaboration such as Stockhausen would surely have approved, Le Balcon and Pascal, excellent as ever, despatched the first scene and the Deutsche Oper String Quartet the second, Derex common to both, joined by assistants, technicians, and of course pilots in that latter case. These can seem, even when one has begun to know the work, a challenge to integrate into any such conception. There is no obvious narrative link, indeed not much in the way of dramatic narrative at all. But there is wonder once again—and there was here. The first parade of instrumentalists (and instruments) was captivating, indeed enthralling. Kennedy’s introduction of performers common to all four scenes helped with binding together—or at least permitting one to draw connections. Their movement, dance, ritualistic actions and so forth were certainly preferable to ‘AI’ images of trains and birds when, I presume, the music was held to sound a bit ‘like’ them.

The helicopter dream seemed more overtly connected in musical terms this time around, though that may simply have been my greater familiarity and the more musical acoustic. If the excitement of events (recorded at Berlin-Brandenburg Airport a week or so before) must have been of quite another order in person, the performance was thrillingly relayed, a welcome addition to the screens for four quartet members an additional camera from under one of the helicopters, permitting one to see how the machines (helicopters and indeed strings) viewed and doubtless heard one another. It was quite a ride, and seemed perfectly timed. (Thank you, Stockhausen.) Any longer and it might have seemed too much, but Goldilocks would have approved. Instead of an interview with the performers, we had Stockhausen’s own words as recorded: a touching visitation from Sirius. Again, it is worth adding: what an extraordinary feat of musical and technical performance. It is truly like nothing else; it neither could nor should be. Yet the experience it offers, if hardly sustainable, is both more so and more wondrous than anything ‘AI’ will. 

And so, to Michaelion, the fourth and final scene. It was only here – and only, I should emphasise, in certain measure – that I felt a little disappointment. (Such, after all, is life in the opera house, even Bayreuth: indeed, sometimes especially Bayreuth.) I had not felt it drag before, and I am certain this was not the doing of Pascal and Le Balcon. It took me a while – actually, the observation of a friend following the performance – to work out why. It was, I am afraid, once again the fault of ‘AI’: not so much use of it in itself, as the particular form, presumably the ‘prompts’ employed, or at least apologists for this technology would have us believe so. The incessant, repetitive movement was all in one direction, all heading (from our standpoint) forward. That not only became extremely wearing, but also contrasted unhelpfully, banally with the many directions taken by the music and, to a lesser extent, even the circular motion of the staging. In addition, it was here that I felt most keenly the loss of the distancing employed – and employable – in the Birmingham chemical works. There we viewed and indeed heard this scene as something remote, of which we were vouchsafed a glimpse, but which we could not truly approach. That, to me, captured its mysteries better, though it would have been well-nigh impossible in this venue. 

One further cavil: why no dance for Lucicamel? It seemed an odd omission, following prescribed swig of champagne from the bottle, and contributed to a slight sense of anticlimax in the scene: crucial not only in itself, but in anchoring the opera within the greater context of Licht. Rhineland-humour – that same, Hanoverian friend rightly corrected my designation ‘German’ – may not be for us all, or rather for all the time. But it is called for here; we encounter Lucicamel so rarely, it was a pity. Encounter him, though, we did, both as camel and then as Operator, Robin Adams a commanding presence once elected by intergalactic representatives and emerged from the camel suit. It was, moreover, a delight to see the return of the same suit used not only in Birmingham, but for the ‘Michaelion’ premiere at Munich’s Prinzregententheater in 1998. Short-wave radio brought its surprises and appeared charmingly dated: ‘period’ technology, one might say. If future productions may be permitted to step beyond Stockhausen’s prescriptions – unlike Wagner or Beckett, he was no theatre director – that will doubtless be welcome, but for now, it is not the gravest of concerns. Childlike wonder was retained and enhanced, in a world that seemed, recognisably, on the brink. 

For here, it seemed, was one of those rare occasions when opera took a step, arguably more than one, beyond not its only own aesthetic, however generously defined, but that of Western art more generally. They remain firmly rooted in that primary aesthetic of course; that is not the point. There is Mozart in The Magic Flute, unquestionably; Janáček in The Cunning Little Vixen; there are others, doubtless, but not so many. Henze certainly never did, though nor did he have any desire. Vienna is for most of us fine as it is, or could readily be attended to through explosives. (Please, please, literally minded people: do not take that as a threat to a city I love. I have no desire to wake up, like Boulez, to Swiss police a generation later, come to arrest me as a ‘terrorist’.) But it is meet and right to be reminded, from time to time, that there are alternatives—and that the opera houses Boulez, Stockhausen, and others dating back to and beyond Wagner have, in many ways, justly disdained can and will join them, if only from time to time, to a higher purpose than Boulez’s café. 

Now, please, the rest of Licht, perhaps in cooperation with other houses, other institutions. Whatever it takes: the world needs a premiere of all seven days, even if the explosives, the oil, the computers, the Lucifers, those who would blow the opera houses into the air should bring down the curtain thereafter.

Matejča/Koba/Prague RSO/Grandy - Debussy, Kučera, Schulhoff, and Ravel, 15 September 2026

Dvořák Hall, Rudolfinum

Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Jan Kučera: Double Concerto for violin and cello (world premiere)
Schulhoff: Symphony no.1, op.50
Ravel: Boléro

Daniel Matejča (violin)

Sakura Toba (cello)

Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra 

Elias Grandy (conductor)  

Images: (c) Dvořákova Praha

Founded at the dawn of the wireless age in 1926 as the twenty-strong Radiojournal Orchestra, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra (Symfonický orchestr Českého rozhlasu) will celebrate its centenary throughout the coming season. A little later this month, that season’s opening concert will recreate its opening programme, offering music by Smetana, Beethoven, Dvořak, and Fibich. As a prelude, this concert, part of the Dvořák Prague International Music Festival (Dvořákova Praha), welcomed its new chief conductor and artistic director Elias Grandy and renewed its record in new music, then and now, Czech and otherwise, albeit with somewhat unexpected results. 

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune has often been claimed as the dawn of modern music. It depends, of course, what one means – even the Bible has two creation stories – but Debussy’s softly subversive tone-poem has as good a claim as any—and was not three decades old when Josef/Jožka Charvat, a pupil of Janáček lifted his baton for that first concert. The performance’s mood was felt in its opening flute solo, which lightly yet unmistakeably infected the orchestra, or so it seemed. I mean no disrespect to Grandy when I say it is better not to pay too much attention to the conductor’s workings here, especially one so outwardly demonstrative, but crucially it did not feel over-conducted. At any rate, due languor – that inescapable word here – was elicited, with outstanding playing here and elsewhere from the orchestra, its warmth just the faunish thing, subsequent arabesques suggestive and provocative. Tristan und Isolde was in the air, but it was also a memory—like the faun’s amorous escapades, imaginary or real. Harps told us much, as did crotales. Time was almost up for a magical, deceptively light opening that left one wanting more. 

The world premiere of Jan Kučerá’s Double Concerto for violin and cello was a more puzzling affair: not only in relative but more-or-less absolute terms the least advanced work in musical language, form, and much else, of the four on offer, though all but a century newer than the latest (Ravel’s Boléro). Does that matter? Not necessarily, though we are not talking about Webern or Varèse here. What concerned me more was an almost televisual sectionalism to the outward movements, suggesting they might accompany a broadcast we could not see and without which they did not, at least to my ears, make a great deal of sense. The first of three movements opened promisingly enough, with a cello solo as Romantic cry de profundis from Sakura Toba, soon joined in violin-cello duet by the similarly excellent Daniel Matejča, both soloists collaborating well in what soon became rather jolly. It was not exactly ‘like’ Prokofiev, but there was a good deal of ‘side-slipping’ and, at its best a welcome sense of theatricality. Continuing in neo-Romantic vein, it was for the most part well-fashioned, but the agglomerative sense, without much in the way of transition, of section after section here and in the finale soon began to pall. The central slow movement, a lullaby, cohered better, its opening suggesting something darker, a little more adventurous, although unabashedly tonal: more in texture, then, than in harmony. Its melodic thread had just enough elements of unpredictability to hold one’s attention. A fiddling rondo theme announced the third movement, thereafter shared with cello, provoking a more lyrical response: very much what one might have expected, prior to a puzzling, once again ‘Russian’ waltz interlude and double cadenza. The piece received an enthusiastic reception, however nonplussed I may have been. 

Erwin Schulhoff’s 1925 First Symphony packed, by contrast, quite a punch: perhaps not entirely successful, but largely so and always intriguing. This was new music to me in the most straightforward sense. Its first movement was haunted by pentatonicism and by Stravinsky—but perhaps not the Stravinsky one might have expected, that of Le Rossignol. Schulhoff here was already assured enough to engage in Stravinskian theft from the master himself, thereafter to proceed along a different, Neue Sachlichkeit path. Rhythm and harmonic rhythm evinced theatricality, but as a view from the concert hall. Was that Debussy’s Prélude in the air of the second of three movements, an ‘Andante con moto’? If not, programming and performance cunningly suggested it, alongside darker, Berg-like material in which the Prague strings truly excelled. This is how to do allusion—and illusion. Grandy shaped its progress well without undue moulding, likewise in a finale that intensified many of these tendencies in an assured, committed performance. 

Boléro did its thing, resonating with invigorating splendour and clarity in the main hall of the Rudolfinum. Solo spots brought, in context, reminiscence of other works: flute, naturally, with Debussy and bassoon with Schulhoff. But Ravel’s piece was only ever itself in a reading that built in carefully constructed colour. Each of the soloists clearly enjoyed their moment, none more so than the trombonist. My sole cavil was the way Grandy pulled around, even mauled, the close. Yes, there must be, can hardly not be, a wrench, but that comes of itself. It was a pity, but not enough to undo an otherwise fine performance and concert.

Ólafsson - Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert, 10 September 2026

Wigmore Hall

Bach: Prelude in E major, BWV 854
Beethoven: Piano Sonata no.27 in E minor
Bach: Partita no. 6 in E minor, BWV 830
Schubert: Piano Sonata in E minor, D 566
Beethoven: Piano Sonata no.30 in E major, op.109

Vikingur Ólafsson (piano) 

Three sold-out Wigmore Hall recitals, of which this was the first, marked the end or better, climax, of Vikingur Ólafsson’s tour with this programme. Intervention of a stray hearing aid reached the level of an announcement being made, the stage cleared, and a pause scheduled in what was otherwise a recital without break, for the owner to put things right. As Ólafsson disarmingly owned, he had not been too happy about it at the time, but in retrospect, taking a break and returning to Bach’s E minor Partita was an interesting experience, not least because it was what he had been doing with the programme as a whole over this tour. He thus showed himself not only an outstanding musician, but a good sport—and indeed estimable diplomat.

It was the first time I had managed to hear Ólafsson as a soloist. He clearly divides opinion, as the cliché has it. I can imagine some may not have liked his way with this music. Indeed, I had my doubts concerning the deliberate approach to the opening Bach prelude (E major, Book I). Once my ears had settled, though, crystal-clear counterpoint told its own story. There is nothing routine to his interpretative stance, which seemed, moreover, very much to have been directed towards the programme as a whole: a demonstration, as he described it at the close in eloquent as well as word-perfect English, of what tonality can do, of how late Beethoven can and should be approached not only from Romantics such as Schumann and Brahms, but also from Bach, his dizzying array of contrapuntal techniques, and their emotional instantiation as music. 

Beethoven’s op.90 E minor Sonata followed, with similar, quite extraordinary clarity, although this time Ólafsson allowed himself a little pedal. I was struck by the first – and indeed second – movement’s intellectual, emotional, and sheer physical immediacy in a performance that captured to a tee this work’s position on the threshold of the ‘late’, not unlike the op.95 String Quartet. A direct performance nonetheless opened up other possibilities, without mannerism, towards the close. Its companion movement came as a breath of fresh air: contrast, yes, but above all response. Whilst strikingly different in tempo and (relatively detached) touch from how I hear the music, I found it compelling indeed. Not, I hasten to add, that it was without beautifully voiced legato, far from it, but it was not the default. Above all, there was a freshness to the conception that put me in mind, however different the results, of some of the early occasions I heard Igor Levit in this repertoire. 

Bach’s E minor Partita received a rich, commanding performance, of similar clarity, its Toccata gathering pace through dynamic counterpoint. There was no question of imitating the harpsichord; this was emphatically piano music, but rethought, never quite as I had heard it before. Likewise the Allemanda and Corrente, splendidly consequent and forthright, more Klemperer than Furtwängler. The former’s harmonic deviations were well served without exaggeration, the latter characterised by a paradoxical vehement insouciance that seemed already to presage Beethoven. The Air had a sense of rightness with which it would have been pointless to argue. A dark, introverted Sarabande and rapt Tempo di Gavotta, whose complexity of form suggested Schumann, prepared the way for a final Gigue finely sprung in conventional and harmonic rhythm, its fugue a climax that itself must climax—and did. 

Schubert’s early E minor Sonata was given in two-movement form, Ólafsson vigorous and, to my mind, quite justified in that preference. Performance is, of course, ultimately the justification or otherwise, with no otherwise here. The first movement’s lilt was as much a harmonic matter as anything else, laying the foundations of all to come, spun from a single thread. Its second movement offered, like its Beethovenian counterpart, a response, albeit here properly one of greater ambiguity.

Beethoven’s E major Sonata, op.109, registered with due contrast, ambiguity and ambivalence replaced with dialectics. Apology was neither required nor received for its difficulty. Its first movement in particular sounded as a synthesis of so many strands in the recital. The following ‘Prestissimo’ plunged us back to earth in battle royal, unrelenting in the best sense. Balm, not snake oil, was the mission, movingly fulfilled, of the theme to the finale. There was consolation to be felt here, but there were no easy answers. Again, haunting from the previous works could be heard, fancifully or not: Beethoven taking Schubert at his word in the first variation and Bach in the second, emboldening himself – and us – to take directions that could only be his. (This is not intended in any sense to suggest influence, but rather the coherence and meaning of programme and performance.) As the variations continued and developed, however challenging the route, thread, guide, and spirit emerged quite unbroken, quietly strengthened. Such is Beethoven and such remains his ethical force.

As an encore, we heard a transcription, Ólafsson’s own, of Bach’s so-called ‘Air on a G-string’, which he had presented to György Kurtág on his hundredth birthday. An act of love, subtly, finely arpeggiated, it was noble, direct, and ravishingly beautiful.

Romaniw/BBC SSO/Kapuła - Henze, Schubert, Mahler, and Strauss, 9 September 2026

Royal Albert Hall

Henze: Erlkönig: Orchestral Fantasy on Goethe’s Poem and Schubert’s op.1
Schubert: Symphony no.8 in B minor, ‘Unfinished’, D 759
Mahler, arr. Britten: What the Wild Flowers Tell Me
Strauss: Four Last Songs

Natalya Romaniw (soprano)

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Paweł Kapuła (conductor)

Images: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou

September is a month of melancholy. Temperatures drop. Nights draw in ever more markedly. We return to work, studies, ‘normal life’, insofar as we have ever been away. The last gasp of the summer festival season draws to a close. For the Proms, this comes ultimately with the notorious ‘Last Night’. Occasionally I have wondered about giving it a try, if only to say that I have, but adventure takes one only so far. This year, Four Last Songs, its own ‘September’ and all, seemed a good time to bow out: Malven notwithstanding, Strauss’s farewell to the world, the Lied, the orchestra, and, in eerie familiarity once again, to a civilisation that had long since given up the ghost. 

Here, we worked up to that final farewell, first of all with a composer for whom the murderous, genocidal taint of that civilisation, from which he could nonetheless never break free, would condemn it for many years to come: Hans Werner Henze. His centenary this year has been extraordinarily muted. The buzz of his Erlkönig was better than nothing, but frankly the Proms, like many other organisations, could and should have done more. From the BBC SSO and Paweł Kapuła, it made for an urgent, typically abundant, and ultimately involving concert opener, very much what it said on the ‘orchestral fantasy’ tin, Schubert recomposed by one who would like to be more Stravinskian than Schoenbergian, yet cannot help who he is—and at the last, does not even wish to. It drew one in with a hint of Romantic magic and devilry. 

The concert moved to Schubert proper, in an unusually intimate, yet compelling account of the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony, emblematic of that German Romanticism to which Henze continued to be drawn. Its first movement was relatively swift, yet never unduly driven, urgency and chiaroscuro rightly emerging from the material, sonata form ‘becoming’ rather than merely ‘being’. The fearful hush of its liminal passages sent shivers down the spine, building thereafter in Gothic horror, albeit without exaggeration. The second movement flowed as a drama in itself that was both consequent to the first and mysteriously, ‘unfinished’ or not, a satisfying finale, even farewell, with nothing left to say. It invited us to listen and rewarded us for doing so. 

The second movement from Mahler’s Third Symphony, rescored by Britten, was for me the only disappointment. It feels strange to hear this on a smaller orchestra, perhaps stranger than a more radical arrangement, but I do not think it was only that. Kapuła showed a tendency to fussiness, overtly moulding Mahler’s lines. Balances, especially earlier on, sounded odd, even on occasion inside out. Tempi never seemed quite in proportion, either a little too fast or a little too slow: not necessarily intrinsically, but in relation to one other. Later on, a welcome sense of irony tentatively asserted itself, but its motivation remained elusive.   

And so, Natalya Romaniw joined orchestra and conductor for the Four Last Songs, in the hall in which they were premiered (in 1950, by Kirsten Flagstad, the Philharmonia, and Wilhelm Furtwängler). What struck me in the orchestral introduction to ‘Frühling’ was how much the sound took its cue from the Schubert performance in the first half, detail and urgency again to the fore, neither rushed nor maudlin. (None of this should be, of course, but certainly not an evocation of spring, however backward-looking.) Romaniw was crystal clear, verbally and musically, perhaps with a slight musical ‘accent’, bringing the music closer, say, to Tchaikovsky than to Mozart, but there is no one way with these songs, nor should there be. In a programme interview, she said she intended ‘to make the meaning as clear as possible to listeners, even if they don’t understand German,’ which she certainly accomplished, adding the unquestionable truth that ‘the orchestra’s music says so much as well,’ which again it did here. From soloist, orchestra, and conductor alike, there was a sense of beginning—even if the beginning of the end. 

Our month, ‘September’, followed on ‘naturally’, however much art may conceal art here (an echt-Straussian idea in itself). Mood may have been changing and, more fundamentally, time passing, but this was the turning of the year (and life), nothing abrupt. The celebrated horn call was tender, moving, and paved the way for a darkened rather than dark close. Here, I am afraid I must register unhappiness with the audience, a good part of which insisted on applauding between every song, doing its damnedest to break mood and continuity. An elephantine sneeze, heard from the opposite side of the hall, was not the ideal introduction to a ‘Beim Schlafengehen’ that was nonetheless beautifully judged, imploring, and led but not determined by Hermann Hesse’s words. An exquisite violin solo soared, however soiled the cliché, like the ‘soul, unguarded … free in flight’, preparing the way for a noble close, beyond good and evil, as the avid Nietzschean composer would have understood. The final sunset of ‘Im Abendrot’ was painted in just the right colours. It lingered, yet justly no more than a little. Voice and words, moreover, were part of it, distinction between various forms of text dissolved. Larks sang, solo violin, orchestral horns, and more made their valedictory bows. It was a song, perhaps, closer to a verbal tone poem than to anything from the operas. Radiant, dignified, and beckoning a beyond in which Strauss may have claimed not to believe, it was, premature applause notwithstanding, a true last song.

Argerich/Munich PO/Shani - Farrenc, Beethoven, and Brahms, 5 September 2026

Royal Albert Hall

Louise Farrenc: Overture no.2 in E-flat major, op.24
Beethoven: Piano Concerto no.2 in B-flat major, op.19
Brahms: Symphony no.4 in E-minor, op.98

Martha Argerich (piano)

Munich Philharmonic Orchestra

Lahav Shani (conductor)

Images: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou

With the best will in the world, much of the audience in such a concert will be there for the soloist. That intends no disrespect to Lahav Shani or the Munich Philharmonic, but Martha Argerich is, well, Martha Argerich—and one takes whatever opportunity one can to hear her. It took me several false starts in the face of cancellation before finally I did, but I have never regretted it and certainly did not now. Whether rehearsal time had been targeted accordingly, I do not know, but Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto proved the unquestionable highlight of the evening, alongside deeply disappointing Brahms and a well-played nonentity of a concert overture by Louise Farrenc. 

An interesting historical figure both as pianist and composer, Farrenc has her advocates, but this E-flat Overture proved little more than a series of introductions to introductions, wearing a little too obviously influences on its sleeve, from Gluck and Beethoven to Cherubini and Rossini. It began impressively, implying a true curtain-raiser, even without an opera to come. Its over-reliance on tonic-dominant harmony – yes, Beethoven can do this too, but how! – might not have mattered too much, but the lack of anything in the way of intrinsic musical interest did. Still, it was a welcome opportunity to hear this music for oneself, and the orchestra was on good firm, powerfully directed by Shani. 

The Albert Hall offers an ideal acoustic for very little, if anything, certainly not for an early Beethoven concerto performed with chamber-orchestral forces (ten first violins down to four double basses). One had to listen in here, but rewards were many for having done so, from the fresh opening tutti onwards. Argerich’s entry had it all: chiaroscuro, beautifully pointed, and unerring line, Beethovenian goal-orientation never in doubt. In that, it offered a prospectus for the whole, the first movement in particular notable for counterpoint as crystal-clear as it was harmonically founded and directed. It was often a more inward account – these things are relative – than one might once have expected from her, but it was not without vehemence either, the world of the later composer summoned and very much with us in the cadenza. If the opening of the second movement exposed Shani’s inability, as yet, to work out how, in this acoustic, to present Beethoven simply, balances awry and much a little too fussy, then things settled soon enough on the return of the soloist. Thereafter, Shani proved a sure and sensitive accompanist. Perhaps the close was a little too drawn out, a little too loved, but if so, that is a fault in the right direction. Cultivated, directed orchestral playing and flashes of the tigress of old characterised the finale, its Scotch snaps worth the price of admission alone. ‘Le Jardin féerique’ form Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye made for a slightly surprising encore. It took a while to find its feet—or better, its balance, but Argerich’s glissandi will linger long in the memory of all who heard them. 

Brahms’s Fourth Symphony brought out the best in neither orchestra nor conductor. If the first movement opened wistfully, its lack of textural clarity presaged one of several recurrent problems. That may have been in part an acoustical matter, but general listlessness and dissipation of tension were surely less so, likewise surprising thinness of string tone. At times, we heard more committed playing, but it was unclear where it had come from or why. Such issues were carried forward into a second movement whose mixture of petulance and strange balance – often, downright lack of balance – meant it never really had a chance. It suggested Brahms, here at the height of his powers, had simply given up. The third movement began more promisingly. It bounced along, a little too jolly but with greater precision—until tone thinned again and it became merely hard-driven, disintegrating thereafter. The finale likewise seemed to have a stronger sense of structure at its opening, but that was not to be maintained. A strange emptiness at its heart was engendered by scrappy playing and Shani’s apparent lack of musical understanding. What presumably was intended to sound hushed sounded merely uncertain. It was all a bit of a mess, and though it gathered a reasonable head of steam later on, that was too little, too late. Contrast with the courageous witness of Ilan Volkov at least year’s Proms could not have been starker.

BPO/Petrenko - Elgar and Tchaikovsky, 2 September 2026

Royal Albert Hall

Elgar: Variations on an Original Theme, ‘Enigma’, op.36
Tchaikovsky: Symphony no.4 in F minor, op.36

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Images: Berliner Philharmoniker/Lena Laine

Elgar and Tchaikovsky are not exactly strange bed-fellows, but nor are they frequently programmed together. Their harmonic and, in some cases, melodic worlds have more than some might suspect in common—and can be nudged further in that direction in performance, as I think probably happened here, from Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic. Indeed, in a decidedly un-English performance, the theme of the Enigma Variations already danced a little closer to St Petersburg than I have previously heard. It only struck me afterwards that both works on the programme, that and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, were their respective composer’s op.36. It would seem a strange reason to programme the two works together, but it would also seem a strange coincidence. Maybe Petrenko first thought of them on that account and pursued the idea further to the extent of recognising the combination might work. 

First, I should state that I stand warmly in favour of celebrating Elgar as a great European rather than ‘English’ composer. We need not rehearse here his musical antecedents, Richard Strauss’s praise, and the rest: they are by now common currency, though perhaps more in criticism and musicology than in performance. I cannot recall hearing Elgar from this Petrenko before, though I have done so from his namesake Vasily and been greatly impressed. Perhaps more to the point, I have heard Daniel Barenboim and another great Berlin orchestra, the Staatskapelle, more than once in this music, and raved. There was much to admire in this performance, not least the ever-outstanding playing of the Berlin Philharmonic, not to mention the still-too-rare opportunity to hear it play Elgar. There is a ‘but’ coming, as you may have sensed, yet I should like first to attend to the positive, often highly so, side of the ledger. From the outset, this was warmly expressive, cultivated playing which yet never curdled into narcissism. Petrenko clearly had his own ideas about the score and knew very well how to pursue them with his players. Every variation had sharply etched character, had seemingly been approached anew, developed within, and often offered contrast with its predecessor and successor. I shall not list them all, but a good-natured ‘R.P.A.’, in which we reheard Mendelssohn through Brahms, exquisite solo viola-playing in ‘Ysobel’, and a truly rollercoaster ‘Troyte’, propelled by wondrous timpani, more Berlioz than Brahms, were three that lay at the heart. A flighty ‘Dorabella’ had one hear the music newly, as did a ‘Nimrod’ that unfolded with the most natural, warm Romanticism one could imagine. There were some variations, however, that to my ears and sensibility felt driven too hard: perhaps most of all a ‘B.G.N.’ that came dangerously close to a mere showpiece. There was some of that to the finale too, though I greatly appreciated the way Petrenko had its opening somehow sound and feel as if it were the final movement of not only a set of symphonic variations but a symphony. It was ultimately, though, in that sense rather than its far from unwelcome heterodoxy, that I felt the performance added up to less than the sum of its parts. There is more to the relationship between these variations than individual character and contrast. A guiding thread founded on harmonic motion, such as we should unquestionably have heard from Barenboim, proved elusive. Moreover, comparison with Petrenko's superlative way with another Barenboim speciality, Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra, op.31, might also suggest this to be something of a work-in-progress. I hope he will return to Elgar and develop his often interesting thoughts further. 

For three of the four Tchaikovsky movements I felt that more keenly. (Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, this was also repertoire in which Barenboim excelled.) The opening of the first movement felt more idiomatic, more ‘inside’ the music, the trumpet fanfares already drawing back in dialectic relationship to a Fate that must be obeyed yet from which the subject in performance must surely also recoil: thereby grief-laden without so much of a hint of the mawkish. At some point Petrenko dropped his baton, later to be retrieved by concertmaster Noah Bendix-Balgley, but it mattered not a jot to the cohesion and persuasiveness of the performance. It chilled just as much, perhaps even more so, in its eerie, nether passages, again evoking the world of Berlioz (in whom I should be very keen to hear Petrenko). Struggle was felt, not merely observed, throughout, as was a sense that it might become too much, the falling nature of motifs itself becoming a motif. The second movement again ‘spoke’ as well as sang beautifully—and consequently. ‘Soul’ and form seemed as one in its unfolding. Pain, pride, all manner of sensitivities vied beneath the surface and in turn helped shape it. In its bitter, pizzicato introversion of a balletic world, the third movement edged us a little closer to Mahler, without forsaking the composer’s own palette or sentiment. There was always, moreover, ambiguity: a sense, sometimes achieved in the trio, that something more joyous might break through, albeit not without a welcome dose of Prokofiev-like sardonicism. 

And so, when all that pent-up energy exploded at the outset of the finale, the performance seemed truly to have arrived. Alas, it was here that I felt its narrative fell apart somewhat. Yes, one can drive this music hard: it is marked ‘Allegro con fuoco’. But it is, or should be, with fire rather than like a machine. Technical accomplishment was beyond compare, but it seemed more hysterical, even Shostakovich-like, than deeply felt. It came and went, like a whirlwind, yet seemed not only out of proportion, but also a little out of meaning. At any rate, a London audience increasingly starved of high-profile orchestral visits during its normal concert season, responded with great enthusiasm.