BBC SO/Oramo - Elgar, 13 December 2024

Barbican Hall

Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius, op.38

Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)
David Butt Philip (tenor)
Roderick Williams (baritone)

BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Neil Ferris)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

This was to have been something entirely different: Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ, conducted by Andrew Davis. The death of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s former chief conductor led not only to a necessary change of conductor, in the guise of the orchestra’s current chief conductor, Sakari Oramo, but to a change of programme, Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, a work with which Davis was more strongly associated, taking the place of Berlioz’s oratorio, as a memorial. Having been a little nonplussed by the change, I soon realised that it made greater sense as a memorial, not least on account of the tangible commitment from a chorus and orchestra – a considerable Barbican audience too – to remembering their erstwhile colleague. I had a few reservations concerning the performance itself, none especially grievous; I hope it will not seem unduly curmudgeonly to share them, alongside the many estimable qualities to what I heard. For whatever reason, they did not seem to be shared by most members of a highly enthusiastic audience. 

The principal problem was arguably the hall itself and its constricted acoustic. For once, the Royal Albert Hall might not have been too poor a venue; large-scale choral works, many of which Davis conducted there at the Proms, tend to fare better than most. Brass in particular tended to blare, something it was difficult to ignore in the Prelude. I was a little surprised that Oramo, who must by now be used to the difficulties, did not do much about them: a pity, given the fine Elgar sound from the rest of the orchestra, strings in particular. Oramo certainly showed flexibility in his reading here, though some tempo choices and changes I found  puzzling. 

David Butt Philip’s entry, ably supported by Oramo and the orchestra, announced a surprisingly Italianate way with the music: more Puccini than Wagner or Strauss, let alone Brahms. Indeed, Oramo increasingly brought things I had either not heard or had forgotten, but which seemed very much to grow out of the score, a nice line in dance rhythms included. This was certainly, at least in the first part, an operatic reading: not necessarily how Davis would have done it, but then a tribute should not be an imitation. The struggle was dramatic, it seemed, rather than overtly theological, Oramo skilled at guiding crucial transitions. Many, I know, have problems with the work on the latter ground; it even had to be given with a revised text for early performances at the Three Choirs Festival. One could surely say the same, though, of its avowed model: Parsifal. Perhaps this was a way, conscious or otherwise, ecumenically to broaden its appeal. At any rate, if I sometimes felt a little loss on Newman’s side, there was an undeniable keen sense of joint endeavour, audience included, that appeared to offer ample, even quasi-religious compensation to many. Never showing the slightest sense of strain that occasionally accompanied Butt Philip’s often thrilling and full-throated approach, Roderick Williams proved a wise and faithful guide for the journey both underway and to come. The BBC Symphony Chorus, of which Davis remained President until his death, offered performances throughout of warmth, heft, and blend that worked with, rather than against, the difficult acoustic. 

The second part, quite rightly, took us to a very different place, ushered in by string playing of which any orchestra or conductor would be proud. Sarah Connolly’s Angel’s finely spun, infinitely compassionate performance was a jewel: rooted in Newman’s words, yet equally communicating beyond them through Elgar’s music. Choral and orchestral demons were a colourful, malevolent band, ‘angelicals’ in turn beautifully contrasted. Where sometimes – only sometimes – I had found the first part meandering, Oramo here seemed ever clearer in his mission to bind the work together, motivically, harmonically, and yes, theologically. In that, Wagner returned, as did Parsifal more specifically in the passage of approach to God. Brahms did too, above all the German Requiem, most keenly in the choruses. Moreover, I could not help but find something a little Liszt in an endeavour that, perhaps despite Newman, retained a little of the Faustian. Music once again proved a superior, or at least different, agent of synthesis to words.

And yet, it is not really a matter of either/or, but rather of combination, of that shared endeavour to which I referred above. ‘Farewell, but not for ever brother dear, Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow’: for some a necessity, for some doubtless an obscenity. Heard here from Connolly, at a darker time than many of us have known, it offered, however briefly, a semblance of consolation.

Gerstein/BBC SO/Oramo - Bacewicz and Busoni, 1 November 2024

Barbican Hall

Grażyna Bacewicz: Symphony no.2
Ferruccio Busoni: Piano Concerto in C major, op.83

Kirill Gerstein (piano)

BBC Symphony Chorus

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Images: Copyright: BBC/Sarah-Louise Bennett

The centenary of Ferruccio Busoni’s death fell earlier this year, not that ninety-nine per cent of the musical world appears to have noticed. Where are the operas, even his masterpiece and summa, Doktor Faust this year, or any other? His Turandot will never rival Puccini’s for popularity, nor for various other attributes, least of all disturbingly alluring sadism. Yet, though I admire both, I think Busoni’s is ultimately the better piece. In the meantime, the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, Sakari Oramo, and Kirill Gerstein offered a rare opportunity to hear his genre- and much-else-defying Piano Concerto, which in its finale offers a male chorus setting of words from the Danish Romantic Adam Oelenschläger’s Aladdin, in Oelenschläger’s own German translation (long since superseded), which Busoni at one point considered turning into an opera. If that sounds more like Beethoven’s Ninth than any of his piano concertos – not, if truth be told, the work has much in common with either – then it points to an important truth: namely, that this superlative pianist and veteran of many a piano concerto, historical and contemporary, chose in his own to write, without sparing the pianist great technical challenges, a work that was more operatic symphony with piano than concerto in any traditional sense, adversarial or otherwise.

A composer such as Busoni needs a champion, and Gerstein probably has better claim than any other current performing musician to the title. During the 2022-23 season, he gave a series of three concerts at the Wigmore Hall, entitled ‘Busoni and his World’. I attended two and left enriched by both. He has also been performing the Piano Concerto, a live recording with Sakari Oramo and the Boston Symphony Orchestra having been warmly acclaimed. I have yet to hear it, but if it is anything like this performance with Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, it should be snapped up by anyone with the slightest interest or curiosity. I suspect it will be in broad outline, since swift overall timings of about seventy minutes are common to both. For the sake of comparison, John Ogdon takes about seventy-eight and Victoria Postnikova manages to stretch it to almost ninety. A signal achievement of this performance, though was that such thoughts never entered the mind. The work did not even seem long, but rather, like a Mahler symphony, the precise length that it needed to be, compelling from beginning to end. 

Indeed, from the outset, soloist, conductor, and for the most part orchestra approached it as if it were a repertory piece. The first movement flowed with notable fluency, with no question as to its depths. Whatever this is, it is not a ‘surface’ work. There was a Beethovenian strength to the string foundations, the Seventh Symphony in particular coming to mind. Gerstein, on his first entry, showed himself both secure in command and inviting—even if we did not yet quite know to what he and Busoni were inviting us. He made the massive piano chords sing in themselves, but equally in counterpoint with the orchestra, unleashing Faustian energy yet also relishing the more ‘feminine’ – in the old, gendered typology – passages in which Doktor Faust itself is at its least successful. If the creation of music from often simple elements required Beethovenian struggle, it rarely sounded like it, the effect closer to Mozart, to Liszt, and occasionally to Brahms. One sensed if not the birth of Busoni’s Junge Klassität, then a milestone in its evolution. 

That Classical-Romantic line ran through the following Pezzo giocoso too, its energy almost yet not quite delirious in piano and orchestra alike. Like its predecessor, it seemed effortlessly to capture the protean spirit of its composer, here pointing, tambourine and all, toward the warm, Mediterranean south. The longer Pezzo serioso struck, unsurprisingly, a more serious, even Teutonic note, pianistic shadows and rays of winter sun from the worlds of Beethoven and Brahms set against surprisingly Wagnerian trombones: a magical combination. Form was unerringly communicated as was a musical narrative perhaps closer to that of Liszt’s symphonic poems than to Strauss. Faustian tones became more pronounced, as if the good doctor himself were seated at the piano, performing his own concerto. The fourth movement tarantella sounded as a truly Italian vision, albeit an Italy different from anyone else’s. In its Lisztian figuration, we experienced a unique, even outrageous fever. And how could we not smile at the evocation of Rossini on entering the realm of commedia dell’arte? 

The transition to the final movement, as the male chorus stood, was a thing of wonder. Busoni instructed that it should be invisible, and the effect would doubtless be all the more magical if it were, if perhaps at the cost of intelligibility, though we had (welcome) surtitles in this case. A quietly ecstatic new and final chapter opened: ‘Lifet up your hearts to the Power Eternal. Feel Allah’s presence. Behold all his works.’ A splendidly warm and consoling choral sound led us into a realm in which it was difficult not to think, perhaps through a Goethian lens, of Die Zauberflöte—and of Mahler. The rapturous acclaim with which Gerstein and his fellow performers met was fully justified. I have no doubt it will prove to be one of my musical memories of 2024. 

Preceding it, we had heard Grażyna Bacewicz’s Second Symphony, a much shorter and more modest work, far from without its virtues, yet paling when placed beside the Busoni. The BBC SO and Oramo summoned just the right sort of mid-century sound in a committed performance of this 1951 work. Other composers came to mind, Prokofiev and Bartók in the first movement, Hindemith later on, but Bacewicz was never merely to be reduced to them, her personal contrasts of ‘voice’ and texture holding the attention throughout. The second movement evoked unease through traditional harmony and counterpoint. The third, a scherzo proved incisive and ambiguous. In the finale, not for the first time, the composer showed her ability not only to write a melody but to ensure that it was generated from the material in which it found itself. Bacewicz’s symphony could probably have found a more suitable home than this concert, but it was a good opportunity to make its acquaintance.

BBC SO/Gardner - Berlioz, L'Enfance du Christ, 17 December 2018

Barbican Hall

Karen Cargill (mezzo-soprano)

Robert Murray (tenor)

Etienne Dupuis (baritone)

Matthew Rose (bass)

Members of the BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Neil Ferris)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Edward Gardner (conductor)

L’Enfance du Christ is not an Advent work, but since most of this country’s musical institutions shut down over Christmas, Advent is probably the only chance we shall have to hear it – and even then, only on occasion. But then Messiah is a Lenten work, and yet… There was certainly much for which to be grateful in this BBC SO performance. An initial tendency, heard for instance in the first scene’s Marche nocturne, for Edward Gardner to drive Berlioz’s music too hard, was mercifully not maintained. Indeed, as time went on, Gardner’s tempi relaxed more, greatly to the music’s benefit. The BBC Symphony Chorus’s singing, at the outset a little woolly, sharpened up too. If orchestral colours tended to be stronger on individuality then on blend, that was only a tendency, with plenty of exceptions, not least the opening woodwind recitative, in which the orchestra, Robert Murray, a fine Narrator, drew us in, his entry and that of the strings having the drama gather pace nicely and without exaggeration.

There is something enduringly and endearingly strange to any ‘sacred’ or perhaps better ‘religious’ work by Berlioz. Just as much as with the Requiem, it is perfectly clear, without his needing to say so, that he does not believe a word of it. If that stands very much in a grand, public, ceremonial tradition ultimately as empty as Robespierre’s Cult of the Supreme Being, this becomes an illustrated children’s story that is yet not for children. The vividness of the writing and, one hopes, the performance too has characters, scenes, even locations stand out from the pages, but the lack of belief – not hostile, just ‘as it is’ – remains. That presents its own very particular challenges to the performers, challenges to which they rose very well. Herod’s Aria, for instance, sung darkly and clearly by Matthew Rose, ‘accompanied’ by due orchestral darkness too, might have been sung by a Shakespearean king; it was difficult not to think of parallels in the writer Berlioz loved above all others. In the ensuing scene with the soothsayers, the clarinet first commenting on, then seemingly confirming, the king’s dream, much must be accomplished by instrumental means alone, the ‘stage directions’ acting ‘as if’ there were a stage, written explications to musical ‘illustrations’. Such was certainly the case with the ‘cabalistic’ movements of the soothsayers as they moved to conjure the dark spirits to be ‘appeased’. A dark, Theresa May-like tyrannical resolve was inculcated, heedless of the consequences: infanticide meant infanticide. Just after the Strong and Stable One had flounced out of Parliament ‘in real life’, so too did Herod walk offstage: ‘Malgré les crie, malgré les pleurs de tant de mères éperdues, des rivières de sang vont être répandues, je serai sourd à ces douleurs.’

Pastoral innocence was just what we needed as balm to such malevolence, and so we heard – even saw – it at the Bethlehem stable. Karen Cargill’s beautifully floated lines as Mary remained alert to Berlioz’s idiosyncracies. Joined by Etienne Dupuis, whose suave, stylish, yet heartfelt singing proved very much one of the evening’s highlights, this Holy Family gave us something we might or might not believe in, but which could certainly enchant. Berlioz’s tone-painting did likewise, although it had me think his strictures against Haydn in The Creation not without double standards. Joined by offstage members of the BBC Singers as angels, singing very much in a choral tradition of French semi-archaism, this was a scene not just of contemplation but of readiness to depart. It prepared us as well as the Holy Family well for the short second part: ‘La fuite en Egypte’, its Overture having me wonder again – as I had during Herod’s music – whether Mussorgsky knew the music and unconsciously had it in mind when at work on Boris Godunov. The Russian composer certainly cherished Berlioz’s treatise on orchestration. Sometimes a correspondence is just a correspondence; at any rate, parallels, such as they be, may be worth consideration. The celebrated ‘Shepherds’ Farewell’ flowed nicely, integrated rather than a ‘set piece’. Murray’s narration reminded us how stylish and meaningful his French singing could be; sweet toned too, it was really rather wonderful.

The third part, entitled ‘L’Arrivée à Saïs’, is indeed an arrival in more than a strictly narrative sense. The Holy Family, following malevolent calls, as May would have it, to GO HOME – ‘Arrière, vils Hébreux,’ shout the Roman and Egyptian Tories de leurs jours – nevertheless find shelter with fellow ‘migrants’: an Ishmaelite and his family. And yet – something that came across gently yet strongly in performance – this is not the end of the story. Anticipatory narration, clearly, vividly delivered by Murray and the BBC SO alike, is never quite fulfilled, events and sentiments in the Ishmaelite house – Berlioz’s fugal chorus especially relished – a challenge to us, to the readers of his picture-book to respond or, like many self-styled ‘Christians’, to cross to the other side of the road, with or without ‘citizens of the world’ abuse. Berlioz’s closing chorus, euphonious to a degree, sounded a gentle warning: ‘O mon cœur, emplis-toi du grave et pur amour qui seul peut nous ouvrir le céleste séjour.’ Will any of us heed it?

Prom 33 - BBC SO/Farnes - Musgrave and Brahms, 7 August 2018

Royal Albert Hall

Thea Musgrave: Phoenix Rising (1997)

Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem, op.45
 

Golda Schultz (soprano)

Johan Reuter (bass-baritone)
BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Neil Ferris)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Richard Farnes (conductor)

  

I am not sure I could find much of a connection between the two works on offer here. They offered ‘contrast’ of a sort, I suppose, yet not in a meaningful way such as I could discern. No matter: the concert was what it was, concluding in a truly excellent performance of Brahms’s German Requiem, infinitely preferable to a curiously vacuous one I heard last autumn – perhaps more the time of year for it – from starrier forces in Berlin.

 

First, however, came Thea Musgrave’s 1997 orchestral work, Phoenix Rising, its title taken from a sign outside a Virginia coffee shop, its programmatic subject matter that of, well, a phoenix rising from the ashes. Its opening éclat promised much, very much a presentiment of the sharpness – rhythmic, yet not only that – of the rest of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s performance under Richard Farnes. It could have been the prelude to a stage work; I could not help but wonder if it might have been better off that way. For the piece’s initial post-Peter Grimes dramatic tension dissipated somewhat, transforming in a different way from the phoenix, into a competent yet hardly earth-shattering tone poem. Unrepentantly tonal, it came to sound more like film music than a concert work. Visual theatrics, in which the excellent timpanist cued a bass drum player above, before downing his sticks and leaving the stage amused and/or puzzled, yet seemed to lack motivation in to the musical material (other than his ceasing to play for a while, before being heard at the end, off-stage). It was interesting to hear a Proms premiere from a composer long overlooked in this country; I doubt I should hasten to hear it again.

 

The introduction to the opening chorus of the Brahms, ‘Selig sing, die da Leid tragen’ – from the Beatitudes, of course – truly set the scene for the rest of Farnes’s reading. Combining serenity with a hint of harmonic grit often missed, he pointed to the location of meaning in Brahms’s harmony. It is all there, pretty much. In the words too, of course, but one might have a pretty good feeling for what this splendidly Lutheran humanist – in more than one sense – work was about even without. Or so one imagined. At any rate, the BBC Symphony Chorus, upon its entry, ensured that we never had to find out, its rounded tone of consolation just the thing – as was its diction. The movement remained founded, even grounded, upon its bass line, orchestral and choral. This was to be a ‘natural’, unaffected performance of the very best kind.

The following chorus’s roots in early music – not only Bach and Handel, not only Schütz, but earlier – were clear at its opening, without any need to underline, to highlight. Once again, the placing of chords, the path of harmonic progressions, mattered in work and performance, yet without a hint of pedantry. Soft, which is not to say weak, foreboding, ‘All flesh is as grass’, grew and grew through the great sarabande processional. Brahms may not have been a Believer, but he knew what belief and Belief were. The central section, ‘So seid nun geduldig…’, was taken more swiftly, with greater contrast, than often one hears; it worked very well indeed, heightening expectancy in words and music alike. A sense of return, musical as much as theological, was finely achieved thereafter, with the return of the opening material, prior to turning of the corner, clean and warm: the Lord’s Word would endure for ever. Again swifter than usual, the closing section worked splendidly, the foretelling of heavenly rejoicing almost akin to a choral climax in Haydn. Farnes shaped this music, as that of the whole, with powerful yet unobtrusive understanding.

 

Johan Reuter proved a sincere soloist, his diction also excellent, in ‘Herr, lehre doch mich’, the chorus engaged in a dark game, or perhaps better ritual, of versicle and response. Subtle darkening of instrumental colours as the psalmist reflected upon the humbreing of his days proved just as telling as the vocal line itself. A swift closing once again worked; it was not hard-driven, but a release that was again as much musical as a mere response to the words. Klemperer’s is not the only way. And yet, all the while, that pedal point resounded in a way the grand old man would surely have appreciated. The ensuing chorus, ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen,’ flowed beautifully, indeed beguilingly, without a hint of sentimentality.

 

Golda Schultz’s solo work in the next number, ‘Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit’, offered a near ideal blend of the ‘angelic’ and the ‘womanly’: the ‘Ewig-Weibliche’, one might almost suggest, in Goethian homage. I was put a little in mind of Edith Mathis (on Daniel Barenboim’s early recording, although there was perhaps greater range here. Maternal comfort – the death of Brahms’s mother almost certainly played some role here, just as the death of Webern’s mother would for so much of his œuvre – was apparent, was felt, with a nice sense of homage to Mendelssohn, delectable BBC woodwind and all, towards the close.

 

I wondered whether Reuter might have been a little forthright in ‘Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt’, but perhaps that was as much a matter of the Albert Hall acoustic as performance. At any rate, choral swallowing up of death and grave in victory proved a thing of awe, prior to another Haydn-Gloria-close: which, after all, is precisely what the words from Revelation suggest. This was not difference for the sake of it, but a keen response both to words and music. The final chorus, taken more or less attacca, reinforced the ‘cyclical’ element to Brahms’s vision. That is not quite the right word, I know, for we have been changed by what has happened in the meantime; yet tonally, there is – and here there was felt to be – a strong element of return. Farnes’s ability to maintain the longest of lines came in very handy here, as did his readily apparent long-term harmonic thinking. Blessed were these dead souls indeed.

First Night of the Proms: Gabetta/BBC SO/Oramo - Tchaikovsky, Elgar, and Prokofiev, 15 July 2016

Royal Albert Hall

Tchaikovsky – Fantasy Overture: Romeo and Juliet

Elgar – Cello Concerto in E minor, op.85
Prokofiev – Cantata: Alexander Nevsky, op.78


Sol Gabetta (cello)
Olga Borodina (mezzo-soprano)
BBC National Chorus of Wales (chorus master: Adrian Partington)
BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Adrian Partington)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

 

What to make of the unannounced decision to open this concert with the Marseillaise? I am sure it was well intended, and perhaps should leave it at that. Music, especially avowedly political music, has associations, though, and what many, but not all, English and French listeners might understand as solidarity following the previous night’s carnage in Nice, might sound rather different to a listener from, say, the Maghreb. Nationalism is, after all, a big part of the problem – as London has rediscovered with a vengeance over the past few weeks. The issue of ‘national anthems’ is fraught too; ours, in the (Dis)United Kingdom is about as divisive as it could be, eliding membership of a nation with monarchism and thus necessarily defining republicanism as a foe within. French revolutionaries, insisting on national sovereignty, offered a not entirely dissimilar binary opposition: that, ultimately, led to the execution of Louis XVI, who, having a veto, could not be part of the nation, which, in a time of emergency, led to one particular conclusion. It also led to – well, we know the rest. Returning to the Royal – yes, Royal – Albert Hall, applause at the end heightened the oddness. If the opening number were a sign of respect, however problematical – and that is how I took it, standing like everyone else – then why would one applaud? Might an aestheticised version of the anthem, for instance that of Berlioz, not have been another option? I felt conflicted, then, but I seem to have been in a minority; many were clearly inspired by the hope and solidarity they felt had been afforded.

 

Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet sounded, in this context, especially dark in its fatal opening bars. The introduction took its time, pace gathering with a proper harmonic foundation; Sakari Oramo is far too musical a conductor to whip up artificial ‘excitement’. The Allegro sounded turbulent indeed, counterpoint nicely Berliozian (should that not be too much of a paradox). The BBC Symphony Orchestra played the ‘Love’ theme gorgeously, without a hint of vulgarity. On more than one occasion, the harp stole our hearts, although so, to be fair, did the BBC woodwind. Tension between programme and material was productively explored, so to enthral and indeed to move all the more. There could certainly be no doubting the strength of the partnership between the BBC SO and Oramo.

 

Sol Gabetta joined them next for the Elgar Cello Concerto, with equally fine results. In the first movement, the Moderato material proved very much the child of the preceding Adagio, transition emotionally as well as technically seamless, whilst remaining a transition nonetheless. Much the same might be said of the transition between first and second groups; although the mood lifted in some respects, it remained dependent (secondary, one might say) upon what had come before. It was not all doom and gloom, by any means; Elgar’s Mendelssohnian inheritance came sparklingly to life at times. Underlying sadness, however, remained inescapable. The background of German, even leipzigerisch, Romanticism was also present in the scherzo; it sometimes came into the foreground too, albeit without banishing unease entirely. Elgar’s modernity, even modernism, was as unquestionable as its roots. (Applause and bronchial outpourings were most unwelcome at the movement’s close.) There was nothing morose about the Adagio, although it certainly sounded deeply felt. It was, rather, passionately songful, with wonderfully hushed tones too to relish, both from Gabetta and the orchestra. Dialogue and incitement were the generative order of the day in the final movement. Light and shade were expertly judged, likewise harmonic motion. Kinship with Elgar’s symphonies was clear, although, by the same token, this was decidedly later music too, almost an English cousin to Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. Ultimate weight was placed on the finale, and rightly so. Gabetta returned to the stage, following justly warm applause, to perform Pēteris Vasks’s Dolicissimo, her solo vocal as well as instrumental; this was an auspicious Proms debut indeed.

 

The second half was given over to Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky Cantata, based on the composer’s score for Eisenstein’s film of that name. Its nationalism can hardly fail to make one uneasy too; Stalin is quoted in the Proms programme as having declared to the director, ‘Sergey Mikhailovich, you’re a good Bolshevik after all!’ Not that Stalinism by this stage had so very much to do with Bolshevism, but anyway… Prokofiev, awkwardly for many of us who admire him, often, although not always, seemed to flourish in such circumstances. Those who would have us believe that art is somehow removed from politics could not be more wrong; more to the point, their protestations could not be more pernicious. However much one might want to wish away awkward questions, such as over the Marseillaise, one cannot – and should not.

 

The opening orchestral number, ‘Russia under the Mongolian Yoke’, was cold yet colourful, just as it should be. The ‘Song of Alexander Nevsky’ revealed choral forces (both the BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC National Chorus of Wales) both weighty and clear. Prokofiev’s homophonic writing helps in the latter respect, of course, but only helps. The ‘patriotism’ and militarism of the words – ‘Ah, how we fought, how we hacked them down!’, ‘Those who invade Russia will meet death,’ etc. – is all the more perturbing when performed with such musical conviction as here. An impeccably post-Mussorgskian orchestral opening announced ‘The Crusaders in Pskov’, the dissonances of course quite Prokofiev’s own, harking back to The Fiery Angel and forward to Romeo and Juliet. Even here, in ‘socialist realist’ land, there is some of the bite of the more youthful composer’s acerbity – and so there was in performance. Echoes of Boris Godunov sounded all the more strongly as the number progressed. One could hear what must have attracted Claudio Abbado to this music.

 

The following chorus, ‘Arise, Russian People’, provided a not un-Mussorgskian contrast. Motor rhythms in particular rendered the composer’s identity unmistakeagble. Glockenspiel and xylophone offered the most enjoyable of rejoicing later on. ‘The Battle on the Ice’ is the longest number in the cantata; here it proved very much the musical and emotional heart too. Its introduction was not only atmospheric, but atmospheric in a filmic way. Oramo brought out the glassy violas at dawn to strike a proper chill. Still more chilling was the barbarism of war proper, those motor rhythms and grinding dissonances once again proving the engine of progress; the scherzo of the Fifth Symphony hovered not so far in the musical future, whilst Mussorgsky’s shadow was, once again, rarely far from the aural stage. Eisenstein came to the eyes of our imagination. Olga Borodina walked onto the stage for ‘The Field of the Dead’, seemingly as an angel of death. And yet she sounded, in her ineffably Russian fashion, a note of consolation as well as one of tragedy. This contralto-like rendition held the hall spellbound. The final chorus, ‘Alexander’s Entry into Pskov’, struck a more difficult note. Now is not the time, to put it mildly, for patriotic rejoicing in London, and disconcerting it sounded, even when of a ‘foreign’ variety. It was magnificently done, though, chorus, orchestra, and conductor alike clearly relishing their musical task. Perhaps they had succeeded in putting the words to one side.

Prom 28 - D'Orazio/BBC SO/Oramo: Beethoven, Brett Dean, and Stravinsky, 7 August 2014

Royal Albert Hall

Beethoven – Egmont, op.84: Overture

Brett Dean – Electric Preludes

Stravinsky – Oedipus Rex

 
Francesco D’Orazio (electric violin)

Oedipus – Allan Clayton

Jocasta – Hilary Summers

Creon – Juha Uusitalo

Tiresias – Brindley Sherratt

Messenger – Duncan Rock

Shepherd – Samuel Boden

Speaker – Rory Kinnear

BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Stephen Jackson)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

I admit that I came to this concert mostly with the second half in mind. It was a more than pleasant surprise, then, also to find a good deal more to enjoy before the interval than I had expected. It is not, of course, that I do not think the world of the Egmont Overture, but I have increasingly become weary of the state of present-day orchestral Beethoven performance. (Oddly, the problems bedevilling symphonic Beethoven seem less apparent or at least far less widespread in solo and chamber music.) Sakari Oramo’s account with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, then, came as a breath of fresh air. The introduction was full of suspense and foreboding, unfolding at a tempo that simply sounded ‘right’ (which is not, of course, to say that another could not). Already there was a proper sense of the mystery of Beethovenian development. The transition to the main Allegro was well handled, and throughout there was a good sense of formal dynamism. Characterful woodwind and forthright brass (admittedly, not always ideally precise) added a great deal. The ‘Victory Symphony’ at the end – I know that it is not actually entitled as such here – was perhaps a touch harried, but if a shortcoming, it was one that was readily forgiven. This was a real Beethoven performance.

 

Brett Dean’s Electric Preludes, for electric violin and orchestral strings, received its first Proms performance, Francesco D’Orazio joining the orchestra. In six ‘character pieces’, some of them continuous, Dean’s work explores, in his words, ‘the intersection between high instrumental virtuosity of a “classical” nature on the one hand and sound-worlds that are only possible with electronics on the other, all commented upon by an essentially “unplugged” string chamber orchestra’. As a summary, that seemed to me to tally very well with what I heard. The first movement, ‘Abandoned Playground’ is scurrying, at times almost filmic in quality and ‘atmosphere’, though perhaps a little repetitive. Despite its inspiration by indigenous painting from around Papunya, in Australia’s Northern Territory, the second movement sounded – at least, impressionistically, to me – more ‘abstract’, though perhaps matters would be different if one knew the art.  The short ‘Peripetea’ that follows, fast and highly rhythmical, had a sense, both as work and performance, of providing what it says, a dramatic turning-point. A slow movement, ‘The Beyond of Mirrors’, seemed more fully to emphasise electronic sounds, and yet at the same time to engage in ‘traditional’ violin and string fantasy. So too, in another mood, did the following ‘Perpetuum mobile’, which put me in mind almost of electric Prokofiev (the finale to the Second Violin Concerto). Its lengthy cadenza seemed perhaps to outstay its welcome, but there could be no gainsaying, here or elsewhere, D’Orazio’s command of technique, idiom, and expression. Likewise, the BBC SO sounded reinvigorated under its new Principal Conductor. The final ‘Berceuse’ traces an unhurried path from a dark, almost growling opening to quiet ecstasy – or so it sounded here in what seemed to me an excellent performance.

 

There followed an equally excellent performance of Oedipus Rex, in which the singularity of this ‘opera-oratorio’ announced itself as only it can, whether through form, language, or that oppressive atmosphere engendered by the pervasive minor third and its implications. The orchestra and Oramo continued to be on fine form, now joined by soloists, men’s voices from both the BBC Singers and the BBC Symphony Chorus, and Rory Kinnear, a splendid narrator throughout, declamatory without a hint of the excessive ‘ac-tor-li-ness’ which often comes into play here. Stravinsky’s opening chorus was splendidly attacked by chorus and orchestra alike, truly plunging us into the drama. Motor rhythms and ostinato made one all the more aware than usual of Poulenc’s blatant plagiarism in Dialogues des Carmélites (not that Stravinsky, given his record, need have disapproved). The aggression of neo-Classicism was as apparent in Oedipus’s ensuing claim of deliverance as in, say, the Octet; there is nothing placid about this æsthetic. I especially liked the clearly questioning choral ‘Quid fakiendum, Oedipus, ut liberemur?’ There soon followed what for me was the only real blot on the performance, the dry, wooden solo from Juha Uusitalo’s Creon, not helped by a pronounced vocal wobble. An intriguing, quasi-liturgical sense of versicle and response between ensuing chorus and Oedipus (‘Solve, solve, solve!’ ‘Pollikeor divinabo!’ etc.) swiftly compensated. Brindley Sherratt’s Tiresias sounded ‘old’ in character but without detriment to his fine musical delivery, precise and clear of tone, declamatory yet most definitely ‘sung’. The oddness of Stravinsky’s tenor writing constantly forced itself upon one’s attention, at least as much here as in, say, The Flood, but Allan Clayton coped – indeed, more than coped – very well.

 

The second act brings the extraordinary entrance of Jocasta. I mean it as no disrespect to the rest of the cast when I say that Hilary Summers truly stole the show with her unmistakeable contralto, somehow wonderfully archaic in a Mediterranean sense. Stylistically, she sounded just right, ‘operatic’ in Stravinsky’s utterly personal way (all the more so, the more ‘impersonal’ he might try to be). Oramo’s urgent yet spacious pacing seemed well-nigh ideal here, whilst choral imprecations of Fate hammered home their ritualistic point. Jocasta being joined by Oedipus, we heard what registered wonderfully as both parody and instantiation of the operatic duet. Indeed, it was a strength of the performance as a whole that issues of genre seemed, in unforced fashion, to come so strongly to the fore. Duncan Rock’s arrival as Messenger had one wishing he might have sung Creon too: his was a thoughtful, expressive performance, as was that of Samuel Boden as Shepherd, whose sappy tenor dealt so well with the vocal awkwardness of Stravinsky’s writing as almost to vanquish it. (It should not be entirely vanquished, of course, since it is a crucial part of the work and its ‘expressive’ – to use a loaded word in any Stravinskian context – power.) The weird jauntiness of the chorus, ‘Mulier in vestibulo’ led inexorably, as in performance it must, to the stone death of ‘Tibi valedico, Oedipus, tibi valedico’. Oramo and his forces had much to be proud of in this concert.

BBC SO/Davis - Wood and Tippett, 23 March 2012

Barbican Hall

Hugh Wood – Violin Concerto no.2, op.50 (London premiere)
Tippett – A Child of Our Time

Anthony Marwood (violin)
Nicole Cabell (soprano)
Karen Cargill (mezzo-soprano)
John Mark Ainsley (tenor)
Matthew Rose (bass)

BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus-master: Stephen Jackson)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sir Andrew Davis (conductor)


The Barbican’s English oratorio series now reaches the twentieth century, with Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, though it will step back to The Dream of Gerontius next month. At a little more than an hour long, Tippett’s 1939-41 oratorio might have been thought to make for short measure by itself, though I for one should much prefer to leave wanting more rather than to regret the inclusion of padding. In any case, the companion piece was certainly not padding on this occasion; we were treated to the London premiere of Hugh Wood’s delightful second violin concerto, written between 2002 and 2004, and reviewed in 2008 (premiered by Alexandra Wood, the Milton Keynes City Orchestra, and Sian Edwards in 2009). Cast in the ‘traditional’ three movements, ‘marked ‘Allegro appassionata e energico’, ‘Larghetto, calmo,’ and ‘Vivacissimo’, this proved to be a concerto worthy of any soloist’s – and orchestra’s – attention, and received committed performances from all concerned. Sir Andrew Davis is an old Wood hand, having recorded the composer’s Symphony and Scenes from Comus for NMC. His direction of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, also featured on that recording, seemed authoritative, rhythms tight and colours boldly portrayed. Likewise the contribution of Anthony Marwood impressed. His is not a ‘big’ violin tone, or at least it was not on this occasion, but his shaping of Wood’s lines and his irreproachable intonation – there are a lot of tricky yet always idiomatic double-stopping passages here – served the composer well. What struck me most forcefully about the work were the powerful echoes of Berg: to have as a kinsman, if not a model, the composer of the greatest of all twentieth-century violin concertos is not necessarily a bad thing. I assume that the harmonic relationship between the two works must be deliberate. Certainly the way Wood’s themes construct themselves – at least quasi-serially, by the sound of it – has strong parallels in the work of his august predecessor. Even the solo violin theme which enters in the second bar (a rising figure of semiquavers, G-B-E-flat-F-sharp-B-flat-D-F-A, which then continues to soar above the orchestra in lyrical crotchet triplets) seems to harness the spirit if not the letter of Berg’s example. The transformative technique to which the themes are subjected, and through which they are developed, may ultimately have its roots in Liszt, even Beethoven, but it sounds very much Wood’s own. I wondered also whether , especially in the rondo-like finale, there was something of a homage to Prokofiev, though this may have been nothing more than unwitting correspondence; whatever the truth of that, the woodblocks and other lively, rhythmic untuned percussion gave a hint of the Russian composer’s second concerto. (Wood in his programme note pointed to a ‘Spanish’ tinge, ‘prompted by Alexandra Wood’s playing of Sarasate).

A Child of Our Time had the second half to itself. Davis and the BBC SO again have a good track-record in the composer’s music, if not quite so extensive as the conductor’s namesake, Sir Colin. Marking both the increasingly traumatic turn of events in the 1930s – in particular, Kristallnacht and the 1938 assassination of a Nazi diplomat by a Jewish boy, composition beginning the day after war was declared – and the composer’s undertaking of Jungian analysis, this oratorio attempts to address the political by virtue of a turn to the psychoanalytical. That ultimately remains for me a problematical turn, though there can be no doubting the composer’s sincerity. Is it really enough in the Part Two scena – there are three parts, echoing Handel’s Messiah – for the Narrator’s ‘He shoots the official’ to be responded to with the mezzo’s ‘But he shoots only his dark brother’? It might well be the case that the fate of the boy whose tale is told obliquely can provide no answers, but do political atrocities really permit of a solution in which all we need to do is to master our dark unconscious?

At any rate, the oratorio received a fine performance. Its opening orchestral bars evoked a melancholy as ‘English’, if distinctively so, as the music of many of Tippett’s countrymen, up to and including Birtwistle, yet with its own harmonic and melodic inspiration. Are there in the music and the storytelling hints of Weill too, or does that merely reflect common influences? The BBC SO’s contribution impressed greatly, whether in the instrumental interludes – Tippett’s inspiration here Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis – or the more grandly orchestral passages, the opening to the Third Part rhythmically tight and implacable, not least thanks to Davis’s direction. The first interlude, with its trio of two solo flutes and solo viola against a softly singing cello section was powerfully matched by the third part ‘Preludium’, almost neo-Baroque, in which two flutes and solo oboe prepared us for the final peroration, chaste yet without Stravinskian coldness. Choral singing was excellent throughout, the BBC Symphony Chorus as ever well trained by Stephen Jackson, yet with an emotional as well as a musical weight necessary to convey Tippett’s pain and transformation. Strength in anger – ‘A Spiritual of Anger’ – was powerfully conveyed in ‘Go down Moses’, though the intonation of Matthew Rose’s bass contributions was not always spot on. Nicole Cabell and the chorus provided what is perhaps the most magical moment. An exquisitely floated and shaded – with fulsome, though never excessive vibrato – soprano solo, ‘How can I cherish my man in such days…?’ persisted whilst the chorus movingly ‘stole in’ beneath, with the spiritual ‘Steal away’. The use of five spirituals, clearly echoing Bach’s Passion chorales, seems to me not without its problems; simplification of harmonic language at times sounds a little abrupt. Yet again, compositional sincerity tends to win out over such doubts. Karen Cargill, whilst definitely a mezzo, brought a welcome hint of the traditional oratorio contralto too to numbers such as ‘Man has measured the heavens with a telescope’. I was less sure about John Mark Ainsley’s contributions, sometimes both lachrymose and underpowered, struggling to be heard above the orchestra. (It should however be noted that he was a late replacement for an indisposed Toby Spence.) This may be a problematic work, then, but it received for the most part powerful, enlightened advocacy.