Die Zauberflöte, English National Opera, 14 March 2019

Coliseum

Images: © Donald Cooper

Tamino – Rupert Charlesworth

Three Ladies – Susanna Hurrell, Samantha Price, Katie Stevenson

Papageno – Thomas Oliemans

Queen of the Night – Julia Bauer

Monostatos – Daniel Norman

Pamina – Lucy Crowe

Three Spirits – Guillermo Fernandez-Aguaya Martin, Richard Wolfson, Nao Fukui

Speaker – Jonathan Lemalu

Sarastro – Brindley Sherratt

First Priest, First Armoured Man – David Webb

Second Priest, Second Armoured Man – David Ireland

Papagena – Rowan Pierce

Simon McBurney (director)

Josie Daxter (associate director, movement)

Michael Levine (set designs)

Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)

Jean Kalman, Mike Gunning (lighting)

Finn Ross (video)

Gareth Fry, Matthieu Maurice (sound design)

English National Opera Chorus (chorus master: James Henshaw)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Ben Gernon (conductor)

Tamino (Rupert Charlesworth) and Pamina (Lucy Crowe)

When Simon McBurney’s Magic Flute was first staged by ENO, it needed, I think it fair to say, some further work. That it seemed to have received at the time of its first revival, although there was certainly room for more. (Is there not always?) Here, upon its second revival, I could not help but think that there had been something of a reversion, or at least that a general aggressive silliness to the audience made it feel so. Is it really quite so side-splittingly hilarious for someone to write ‘The Magic Flute’ on a board, or for someone to take a photograph? (Worse still, is it really necessary to applaud within a number? A conductor should at least stamp upon such practices, rather than indulge them by pausing.) The most obviously ‘Complicité’ elements of the action, or better its framing, are still handled very well: in general lightly worn, the metatheatricality of sound effects, paper birds, and other ‘workings’ has meaning, wit, and if not quite poignancy, at least permits thoughts of that order. 

A balance is, of course, very difficult to strike in a work with so many competing demands. tendencies, sources, strands of reception; some might argue that it is better not even to try, instead concentrating on one or two. Perhaps. Something more all-embracing is, I think, required or at least desirable. This production certainly attempts that – and sometimes succeeds. It is certainly preferable to its predecessor (Nicholas Hytner), which did not even seem to try. What I missed on this occasion was a greater integration between different strands. A wartime setting seems hinted at, perhaps more than that. (Or is it just a fondness for combat fatigues?) Likewise a somewhat sinister bureaucracy for Sarastro’s brotherhood. (‘Of course’, you might reply, not without reason.) Alas, the logic, the mystery, the magic that might bind these to the rest of what is going on, do not seem to be there; either that, or – perfectly possible, this – I missed them. Inclusion of the Queen of the Night at the close is now such a cliché that it barely registers: nothing wrong with it in itself, but why? Again, it seems unmotivated. The work’s cosmos is unusually varied – not least because, written for a non-court-theatre, and as a Singspiel, it offered librettist and composer far greater freedom than they would ever have been granted for an opera seria or indeed an opera buffa. Making sense of that cosmos and its communicating through words, gesture, and music are key to a success in performance only intermittently realised here.

Papageno (Thomas Oliemans) and
Papagena (Rowan Pierce)

Stephen Jeffreys’s translation sometimes departs considerably from Schikaneder, yet offers welcome relief from the preening self-regard of usual suspects. The translation ‘Queen of Night’ – reproduced in the programme – is a bit odd: not incorrect, yet a departure from universal usage to ends unclear. More seriously, why are the Armoured Men (Geharnischter) listed in the programme as ‘Armed Men’, not at all the same thing? Do such things matter? Yes, especially for a company that prides itself on presenting works in English – and, for once, presented a good case for doing so, the cast’s diction proving uncommonly fine.

For the evening’s true rewards were to be found in the singing – and stage performances more generally. Rupert Charlesworth proved an excellent Tamino, beauty of vocal line allied to unmistakeable sincerity of purpose. It would have been a strange audience member indeed who did not root for him and Lucy Crowe’s equally touching, finely sung Pamina. Julia Bauer’s Queen of (the) Night came as close as many, closer than most, to fulfilling Mozart’s absurd demands. Thomas Oliemans’s Papageno proved a worthy successor to Schikaneder himself, alert to the role’s competing demands without ever alerting us to their difficulty. Brindley Sherratt’s considered – never too considered – Sarastro, Daniel Norman’s lively Monastatos, a fine trio of Ladies and pair of Priests/Armoured Men attested to a casting in depth that has not always been in evidence in recent years at the Coliseum, but which proved very welcome indeed.

Three Ladies (Susanna Hurrell, Samantha Price, Katie Stevenson) and Tamino

Ben Gernon’s conducting had much to be said for it: a few rushed passages notwithstanding, generally sane and varied tempi; command and coordination of the orchestra in the pit and the singers on stage; and undoubted knowledge of the score. What it lacked, at least for me, was any sense of magic, of awe. Partly, that seemed owed to a determination to keep the orchestra down, strings in particular. So much magic and meaning are to be found not on stage, in the pit, that much, alas, was lost. Moreover, as with the production, a sense of greater structure, of the construction of a musico-dramatic world, often proved elusive. How does it make sense for Papageno and the Queen of the Night to feature in the same work, indeed to interact meaningfully? How, moreover, does it make sense for a neo-Bachian chorale prelude and the Papageno-Papagena duet not only to coexist, but to form part of a coherent, meaningfully dramatic whole? The answer may be magical as much as logical; it may not be reducible to words. Karl Böhm and Colin Davis knew how to accomplish this. So have directors such as Achim Freyer and David McVicar, both surely close to their best here. This is where the order’s ultimate wisdom lies, its secrets vouchsafed to and by a band of initiates whom we should treasure. We continue, it seems, to search for an interpretative Tamino and Pamina to join them.

Benedetti/Camerata Salzburg/Gernon - Bartók, Bruckner, and Mozart, 11 March 2015

Cadogan Hall

Bartók – Divertimento, Sz 113

Mozart – Violin Concerto no.5 in A major, KV 219

Mozart – Rondo in C major, KV 373

Bruckner (arr. Stanislaw Skrowaczewski) – ‘Adagio’ from String Quintet in F major

Mozart – Symphony no.29 in A major, KV 201/186a

Nicola Benedetti (violin)

Camerata Salzburg

Ben Gernon (conductor)

 

A disappointing concert, I am afraid, for which much of the responsibility lay with the conductor, Ben Gernon. I was initially intrigued by the decidedly unusual performance of Bartók’s Divertimento. To his credit, Gernon observed the ‘non troppo’ from Bartók’s ‘Allegro non troppo’ marking to the first movement, though perhaps he observed it a little ‘troppo’. It certainly felt like the slowest account I had heard. The playing of the Camerata Salzburg was in its way impressive, the strings really digging in, but offering a sound that was more generally mitteleuropäisch than Hungarian. That I did not mind, though my companion was less impressed; however, as the work progressed, what might at first have seemed refreshingly different merely sounded inappropriate. The lack of a greater intensity from and/or a greater body of strings was felt strongly during the slow movement. It was not that that greater intensity could not be summoned up; it just needed to be done so more often. When the finale began, I again wondered whether something less frenetic than usual might actually prove revealing. Despite some fine solo playing, however, the movement and the work as a whole remained earthbound.

Nicola Benedetti joined the orchestra for Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto and, as a sort of written-in encore, the C major Rondo for Violin and Orchestra. The first movement of the concerto announced a better sense of style. One would, of course, hope so with this orchestra, although one hardly knows what to expect post-Norringtonisation. Vibrato, at least, was not eschewed, although it might have been employed more freely. Benedetti’s Adagio entry properly disoriented, almost as if an operatic character had awoken. I was less sure about what followed. At its best, Benedetti’s violin tone was characterful, whether silvery or bright. However, there were numerous surprising intonational slips and, more worrying, strange bulgings of phrasing. The movement never really settled down, and never sounded effortless. Its successor, the Adagio, would have benefited from warmer orchestra playing; perhaps the Camerata still has ghosts of dated ‘authenticity’ to lay. Both soloist and orchestra had an unfortunate tendency of progressing from beat to beat, with little sense of a longer line. The music plodded rather than flowed. More successful was the finale, which proved both warmer of tone and more connected. A sensible tempo was adopted and, perhaps surprisingly, given the movement’s structure, there was, if only at times, a greater sense of dramatic development. The ‘Turkish’ music offered welcome contrast, though not too much. However, some tricky corners ought to have been more smoothly handled. The C major Rondo was played with grace, functioning well as an encore, although there was nothing to challenge players such as Arthur Grumiaux here either.

In this rather oddly conceived programme, the second half followed with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski’s arrangement for string orchestra of the Adagio from Bruckner’s String Quintet. A somewhat bizarre programme note engaged in ill-expressed special pleading. (A taste: ‘The work was composed between the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and so is an example of Bruckner at full maturity and the Adagio is one of his greatest symphonic movements and it would be a pity indeed if it languished unperformed because of purist concerns about playing a single movement out of its context.’) Again, Gernon conveyed little of the longer line, a failing as damaging to Bruckner as it is to Mozart. The music progressed from note to note, with the unfortunate consequence that I began to fear that it would never end. There is no reason at all why performance of this arrangement should require special pleading; it just needs a Skrowaczewski to bring it to life, and ideally, a larger body of strings.

String tone, if not aggressively ‘period’, was thinner in the A major Symphony than it had been in the works with violin. (Had, perhaps, inclinations been tempered for Benedetti’s benefit?) The first movement set the tone for what followed, proving ‘light’ in a meagre rather than spirited sense. One had a reasonable idea of how it hung together, but there was little beyond that to the performance. Thinness of tone was even more of a problem in the slow movement, which at least was not taken so absurdly fast as has recently become fashionable; as an Andante, it was well judged. Playing was generally alert, though occasionally scrappy, in the Minuet. The Trio, however, less relaxed than slumped. It was not a matter of speed, but of lack of tension. Encouragingly, the finale began in rigorous fashion, with not a little swagger. Alas, it lost its way soon enough. Mozart remains the sternest test for any conductor – or orchestra, or soloist. No one passed with flying colours on this occasion.

Prom 70: SCO/Gernon - Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, 80th birthday concert, 8 September 2014

Royal Albert Hall

Concert Overture: Ebb of Winter (London premiere)

Strathclyde Concerto no.4

An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise

Dmitri Ashkenazy (clarinet)

Robert Jordan (bagpipes)

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Ben Gernon (conductor)

Image: Chris Christodoulou/BBC

Unlike many such occasions, this concert actually did take place on the composer’s birthday, albeit banished to a ‘late-night’ slot. I wish I could feel greater enthusiasm for the more recent works of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, at least taken as a whole. Too often, especially during the Fourth Strathclyde Concerto, I was left hankering for something of the violence of Eight Songs for a Mad King, of Taverner, or of Worldes Blis. (When, I wonder, shall we hear the latter again? Or, in my case, hear it for the first time in concert?) One would not, of course, expect any composer to stay the same throughout his career, and it is perfectly understandable that Davies should consider such works those of an ‘angry young man’ and feel the need to do something different. At any rate, it was good to have the opportunity to hear three works of his which I had never heard ‘live’ before.

Ebb of Winter was written last year, commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra for its fortieth anniversary. I found it the most compelling of the three pieces performed here, having the scale and ambition of a true tone poem.  The opening calls from horns are – and, in performance were – arresting. Within a minute or so, one hears them, all almost jazzy syncopation, something more ‘involved’ in a Schoenbergian sense, and the ‘Scottish’ rhythms of the Scotch snap: material and moods aplenty, then, for development, and it is that which most impresses. Trumpets seemed to offer a reminiscence of the frenetic world of The Lighthouse. A stentorian chorale made its mark, both uncertain and certain; so did delicate woodwind solos. The depth of orchestral sound from the SCO under Ben Gurnon belied the relatively modest forces.

The fourth of Davies’s ten Strathclyde Concertos followed, Dmitri Ashkenazy joining the orchestra. Again, the performance seemed beyond reproach, and there could be no gainsaying the composer’s command of line. Ultimately, however, what one might call its ‘meditative’ quality proved a little monotonous – and grey – for me. That is not to say that there were not interesting moments. Following the brief introductory Lento, the second section, Allegro moderato, sounded almost like whimsical Brahms, the example – at least to my ears – of Schoenberg again apparent, if somewhat tamed. (It was the First Chamber Symphony that sprang to mind, albeit with thinned-out texture.) ‘Scottish’ rhythms again were to be heard. The following Adagio was gentle, unassuming, but a bit of an endurance test. That said, a discernible thread continued to be heard, so my disappointment may simply be a matter of taste and/or mood. (It was quite late in the evening by this stage!) The marimba, however, offered some sense of relief. Ashkenazy’s account of the cadenza clearly had its measure, preparing the way for a simple, folk-like melody to emerge, the final section proving numinous, even moving.

The frankly pictorial An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise followed, the SCO players clearly enjoying themselves, some of them – and the composer, onstage, with Tom Service – being offered a drink of celebration during the performance. There was characterful, at times boisterous playing: just as it should be. The descent into the darkest hours of night was expertly handled, both by the orchestra and by Gurnon. Those more enthused than I by the sound of bagpipes will have loved what came next; the instrument made its point, even as I wondered whether Scottish independence might not be so bad a thing after all. An arrangement of Happy Birthday, apparently made by one of the SCO’s players, rounded off the evening.