Dido and Aeneas and Bluebeard's Castle, Oper Frankfurt, 5 June 2022

Frankfurt Opera House

Dido – Cecelia Hall
Aeneas – Sebastian Geyer
Belinda – Kateryna Kasper
Second Woman – Karolina Bengtsson
Sorceress – Dmitry Egorov
First Witch – Elizabeth Reiter
Second Witch – Karolina Makuła
Spirit, Sailor – Carlos Andrés Cárdenas

Bluebeard – Nicholas Brownlee
Judith – Claudia Mahnke
Prologue (on tape) – Benedek Salgo

Barrie Kosky (director)
Alan Barnes (revival director)
Katrin Lea Tag (designs)
Joachim Klein (lighting)

Zsolt Horpácsy (dramaturgy)

Frankfurt Opera Chorus (chorus director: Tilman Michael)

Frankfurt Opern- und Museumsorchester

Benjamin Reiners (conductor)

First Witch (Elizabeth Reiter), Sorceress (Dmitry Egorov), Second Witch (Karolina Makula)
Images: Barbara Aumüller

The operatic double-bill presents problems and opportunities—like any staged event, one might say, though there are of course specific cases for each genre, even vis-à-vis spoken theatre. First, at least in most instances, comes the question of what to programme together, that is assuming one has rejected the obvious solution of leaving a shortish one-act opera on its own. Practices change: we now rarely programme Salome or Elektra with another work, although once this was far from uncommon. Bluebeard’s Castle is more often heard in concert, which permits a broader range of companion pieces; in the theatre, it has also attracted ballets and even concert works, Katie Mitchell’s recent Munich staging having been presented with Bartók’s own Concerto for Orchestra. Another companion, at Salzburg, Covent Garden and the Met, has been Erwartung: the timings work well, as do the complementary dramatic trajectories. In New York, Jessye Norman played both Judith and The Woman, quite a feat. Dido and Aeneas has likewise had various operatic partners, as well as none; ENO’s After Dido, again directed by Mitchell, presenting the opera within a larger theatre piece. Only last month, I saw an HGO performance paired with John Blow’s Venus and Adonis. In our enclosed musical world, ‘early music’ all too often siphoned off as a thing-in-itself, rarely to be performed with modernist works, or even on the same instruments, one interesting dramatic solution can rarely if ever have been attempted before: Bluebeard and Dido, both treatments of a proud woman’s fate. Step forward Oper Frankfurt and Barrie Kosky, in their 2010 production (taken to the 2013 Edinburgh Festival), now revived in Frankfurt for the fourth time. 

A further major question lies in how far to connect the stagings and performances. Calixto Bieito’s pairing of Bluebeard with Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi for Kosky’s home territory of the Komische Oper Berlin presented what we might think of as a strong yet subtle combination of the two, leading connection not only through scenery but action and ideas, without forcing it. Kosky seems more content to let us do the work: no bad thing necessarily, and it may (more or less) simply reflect the differences between the works. The closest I could come to a guiding thread was use of space, physical and metaphysical. When Dido opens, we see a crowded bench, somewhat cramped, with what may be a theatre audience, or at any rate a representation of the cast and (postmodern?) society featured. There is stereotypical Kosky action, whose silliness will irritate or not according to persuasion, albeit in more of an alienating, even Brechtian way than twelve years later one might expect from him. There is, of course, cross-dressing—but in a fun slant on such gender bending, it is unclear whether the female singers who play witches (as well as countertenor Dmitry Egorov as the Sorceress) are male or female; at least it was to me. I only discovered when they sang. And in that sense, there is some impression given that liberation from a claustrophobia that stands somewhat at odds, presumably on purpose, with our post-Virgilian idea of Carthage is through music, through dance, through human (and theatrical) activity. The loneliness felt in the case of Dido and Aeneas alone on the vast expanse of the bench comes as contrast, yet within an overall sense of constriction. It is perhaps a reinvention of the classical AMOR/ROMA dilemma, not without metatheatrical elements born of, yet far from enslaved by, the old English court masque. 

Bluebeard (Nicholas Brownlee) and Judith (Claudia Mahnke)

With Bluebeard, by contrast, where one would expect to see visual, if opulent constraint, within the castle, the stage is wide-open, though its tilting revolve, leading nowhere, provides necessary boundaries. The important thing here, I think, is that nothing is overladen with attempts, necessarily unsuccessful, to conjure visually the riches of what we hear. There is good reason this opera is often given in concert. Like Bieito, Kosky understands Bluebeard as a game of sado-masochism. It is played out with restraint, though certainly not without action, simply making every action, more symbolist than realist, count. And it is open, like the stage, permitting to make what one will. Doubles of different ages come and go, participate and do not; but it is clear where the drama truly lies. 

Benjamin Reiners registered the orchestral action most strongly in Bartók, seemingly afraid to trust Purcell at what we can still with good reason consider his word, notwithstanding the complexities of textual issues three centuries on. Leading the excellent Frankfurt Opern- und Museumsorchester, Reiners traced the ebb and flow of Bartók’s score with dramatic wisdom, absorbing the fascination of detail within longer-term hearing (and playing), not unlike what we saw played out above. If lacking the razor precision and strength of tonal association of the finest accounts, there was no reasonable room for complaint here, especially with Nicholas Brownless and Claudia Mahnke on stage. Their commanding, utterly involved performances seemingly took us to the limits, straining at something beyond, again just like Bartók’s (and Béla Balázs’s) drama. Within those limits, all manner of variegation made its point just as strongly. Bluebeard’s deep, damaged vulnerability came as powerfully to the fore as Judith’s complex death wish, caught within the dictates of fate. 

When it came to Purcell, Reiners (and, to a certain extent, the orchestra) seemed more uncertain, aping what we have come to know, rightly or wrongly, as ‘period style’ without making the case for it. The results often sounded arbitrary, more fashionable than grounded, resorting to peculiar distractions so as not to sound too archaeological and thereby emerging as neither fish nor fowl, not even an alchemical combination of both. I do not think I have ever, in any variety performance, heard the second section of the overture taken at anything like such a speed. One may quibble with the suggestion by the Victorian editor (and composer) George McFarren of ‘Allegro moderato’, though it seems sensible enough to me; a modern Presto merely sounded bizarre. Other sections came across as listless, lacking necessary underpinning of harmonic rhythm. Peculiar Luftpausen were frequently inserted into vocal lines, solo and choral; whether this were a feature of the production or simply the performance, I am not entirely sure, though I had a distinct impression, so well staged were they, that it may have been the former. At any rate, they served little musical—nor, for that matter, dramatic—purpose, though some will doubtless have felt differently. Likewise addition of recorder, oboe, and percussion. (The same people who scream blue murder at a great name from the past ‘taking liberties’ with early music seem strangely content with far more musically arbitrary practice such as this, so long as vibrato is minimised and/or ‘period instruments’ are employed.)

Dido (Cecilia Hall) and Aeneas (Sebastian Geyer)

A good deal, though, was redeemed by the singing. Cecilia Hall and Sebastian Geyer made for a captivating, ill-fated pair, who used Kosky’s staging (and Alan Barnes’s evidently attentive revival direction) as a fine springboard for their own thoughtful interpretations of mood, action, and overall trajectory. Kateryna Kasper’s Belinda, Karolina Bengtsson’s Second Woman, and Egorov’s aforementioned Sorceress, all impressed in detailed performances highly invested in music, words, and gesture. The chorus responded similarly well to demands both of score and production. Much, then, to enjoy—and on which to ponder.

Gianni Schicchi and Bluebeard's Castle, Komische Oper, 5 April 2015

Komische Oper, Berlin

Gianni Schicchi – Günter Papendell

Lauretta – Kim-Lillian Strebel

Zita – Christiane Oertel

Rinuccio – Tansel Akzeybek

Gherardo – Christoph Späth

Nella – Mirka Wagner

Gherardino – Kosma Foik

Betto di Signa – Stefan Sevenich

Simone – Jens Larsen

Marco – Nikola Ivanov

Ciesca – Anna Werle

Maestro Spinellocio - Bruno Balmelli

Amantio di Nicolao – Philipp Meinhöfer

Pinellino – Ezra Jung

Guccio – Tim Dietrich

Buoso Donati – Bernd Guthmann 

Bluebeard – Gidon Saks

Judit – Ausrine Stundyte

Calixto Bieito (director)

Rebecca Ringst (set designs)

Ingo Krügler (costumes)

Pavel B Jiracek (dramaturgy)

Franck Evin, Rosalia Amato (lighting)

Orchestra of the Komische Oper, Berlin

Henrik Nánási (conductor)

 



Images: Monika Rittershaus

 

Easter Sunday in one of the most strongly atheist cities in Europe: it must be time for Calixto Bieito’s double-bill of Gianni Schicchi and Bluebeard’s Castle. And whilst it was difficult to find much prospect of resurrection, let alone Resurrection, what an enthralling evening it turned out to be. Both works were premiered in 1918, but beyond that, have little in common, contrast being more the order of the day. But the production, especially its designs, and those too-oft-unsung heroes of the opera house, the stagehands, did a magnificent job in bringing them together – if only ultimately to keep them apart. Performed without an interval, there is only a very short break. Little, apparently, has changed. The curtain rises to reveal the room in which Gianni Schicchi, the Florentine ‘trickster’ has comedically triumphed, following the death of Buoso Donati. Bluebeard and Judit seem initially to have triumphed, only for all to turn inexorably to tragedy.

 

 

The first opera fully inhabits an updated spirit of commedia dell’arte, ‘Europe’s oldest tradition of comedy,’ as Bieito comments in a programme booklet discussion. It is difficult to imagine any sense in which the work is fundamentally ‘about’ fourteenth-century Florence; its import is certainly more universal here. There is riotous earthiness, much as one expect from both director and company. So there is in the tradition in which it partakes. And whatever Puccini may have been, he was no prude. A gloriously bad-taste view of modern Italy – Bieito cites the ’60s and ’70s Spanish and Italian films, loved by his father, of Alberto Sordi, Vittorio Gassman, and Alfredo Landa – reigns, but as a frame rather than unwanted determinant, for the equally bad-taste antics of the squabbling relatives. As ever with this director, whatever one thinks of his ideas, there is no doubting the mastery of his craft; everything is clearly as it should be, and indeed there is probably too much to take in on a single viewing, just as there would be in ‘real life’. The filmic – or indeed ‘stagey’ – falling still of the characters in ‘O mio babbino caro’ shows it not as the fly in the ointment I once took it to be, but as a wry send-up of the sentimentality of a tradition that ensnared Puccini at least as much as it inspired him. The notary’s stamping of each clause of the will upon the back of his assistant, and the latter’s outrageous expressions of pain and anal pleasure is but one vignette; Rinuccio’s enjoyment of Lauretta (later clearly tempted by the aforesaid assistant) outside the window before they climb back in is another. You will either love or hate it, but cannot doubt the brilliance of the accomplishment. I found it more enthralling than any other staging I have seen.

 

 

At first, one thinks that there will merely be clever re-use of Rebecca Ringst’s set, dark, brooding emptiness substituted for Italian religious tat and ‘valuables’. But the conception is better than that. As the tragedy deepens, as Fate does its terrible work, walls move and new scenes present themselves, the mechanics dealt with superlatively. We do not see what lies behind each door; such would only lead to the gravest disappointment. In that sense, and despite my regret that I had long thought the work stood in little need of staging, this remains theatre of the imagination. Certainly ours, and maybe theirs. Yet we see a good deal of the castle, itself surely an important ‘character’ in its own right, although quite rightly, secondary to the antagonists. The castle is a setting, but also an intensification, of the searing struggle we witness, one of the most compelling psycho-dramas I have ever seen. Sado-masochistic, soaked in blood, a deadly serious game: I am not sure that any description can come close. Suffice it to say that Bieito penetrates to the very heart of what is going on in this extraordinary work, screwing up the tension like none – at least in my experience – before him and never letting go. One small example: the way they hide and exchange clothes, seeking to learn something, yet only adding to the sanguinary descent into madness and beyond. Nothing is added, but somehow the drama is set free.

 

 

 

That would be nothing, of course, without singers able to inhabit the roles as overwhelmingly as we saw and heard. Gidon Saks’s Bluebeard was not especially impressive in purely vocal terms; in a concert performance, one would have thought him underpowered, although his diction was beyond approach. Yet he somehow managed to project above the orchestra, perhaps at least in part by virtue of his stage presence. One felt the terror he felt as much as that he projected; one knew, almost before the text, whether verbal or musical, told us, that he had nobler intentions, yet was incapable of fulfilling them. As for Ausrine’s Judit, no praise could be too high. Hers was a complete portrayal, as distinguished vocally as on stage. She took the role to places I had no idea it could go: this was a woman driven by mysterious forces to do something she knew would end in tragedy, yet had no choice but to do. She exulted, she cowered; above all, she assumed the role – Bartók’s, Bieito’s, and hers – in every sense.

 

 

Gianni Schicchi is, of course, far more of a ‘company’ opera, and so it was here. There were powerful performances from the young lovers, an enthusiastic, puppyish Rinuccino, Tansel Akzeybek, and an adult-girlish Lauretta from Kim-Lillian Strebel. Günter Papendell proved wily and victorious in the title role. Everyone else contributed in his or her own way, the zany sum being still more than the sum of its numerous parts. Throughout, Henrick Nánási ensured an excellent contribution from the orchestra. Puccini’s scherzo’s followed by Bartók’s tragedy might sound ironically Mahlerian in the abstract, but it sounded very much of the two composers in the theatre. It was not, however, a performance which stood apart from what we saw on the stage; I heard it simply as part of the drama. That was not least the virtues of this unmissable double-bill (performed, I should note, in the original Italian and Hungarian).

 

BBC SO/Karabits - Schnelzer, Ravel, and Bartók, 13 March 2015

Barbican Hall

Albert Schnelzer – Tales from Suburbia (world premiere)

Ravel – Suite: Ma mère l’Oye

Bartok – Bluebeard’s Castle

Judit – Michelle DeYoung

Bluebeard – Gábor Bretz

João Henriques (director, narrator)

 

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Kirill Karabits (conductor).

Albert Schnelzer’s Tales of Suburbia, written in 2012 as a co-commission from the BBC and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, here received its first performance. Lasting about a quarter of an hour, it seemed to me akin more to a vaguely, generically ‘atmospheric’ television score – doubtless fine in its place – than a concert work. Written for a large orchestra in a language at least a century out of date, it sounded like a diluted version of early-twentieth-century conservatism. The composer wrote, ‘… this is where I live. Mahler once said that he wanted his symphonies to encompass the whole world. I would settle for just suburbia.’ The seemingly aimless meandering that ensued suggested his commentary had not been intended ironically. My previous encounter with Schnelzer’s work had been a performance, the first in this country, of his Emperor Akbar. If that had left me nonplussed, this left me less than that. Mention, though, should be made of the solos from leader, Natalie Chee; if only she had been playing Szymanowski…

 

Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite was played charmingly, if not necessarily with quite the enchantment or precision that the greatest performances bring. Still, there was much to admire in this account from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Kirill Karabits. A stately opening ‘Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant’ seemed perfectly poised – as, of course, the movement is – between the Pavane pour une infante défunte and the later Ravel of Le Tombeau de Couperin. It did not lack a little luxuriance either. I wondered whether ‘Laidoronnette’ was taken too quickly; its treatment verged upon the harrying. However, there remained a sense of the parts contributing to a greater whole, never more so than in the concluding ‘Le Jardin féerique,’ which pretty much lived up to its name.

Bluebeard’s Castle was given a fine performance: unquestionably the highlight of the evening for me. I look forward next month to reporting back from Calixto Bieito’s new staging, in a double-bill with Gianni Schicchi, but here, a spare concert staging, imaginatively conceived by João Henriques, kept the work where it arguably belongs, in the theatre of the imagination. Henriques acted as Narrator too, offering (in English translation) an inviting, probing reading of that crucial Prologue. It seemed to offer choices; yet, at the same time, we knew that Fate would win. We certainly did once Bartók’s score began its work. (If only a good few other operas could say as much as it does, in the time it takes to do so!) Arriving with seven suitcases upon a trolley, one for each door, this pairing of Bluebeard and Judit increasingly suggested both that there were things better left packed up, and that the Forbidden Question – those inevitable shades of Lohengrin – would be asked.

Michelle DeYoung was strong yet imploring, totally assured in her delivery of Bartók’s lines, bringing them, quite rightly, close to a Hungarian Pelléas. She shuddered with the orchestra, if not necessarily at the same time (if that makes any sense!) This Judit was transformed before our very ears, De Young expertly tracing Bartók’s – and Béla Balázs’s – arc from triumph to tragedy. Gábor Bretz sounded more youthful and, indeed, more aristocratic than one often hears, exercising a dark, mysterious allure; one could understand why she had fallen for him. One sensed that there was not only more to him than we knew; there was probably more than Bluebeard himself consciously knew. For this is a sadistic drama of the mind (perfectly suited, one might say, to next month’s pairing with that master-sadist, Puccini).

All the while, the orchestra under Karabits shaped and commented upon the drama – unlike but also unlike Debussy in his sole completed opera. (There are surely few more singular operatic masterpieces than Pelléas and Bluebeard’s Castle.) Maybe this was because Ravel had been heard before the interval, though I think not entirely so; in any case, I felt there were a few occasions upon which colour and ‘atmosphere’ were perhaps exalted at the expense of more ‘Teutonic’ structural concerns. (I am doubtless, however, consciously or otherwise, making odious comparisons, having heard Boulez conduct the work twice. What I should give to have that opportunity just once again!) The opening of that fifth door overwhelmed as it must, the disappointing electronic organ notwithstanding. (Another cause for Sir Simon Rattle to address?) And yet, Karabits seemed to impress upon us that this was not to be, that there was something unreal to what our ears led us to ‘see’. That was an exaltation of colour that was worth hearing.

 

Philharmonia/Salonen - Bluebeard's Castle, 3 November 2011

Royal Festival Hall

Debussy – Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Bartók – Piano Concerto no.3
Bartók – Bluebeard’s Castle (semi-staged)

Yefim Bronfman (piano)
Judit – Michelle DeYoung
Bluebeard – Sir John Tomlinson
Juliet Stevenson (narrator)

Nick Hillel (director)
David Edwards (staging)
Adam Wiltshire (set designs)
David Holmes (lighting)

Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)


Bartók’s only opera, a masterpiece to rank with other sole works in the genre such as Fidelio and Pelléas et Mélisande, was chosen for the climax of the Philharmonia’s year-long series, ‘Infernal Dance: Inside the World of Béla Bartók’. It was the obvious and fitting choice, both as idea and reality. But first came a far from negligible opening to the concert: a visit from Debussy, albeit in still earlier guise than the composer of Pelléas, and the third of Bartók’s three piano concertos, the soloist again Yefim Bronfman.

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune is pretty much universally considered to mark the dawn of twentieth-century music. (The programme note by Malcom Gillies presented Debussy’s work as a candidate, but oddly claimed ‘some date it as late as 1913, with Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps.’ No one would gainsay the importance of The Rite of Spring, yet, by the same token, surely no one would date the beginning of twentieth-century music after Schoenberg’s emancipation of the dissonance.) In the hands of Esa-Pekka Salonen – he only picked up a baton later, preferring to mould the music here more freely – Prélude à l’après-midi received a fine performance. Samuel Coles’s opening flute solo was not only not conducted by Salonen; he did not even herald it, leaving Coles to begin in his own time. He did not disappoint; nor did Chris Cowie’s equally fine oboe solo work. Salonen shaped an initially languid reading, soon bathed in the warm glow of the Philharmonia strings. There was certainly a sense of the novelty of form we can all too readily take for granted, but which would point the way not only to later Debussy and to a number of works by Bartók and other composers of his generation, but even to post-war composers such as Boulez, as conductor one of Debussy’s – and Bartók’s – foremost interpreters. Flexibility of tempo proved the key that unlocked malleability of form. Finally came that undefinable, ineffable magic that marks a distinguished performance of this great work.

Such lyricism also informed the opening of the piano concerto, Bronfman presenting it as if in a single breath, foretelling an over-arching melodic approach. The tempo adopted, however, sounded slower than usual; moreover, the general style adopted was more classical, post-Mozartian even, than one often hears. Sometimes I wanted a little more fire from both soloist and orchestra in the first movement: though an interesting reading, it was ultimately a little underwhelming. The cool but not cold dignity with which Bronfman announced his opening statements in the slow movement was striking. Thereafter, the extraordinary night-music – surely the most interesting part of a concerto that does not always show Bartók at his best – was piquant and lively under Salonen. He clearly relished the colours that point back to Ravel but also look forward to Messiaen. A relatively cool classicism paid dividends with the counterpoint of the finale, but elsewhere much sounded a little too relaxed, at times verging on the lethargic. At one point, the pace noticeably picked up, but it seemed more of a correction than an intensification. I have no idea why the lights were dimmed at one point and then turned back up; it was probably a mistake, but it would be nice to think that it was a warning shot to the serried ranks of coughers.

Bluebeard’s Castle was performed in a semi-staged version, directed by Nick Hillel. Bartók’s opera is a strange case, in that in many respects it seems almost made to be performed in concert: its interiority, as heralded by the prologue, may even work better if it compels the listener to direct the work in his head. I am not sure that the production, based upon projections onto a ‘motorised shape’ above the orchestra and a simple enough design around the borders of the stage, added very much, but if it liberated the imagination of some unimaginative souls then it will have done some good and little harm. So far as I could tell, the designs, projections, and lighting all worked as they should.

Woodland film rendered the opening music more than usually Pelléas-like; that seemed to suit Salonen’s strategy too, at this stage characterised by what one might paradoxically call a subdued teeming of orchestral life, rendering contrast of Judit’s viewing the torture chamber all the greater. What we saw here was rather literally representative: some instruments of torture, followed by red for blood – though oddly, the red seemed more redolent of socialist propaganda posters, which, Bartók’s politics notwithstanding, I cannot believe was the intention. Such a colour-based approach might actually have worked better with Schoenberg’s contemporary Die glückliche Hand. On the other hand, visual evocation of diamonds complemented the fantasy so finely painted by the Philharmonia’s harps and celesta. Even then, however, Michelle DeYoung’s facial expressions, let alone her vocalism, had much more to say than any film projection, and still more so in the subsequent case of the flowers. DeYoung offered more than ample compensation for the previously advertised Measha Brueggergosman; hers was a powerfully dramatic and beautifully sung performance, equally alert to the demands of text and melodic line. She was formidable, not in the slightest pathetic; one could readily understand how she had her fateful way. Bluebeard’s defiant pride in the splendours of his kingdom was far better expressed by Sir John Tomlinson’s performance, noble yet wounded, than by turning the lights on and showing a few clouds on the move.

I took a while to be convinced by Salonen’s reading, wondering if the tension was sagging a little in the middle; this was certainly not a razor-sharp Bluebard’s Castle in the manner of Boulez. And yet, matters would become clearer, the greater strategy paying off handsomely, when the cold menace of the increasingly modernist-sounding orchestral palette asserted itself as Judit learned of her predecessors, likewise in the cumulative terror leading up to the final revelation. (DeYoung was superb here too.) The post-Wagnerian orchestral glory of the final climax put me in mind of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, but it was the desolation of Tomlinson thereafter that moved most of all. As with so much of the production, the appearance of Judit as an apparition at the back of stage did no violence to the work, but might better have been discarded.

LSO/Gergiev - Stravinsky and Bartók, 27 January 2009

Barbican Hall

Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring
Bartók – Bluebeard’s Castle

Judith – Elena Zhidkova
Duke Bluebeard – Sir Willard White

London Symphony Orchestra
Valery Gergiev (conductor)

The Rite of Spring in the first half of a concert? One would have to find something truly extraordinary – and perhaps somehow still more than that – to preclude a feeling of anti-climax. Bluebeard’s Castle might not seem a bad choice, although I worried on account of the two occasions, both at Covent Garden, when I had heard it performed after Erwartung, one of the few works that in its breathtaking radicalism can leave Bartók’s opera sounding relatively conventional. A reversal of order would probably have helped – and could have granted an interesting feminist slant to the pairing, though this would hardly have been the case with Stravinsky’s ballet of annihilating female sacrifice. As it happened, none of this really mattered, since these performances under Valery Gergiev’s baton were disappointing.

The gravest danger facing performances of the Rite nowadays seems to be reduction of the work to the level of an orchestral showpiece. To Gergiev’s credit, this was not the case here; slickness was not the order of the day. And whilst there were moments of uncertainty, seemingly occasioned by imprecision of his beat rather than any orchestral deficiency, that was not really the problem either. Gergiev’s right hand was actually a surer guide than I have often seen it, though I remain baffled as to the function of the almost perpetually waving left hand. Surely he cannot always be asking for more vibrato? If so, the orchestra does not seem to be answering – and how could it? The principal problem for me was the episodic nature of the performance. It started well; Rachel Gough’s opening bassoon solo, whilst not perfect, had a natural, easy rubato, which fed in to the instrumental imitations and developments of that celebrated passage. Moreover, there was a real sense of something primæval coming to life thereafter, auguring well for a rite of spring generically as well as particularly. Then the tension dissipated and never really recovered. The last time I had heard the Rite live had been an astounding performance, with the very same orchestra, under Boulez. He had brought out the symphonic and non-symphonic unity of the work to an extent that I do not think I had ever previously heard. It may be invidious to draw a comparison with such an account but this came nowhere near. One could hear the balletic sections all too clearly, often with apparently little to connect them. There were several remarkable passages. I especially liked the sense of almost Wagnerian world-weariness with which the second part opened, followed by marvellous, ghostly muted trumpets. The percussion section was on excellent form and the strings dug commendably deep. But the performance was summed up by the strange slowing for the final Danse sacrale. There might be a case for this but here it sounded arbitrary, unmotivated.

It was a similar story with Bluebeard’s Castle. Only last season, Boulez again had conducted the LSO in this work. Somewhat let down by the Bluebeard, it had nevertheless been an excellent performance. It seems unwise to have repeated the opera quite so soon, especially with a conductor who is not especially known for his Bartók. Sometimes, of course, a new slant can be refreshing, occasionally revelatory, but not in this case. The LSO sounded dutiful, which is probably all that could be expected, given the uncertain direction. There were again some nice touches: some wonderfully insistent bass ostinati and a stupendous duo of percussionists sharing the xylophone for the opening of the door to the torture chamber. For the most part, however, Gergiev seemed uncertain where the music was leading. If one did not know the score, one would doubtless have been impressed to hear it for the first time, but that all-important sense of fatal progression was sadly lacking. This was a pity, since the vocal protagonists were both very good. Willard White, who also read the Prologue in Peter Bartók’s English translation, was as attentive to the text and its diction as I can recall hearing. His voice is not as black as that of some Bluebeards and the tone is not perhaps so menacing, yet this was a keenly intelligent portrayal. Elena Zhidkova was a revelation to me; I am certain that I should have recalled hearing her before. One sensed her aching to be on stage; indeed, one saw it too, when she could not help knocking in the air for the first door. The look on her face at the end was haunting indeed. She has a fine voice and puts it to good use, shaping her lines with musical and dramatic force. Her performance was all the more remarkable, given that she had stepped in at short notice, to replace an ailing Katarina Dalayman. I should be keen to hear her again, both in this work and in others. As it was, and despite the efforts of the soloists, there was little real tension until the build up to the opening of the final, seventh door. By then, it was far too late; it felt more like the seventeenth.

LSO/Boulez: Schoenberg, Pintscher, and Bartók, 11 May 2008

Barbican Hall

Schoenberg - Die glückliche Hand, Op.18
Matthias Pintscher - Osiris (British premiere)
Bartók - Bluebeard's Castle

Michelle DeYoung (mezzo-soprano)
Peter Fried (bass)
BBC Singers
London Symphony Orchestra
Pierre Boulez (conductor)

And so, we came to the second of Boulez's two LSO concerts this season. The performance of Die glückliche Hand was magnificent. Although Peter Fried's contribution was solid rather than inspiring, this seemed to matter little, since the real drama appeared to take place in the orchestra and in the chorus. The phantasmagoria of colours Boulez drew from the LSO was quite a revelation - and an extraordinary contrast with his rather flat Sony recording. (I do wonder whether the recordings are more at fault than the performances in his Sony Schoenberg series, but nevertheless remain sure that his greater experience, not least in the music of Mahler, has paid dividends in his more recent Schoenberg, which demands to be recorded.) Wild terror, rare beauty, and sometimes plain - or rather anything-but-plain - weirdness were all there in abundance during the unfoldling of this Expressionist nightmare. Details such as the early harp ostinato were projected with that clarity which eludes most musicians yet seems to be second nature to Boulez. To begin with, I wondered whether the BBC Singers sounded too much like individual voices, rather than 'a choir', but on reflection - and being convinced by their performance - appreciated that it was almost certainly my conception rather than theirs that was at fault. If one considers not only Schoenberg's wishes, but also the dictates of the drama, then mysterious, threatening, cajoling 'voices' is really just what they should be. I find the neglect of this score incomprehensible; let us hope that this performance will have left, as it should, many in the audience hungry for more.

The first British performance of Matthias Pintscher's Osiris received a commanding performance. (Consider the fortune of the composer who has Boulez to conduct the earliest performances of his works!) The early string-based textures, stemming from individual, twisting lines put me in mind of late Mahler (the Ninth and Tenth Symphonies). There was, moreover, a strong sense of this being something akin to a late-Romantic tone poem. This is not to say that the harmonies were straightforwardly of Mahler's or even Berg's world, but equally they were not wholly divorced from those composers' worlds. The intensification of the textures brought with it an 'updating' of the style, almost as if we were being asked to take a synoptic journey through the modernist inheritance. Ligeti's Ramifications was a work that came strongly to mind. This may of course merely represent my attempts at understanding rather than anything more fundamental to the work itself, but I wonder. As the textures diversified further, and the rest of the orchestra played an increasingly prominent role, I thought also of Messiaen, especially as the themes sounded more fragmentary. The coincidence with some of Messiaen's bird-song may again be no more than that. There were superb solos from the contrabass clarinettist and principal trumpet; the percussionists increasingly enjoyed a field day. Surely no section of the orchestra has benefited more from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I had no doubt of the strong narrative drive of the work, which further hearings would doubtless render clearer. In Pintscher's overall approach to modernist tradition, I was reminded of Wolfgang Rihm, which is not to say that one could mistake one for the other.

The account of Bluebeard's Castle (sadly, minus Prologue) was for the most part excellent, although I did not react so ecstatically as some in the audience. There was a section, a little after the duly overwhelming opening of the fifth door, in which I thought the orchestra - and perhaps its direction too - sounded just a little laboured, tired even. There were also occasions when its rhythmic bite might have been more pronounced, although this was doubtless to some extent a product of Boulez's rather Debussyan conception of the textures: closer to The Wooden Prince and even to Pelléas than to more typically 'Hungarian' readings. Fried was somewhat disappointing, variable in his ability to project the text over the orchestra. His timbre was suitably black, but often rather dry. (Think of John Tomlinson in this repertoire, and one appreciates what was missing.) Michelle DeYoung had no such difficulties, and also proved herself unfailingly musical with regard to the general - and particular - musical 'line'. Orchestral soli were without exception of the highest order, and the work's conclusion, subsiding into eery nothingness, was simply breathtaking. There were certainly most of the ingredients for a great performance here and, perhaps on another occasion and with another Bluebeard, this is what it would have been.