Britten Sinfonia/Watkin - Handel, Messiah, 16 December 2021

Barbican Hall

Harriet Eyley (soprano)
Jess Dandy (contralto)
Stuart Jackson (tenor)
James Newby (baritone)

Choir of Jesus College, Cambridge (director, organ: Richard Pinel)

Britten Sinfonia

David Watkin (conductor)

Messiahs take many forms. They did during the eighteenth century; they did in the nineteenth; they did in the twentieth; despite the more or less complete victory of ‘authentic’—was ever the term less apt than for this work?—performance practices in the rest of Handel’s œuvre, they have continued to do so in the twenty-first. Sadly, even tragically, the video of that inimitable ‘Handel meets Pop with Messias’, starring the still-more-inimitable Robbin Casey, seems to have vanished not only from YouTube but the planet. (Please do let me know if you have a copy of the original broadcast!) But we still have options ranging from Mozart to McCreesh, from Beecham to Britten Sinfonia. The small forces employed here, including a tiny orchestra (strings 3.3.2.2.1) and a choir of only twenty-six (men and women but not boys of Jesus College), were at least in part a response to the dread virus. They were perhaps not what one might have imagined ideal for the Barbican and would probably have worked better at home in the warmer acoustic of that most magical of Cambridge chapels. One’s ears nonetheless adjusted to aesthetics as well as to pragmatics. Not only would it be churlish and pointless to object too strongly; it would also arguably ignore the fact that pragmatics have almost always been an important part of aesthetics. Handel, after all, never composed a Helicopter-Quartet. 

That a musician such as David Watkin, so well versed in what, for better or worse, we have come to know as ‘historical performance’, would take an anti-Romantic, or perhaps better a non-Romantic, line should have come as little surprise. The Britten Sinfonia’s versatility is such that these players could doubtless follow any lead with equal relish. Nicely detailed playing in, for instance, ‘But who may abide the day of his coming?’ permitted of considerable instrumental drama, whatever the numbers involved. So too, naturally, did that greatest of musical rarities: a true and fine contralto voice, in this case Jess Dandy’s. When it came to ‘He was despised…,’ the plainness of some of the orchestral playing was a little underwhelming, yet Dandy’s voice and interpretation continued to carry the performance.

In any case, Watkin’s direction was in general pragmatic, clearly aiming to build a performance founded not upon an ideal, but on the forces in front of him. If I suspect I shall never share ‘period’ predilection for ending numbers in what I hear as merely perfunctory fashion, I watched and listened eagerly to hear the way Watkin worked with his soloists, no diktat handed down from above, but rather making the most of Stuart Jackson’s dramatic, even operatic flair, Harriet Eyley’s appealingly bell-like soprano, or James Newby’s rich yet agile baritone. So too was this the case for the young choral musicians, for many of whom the past twenty-one months will have been particularly trying. If ‘All we like sheep’ bobbed along amiably, if little more, the winning, Saul-like responsorial singing of ‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates’, and agile passage work of ‘Let us break their bonds asunder’ duly impressed, as did the grandeur, finally achieved, of the ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus. Most stood, although one peculiar soul, who had disturbed ‘How beautiful are the feet’ and a couple of other numbers with incredibly noisy crisp-eating elected instead to film the performance on his telephone.  Music-making is itself a human good, a human necessity: something none of us should ever forget again, even in the unlikely event further ‘restrictions’ do not return. 

Coloratura was a distinct strength to all concerned: not only ‘in itself’, but as put to dramatic use; so too was stylish and varied ornamentation. This is an oratorio, one can readily forget, that is simply scored. In an unassuming performance such as this, one welcomes perhaps all the more the coming of bright trumpets in ‘Glory to God in the highest’, certainly as much as telling, if often subtle, shifts between numbers in tempo. One size has never fit all, and never will. And if this will never, should never, come across as a dramatic, narrative oratorio in the mode of many of Handel’s, there was much to enjoy in that mode too: Jackson fairly scourging with his voice (‘All they that see Him…’), at times coming across as Handel’s unconscious response to Bach’s Evengelists; Ryder’s tasteful intensification of vibrato for Christ’s resurrection in ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’; and Newby’s moving representation of words and theology, allied to equally fine trumpet-playing (Imogen Whitehead) in ‘The trumpet shall sound’. A euphonious final chorus served not only as fitting aesthetic culmination, but worked as a keenly felt moral metaphor for what we had seen, head, and God willing, participated in too. Amen.

BBC Proms (7) - Britten Sinfonia/Bates: Rameau, Bologne, and Mozart, 20 August 2021

Royal Albert Hall

Rameau: Hippolyte et Aricie: ‘Bruit de tonnerre’, ‘Ritournelle’
Rameau: Dardanus: Tambourins I & II
Rameau: Castor et Pollux: ‘Tristes apprêts’
Joseph Bologne: Symphony no.2 in D major
Rameau: Dardanus: ‘Lieux funestes’
Rameau: Platée: ‘Orage’
Rameau: Les Indes galantes: Chaconne
Mozart: Requiem in D minor, KV 626

Samantha Clarke (soprano)

Claudia Huckle (contralto)

Nick Pritchard (tenor)

William Thomas (bass)

The National Youth Chamber Choir

Britten Sinfonia

David Bates (conductor)

A peculiar concert, this: much to enjoy and indeed savour in a first half of eighteenth-century French music, followed by, not to put too fine a point on it, the most bizarrely, downright perversely conducted performance of any sacred work by Mozart I have had the misfortune to hear. Let us begin, however, at the beginning, with selected extracts from operas by Rameau. That his stage works are not staples of our opera houses says everything about the latter—including their public—and nothing about the works’ intrinsic virtues.

Hippolyte et Aricie, Rameau’s first opera, was represented by two orchestral movements. Thunder-clap and wind machine both evoked the eighteenth-century theatre and, in the very different setting of the Royal Albert Hall, underlined our distance from it. A vividly pictorial and dramatic string ‘Bruit de tonnerre’ was followed by a ritournelle written for the opera’s 1742 revival, Britten Sinfonia woodwind adding colour and counterpoint, and a proper sense of leading us somewhere, of connecting. What a joy it was already to hear Rameau from a decent-sized orchestra, in such enlightened performances. Likewise, with added percussion, in the first of the tambourins from Dardanus. If the second were a bit breathless, it would be churlish to complain too much. 'Tristes apprêts', Télaire’s celebrated air from Castor et Pollux once more brought bassoons to the forefront, in a particularly Baroque use of orchestral colour that readily crossed national and stylistic boundaries. (Think of Handel, Zelenka, even Bach…) A plaintive performance, splendidly slow, from soprano Samantha Clarke and conductor David Bates truly made the words’ point—and went beyond them.

Next up was the short D major Symphony by Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The Britten Sinfonia offered cultivated playing, which might have been richer of tone, but they were clearly acting under orders. (Why such puritanism for music of a decidedly non-puritanical age? Must we still labour under the yoke of sub-Stravinskian diktats concerning a certain, long since discredited brand of ‘authenticity’?) At least there was none of the exhibitionism fashionable among some self-declared ‘specialists’. If it would be silly to make excessive claims for this music, it is pleasant and has just enough in the way of playing with expectation to hold one’s attention. The ebullient finale, for instance, lacks symphonic direction but retains a nice line in incident, clearly enjoyed by players and audience alike.

Nick Pritchard joined the orchestra for 'Lieux funestes' from Dardanus. Unfazed by sometimes tricky tessitura, Pritchard shone in another gloriously unhurried account, tbasking in its moment. Rich bassoon-writing again made its mark; the orchestra in general seemed, not unreasonably, more committed to Rameau’s music than to Bologne’s. Harpsichordàwind machineàpizzicato strings: a vivid storm from Platée worked its magic nicely. Finally, for this half, the closing Chaconne from Les Indes galantes functioned rather as it does in Rameau’s opéra-ballet itself, culminating and closing. If a grander vision would not have gone entirely amiss, there was much to delight in colour and rhythmic detail.

After the interval, bassoons and other woodwind took up hints from much of that music and plunged us into the very different world of Mozart’s Requiem. The opening ‘Introitus’ had plenty of clues as to where Bates might lead us, though I could hardly have guessed at the extremity of his nullifying anti-vision. Although it was taken swiftly, lightly, and merely bar-to-bar—no real phrasing, let alone longer-term thinking—there was choral and orchestral detail to admire, though peculiar mannerisms from the violins already gave pause for thought: far more ‘period’ in the pejorative sense than anything we had heard from Rameau. The following ‘Kyrie’ was clear enough, I suppose, though rushed. Quite what Bates thought, or thought Mozart thought, of its tripartite invocation was anyone’s guess.

The ‘Sequenz’, though, left one in no doubt as to travesty this would continue to be. A ‘Dies irae’ that was merely fast, quite without terror, and a peremptory ‘Rex tremendae’ that suggested a King of dreadful majesty incongruously rushing for the bus, came either side of a considerably superior ‘Tuba mirum’, which at least gave us opportunity to hear each of the vocal soloists in turn. William Thomas’s dark, characterful bass proved especially welcome, his peculiar cadenza less so. He was not, alas, the only soloist to follow such dubious practice. If the ‘Recordare’ was predictably fast, voices were well balanced, responsive, and sincere. The orchestra, alas, went for naught, relegated to the status of an end-of-pier band. By the time we reached the ‘Confutatis’, it was less a matter of rushing for the bus as the vehicle freewheeling downhill, brakes having failed. Bizarre.

The decision suddenly to perform the ‘Lacrimosa’ at a reasonable tempo, welcome though it was, spoke in context more of sentimentality than anything more elevated. There was, to be fair, splendidly fruity woodwind playing and the National Youth Chamber Choir, at last permitted to sing freely, took its chance to shine too. The rest, alas, was more of the same: a ‘Domine Jesu’ live from the Tokyo Olympics, a ‘Hostias’ whose inconsequentiality ought truly to have shocked anyone attentive either to words or music, and so on. There was fine conversation between the soloists in the ‘Benedictus’, though ornamentation might again usefully have been eschewed. As for the bald, unqualified assertion in the programme that the movement was written by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, I can only suggest that the person concerned actually listen to its material—and then some of Süssmayr’s own church music. After a double-speed—well, almost—‘Agnus Dei’, nothing could have saved either this disposable Requiem, or the poor souls on whose behalf it was supposedly sung. Requiem for a fashion victim, as someone once said in a different context.

Clayton/Britten Sinfonia/Adès - Beethoven and Barry, 23 May 2018

Milton Court

Beethoven: Six Ecossaises, WoO 83

An die ferne Geliebte, op.98

In questa tomba obscura, WoO 133

Gerald Barry: Jabberwocky

Beethoven: Quintet in E-flat major, op.16

Allan Clayton (tenor)

Alex Wide (horn)

Timothy Rundle (oboe)

Joy Farrall (clarinet)

Sarah Burnett (bassoon)

Thomas Adès (piano)

As a whole, this concert proved a curious affair. It probably made more sense in the context of Thomas Adès’s series of Beethoven and Barry concerts with the Britten Sinfonia. The idea of a night off from the symphonic Beethoven to turn to chamber works was, in principle, a good one, but the sole Gerald Barry piece here seemed oddly out of place – and not in a productive, provocative way. Even the Beethoven pieces did not really seem to fit together especially well. A lovely performance of the op.16 Quintet nevertheless made the evening worthwhile.

The first half, however, put one in mind of that proverbial, clichéd curate’s egg. Adès walked onto the stage and apologetically informed us that two works had been added to the programme. Nothing wrong with that, although Beethoven hardly requires apology. The first was his Six Ecossaises, WoO 83, which many of us will recall from childhood piano lessons. Adès’s performance proved a curious mixture of the reticent – as though he would rather be playing the dances at home – and the heavy-handed. It became more flexible, to good effect, as it went on. Ultimately, though, little was made of these charming miniatures, whether individually or as a whole.

An die ferne Geliebte followed, Adès continuing to show a good deal of reticence, for most of the time very much the ‘accompanist’. Allan Clayton offered a sincere, verbally attentive performance until the final song, in which he sounded curiously harsh of tone, even hectoring. Still, there was a good deal to savour, for instance a true hint of sadness at the close of the fifth stanza of ‘Es kehret der Maien’. Adès seemed to come into his own as the cycle progressed. If he still came across as shadowing the singer at the beginning of ‘Leichte Segler in den Höhen’, his shaping of a minor-mode phrase at the end of the third stanza – ‘Klagt ihr, Vöglein, meine Qual’, offered just the sort of touching insight I had hoped he would bring to the music of a composer with whom he is not so obviously associated. The transition to the next song, ‘Diese Wolken in den Höhen’ was also skilfully handled.

The second additional work was In questa tomba oscura, WoO 133, Beethoven’s setting of a poem by Giuseppe Carpani, amongst other things an early biographer of Haydn (and royalist spy!) This proved a duly haunting performance of a song whose text has a man visit the grave of his beloved, albeit from the standpoint of the latter, who reproaches her lover for not having thought more of her whilst she was alive. Perhaps again Adès might have brought out the piano part more strongly. Beethoven’s harmonies nevertheless told – and there is much to be said for understatement. Clayton clearly relished its challenges, heightening without overstating its curious drama.

‘Curious’ is certainly a word to be applied to Lewis Carroll, and to Gerald Barry, let alone to their combination in Jabberwocky, commissioned and premiered by Britten Sinfonia in 2012. The idea of performing its nonsense words in French and German translation is typically brilliant – and makes just as much (non)sense as the original. Clayton’s declamatory performance perhaps inevitably put one in mind of Barry’s brilliant operatic comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest. Alex Wide’s bizarre horn flourishes added another level to the studiously inexplicable entertainment unfolded. The song – should one call it a ‘song’? – seemed, almost in spite of itself, to grow, even to develop. And then it was over.

Additional wind players joined the ensemble after the interval for Beethoven’s Quintet for piano and wind instruments, op.16. It was the sheer gorgeousness of their sonorities that struck me first – and Beethoven at his most Mozartian (or, his tragedy, post-Mozartian). Balance with the piano here sounded much improved; there was greater impetus to the performance too. This is music that needs plenty of space, a grandeur of scale if you will, as well as chamber intimacy; it received both. The second movement was again well paced, its post-Mozartian sadnesses again given space to breathe, yet also to progress. Here, Adès could prove a little indulgent, his solo rubati occasionally puzzling; in concert, however, everything delighted. The hunting finale again summoned up Mozart’s ghost – as opposed to Haydn’s ebullience. Yet, quite rightly, not all was subtlety, not all was interiority. That balance and others were finely judged, in a performance of almost tiggerish enthusiasm.

Turnage: Coraline, Royal Opera, 31 March 2018

Barbican Theatre

Coraline – Mary Bevan

Mother, Other Mother – Kitty Whately
Father, Other Father – Alexander Robin Baker
Miss Spink, Ghost Child 1 – Gillian Keith
Miss Forcible – Frances McCafferty
Mr Bobo, Ghost Child 2 – Harry Nicoll
Ghost Child 3 – Dominic Sedgwick
 

Aletta Collins (director)

Giles Cadle (set designs)
Gabrielle Dalton (costumes)
Matt Haskins (lighting)
Richard Wiseman, David Bruitland (magic consultants)


Britten Sinfonia

Sian Edwards (conductor)

 

This was not quite the premiere: that had fallen two nights previously. In many ways, though, I was very happy to be there for a more ‘ordinary’ performance: as it happened, a Saturday matinee. For one thing, it was good to have a sense of how children received Mark-Anthony Turnage’s fourth opera, expressly written for children, Coraline, and presented at the Barbican by the Royal Opera. I was charmed, for instance, to hear in the bar beforehand, an adult telling a child, perhaps his own, to remember that, ‘in the opera, we listen; we don’t sing along.’ Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, to sense a somewhat different audience excited about the prospect of a magical theatrical occasion, rather than to hear Soprano X, in order to complain that it was not Soprano Y, was refreshing enough.

 

Still more, perhaps, was the behaviour of the audience, far better than that of the entitled bunches who often fill our opera houses. They were not silent, but when the occasional question was heard from another row, it was pertinent and genuinely added to the experience. There was certainly none of the idle chatter that so often detracts from a performance. That immediately leads to the caveat that this was not necessarily intended for me at all: again a salutary lesson. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the piece and found the objections I came up with on behalf of a young audience – was it perhaps a little too long? – apparently confounded. There was certainly no sign of such. We do well not to speak on behalf of others, especially when they are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves.

 

The opera is based upon a children’s novella by Neil Gaiman, converted into an opera libretto by Rory Mullarkey. I suspect the original and various adaptations – film, musical, comic book, video game – will have been familiar to a good few of various ages in the audience. Not to me, however, so I shall have to refrain from comparisons. One of the things that struck me about the story as we encountered it here, however, is how much it had in common with other children’s story tropes – nothing wrong with that, for what piece of literature or theatre is unconnected to anything else? – and yet also how one, or at least I, could appreciate it for itself. Dissatisfaction with the mundanity of home and parents, escape to an alternative life and ‘reality’ that promise everything and are thus clearly too good to be true, and a renewed appreciation for what one has, allied to an overcoming of personal fears, stand at the heart of the story. But so do ‘incidentals’: curious neighbours, fun machines, body parts that operate on their own, and so on. A world that is both close to ours and yet is not is created; an audience experiences that creation and even, to a certain extent, reflects upon it. Drama has always done that, and always will. The devil tends to be in the detail, and here the detail seems to me good.

 

This is also opera, of course. Turnage, operating within a broadly post-Stravinskian sound- and rhythm-world, generally tonal, but not in any reactionary sense, gives no sense of condescending to his audience. Indeed, like many composers, he seems perhaps to be liberated by the particular requirements of the commission. (You may wish for everything in the world, as the story tells us, but you do not necessarily want it; nor will you necessarily get it.) Typical, yet far from stereotypical, dance rhythms, propel an action that is not merely of the stage; so, too, do different instrumental combinations and colours, different harmonies, different tonal mises-en-scène, if you like. This is not a score of the complexity of Moses und Aron, but it is not trying to be, nor is there any reason why it should be. After all, its subject matter is entirely different. It steers away from the artifice of much opera; word-setting is rarely melismatic, although nor is it always syllabic. Perhaps that is no bad thing for children. Whether or not, however, they would have had a ‘problem’, with something with which they suspect we might, that does not in itself dictate how a composer should write. The history of opera, after all, is littered, often productively, with aesthetic debates, even wars, in which composers, librettists, impresarios, performers, audiences, theorists, and others have triumphed on both, or many, sides. Such debates will often stimulate; they will never, however, offer more than a provisional word on anything. Ask Richard Strauss.

 

With a splendid cast such as this – all fine actors as well as fine singers, an ensemble in the very best sense – combined with a fine orchestra and conductor, musical magic will nearly always have opportunity to emerge: which I distinctly had the sense it did for many in the audience, not all of them young. If I do not dwell on the performances as such here, it is not intended as any disrespect; all were first-rate. But I think it is sometimes, perhaps especially in a ‘children’s opera’, a good idea to step back and to ask other questions too.

 

How, in any case, could anyone truly dislike a show boasting a couple of ‘magic consultants’? A serious point here, though: this, I think, would really have made a good introduction to many children – perhaps not just to children – to the magic of the theatre. (Again, I emphasise the caveat that, as a non-child, or at least far-too-overgrown child, I may not be the best placed to see.) There are plenty of other options, available, of course, but another one does no harm, indeed does good. Aletta Collins’s staging does not shy away from showing that this is theatre, not television, not film: we see what theatre can suggest, whereas more realistic media will often (not always, I know) will find themselves merely portraying. Coraline walks to another door in the building, and we see the set move around: no big deal for us, nor perhaps for the children, but who knows?  Lighting and costumes likewise take part in a degree of play between the realistic and something else. Moreover, I heard, in the row behind me, an adult explaining at the curtain call, how it was that there were fewer people on stage than there had been characters. The child seemed both to understand and to sense some of that magic we can all too readily for granted. Need it have been an opera, as I have heard some ask? Maybe not. But why should it not have been? And what might come next? It is not always ‘about us’. And perhaps we too have fears to overcome in terms of surrender to the theatre, to opera, to art.

Polyphony/Britten Sinfonia/Layton - St John Passion, 30 March 2018

St John’s Smith Square

Evangelist – Nick Pritchard

Christ – Neal Davies

Anna Dennis (soprano)

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano)

Hiroshi Amako (tenor)

Ashley Riches (bass)

Polyphony

Britten Sinfonia

Stephen Layton (conductor)

This was the first time, I think, since having moved to London that I had attended a Bach Passion performance on Good Friday here. More often than not, I had been in Germany, either for a Passion in Leipzig (most recently in 2011) or for Parsifal (most recently last year). A change is as good as a rest, though – sometimes, at least. This proved an impressive, indeed moving, performance from a good cast of soloists, the chamber choir, Polyphony, the Britten Sinfonia, and conductor Stephen Layton. An eighteenth-century church, ‘Queen Anne’s footstool’, is a not inappropriate venue, of course; the warmth of the St John’s, Smith Square acoustic certainly helped balance a certain dryness in what one might characterise as an ‘period-ish’, rather English approach.

This was certainly not a Roman Catholic Bach in the vein of, say, Nikolaus Harnoncourt – but nor, after all, was Bach a Roman Catholic. Nor was it really a very German Bach we heard, or perhaps better, nor was it one of the many German Bachs we heard. What was more on my mind, than placing the performance within performance tradition, however, was the thorny matter of anti-Semitism. Such has, of course, been a preoccupation of British news reporting over the past few days. Moreover, having been working on the life and work of Arnold Schoenberg for quite some time now, musical and linguistic coding – as well as more overt violence – have been very much in my thoughts too. What do we do about a text, a sacred text no less, which, were it from anywhere other than the Bible, we might approach with greater apprehension? It is a particular problem with St John’s Gospel, and a particular problem within that, of the telling of the Passion. What, moreover, do we do about those turba choruses, in which Bach’s musical mastery, his extraordinary ability to characterise the crowd, add a further layer of discomfort? I do not know. I am certainly not saying that we should necessarily change the words, either of Bach’s work, or the Gospel; nor, however, am I saying that we should not at least consider making such changes on occasion. I do think, however, that, in a post-Holocaust age, in which the Church has been forced to confront long-standing anti-Semitism amongst its earthly sins, we cannot airily declare that there is no problem, that this is ‘just’ a work of art; nor indeed that a work of art, however ‘great’, is far too important to be implicated.

For those choruses truly proved the beating heart, Christian, (anti-)Semitic, or otherwise, of the drama that unfolded here. Taken generally, yet not unvaryingly, at quite a speed, there was fury in them? Whose fury, though? The (Jewish) crowd’s? Ours? If the latter, then what was our fury concerned with? Those who crucified Christ? And if so, what might that mean on earth as well as in theology? The changing role of Bach’s choir, after all, prompts us to consider our own relationship to it. When it sings the chorales – here, quite beautifully, and occasionally, arrestingly, a cappella – it seems to be ‘us’, as congregants and/or audience. We feel its pain, and/or it ours. It comments, like a Greek Chorus; and yet, also, like that Chorus, it participates. Not for nothing was it a crucial model, more so even than Handel’s oratorio choruses, for Schoenberg’s children of Israel in Moses und Aron.

Another particular strength, I thought, was a keen sense of soloists, almost as figures in an aural painting, coming on stage to portray and to reflect. That is what they do in their arias and other solos, of course, but it somehow came across both with particular differentiation and yet also interconnection on this occasion. I am not quite sure I can explain how or why; perhaps it was just that each of the soloists was on fine form. Lines were clean, yet far from un-emotional. There was, however, no attempt to impose ‘emotion’, least of all anachronistic or otherwise inappropriate, heart-on-sleeve emotion upon the music. All manner of approaches can work, of course, but this did – and it seemed, rightly or wrongly, to be something of a collective decision. Much the same can be said of the playing of the Britten Sinfonia, I think. I might sometimes have missed a little greater warmth, especially from the strings, but my ears adjusted soon enough, and I came to appreciate the performance very quickly for what it was, not for what it was not. Obbligato passages were always well taken, without a hint of narcissism. As voices seemed to emerge from the choir – even though they did not, at least literally so, in this case – so did instruments sound very much as if emerging from the greater instrumental collective. Guiding this all, with a determined dramatic presence, yet also due musical collegiality, were the wise presences of Nick Pritchard’s intelligent, finely sung Evangelist and, of course, Layton as conductor. 

This was, then, not just an observance, insofar as a concert can or should be; it also made me think. And all the time, I kept returning to the turbulence of that seething opening chorus – as, I think, does Bach. Wagner himself never wrote a finer, more complete, more troubling instance of music drama.

Britten Sinfonia (Voices)/Dougan - 'Easter Voices': works by Mozart, Stravinsky, et al., 28 March 2018

Milton Court

Andrea Gabrieli: Maria stabat ad monumentum

Stravinsky: Fanfare for a New Theatre
Mozart: Missa Brevis in F major, KV 192186f, interspersed with:
Stravinsky: Pater Noster and Ave Maria
Salonen: Concert étude, for French horn
Bruckner: Aequale no.1, for three trombones
Gesualdo: Two movements from Tenebrae Responsories for Good Friday
Stravinsky: Mass

Ben Goldscheider (French horn)

Britten Sinfonia Voices
Britten Sinfonia
Eamonn Dougan (conductor)

It was a little early, perhaps, to be hearing ‘Easter Voices’ in the middle of Holy Week. However, this was not especially an Easter programme – and, in any case, included two pieces from Gesualdo’s Tenebrae responsories for Good Friday. Given the continued vileness of the weather, a little foreshadowing of something warmer was in any case most welcome. (Yes, I know: I should hang my head in Lenten shame.)

Andrea Gabrieli’s Maria stabat ad monumentum functioned splendidly as an introit: Mary Magdalene weeping at the tomb, telling the angels ‘they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid Him’. It cautioned us against the adoption of anachronistic models of ‘expressiveness’. This is no heart-on-sleeve lament, nor was it in performance. Britten Sinfonia Voices, under Eamonn Dougan offered a warm, nicely flowing account, the choral sound recognisably ‘English’, no doubt, but there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Who on earth, or indeed beyond, knows what the composer’s ‘intentions’ were here, in any case? The very question most likely makes no sense. He would surely have been astonished to hear that the piece was being performed in a London ‘concert hall’ in 2018, let alone that someone was writing about that on a ‘computer’, that writing soon to be posted on a noticeboard on which, in theory, anyone on God’s earth would be able to read it, although most would not.

The same, of course, would go for Mozart, and parts of it would at least have been a stretch for Stravinsky. Their music formed the twin pillars of this concert, the rest of the first half given over to Mozart’s F major Missa brevis, KV 192186f, introduced by and interspersed with short pieces by Stravinsky, the second half offering pieces by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Bruckner, and Gesualdo, leading up to a performance of Stravinsky’s Mass. Both masses were written, ‘intended’ for liturgical performance, although Stravinsky would not have been so greatly surprised to hear of concert performance, however much he might have affected to disdain it, or indeed genuinely done so.

His 1964 Fanfare for a New Theatre heralded ‘the start of the concert proper’, according to Dougan, quoted in Jo Kirkbride’s booklet note. Written for the opening of the New York State Theater, it proved, as ever, blazing, uncompromising, in its forty-second-odd, post-Webern character, whilst at the same time having one wonder: might that actually be a passing reference to Monteverdi? Probably not: one just thinks of Orfeo anyway. In any case, no one time-travels quite like Stravinsky; no one ever remains so much himself. Stravinsky’s Pater Noster and Ave Maria, following Mozart’s ‘Gloria’ and ‘Credo’ respectively, spoke, almost unmediated – or such was the trick. The composer would surely have approved. Choral blend was impeccable, the words highly audible. (Both were given in their later, Latin versions, as per their 1949 revision.) The former sounded a little more Russian, perhaps, as if a neo-Classical remembrance of the world he had left, the latter whiter still, with a strong sense of a musical ‘object’, a Stravinskian icon.

Stravinsky notoriously affected disapproval of Mozart’s early masses: ‘Rococo-operatic sweets of sin,’ he called them, having discovered some scores in 1942: ‘I knew I had to write a Mass of my own,’ he continued, ‘but a real one’. Give me a fake one any day – as well, of course, as Stravinskian ‘reality’. Classical sacred music, whether that of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, or others, less canonical, is woefully un-performed, with the signal exception of Mozart’s Requiem and perhaps, though only perhaps, the Mass in C minor. Granted, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis is not a work for every day. But many of Mozart’s and Haydn’s masses and other works are just that – or should be. Here we heard a small-scale performance of the Missa brevis: small choir, with soloists drawn from it, two violins, cello, double bass, chamber organ, and occasionally, those two Stravinskian trumpets.  This was, not unreasonably, the sound world, if hardly the acoustic, of the church sonata, slightly augmented. It worked well in a small hall with nothing of the ‘Rococo-operatic’ to it. One can always go to Salzburg’s churches for that.

Performances were again generally warm, if occasionally less so – an interpretative decision, no doubt – from the solo strings. Words again were crystal clear. I especially liked the rich timbre of Tim Dickinson’s bass, but all solos and ensembles were well sung indeed; a fine balance between solo line and blend. The culminatory nature of the ‘Amen’ in the ‘Gloria’; the learned counterpoint of the ‘Credo’, whose contrapuntal tag has one think, whether one likes it or no, of the Jupiter Symphony; the nimble ‘Osanna’ music; and the darkness of the imploring harmonies of the ‘Agnus Dei’, which yet hung over the concluding ‘Dona nobis pacem’: such were just some of the highlights of a lovely performance, well shaped, without interventionism, by Dougan.

Salonen’s 2000 Concert étude for solo French horn, a homage to his teacher, Holger Fransman, offered an equally refreshing opening to the second half, not least given the outstanding, indeed mesmeric quality of Ben Goldscheider’s performance. It acted here almost like a wordless second introit, Messiaen heard from another, related world. The twin requirements of a single line and, at times, multiple voices (various extended techniques, including singing a line in addition to that played) were handled beautifully and, more to the point, meaningfully. The first of Bruckner’s two Aequale followed from the gallery, rooted in tradition and yet, in both melody and harmonic implications, unmistakeably Bruckner.

Gesualdo’s weird chromaticism – is that the best way to think about it at all? – stood out, without undue exaggeration, in carefully unfolding performances of ‘Omnes amici mei’ and ‘Vinea mea electa’. The former proved, perhaps, more of an object, almost in the Stravinskian sense, the latter more developmental, opening in chaster fashion, yet blossoming. Is this how such music, such words ‘should’ be performed? Who knows? Again, the question is hardly the right one to ask. One could certainly imagine what might have fascinated Stravinsky in this composer’s music.

And so to his ‘proper’ Mass, with its non-string, wind orchestra. I was interested to read Dougan speak of ‘the more lush sound world of the winds and brass in the Stravinsky’, as compared to Mozart’s strings. I hear it the other way around – and did again. Although this was anything but a cold performance, an austere, even angular quality, with roots in Symphonies of wind instruments nevertheless manifested itself. We all have our own Stravinskys, I suppose; yet, as Boulez, once put it, Stravinsky demeure (the title of his Rite of Spring analysis).  Is there, was there, something ‘Oriental’, or at least ‘Orientalist’, in the opening wind and vocal arabesques of the ‘Gloria’? Or is/was that just recollections of Paris? Whatever it might have ‘been’, it was delightful. The ‘Credo’ perhaps spoke a little, yet only a little, more nostalgically, of a service from ‘home’ now once again viewed or heard as an ‘object’, its jangle of ecclesiastical Latin leading inexorably to a beautifully floated Amen. Intonation throughout was spot on, as it must be, truly permitting one to appreciate the originality of Stravinsky’s own heavenly host in the ‘Sanctus’ and the  imploring qualities of the closing ‘Agnus Dei’. As a surprising encore, another object of fascination, we heard Mozart’s Ave verum corpus motet, with accompaniment from the wind orchestra on stage: Mozart and Stravinsky, perhaps, united at last.

Britten Sinfonia - Webern, Uduman, and Schoenberg, 14 December 2016

Wigmore Hall

Webern – Four Pieces for violin and piano, op.7

Sohrab Uduman – “Dann klingt es auf…” (London premiere)

Schoenberg, arr. Steuermann – Verklärte Nacht, op.4

Thomas Gould (violin)

Caroline Dearnley (cello)

Diana Ketler (piano)

Lunchtime concerts present an attendance problem. Had my teaching (though certainly not my university!) term not come to an end, I should most likely not have been able to hear this Wigmore Hall concert. That would have been a great pity, since it offered just the right sort of reinvigoration I needed for the afternoon. Whatever the reasons, it was sad to see so small an audience, but no matter: the box office has nothing to do with artistic concerns. Schoenberg, of all composers, knew that very well, when founding his Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen. I shall draw a veil over his prohibition on critics; or rather, I shall deflect it, trusting that I qualify as a Schoenberg scholar too…

It was with Eduard Steuermann’s arrangement of what, sadly, remains perhaps the composer’s most popular work, Verklärte Nacht, that the concert closed. Here, the opening was given to piano (Diana Ketler), cello (Caroline Dearnley) responding as if that were how we always heard it, violin (Thomas Gould) likewise. D minor sounded all the more obsessive, somehow, in this re-scoring, as if a Brahmsian pedal-point were being further underlined. (Maybe it is the strength of the piano bass?) Richly Romantic tone was offered from all, especially the strings. The narrative form of Richard Dehmel’s poem seemed especially to the fore, structurally determinative, not just pictorial, in a reading that was highly dramatic, highly rhetorical. Gurrelieder, quite rightly, did not seem so very far away. Too sectional? No, I do not think so; there is more than one way to perform the work, and motivic integrity was never in doubt. Moreover, Schoenberg’s harmonies always seemed, again rightly, on the verge of vertical and horizontal disintegration: Tristan and late Brahms working together as well as in conflict. Occasionally, the arrangement brought, perhaps paradoxically, congestion at climaxes. On the whole, though, I was struck by how little I missed the original. The new instrumentation sometimes brought, to my ears, an almost Gallic (or perhaps Flemish!) air. The piano could suggest shimmering strings surprisingly well; in the bass, it offered something new, but no less welcome. I was especially intrigued by the ability of both Gould and Dearnley to give what were, originally, first violin/first cello and second violin/second cello parts different ‘voices’. The closing section, save for a few bars which probably defy transcription, sounded duly fulfilled, even transfigured.  

  

Another of Schoenberg’s pupils opened the concert. Gould and Ketler gave a spellbinding performance of Webern’s Op.7 Pieces. Violin harmonic, answered by piano chord, somehow incited a melody somewhere between languor and sadness, yet ever-changing. In reality, especially in this first piece, any description of either work or performance would pertain at best for one note or one interval. A passionate, late Romantic response came in the second: Brahms ultra-distilled. Such an array of colour was to be heard. Later playfulness eventually – ‘eventually’ is relative, in Webern! – returned us, sonata-like, to the ardent quality of that earlier material, although it was not, of course, a ‘mere’ return. The violin opening to the third seemed to point us towards Nono, the piano clearly joining up the notes; however much Stockhausen may have learned from Webern, there was a great deal he did not learn, or did not want to. A nineteenth-century inheritance sounded stronger still in the fourth and final piece, suggestive of a sonata finale. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say, that at its close, I felt as though I had heard a work far longer, at least equivalent to a sonata by Brahms.   

In between Webern and Schoenberg-Steuermann came not quite the premiere of Sohrab Uduman’s “Dann klingt es auf…”, for that had taken place in Norwich on 9 December, but its first London performance. The title comes from a Hildegard Jone poem, used in Webern’s exquisite Second Cantata. (Now when shall we hear a performance of that in London, or indeed anywhere else?) ‘Shimmering colours’, suggested by the title, looked both forwards and backwards. In context, at least, the opening had something of a sense of a much ‘busier’ version of the opening of Webern’s set of pieces. There was, throughout, a true sense of three voices, interacting in all manner of ways; indeed, the transformation of such interaction – Uduman refers to ‘fusion and disentangling of the contrasting timbres of the piano and strings’ – seemed to lie at its heart. So too, however, did some sense of narrative, even if it could not be put into words (and why should it be?) Sections within its ten-minute span seemed not unlike those we should hear in the Schoenberg. A sudden slowing, without letting up of tension, suggested something akin to a slow movement, in a Liszt-Schoenberg tradition (movement within a movement); or perhaps that was just my idiosyncratic way of making sense of a new work. Material was still being developed, it seemed, from what had gone before, and would continue to be; transformation, another Lisztian concept, seemed a not entirely inappropriate way of considering what may well have been quite a Romantic journey from darkness to light. The piece was played with all the confidence, none of the staleness, of a repertory stalwart. Three cheers, once again, to the ever-enterprising Britten Sinfonia!

Britten Sinfonia/Hannigan - Mozart, Stravinsky, and Haydn, 6 May 2013

Barbican Hall

Mozart – Idomeneo: Overture

Stravinsky – The Rake’s Progress: Act I, Scene 3

Haydn – Symphony no.49 in F minor, ‘La Passione’

Mozart – La clemenza di Tito: Overture

Mozart – Concert Aria: ‘Bella mia fiamma, addio!... Resta, o cara’, KV 528

Stravinsky – Pulcinella: Suite

Britten Sinfonia

Barbara Hannigan (soprano, conductor)

 

A concert from Britten Sinfonia and Barbara Hannigan boded well – and more than fulfilled expectations. Programmed around the idea of ‘Stravinsky and neo-Classicism’, it was not in any sense didactic, but highly enjoyable, whilst at the same time giving opportunities for thought: in my case, reminding me that what I tend more often to think of Stravinsky aping, or rather inventing, ‘neo-Baroque’ manners is not always so.

The opening Overture to Idomeneo fairly took my breath away. Post-Gluckian grandeur and gravitas were from the outset the order of the day. Mozart’s hints of Salzburg luxuriance remained, albeit subordinated to dramatic purpose. The Britten Sinfonia may have been smallish in size, but it did not sound so. Hannigan’s direction was reassuringly ‘traditional’, for want of a better, less misleading word; but for the double-dotting, this might almost have been the late Sir Colin Davis at the helm, and I can give no greater praise than that. Splendidly grainy woodwind made their characterful presence felt. How I longed for the rest of the opera to follow!

 

But instead, a scene from The Rake’s Progress followed on immediately. Affinity or difference? We could decide, and indeed, the either/or, as so often, was found wanting. Perhaps perversely, perhaps with justification, I found Stravinsky, in the opening woodwind lines, all the more strongly himself, even perhaps closer to The Rite of Spring, than ever. Hannigan’s vocal crescendo – yes, she sang and conducted – put me in mind of what one hears from Jonas Kaufmann at the beginning of the second act of Fidelio. I am not sure I have heard a more sparkling despatch of ‘I go, I go to him’. Moreover, what can sometimes seem mere clever words here had true dramatic import. And what a difference antiphonally seated violins made too.

 

This may well have been the first time I have heard a live performance of Haydn’s Symphony no.49, ‘La Passione’, but then the same might be said of far too many of his symphonies. Surely no great composer, with the possible exception of Webern, is more hideously treated by modern concert life. The wait was certainly worth it, the first movement grief-laden, a true wordless drama, which of course is precisely what it should be. Excellent command of the longer line had one hearing forward to later Haydn works – I thought in particular of the Seven Last Words – and indeed beyond. Kinship with the composer’s Stabat Mater was also evident. Sturm und Drang characterised the second movement. Urgency was never mistaken for the merely hard-driven. Harmony remained at the root, if the pun may be forgiven, of all that transpired, expected or unexpected. The third movement remained dark in its onward trudge, its trio but a fleeting relief. In the finale, we went back, or rather forward, to Sturm und Drang. Motivic working seemed already to presage the Paris Symphonies. A splendidly full-blooded performance, not least from the strings, made me hungry for more Haydn from these superlative artists.

Mozart’s Overture to La clemenza di Tito opened the second half. It was noble and, yes, grandly neo-Classical. (Of all Mozart’s works, this has long seemed to me the most worthy of that tag.) Again, weight and drama encouraged, indeed incited each other. Counterpoint was wondrously clear – these players are the match of any of our symphony orchestras! – and, crucially, was despatched with a fine sense of direction. This was a thrilling, absorbing account: again, I am delighted to say, quite the best I have heard since Sir Colin. I cannot help but wonder whether Hannigan should turn her thoughts to conducting a Mozart opera. She certainly has the voice and agility for singing one of the plum roles, as the performance of Bella mia fiamma, addio! made clear. (Hannigan has sung Fiordiligi, but I, alas, have yet to hear her do so.) The Britten Sinfonia strings were wondrously alert, as this lovely aria, woodwind from Elysium, made its way through typically extreme chromaticism to resolution. A taste in miniature of things to come? Let us hope so.

Finally, the Pulcinella Suite; I dare say to ask for a vocal contribution would simply have been too greedy. The Overture was an object lesson, especially from soloists, in the illustration of Paul Griffiths’s memorable observation that Pulcinella is less a composition than a ‘way of hearing’ – although, as so often with Stravinsky, one could with almost equal justification argue quite the contrary. There followed a Serenata that was graceful to a degree in its slightly wistful lilt. In the sequence thereafter, I occasionally, to my surprise, found a slight want of the utmost rhythmic definition, but colours remained both bold and subtle. By the time of the Tarantella, there was certainly not the least slackness. Mozartian Hamoniemusik seemed more strongly echoed in a number of movements than I could recall previously hearing. (Hannigan did not always conduct.) The strange apotheosis of the final movement resonated in startling fashion; nor was it rushed. It made for a splendid conclusion to a splendid concert.

 

Birtwistle at 80 (4) - 'Fields of Sorrow': Britten Sinfonia/Brönnimann, 30 May 2014

Milton Court Concert Hall

Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis

Holst – Eight Canons: ‘If you love songs,’ ‘Lovely Venus,’ ‘David’s Lament for Jonathan,’ ‘The Fields of Sorrow’
Birtwistle – The Fields of Sorrow
Birtwistle – Melancolia I
Vaughan Williams – Flos Campi

Joy Farrall (clarinet)

Helen Tunstall (harp)
Clare Finnimore (viola)
Britten Sinfonia Voices (director: Eamonn Doughan)
Students from the Royal Academy of Music
Britten Sinfonia
Baldur Brönnimann (conductor)
 

This final concert in the Barbican Centre’s ‘Birtwistle at 80’ series – I managed to attend all but one – presented some of the composer’s music in a more general English context.  Whilst there are doubtless correspondences to be drawn here, I could not help but wonder whether something a little more international might have been preferable. There are strands of pastoralism – albeit of rather different nature – and melancholy in common, but might it not have been more revealing to hear either some music from the more distant past or music from Birtwistle’s contemporaries? The Britten Sinfonia nevertheless offered fine performances under Baldur Brönnimann, joined by students from the Royal Academy of Music for Melancolia I.

 

Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis received an excellent, very ‘different’ performance: perhaps in part, though this is too easy an answer by itself, the result of having a conductor unburdened by a host of ‘traditional English’ associations? The score sounded febrile, almost Baroque (in a positive sense); but Ravel was present too, and, despite the small forces, so was lushness of sound. Structure was admirably clear – and meaningful, developmental in spite of the tendencies to stasis. Novelty of interpretation notwithstanding, the aforementioned vein of melancholy remained.  

 

The interest Holst seems to have held for Birtwistle is understandable. Birtwistle is quoted in the programme as having described his predecessor as ‘a strange, shadowy figure’, who ‘didn’t really ever find himself and suffered from the English label’. No one could accuse Birtwistle of having failed to find himself, but the blurred line between ‘English’ and ‘continental’ music may suggest something in common. One can also imagine Birtwistle having set some of the same texts, especially in the case of the Eight Canons from 1932. I wondered whether the performances from Britten Sinfonia Voices were sometimes a little too bright in character for the texts, imbued as they are with loss. Words were not always as distinctly communicated as they might have been. That said, one had due sense of the musical processes at work, as one did with Birtwistle’s own Ausonius piece, The Fields of Sorrow, which followed on immediately from Holst’s (seemingly unknown to Birtwistle at the time of composition) From the piano opening and English horn response, to the very close, this was a melancholy, but never maudlin, experience, its symmetries seemingly both reflective of and helping to construct an imaginary – ‘mechanical pastoral’? – landscape. ‘Old flowers that were once bewailed names of kings’ came to life – and, perhaps, to death in the final antiphonal exchanges.

 

Melancholia I came in 1976, five years after The Fields of Sorrow. The composer’s tool of ‘stasis in progress’ was audibly present not only in work but also potent, well-shaped performance. Joy Farrell’s performance on clarinets and Helen Tunstall’s on harp were irreproachable, the former perhaps inevitably bringing to mind ghosts of Pierrot, however different the material and its working. Swarming strings, the Royal Academy players significantly augmenting their ranks, offered spatial as well as dramatic distinctions. A return to Vaughan Williams for the final Flos campi brought an apparent echo of the English horn from The Fields of Sorrow. The performance was purposeful, with excellent singing and playing from all concerned; Clare Finnimore made a fine last-minute replacement for the indisposed Maxim Rysanov. Vaughan Williams’s sensual, wordless delight may be very different from Birtwistle’s landscapes, but there is virtue in contrast as well as in correspondence, and in practice one is likely to find, as here, something of both.

Birtwistle at 80 (3) - Yan Tan Tethera, Britten Sinfonia/Brönnimann

Barbican Hall

Alan – Roderick Williams

Caleb Raven – Omar Ebrahim

Hannah – Claire Booth

Piper/Bad’Un – Daniel Norman

Jack – Ben Knight

Dick – Benjamin Clegg

Davie – Joe Gooding

Rob – Duncan Tarboton

John Lloyd Davies (director, design, lighting)

 

Britten Sinfonia Voices (director: Eamonn Dougan)

Britten Sinfonia

Baldur Brönnimann (conductor)

A month in which London, or indeed anywhere else, saw one performances of a Birtwistle drama would be something. To have two, plus three associated concerts, all at the same venue, is something very special indeed. The Barbican has certainly done the composer proud with its ‘Birtwistle at 80’ series. Would that Britain’s greatest composer since Purcell were regularly so honoured; the contrast with the absurd overkill of last year’s Britten anniversary is instructive. At any rate, Yan Tan Tethera, written in 1983-4, first performed in 1986, and very rarely heard since – might Channel 4 make available its television broadcast? – shone both on its account and for the fuller sense it offered of Birtwistle’s music0-dramatic development.  

 

To a libretto by Tony Harrison – any chance of seeing and hearing their Oresteia, someone? – this may perhaps seem more conventionally a chamber opera than Birtwistle’s earlier music-theatre pieces. And yet, listen more closely, and this tale of North and South, of shepherds counting sheep, of a malevolent piper, becomes more complex. There is a linear story, yes. Alan, the good, northern shepherd, who adheres to the old counting system, ‘yan, tan, tethera, …’ is drawn into the great hill – a precursor to Benjamin’s ‘little hill’? – by the piper and Caleb seems about to triumph, but the tables are turned. A modern, yet timeless, folk-like version of Virgil’s first Eclogue, Alan and Caleb the new Meliboeus and Tityrus, is far, however, from the whole, or perhaps better the only, story. The interaction, and at times apparent lack of it, between Harrison’s words and Birtwistle’s score are at least as much the story.


We are, as it were, in a ‘secret theatre’ once again. The ‘mechanics’ of the ‘mechanical pastoral’ tell of a story perhaps deeper than Virgil, even than Theocritus. Counting itself is both external and internal drama, which repeats, is broken, is reconstructed, yet is never the same. The choral sheep are counted and ultimately they too count. Birtwistle’s division of the ensemble into groups is part of that story, so is the journey towards unison,  but, as Paul Griffiths noted in the final line of his helpful programme synopsis: ‘Alan leads his family and flock: Everyone is counting, eventually including Caleb underground, as the musical machinery moves on, now set aright.’ Who knows, however, whether the different perspectives, different pulses, different landscapes, different soundworlds we have passed through, will reassert themselves once again? Interestingly, and tellingly, Birtwistle (quoted in Michael Hall’s book on the composer, likened the structuring of his response to the libretto to that of Stravinsky to Auden. Yan Tan Tethera

… has things I’ve never done before and I’m really quite excited about it. Did you know that it was Stravinsky who divided Auden’s text for The Rake’s Progress into recitatives and arias? Auden wrote his libretto without the divisions. Well, I’m imposing something on Tony Harrison’s libretto. Had I asked Tony to provide it for me, it wouldn’t have worked; the result would be too formal in the wrong sense, too predictable.

 

As so often with this composer, anything but a Stravinsky epigone – there have been more than enough of those – but rather a true successor, the musical drama has a good deal of inspiration, conscious or otherwise, in his great predecessor. As Jonathan Cross has noted, the very notion of the ‘mechanical pastoral’ is rooted in ‘the imaginary song of a mechanical bird,’ just like Stravinsky’s Nightingale. The opposition between North and South, country and the town that encroaches upon it, above all natural and mechanical, may perhaps prove a further kinship between the two composers.

 

If at first, then, I was a little disappointed by the necessarily basic nature of John Lloyd Davies’s ‘concert hall staging’, I realised after the event that the concentration necessity had thrown upon the music had very much its own ‘dramatic’ virtues too, enabling me to experience and indeed to conceptualise crucial oppositions in a work I had never heard before. For that, of course, a great deal of praise must be accorded the excellent performances. Baldur Brönnimann’s leadership of the equally fine Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices was assured and (mechanically) expressive throughout. String glissandi – are they echoes of Tippett perhaps? – embodying, to quote David Beard, ‘both Alan’s subjective expression and the representative pastoral anecdote’ evoke both human acts and, perhaps still more so, that of the landscape, as ever with Birtwistle a potent force indeed.  Such was undoubtedly apparent even from this, my first acquaintance with the work. Likewise the distinction between the almost conventionally haunting piper’s melody – still lodged in my memory – and the dramatic mechanisms surrounding it. The scintillating brilliance of the Britten Sinfonia’s response to the score was not the least of the evening’s revelations.

 

Roderick Williams’s Alan and Omar Ebrahim’s Caleb – extraordinary to think he appeared also in the premiere – led a fine cast, all attentive to words, music, and disjuncture. William’s naïve, northern sincerity – flat vowels and all, though sometimes they came and went – contrasted just as it should with Ebrahim’s ‘southern’ malevolence. Claire Booth offered a typically fine performance as Alan’s wife, Hannah, beautiful of tone, dignified and assured of purpose. Daniel Norman’s Piper or Bad’Un, and four boys from Tiffin School, Kingston, all made their mark very well too. Above all, this was a splendid ensemble performance. Now, may we hope for a fully staged version, in which dramatic oppositions receive some degree of visualisation from an aurally alert director?  

 

The Importance of Being Earnest, Royal Opera, 17 June 2013

Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House

John Worthing – Paul Curievici

Revd Canon Chasuble – Geoffrey Dolton
Lady Bracknell – Alan Ewing
Gwendolen Fairfax – Stephanie Marshall
Algernon Moncrieff – Benedict Nelson
Miss Prism – Hilary Summers
Lane/Merriman – Simon Wilding
Cecily – Ida Falk Winland

Ramin Gary (director)

Ben Clark (associate designer, after an idea by Johannes Schütze)
Franz Peter David (lighting)
Christina Cunningham (costumes)

Britten Sinfonia

Tim Murray (conductor)

 
The Importance of Being Earnest, Gerald Barry’s fifth opera, was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Barbican, and was first performed in concert, Thomas Adès conducting the London premiere. This production marks the first London staging, though the honour of the first staging went to Nancy’s Opéra national de Lorraine. It may be considered a resounding success, perhaps all the more surprising given the paucity of worthwhile comic operas. (The inability of stage directors to distinguish between the comic and comedy as a form is one of the greatest banes of an opera-goer’s life, but let us leave that on one side for the moment.)

 

Barry may have studied with Stockhausen but it is his study with Mauricio Kagel that comes to mind here, in the work’s anarchic – though, in its compositional control decidedly not anarchistic – irreverence. An almost Dadaistic sensibility perhaps also brings to mind the Ligeti of Aventures  and Nouvelles aventures; smashing of plates, forty of them, must surely offer a reference, perhaps even an hommage.  Humour arises not just from Wilde’s play and what Barry does with or to it, but also from the interaction of ‘action’ and music, seemingly autonomous, until one has decided that it is definitely is, at which point it tempts one to think that it might have something in common with the text after all. Parody, for instance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, whether its opening or the ‘Ode to Joy’, and of Auld Lang Syne, almost inevitably recalls Peter Maxwell Davies, but I am not sure that the method is actually so very similar. For one thing, it seems more to be the tunes themselves that in some strange sense are forming the drama; words at times follow Auld Lang Syne rather than vice versa, resulting in a cyclical process one might – or might not – consider to be a parody of serialism. (I did, but I have no idea whether that were intended.) Stravinskian motor-rhythms power the music along, until it stops – or are they still doing so? And just occasionally, the poster-paint aggression – or is it an affectionate parody thereof? – seems to melt into something more tender. But is that merely wish-fulfilment on the spectator’s part? Is the joke on the audience?

 

Ramin Gray’s production seems to operate in a similar or at least parallel fashion. There are interactions, for instance when the loudspeaker music plays from Algernon’s iPhone. And the action is cut, stopped, made to continue according to some ticking imperative. Moments impress, stick in the memory, for instance the case of co-ordinated tea-drinking. One begins to ask what they ‘mean’, but already knows or at least fears that one is asking the wrong question. Surrealism, or something like it, becomes genuinely funny. Or is it that the funny becomes genuinely surreal? Modern dress works well, banishing any thought that period ‘absurdity’ might heighten the farce, if that be what it is. For disjuncture, by its very nature, continues to bring us up short. Alienation, in work and in staging, both distances and yet brings us tantalisingly close. For, despite or even on account of the artificiality, one senses a deep humanity lying somewhere beneath. (Perhaps like Wilde; perhaps not.)

 

The Britten Sinfonia under Tim Murray proves at least an equal partner to the madness. Brashly rhythmic, lovingly precise, this is an estimable performance throughout from an ensemble whose versatility seems yet to extend itself with every year. That the players are called upon to shout and to stamp their feet almost seems expected. Paul Curievici impresses with great musicality as Jack Worthing, or whatever we want to call him, Benedict Nelson a bluff foil as Algie. Hilary Summers, surely as versatile an artist as the Britten Sinfonia, makes excellent use of her contralto range and tone as Miss Prism, with a splendidly complementary stage gawkiness. Stephanie Marshall’s Gwendolen and Ida Falk Winland’s Cecily shine on the mezzo and soprano fronts, the former often warmly lyrical, the latter seemingly effortless in the aggressively higher reaches of her range. Simon Wilding’s Lane and Merriman offer a nice hint of rebellion, nevertheless handsomely despatched. Meanwhile, Lady Bracknell is played by a bass, not in drag but in a suitably ghastly barrister pinstripe; Alan Ewing rises to the occasion, and somehow seems more real than much of the chaos around him. The cast, as the cliché has it, proves more than the sum of its parts, as is the performance as a whole, however awkward that fitting together or clashing of those parts may be.