McFadden/Melnikov - Cage, Prokofiev, Berio, Berberian, Knussen, Schnittke, Schulhoff, and Crumb, 28 April 2023

Wigmore Hall

Cage: Aria
Prokofiev: Five Melodies, op.35
Berio: Sequenza II
Berberian: Stripsody
Knussen: Whitman Settings, op.25
Schnittke: Improvisation and Fugue
Schulhoff: Sonata Erotica
Crumb: Apparition: Elegiac Songs and Vocalises

Claron McFadden (soprano)

Alexander Melnikov (piano)

The Wigmore Hall has witnessed an extraordinary number of first-class song recitals over the years; a good few will even have taken place over the past year. This outstanding recital from Claron McFadden and Alexander Melnikov could hold its head high in comparison with any of them. Taking us from Cage to Crumb, via a fascinating route as coherent as it was replete with surprises, it was a model of programming as well as performance. If it were a pity that more listeners did not join the audience, those who did received a rare treat. I do not think I had previously heard any of the pieces previously in concert, with the exception of the Berio Sequenza and Prokofiev’s Five Melodies, albeit the latter in their more familiar, later version for violin and piano. We all love Schubert, but on this occasion he could readily wait until another evening. 

Cage’s 1958 Aria made for a splendid overture, one of a number of pieces closely associated with Cathy Berberian, in this case dedicated to her. It presented a riotous yet ordered – if only in the moment – collage of languages, techniques, styles, delivery, and so much more: from operatic coloratura to a sneeze, arias becoming Aria. My companion aptly likened it to a New York streetscape from a little while ago, in which one might see and hear various characters contributing to this greater whole in near simultaneity. Indeterminacy, after all, is not arbitrary.

It was fascinating to hear Prokofiev’s Five Melodies as vocalise (with piano) rather than for violin, to hear the voice – and McFadden’s voice in particular – as an instrument without words, let alone ‘expressing’ them. This may have been a quieter, even more classical radicalism than some of the avant-gardism on offer, but it was certainly not the least, nor the least durable. An almost post-impressionist delivery from both McFadden and Melnikov led us into and through much of the first song, magical melody and harmony (that utterly characteristic ‘side-slipping’ close!) enthralling us here and beyond. The second soared further, higher, also opening up a world of differences in vocal delivery, a striking shift from vowel to consonant a case in point. The third emerged as Prokofiev’s heir to Stravinsky’s Rossignol, already peering into the Cinderella-like future. Melnikov’s piano interjections in the fourth were perfectly judged, both to disrupt and yet also ultimately to confirm its general, yet never generalised, lilt. A beautifully haunting fifth song took us to a thrilling climax before subsiding. We had been on quite a journey, guided with expert judgement. 

Berio’s second Sequenza and Berberian’s own Stripsody made for a fine pair. The liminal zone in which the audience adjusted to the fact that the former had in fact already begun immediately called into question and enhanced much about our experience. A dizzying array of sounds and techniques were constructed as and into performance. If it is difficult not to experience either ‘theatrically’ – and why would one try? – they were certainly musical experiences too, form apparently created before our ears yet no less real for that. Literal breast-beating with which the latter piece began paved the way for material ranging from that world of Tarzan, necessarily a very different experience with a different artist from Berberian to Monteverdi and The Beatles, to squeaking and sirens. A ticket to ride indeed. 

Oliver Knussen’s Whitman Settings song-cycle for Lucy Shelton might have sounded a little conventional in such company, but its renewal of a relatively traditional genre seemed anything but, given such compelling, at times well-nigh overwhelming performances from McFadden and Melnikov. One heard and felt the construction of each song, harmonically in its serial processes as well as overall shape and form. Melnikov’s piano virtuosity took us to a realm some place after Ravel, in ‘The Dalliance of the Eagles’ even post-‘Scarbo’. McFadden’s way with the words had us experience, seemingly at first- rather than second-hand, how they gave birth to Knussen’s score, how the two had become inextricably interlinked. Vividly communicative in words and music, these were exemplary performances. ‘I am the Poem of Earth,’ McFadden sang in the closing ‘Voice of the Rain’, yet she and her partner seemed equally to be the poem of the skies, of the depths, of the elements. 

Melnikov had a solo spot to open the second half. Schnittke’s Improvisation and Fugue, a later yet not late Soviet work (1965), was stark, declamatory, again laying musical processes bare, whilst also permitting them at time to evaporate before our ears. Polystylism might theoretically lie in the future, yet aspects at least of jazz seemed at times but a stone’s throw away. Schulhoff’s Dadaist Sonata erotica made for a contrast in every way, a definitely German eroticism on show as music emerged from sex and, perhaps, vice versa. The joke did not outstay its welcome, at least not here.

Finally, at least so far as programmed works were concerned, we heard Crumb’s Apparition: Elegiac Songs and Vocalises, Melnikov’s prepared piano contributions as striking, not least in the opening and closing approaches to the world of the sitar, as McFadden’s evergreen variety and integration of techniques. From the more conventionally – this is highly relative – avant-gardism, albeit perhaps by now (1979) looking back with fondness, of the first Vocalise ‘Summer Sounds’ and ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’ to the differently haunting ‘Dark Mother’ and the outright high-dramatic warpath of ‘Approach Strong Deliveress!’ there was another world to be discovered here. The ‘Death Carol’, sung into the piano, bathing in the echoes of its predecessor, and ‘Come lovely and soothing death’, inviting, even seductive, like an expansive slow movement in context, led us to a reprise of the first song both surprising and inevitable. One might say much the same of the two encores, Oscar Peterson’s Hymn to Freedom and Debussy’s Beau Soir. It was indeed a fine evening.

Salzburg Festival (1) - Melnikov/Mozarteum/Bolton - Mozart, 21 August 2022

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Symphony no.31 in D major, ‘Paris’, KV 297/300a
Piano Concerto no.17 in G major, KV 453
Serenade for orchestra no.9 in D major, KV 320, ‘Posthorn’

Alexander Melnikov (piano)

Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra

Ivor Bolton (conductor)

‘Mozart, more intimate [than Beethoven], more touching, between the melancholy of the past and the serene expectation of the future, Mozart, who is neither a child, nor an androgyne nor an angel, but a little of all these, Mozart, always loving, always confident, Mozart smiled, even before death…’ It is difficult to take issue with many, if any, of these claims, save perhaps for the particular comparison with Beethoven, from the fourth volume of Messiaen’s Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie. Messiaen’s insistence that Mozart smiled was repeated in his final commissioned work, Un sourire, written in 1989 for the 1991 bicentenary. If I were to offer a single criticism of the Mozart revealed, or obscured, by Ivor Bolton in this Mozart Matinée, it was that the music all too rarely smiled.

In the Paris Symphony, indeed, the decidedly un-Mozartian quality of the grimace was more to the fore. The Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra offered a welcome, full sound, enhanced by the size of the hall, only slightly marred in the ‘Parisian’ opening by the incongruous sound of rasping ‘period’ brass with a ‘modern’ orchestra, albeit one with regrettably little in the way of string vibrato. Bolton’s tempo, however, was well chosen, probably somewhat on the slow side for today’s fashions—allegedly ‘period’, yet rarely anything of the sort. A hallmark of this performance was the elemental sense imparted by certain basic musical figures. Not always did they fully develop into larger lines beyond that, though, having excellent playing (whether to one’s taste or no) give the impression of dragging rather than fizzing. The slow movement—the 3/4 Andante rather than the 6/8 Andantino—was not entirely without such doggedness but flowed better. I was left regretting its brevity, but then why say more than need be said? Bolton seems not to have mastered the (admittedly difficult) trick of playing as fast as the closing Allegro demands without sounding hard-driven. It was here, above all, that I regretted the lack of a smile, the presence of all too many grimaces. Counterpoint, however, was clear, adding a welcome ‘learned’ depth.

That inability to sustain a long Mozart line, or maybe unwillingness (could it be that he actually does not want to?) was again apparent in the opening of the G major Piano Concerto, KV 453. Lovely woodwind playing could not entirely disguise the lack of vibrato from violins in particular. More, though, than in the symphony, Bolton carried the music forward, although only after pianist Alexander Melnikov’s entry was it clear how this might be done more readily. Strange ritardandi were Bolton’s doing; Melnikov could generally be relied upon to put them right, though he was not without a certain brusqueness either. The cadenza, Mozart’s own (as in the second movement) melted beautifully where called for; a little more of that earlier on would surely have been preferable. Messiaen, at least, would have thought so. The opening phrasing of the Andante was much better. Melnikov’s fashionable decision to play piano continuo before his first solo entry struck me as unnecessary, but it did no great harm. The sense of hushed mystery he brought to the minor mode was beautiful indeed; for that, one could have forgiven much. It was the finale, though, that fell most readily into place, its ‘rightness’ of tempo and phrasing leaving space, well taken, for something closer to the magic Mozart requires. Mozart’s changes of tempo were well handled, characterful and consequential; those imposed on final exchanges between piano and orchestral less so, their rhetoric decidedly uncertain, even arbitrary.

The Posthorn Serenade’s first movement offered another grand, if slightly astringent, introduction. Apparent confusion over dynamics at one point aside, the rest was generally well shaped and benefited from a stronger sense of forward momentum than the Paris Symphony had. Bolton’s rhetorical broadening for the onset of the recapitulation worked in context. The second movement was on the swift side, but far from excessively so. I did not care much for the agogic accents employed, but I have heard far worse mannerism. It was otherwise well shaped and projected, though the Trio, taken by solo instruments, relaxed too much to the extent of sounding sluggish. Whether it was strictly necessary for flutes and oboes (not bassoons) to stand for the beginning of the third movement, the practice drew visual attention to aural delights to be savoured from all in the section. Third and fourth movements were beautifully played, at well chosen tempi; there were even a few smiles. The fifth emerged, intelligently and convincingly, as its predecessor’s successor bathed in darker shadows, that characterisation having us value all the more the passages of sunlight. Here was the dramatic highpoint of the morning, seeming already to point toward the world of the Da Ponte operas. A robust opening to the Menuetto was taken with just the right amount of swing. The considerably faster tempo taken for the first Trio sounded unsettled, even bizarre, but moderate slowing for the second worked well, its solo wonderfully played on what looked to me like a genuine posthorn. The finale offered a rousing close, full of incident and variety. It was a pity, I felt, that some of these insights could not have been fed back into the first part of the concert, to show us the truth of Messiaen’s further claim that Mozart’s form ‘is always perfect and constantly renewed’.

 

Salzburg Mozartwoche (1): Melnikov/Camerata Salzburg/Langrée - Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Dutilleux, 30 January 2016

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Mozart – Symphony no.1 in E-flat major, KV 16

Mendelssohn, Piano Concerto no.1 in G minor, op.25
Dutilleux – Mystère de l’instant
Mozart – Symphony no.39 in E-flat major, KV 543

Alexander Melnikov (piano)

Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra

Louis Langrée (conductor)

 

This year’s Salzburg Mozartwoche has allotted a special place to Mendelssohn, present in three of the five concerts I have attended or will. The centenary of Henri Dutilleux’s birth was also celebrated in this concert from the Mozarteum Orchestra and Louis Langrée. His Mystère de l’instant (1986, revised 1989), for twenty-four strings, cimbalom, and percussion – a clear echo of Bartók, unsurprisingly given its status as a Sacher work – received what seemed to me an impressive performance. I have rarely proved responsive to Dutilleux’s music, rather to my disappointment, given the number of people I know who admire it greatly. This, however, proved an exception. In ten (very) short movements, we experienced a vividly pictorial, albeit not only pictorial, drama-in-miniature. Balances were well judged throughout, all of the solos (be they cimbalom, percussion, or string) well taken. Rhythms were not only precise, but propulsive. The appearance of the SACHER cipher in the tenth movement, ‘Métamorphoses’, inevitably put me in mind of another, slightly younger French composer, whose music I know much better.

 

Alexander Melnikov had joined the orchestra for Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto. It is not a work I feel wild about, yet I have heard more compelling performances than this, especially from the soloist. A turbulent opening to the first movement had promised well. If very fast indeed, pretty hard-driven, the score arguably suggests that. Melnikov’s approach, however, seemed curiously static, a series of episodes that did not lead anywhere. His tone was a strange mixture of grand, old-style Romanticism, and inconsequential skating across the keys. I should have preferred everyone to calm down a little, but it was the lack of direction from the soloist that especially troubled me. That said, Melnikov handled the transition to the second movement well, although his strange detachment soon again had the upper hand. The Salzburg cellos, however, sounded gorgeous. The finale was even more po-faced, at least so far as the pianist was concerned. He efficiently despatched everything, with considerable tonal variegation; I was never moved, though, in a performance that seemed serious in the wrong way.

No one would claim Mozart’s First Symphony to be a masterpiece, but by virtue of being his first symphony, it holds an undeniable interest for many of us. This was a less warm performance than Karl Böhm used to give, but anyone would surely have expected that. It pulsed with life, the highly contrasting figures of the first movement given their due. Langrée’s smiles suggested he was enjoying himself. The slow movement was well-shaped, its textures well-balanced. What it lacks above all is melodic genius, but that is no one’s fault. A joyful and ebullient performance of the finale brought this first item on the programme to an impressive close, the movement over in the twinkling of an eye.

 

Anyone, however, who did not consider Mozart’s final E-flat major Symphony to be a masterpiece would be well-advised to give up on music completely. The opening E-flat chords inevitably brought The Magic Flute to mind, although equally, the development thereafter reminded us this was a very different work. The first-movement exposition clearly grew out of the introduction. (That should, but alas does not, go without saying.) Langrée had a few rather irritating agogic touches (especially upon repetition), but nothing too grievous. For the most part, direction was clear, the concision of the development section truly a thing of wonder. The concluding bars did what they should: properly triumphant, thematically integrative, resounding with an inevitability that would surely have made Haydn proud. The slow movement was well-shaped, taken at a relatively swift tempo, the minor mode episodes making a strong impression. Langrée was sometimes prone to exaggerated tapering off of phrases, but I have heard far worse. A graceful yet vigorous minuet made a strong case for being taken one-to-a-bar. Orchestral detail was always finely etched. The trio flowed nicely, whilst offering proper relief. Langrée’s tempo for the finale sounded effortlessly right, allowing everything to slot into place (which is not, of course, to minimise the achievement of that happening). It was full of Haydnesque purpose, whilst, in its characterisation and sheer drama, never permitting us to forget that this was the composer of the Da Ponte operas. I could find no fault whatsoever in this delightful finale.

Queyras/Melnikov - Beethoven, 30 November 2014

Wigmore Hall

Cello Sonata in F major, op.5 no.1

Cello Sonata in G minor, op.5 no.2

Seven Variations on ‘Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen,’ WoO 46

Cello Sonata in A major, op.69

Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello)

Alexander Melnikov (piano)

 

My only regret connected with this concert was that teaching rendered me unable to attend its successor the following evening, when Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexander Melnikov completed their survey of Beethoven’s works for cello and piano. This was splendid chamber-music-making: no particular ‘points’ being made, but simply, though in reality not at all ‘simply’, excellent communication and exploration of fine music.

 

The first sonata, op.5 no.1, opened in light, understated fashion, which yet told of tensions beneath the surface, this first movement introduction pregnant, as any Beethovenian introduction should be, with possibilities. Energy was pent up ready for the exposition proper, the tempo strikingly yet convincingly flexible. Sharply pointed, sharply directed, that exposition and indeed the performance as a whole were imbued with a crucial sense that every note mattered. Influences of Mozart and Haydn were certainly felt, but Beethoven’s identity remained unmistakeable. Expansiveness was relished but direction was maintained. Queyras proved both lithe and lyrical, Melnikov properly protean. The second movement was playful, with a keen sense of response between the players. A fleet tempo never moved towards being garbled, as it might have done in lesser hands. Balance was never a problem, even when Melnikov occasionally made an almighty noise. Formal roots may have lain in Haydn, but again there was no mistaking the composer.

 

The companion sonata, in G minor, followed. This is a key that inevitably brings Mozart to mind, and the introduction to the first movement certainly seemed haunted, though never overwhelmed, by his ghost. There was a tragic impulse, laudably never hurried, to the main body of the movement too. Major mode passages were given their due, but one heard them in the light of the tonic key. Motivic working and harmony worked in tandem to propel the sonata’s progress. The second movement offered tonal and, again, playful relief. There was grace aplenty, Queyras’s lyricism especially appreciated, but above all a sense of response to tensions previously explored. Not, of course, that that response was too readily accomplished, but accomplished it was.

 

The ‘Bei Männern’ Variations received a cultivated performance. Inventiveness, more in an eighteenth-century than Diabelli-like fashion, was the hallmark of work and performance, the latter detailed without being fussy. The variety of ‘voices’ Queyras extracted from his instrument was noteworthy, both in itself and for its expressive use. The sadness of the minor-mode variation, the scherzo-like quality of its successor – again, that playfulness! – and the rapt ornamentation of the sixth: all those qualities and more served both to differentiate and to dramatise.

 

The greater complexity of the op.69 Sonata in A major was apparent from the outset, enjoining the listener to still greater effort, the performance however an excellent guide to such effort. Simplicity of building blocks and complexity of what the composer does: such was the dialectic to be explored here. Melnikov took more of an obvious lead in the second movement, though not at Queyras’s expense. Rhythmic command proved crucial for both, the incessant quality of Beethoven’s writing unfailingly communicated. The finale opened as if the slow movement we had yet to hear. It was a surprise well concealed until the moment of telling. And even then, contrast between music of differing pulse was very much at the heart of the performance. Dynamic contrasts and transitions worked similarly. There was ultimate musical exultance, but it remained of a reflective character.