Prom 10: BBC Concert Orchestra/Wordsworth - ‘Music for Royal Occasions’, 22 July 2022

Royal Albert Hall

Bliss: Jubilant Fanfare no.1
Handel: Coronation Anthem no.1, ‘Zadok the Priest
Walton: Coronation March: ‘Orb and Sceptre’
Elgar: O hearken thou, op.64
William Henry Harris, arr. Jonathan Manners: The Windsor Dances
Henry VIII: Pastime with good companie
Britten: Gloriana: Courtly Dances
Parry: Coronation Anthem: ‘I was glad’
John Ireland: Epic March
Judith Weir: I love all beauteous things
Byrd: O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth our Queen
Handel, arr. Hamilton Harty: Water Music: excerpts from Suite no.1
Vaughan Williams: Silence and Music
Cheryl Frances-Hoad: Your servant, Elizabeth (world premiere)
Elgar: ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ March no.4 in G major

BBC Singers (chorus master: Martin Fitzpatrick)
BBC Concert Orchestra
Barry Wordsworth (conductor)

 

Copyright: BBC/Chris Christodoulou 

Having gone to this Prom with an open mind, buoyed by the sight of Handel, Byrd, and Elgar among the rest, I am tempted to conclude so much the worse for open minds. Should one keep an open mind about ‘Brexit’ as living standards plunge, goods disappear from shops, stations and airports overflow, vehicles pile up en route (sorry, ‘on the way’) to Dover, and so on? Of course not, though the Foreign Secretary Liz ‘Pork Markets’ Truss’s ‘innovative’ demand that France should sort things out is doubtless worth considering. Certainly France could have sorted out some of this programme: if ‘Music for Royal Occasions’, where was Versailles, let alone Vienna, Dresden, or Berlin? But really, even were one to take the English/British restriction at face, non-political value, a ‘Music for Royal Occasions’ that excluded Purcell in favour of William Henry Harris? The programming looked eccentric, but perhaps we should ‘make Harris work’, ‘get Parry done’, and so on?

Perhaps. There were, to be fair, some better moments, a good few of them, although the BBC Singers seemed an odd match for the repertoire. A local choral society might have been more apt. The brass and percussion of Arthur Bliss’s Jubilant Fanfare no.1, apparently composed for a BBC broadcast of George VI’s Christmas speech, made for an effective, even anticipatory curtain-raiser. The contrast with those celebrated anticipatory strings of Zadok the Priest, mercifully free of ‘period’ affectation from the BBC Concert Orchestra and Barry Wordsworth, worked well and if the performance was on the small side for the Royal Albert Hall, one could hear the words, largely thanks to excellent articulation from the BBC Singers. I could have done without the weird twirling crowns behind them, though, presumably set up for Sunday’s television broadcast but increasingly aggravating in the hall. Elgar’s O hearken thou, written for the coronation of George V, was far more interesting than its monarch. It may be a ‘minor’ work, but it is a finely crafted one: a prayer, rather than a public profession, and moved through its mastery of harmonic progression both in work and performance. If there is little that cannot be traced back to Mendelssohn or, if not, to Wagner, these are two masters worthy of the utmost respect, and what Elgar does can be reduced neither to influence nor to function. Drums, woodwind, and voices made for a refreshing Pastime with good companie from Henry VIII (so far as we know). 

Moreover, in the second half, Byrd’s O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth our Queen, from about the time of his appointment to Elizabeth I’s Chapel Royal, came as a relief in every sense: neither simpler nor more complex, shorter nor longer, than needed be, a jewel that gleamed even in a setting to which it was hardly suited. In the circumstances, a relatively ‘neutral’ performance from the BBC Singers was no bad decision, more or less allowing the illusion of words and music ‘speaking for itself’. A little later, the evening’s commission, Cheryl Frances Hoad’s Your servant, Elizabeth, took Byrd’s words and music and refracted them through a twentieth-century aural lens, various elements, different tonalities included, intelligently set in counterpoint (literal and metaphorical) with one another, imparting also a sense of Anglican versicle and response. More of this spirit would have been welcome. In between, an outing for Vaughan Williams’s Silence and Music, written for an Arts Council set of part-songs for Elizabeth II’s coronation, revealed harmonic oscillation and persistence in happy alliance with thoughtful English word-setting. 

One could even have waved through Walton’s Orb and Sceptre Coronation March. Its opening, after all, breathed the air of a postwar, televisual age. The reprise, however, of that opening more than outstayed its welcome, and the composer’s typical self-satisfaction soon had one realise this was music that, a certain technical skill notwithstanding, was all surface—without that surface ever approaching that of, say, a Ravel. Walton came across as a kindred spirit to Webern, though, by comparison with the aforementioned William Henry Harris, whose Windsor Dances, receiving their first and, let us hope, last performance at the Proms, barely attempted, let alone achieved musical interest. It was plausible enough to imagine them ‘inspired’ by our current Head of State. The titles of these mercifully brief orchestral arrangements from piano duet pieces—‘Castle Walls’, ‘Down by the River’, ‘At a Canter’—said it all. 

The same drum used to announce Henry VIII’s contribution did so for Britten’s ‘Courtly Dances’ from Gloriana. The opera has its devotees, I know, making typically extravagant claims for it, but these dances are thin gruel, far from helped by a pretension that the material cannot and does not justify. I thought the Pavane would never end. The Lavolta was at least a little more colourful, though a programme description of it as ‘fiery’ bewildered. Maybe the performance was lacking, for it sounded about as fiery as, well, Elizabeth II. Alas, Judith Weir’s strangely inconsequential I love all beauteous things, written for the Queen’s ninetieth birthday, also seemed to have its dedicatee in mind. Harris, I suppose, had not even managed the ‘strangely’ part. 

John Ireland was certainly capable of writing music of interest, especially for the piano. His Epic March, though seemingly played well, proved utterly devoid of musical interest. Intended, apparently, as wartime propaganda music, it semeed more likely to disillusion those poor souls on the Home Front fated to endure it. And where—I should have asked this earlier—was even a desultory nod towards decolonisation? Place these pieces in some sort of counterpoint with a wider world, especially a wider world brutalised by the empire they (often) hymned, contrast them with other ‘royal’ music, even simply choose better examples: but this, really? Did anyone seriously think it worth of revival; and, if so, why? 

Hamilton Harty’s Handel may sound intriguing on paper, but rarely has it emerged with the courage of convictions. Wordsworth here seemed curiously tentative, as did the orchestra. The abiding impression left would probably have been that the ‘authentic’ movement had a point, which is surely to have missed the point. If one wants Handel-Harty, one should go to Georg Szell. Even Elgar’s Fourth Pomp and Circumstance March was treated with kid-gloves. What initially sounded as though it might have offered a fresh look, inspired by Mendelssohn-like lightness, turned out merely to be glib and, reading between the lines, a little embarrassed by it all. Lack of sentimentality was welcome; what stood positively in the performance’s favour remained unclear. 

I have saved nearly the worst (after Harris) until last: Parry’s execrable I was glad, which manages somehow to be both vulgar and tedious. (I see it was revived for the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton, which again makes a sort of grimly apt sense.) Here the clash with the BBC Singers seemed strangest, a mismatch that certainly did not reflect badly on them. What empty, shop-worn rhetoric, and to what end? Pierre Boulez once referred to Shostakovich’s music by way of an olive-oil metaphor: a third pressing of Mahler. This sounded like a fifth of an already bowdlerised Victorian-Edwardian Brahms. It was as dull as ditchwater. All hail the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha/Windsor.

The Excursions of Mr Brouček, Grange Park Opera, 18 June 2022

The Theatre in the Woods

Mr Brouček – Peter Hoare
Málinka, Etherea, Kunka – Fflur Wyn
Mazal, Bounzincek, Petrik, Svatopluk – Mark Le Brocq
Würfl, Paycek, Councillor – Andrew Shore
Sacristan, Dudcek, Domšík – Clive Bayley
Kedruta – Anne-Marie Owens
Spotcek, Vojta, Raincek, Mirosla – Adrian Thompson
Postdatedcek – Jonathan Kennedy
Child Prodigy – Pasquale Orchard
Spotcek – Robin Horgan
Farty – Benjie del Rosario
Taborite I – Toki Hamano
Arty, Taborite I – Marcus Swietlicki
Dancers – Lauren Bridle, Bridget Lappin, Arianne Morgan, Luke Murphy, Jay Yule

David Pountney (director)
Leslie Travers (designs)
Marie-Jean Lecca (costumes)
Tim Mitchell (lighting)
Lynne Hockney (choreography)

BBC Concert Orchestra
George Jackson (conductor)

 

Bounzincek (Mark Le Brocq) and an artist on the moon
Images: Marc Brenner

Hats off to Grange Park Opera for unquestionably the best of the four ‘country house’ operas I have seen so far this season. First, and perhaps most important, with respect to the work itself: Janáček’s The Excursions of Mr Brouček. I suppose it might be theoretically possible to reach a state in which Janáček’s music was heard too often, though it might not. (Imagine saying such a thing of Bach or Mozart.) If it is, though, we are nowhere near that yet. Yet the Janáček operas we see staged are mostly, perhaps understandably, restricted to three: Jenůfa, Katya Kabanova, and The Cunning Little Vixen. We must go beyond The Makropulos Case and even From the House of the Dead to reach Mr Brouček. Doubtless some in the Grange Park Opera audience had seen it in the theatre before, but I had not, and was immensely grateful to have the opportunity to do so, let alone for it to be performed so well. 

Mr Brouček will doubtless always be a problematical work, in a way that the aforementioned popular (relatively speaking) trio will not. Its two-part structure will probably always require effort to bring together—if, indeed, such is the dramaturgical aim. But art is certainly not always about perfection, or approaches to it. Sometimes, it is about quite the opposite. The first part’s satire against pretentious avant-gardism, or perhaps better derrière-gardism, hits home more readily for a modern, or at least non-Czech, audience than the second, more preoccupied with Czech national mythology—although a little grounding helps us on our way. Nationalism, after all, remains sadly too universal. But the other part of the satire is against the antihero himself: the philistine who has little idea what he is doing in Prague, let alone on the Moon or in the fifteenth century. To that, we can and should all relate. No one likes a landlord, after all, especially one who boasts of having no mortgage, only a three-storey house. You can begin to see why the opera will never touch as Katya does. That is not its purpose.

 

Málinka (Fflur Wyn)

David Pountney’s production pulls out all the stops for a frankly zany trip from Prague to the moon, clarified and extended by Marie-Jean Lecca’s imaginative costuming. Leslie Travers’s brilliant set for the former captures an almost childlike delight in city models, as well as the, or at least an, idea of Prague. The empty pretentiousness of the moon artists—Pountney has fun, using his own, free English version of the text, creating names such as Spotcek, Raincek, and Postdatedcek—engenders an intoxication of its own. It is fun to watch, which guards us against too ready identification with Brouček. ‘We must each fight our inner Brouček,’ Janáček insisted. A similar, yet different mix of magical constructivism informs the still more bewildering—for many—and darker trip to the Prague of the Hussite rebellion.

 

Mr Brouček (Peter Hoare)

Whether one cares for the (literal) toilet (brush) humour of the interlude between the visits, will be a matter of taste. Monty Python is not my thing, but if it is yours, you will almost certainly love Pountney’s more outrageous excurses. Sometimes, though, I wondered where the heart was, especially during the Moon-trip. Is there not something more positive to say about artistic creation too? The answer, I suppose, would be that it lies in the score (and, indeed, in the artistic endeavour of performance and reception itself. It arguably suggested itself onstage at the end, when the innkeeper Würfl collected his drunken patron, laughed at his tall tales, but also walked him away in camaraderie. Perhaps that was enough. Again, that will probably be as much a matter of taste or inclination as anything else.

 

Peter Hoare’s Brouček captured well the contradictions not only of the character, but of our response(s) to him. This was a typically intelligent performance, which held the stage, amused, and touched without sentimentality. Fflur Wyn’s Málinka and other roles were lively, characterful, and rooted in, yet far from hidebound by, the text. Such is the magic of theatre, and such might be said of any number of the cast, including Mark Le Brocq’s handful of roles, Andrew Shore’s, and Clive Bayley’s, as well as Anne-Marie Owens's Kedruta. This was very much a company effort, which did Grange Park Opera proud, enthralling an audience that could all too readily have registered mere bemusement at the work’s oddity.

Domsik (Clive Bayley)

George Jackson’s traversal of the score elicited my unqualified admiration, as did the playing of the BBC Concert Orchestra. Incisive and expansive, earthy and soaring, above all attuned to those fabled speech rhythms and their unpredictable, magical combination into form and structure, this was as fine a Janáček performance as I have heard for some time, all the more so for its revelation of relatively unfamiliar territory. Time and time, presentiments of the Vixen’s world shone through, anchoring these ‘excursions’ in a common humanity and inspiring us to go forth and create it. The score emerged possessed of the musical, scherzando brilliance of the more or less contemporary Gianni Schicchi, if perhaps less single-minded, at any rate without the latter work’s dramaturgical precision, considered as a whole. We might say Janáček’s musical dramaturgy is more adventurous, though much depends what one means. Whatever our thoughts on that, this was a musical banquet beautifully and, at the last, movingly served.