Prom 44: CBSO/Morlot - Debussy, Lili Boulanger, and Ravel, 15 August 2018

Royal Albert Hall

Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

Lili Boulanger: Psalm 130: ‘Du fond de l’abîme’

Debussy: Nocturnes

Ravel: Boléro

Justina Gringytė (mezzo-soprano)

CBSO Youth Chorus

CBSO Chorus (chorus master: Julian Wilkins)

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Ludovic Morlot (conductor)

Two French commemorations – anniversaries always seems the wrong word – and surely is – here: the centenary of the deaths of Claude Debussy and Lili Boulanger. Absurd comparisons help no one: it is not in any sense meaningful to compare one of the most important, endlessly rewarding composers of the twentieth or any other century, the creator of music as significant for its course as that of Schoenberg or Stravinsky, with that of a fine, exceptionally promising talent cruelly cut short at the age of twenty-three. This is not a competition. Suffice it to say that Boulanger’s setting of Psalm no.130 needs no apologies from anyone. It stands, never falls, on its own merits.

It certainly received no apologies in this commanding performance from the CBSO, CBSO Chorus, Justina Gringytė, and Ludovic Morlot. They clearly believed in it; so therefore did we. The piece opens – and certainly did in performance – de profundis (or rather ‘du fond de l’abîme’): dark, deep, with an intense sense of drama that pervades, impels its twenty-five minutes or so as a whole. This was a true invocation: ‘je t’invoque, lahvé, Adonaï’.  In melody and harmony it seemed very much haunted by the First World War, during which it was composed (1914-17). Chorus and orchestra alike offered clarity, warmth, and heft too. As will always be the case with such a work, I could not help but think of other music of which it reminded me: occasionally, perhaps ironically, Vaughan Williams (via Ravel?), even some of Szymanowski’s choral writing, although it has none of that composer’s complexity. Debussy too, in St Sebastian mode? And yet it could certainly never be pinned down to influence, nor to ‘voice’. If Ravel at all, it was the Ravel of the Left Hand Piano Concerto – yet that was, of course, still to come: more than a decade later. Spitting, sinful song of the chorus – ‘Si tu prende garde aus péchés…’ – found itself transformed by the rich, dark, almost instrumental mezzo-soprano of Gringytė, duetting with various orchestral soloists (and a tenor from the chorus), and vice versa. This was undoubtedly a personal response to the hallowed text – yet sincerity, as Stravinsky reminded us, is never enough; it may not be necessary. The true mastery of this setting meant that, just as with many ‘bigger names’, the question never arose. Here was an ultimate illumination that was anything but naïve.

Debussy had preceded the psalm, with that foundational work of musical modernity, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Exquisitely soft and – yes, that inevitable word – languorous, its opening sounded slower than usual – not, however, to its detriment. Morlot caressed Debussy’s lines, had them luxuriate, in a way that is now a little unfashionable. Yet if phrase endings were often held back, this was no mannerism; the method made sense, just as it did when some phrases were lightly pushed, momentum building, the goal justly vague. (This is not Beethoven!) Indeterminacy may not have been born here; at the very least it seemed to have been instantiated. At times, we seemed not so very far from the world of Klangfarbenmelodie. Perhaps.

Nocturnes followed the interval. There was no doubting here that this was the fully mature Debussy. ‘Nuages’ moved – until it held back. Harmonic roots in Pelléas were perhaps unusually apparent. One felt the amorality of Allemonde beneath this sky. ‘Fêtes’ was vivid, vigorous, proceeding with fine precision and drama. There was a wonderful, hushed tension as the trumpets, followed by woodwind, came centre stage. Rhythmic exactitude seemed already to hint at the Ravel work with which the concert would conclude. (We rightly distinguish between these two giants of French music, yet sometimes it is worth asking again what they had in common too – or might do, in performance.) The close sounded unusually dark, as if invaded by forces that impelled it to the abyss (Boulanger’s abîme?) The CBSO Youth Chorus joined for ‘Sirènes’. This was a sirenic seduction that sounded very much in the line of Debussy’s Épigraphes antiques – yet with a far keener sense of harmonic adventure. I was put in mind of Nietzsche, in The Gay Science: ‘at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an “open sea”.’ Yes, and what dangers have ensued…

Finally came Ravel’s Boléro. The antipathy to this work bewilders me; or rather, I can understand it at some level without sharing it. Whether intended as such or no, it comes across – at least in so fine a performance as this – as experimental, even polemical: indeed as polemical as anything in Stravinsky. I was especially taken by the way the trombone soloist and then his section as a whole danced. (Now there is a misunderstood concept – as if \ must always entail licence!) Indeed all of the CBSO’s soloists and sections beguiled, in themselves and in combination: held one captive, as sirens might, at aural arm’s length, rendering us unable and unwilling to turn away. It was, moreover, quite the ‘French’ sound one heard from the orchestra as a whole, as it reached that terrible climax. Quite the odyssey!

Prom 4 - CBSO/Nelsons: Beethoven and Woolrich, 19 July 2015

Royal Albert Hall

Beethoven –The Creatures of Prometheus, op.43: Overture

Woolrich – Falling Down (London premiere)
Beethoven – Symphony no.9 in D minor, op.125

Margaret Cookhorn (contrabassoon)

Lucy Crowe (soprano)

Gerhild Romberger (mezzo-soprano)
Pavel Černoch (tenor)
Kostas Smoriginas (bass-baritone)

CBSO Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons (conductor)

The precision of attack in the opening to Beethoven’s Creatures of Prometheus Overture signalled thoroughgoing excellence in the contribution of the CBSO to this concert. I could really find nothing about which to cavil at the orchestral performance. Andris Nelsons’s conducting, however, remained distinctly mixed in quality. He eschewed fashionable ideas concerning tempo and offered a refreshingly slow introduction. The main body of the Overture started intriguingly post-Mozartian fashion, seeming – surprisingly – to hint at The Marriage of Figaro. However, Rossini soon, bizarrely, seemed to supplant Mozart, and we found ourselves in the world of Toscanini. The Beethovenian weight of Klemperer was nowhere to be heard. If ‘Italianate’ Beethoven were your thing, you would probably have liked it more than I did.

John Woolrich’s Falling Down, ‘a capricho for double bassoon and orchestra’, followed. The solo part was taken by Margaret Cookhorn, the dedicatee of this piece, first performed by the same forces in 2009 as a CBSO commission. They all seemed to play it very well indeed; I wish I could have thought more of the work itself. A colourful, spiky, somewhat Stravinskian opening augured well, its material reappearing throughout the quarter of an hour or so. Some harmonies put me in mind a little of Prokofiev, and there was indeed, something of a balletic quality. Antiphonally placed timpani had an important role, well taken. But once one is past the interesting ‘experience’ of a concertante piece for contrabassoon, Falling Down seems, at best, over-extended. There is only so much it can do as a solo instrument but, more to the point, what soloist and orchestra do soon seems repetitive. I have responded much more readily to the composer’s Monteverdi reworkings.

The performance of the Ninth Symphony grew in stature, but I am afraid this was not – for me, although the audience in general seemed wildly enthusiastic – that elusive, compelling modern performance we all crave. Daniel Barenboim’s Proms performance in 2012 was nowhere challenged – not least since there was no doubt whatsoever in Barenboim’s performance that the work meant something, and something of crucial, undying importance at that. There was good news in the first movement. First, it was not taken absurdly fast; nor was it metronomic in its progress. And yet, despite the undoubted excellence of the CBSO’s playing, I found myself at a loss as to what the music in performance might actually mean. Too often, extreme dynamic contrasts – somewhat smoothed over by the notorious Albert Hall acoustic – seemed just that; why was a phrase played quite so softly? There was wonderful clarity, enabling woodwind lines not just to be heard, but to sing. What, however, were they singing about? There was real menace, though, in the coda, even if it seemed somewhat to have come from nowhere. Applause: really?!

 

The Scherzo was taken fast, very fast: nothing wrong with that. My chief reservation remained, however, and ultimately this was a smoothly ‘reliable’ performance rather than a revelation. Where were the anger, the vehemence, the human obstreperousness of Beethoven? Applause proves still less welcome here. The slow movement was taken at a convincing tempo, its hushed nobility, with especial thanks to euphonious woodwind, greatly welcome. I was less convinced that the metaphysical dots were joined up, or even, sometimes, noticed. Whatever my doubts, though, there was no denying the beauty of the playing (an intervention from an audience glass towards the close notwithstanding).

Nelsons forestalled applause, thank goodness, by moving immediately to the finale. He and the orchestra fairly sprung into and through its opening: very impressive on its own terms, although it would surely have hit home harder, had it been properly prepared by what had gone before. The cellos really dug into their strings too. Nelsons had them and the double basses paly deliciously softly for their recitative; now, a true sense of drama announced itself, expectant rather than merely soft. Bass-baritone Kostas Smoriginas delivered his ‘proper’ recitative, ‘O Freunde …’, with almost Sarastro-like sincerity and deliberation. I liked the way the rejection of such ‘Töne’ was no easy decision. The soloists as a whole did a good job; that there remains a multiplicity of options, and dare, I suggest, a residual insufficiency to any one quartet, says more about Beethoven’s strenuousness of vision and humility before his God than performance as such. The CBSO Chorus, singing from memory, was quite simply outstanding. Weight and clarity reinforced each other rather than proving, as so often, contradictory imperatives. Nelsons imparted an unusual sense of narrative propulsion, almost as if this were an opera, or at least an oratorio: I am not sure what I think of such a conception, but it was interesting to hear it, and there was no doubting now the conviction with which it was instantiated. The almost superhuman clarity of the chorus’s words – ‘Und der Cherub steht vor Gott!’ a fitting climax to that first section – certainly helped. It was fun, moreover, to be reminded of the contrabassoon immediately afterwards. (Was that the tenuous connection with the Woolrich piece?) The infectious quality to the ‘Turkish March’ brought with it welcome reminiscences of Die Entführung aus dem Serail. And the return to ‘Freude, schöner Götterfunken’ proved exultant in that deeply moving way that is Beethoven’s own. (If only the abuse of this work by the European Union had not had me think of the poor Greeks at this point – but, on second thoughts, that was probably a good thing too.) If only Nelsons could have started again, and reworked the meaning he seemed to find here into the earlier movements, especially the first two, we might have had a great performance. As it stood, there remained a good deal later on to have us think.

Prom 21: Midori/CBSO/Nelsons - Strauss, Walton, and Prokofiev, 30 July 2011

Royal Albert Hall

Strauss – Don Juan, op.20
Walton – Violin Concerto
Prokofiev – Cantata: Alexander Nevsky, op.78
Strauss – Salome: ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’

Midori (violin)
Nadzhda Serdiuk (mezzo-soprano)
CBSO Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons (conductor)

Hopes, at least mine, ran high after last year’s outstanding Prom from the CBSO and Andris Nelsons. Alas, they were not really fulfilled in this curiously programmed concert. If last year, I noted that a ‘traditional’, non-conceptual, programme of overture-concerto-symphony had been renewed in these musicians’ hands, the present combination and ordering made no more sense in the hall than it had on paper. Indeed, given the frankly incoherent nature of Walton’s Violin Concerto, I began wearily to wonder whether incoherence were the guiding thread that attempted to impart coherence. (If so, it did not succeed.)

Don Juan certainly proceeded in such a vein, suggesting that Nelsons viewed it as superior film music – a potential connection with Walton and Prokofiev? – rather than a symphonic poem. His hyperactive podium style irritated somewhat when so misapplied: calming down, one suspected, might have permitted the music to breathe more easily. The opening had precision, yet seemed both driven in the manner of an orchestral showpiece – not unlike Claudio Abbado’s LSO recording: I suspect he would perform it very differently now – and all too audibly moulded. Strauss’s music may not ‘be’ natural, but it needs to sound as if it is more than ‘mere’ artifice. It is only fair to say that the CBSO’s orchestral performance was very fine: slower material sounded undeniably gorgeous, with glowing strings. Solos were exquisitely taken, for instance by leader Zoë Beyers and principal oboist, Rainer Gibbons, the latter’s line beautifully spun in musical and narrative terms. What the performance lacked was either a Kempe-like symphonic integrity or some attempt to deconstruct the hero as in Boulez’s fascinating Chicago recording of Also sprach Zarathustra. Nelsons’s Strauss appeared to be an irony-free zone.

Next came Walton’s Violin Concerto. Here the problem lay principally with the work itself, which frankly, even by Walton’s standards, is third-rate. The first movement sounded as if Elgar had wandered into a cocktail lounge, sauntered around aimlessly for a while and then another while, plagiarising Prokofiev as he wandered. That was as true of the violin part, here performed by Midori, as the orchestral writing. Midori mostly had the technical measure of the piece, though there were, perhaps surprisingly, awkward intonational moments, but she lacked the charisma necessary to transmute the material into something that might have glittered. If anything, the better performance came from the orchestra, Nelsons relishing Walton’s syncopations, and the woodwind solos quite ravishing when considered on their own terms – that is, somewhat akin to instrumental ‘colour’ for a television series. The second movement, if hardly profound, is less embarrassing; the performers captured well its Neapolitan mood, though I could not help reflecting wistfully that Busoni accomplished such things so much more interestingly. Midori had the measure of the Prokofiev-like writing; the orchestra heralded a sense of fantasy. But it was not clear that either ‘side’ was saying much to the other. Elgar returned to the mélange for the finale, though Prokofiev was not vanquished, some progressions sounding as if they had been lifted more or less wholesale from the Russian composer’s scores (and not just the violin concertos). Soaring lyricism – well, relatively so – vied with film score bombast. Some Midori fans went wild; the rest of us repaired to the bar.

It was nevertheless good to hear so vivid a performance of the Alexander Nevsky cantata. Whereas last year in Salzburg, I had admired Riccardo Muti’s Vienna Philharmonic account of Ivan the Terrible whilst being more than a little bored by the seemingly interminable 'oratorio', Nevsky emerged – as it is – a much stronger, coherent work. Nelsons imparted an electric quality to the pregnant opening section, ‘Russia under the Mongolian Yoke,’ which would rarely desert him. The splendid neo-Mussorgskian opening to ‘The Crusaders in Pskov’ was equally well captured, the composer’s trademark harmonic side-slipping relished, the CBSO strings grinding under the yoke of oppression. I was surprised at the hesitance of the CBSO Chorus’s performance early on, but by the time, of ‘Arise, Russian People’, it had strengthened, the block antiphonal exchanges between men and women coming across with admirable clarity. Mention must also be given to the excellent xylophonist. The central ‘Battle on the Ice’ had just the right sort of cinematic quality, yet convinced as music too, prophetic of the great ‘war symphonies’ still to come. Cumulative power was again reminiscent of Mussorgsky. Nadzhda Serdiuk had but a single number, yet sounded impressively soulful in ‘The Field of the Dead’. If the final ‘Alexander’s Entry into Pskov’ is not quite the ‘Great Gate of Kiev’, it was played as if it were, admixed with witty, Lieutenant Kijé-like interventions. During the concluding bars, I fancied that I could hear an organ, but it was simply the CBSO’s peals of rejoicing.

I was at a loss to understand why it was thought a good idea to follow Alexander Nevsky with the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ from Salome. Even as an ‘advertised encore’ it was not an obvious choice. Moreover, for all the excellence of execution, the overall effect was not dissimilar to that of Don Juan. The orchestral phantasmagoria towards the end was properly nauseous, but again there was more than a hint of film music. And I could not help but expect to hear Herod at the end, and feel disappointment when I did not.

Prom 16: Lewis/CBSO/Nelsons - Wagner, Beethoven, and Dvořák, 29 July 2010

Royal Albert Hall

Wagner – Overture: Rienzi
Beethoven – Piano Concerto no.2 in B-flat major, op.19
Dvořák – Symphony no.9 in E minor, ‘From the New World’, Op.95, B.178

Paul Lewis (piano)
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons (conductor)

To my shame, it is many years since the last time I heard the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; indeed, I think it was probably under Simon Rattle. On the basis of this concert, I shall hasten to do so again, since the orchestra sounds finer still if anything, certainly more continental, under its (relatively) new Music Director, Andris Nelsons. I shall also hasten to hear Nelsons wherever he may be conducting. If only I had been able to go to Bayreuth this year to hear his Lohengrin, with Jonas Kaufmann no less. Still, there was a taste of Wagner in the Overture to Rienzi. Nelsons dared – and won – a magnificently slow opening, the orchestra sounding gorgeous, the nobility of the Prayer theme fully and quite naturally brought out. There was at this stage an almost Klemperer-like deliberateness that truly paid off – which can only be the case if accompanied, as here, by profound musical understanding of rhythmic and harmonic progression. Then came the contrast of excitement: the external world opposed to Rienzi’s internal conflict. The CBSO’s brass choir proved it an equal to pretty much any other. Finally, enhanced Meyerbeer – just as it should be.

Though Beethoven was already Wagner’s greatest musical hero at this stage in his career, one would not necessarily have guessed it from Rienzi. The contrast with Beethoven’s ‘second’ piano concerto was therefore starker than it might have been with later Wagner. Paul Lewis, who has recently recorded all five concertos, joined Nelsons and the CBSO for a fine performance of an oft-slighted work, the success of which was at least as much to be attributed to conductor as pianist. For the opening bars alerted one to an uncommon Beethovenian talent too – and this is perhaps an even rarer thing. There was a true sense of life communicated: the music articulated, but never fussy, and Mozartian colours, especially darker hues, beautifully painted. (I thought above all of the E-flat concerto, KV 482.) These virtues were echoed, responded to, when the pianist entered, suggesting something of his great mentor, Alfred Brendel. There were occasions when I wished that Lewis would let himself go a little more, but there could be no gainsaying his command of the score. A rare (minor) cavil was a certain brusqueness to some sections of the development, which did not quite convince. Lewis employed an unusual degree of ornamentation in the recapitulation, but it worked. My only other real criticism was a plodding start to the cadenza. (Whatever Daniel Barenboim’s occasional shortcomings at the Royal Festival Hall earlier this year, he could not be accused of that.) By the time of its climax, this was no longer the case, however. Thereafter I do not think I have a single reservation. From the outset of the Adagio, Nelsons showed command of that long line Beethovenian line, which defeats so many; the maturity of Lewis’s contribution was equally striking. Nelsons continued to emphasise the darker side of Beethoven’s Mozartian inheritance. I should be eager to hear him in Mozart himself – and I cannot remember the last time I thought that of anyone. There was a ravishing oboe solo (Rainer Gibbons), whilst the final bars exuded ineffable magic, verging at least upon greatness (coughing notwithstanding). The rondo sounded just as a rondo should: fun, lively, gently insistent, never driven too hard. Nelsons’s command of Beethoven’s rhythms was notable, once again matched by Lewis. A distinguished performance: I cannot help but wish that Lewis had recorded the Beethoven concertos with Nelsons instead.

Coughing again marred the opening bars of Dvořák’s New World Symphony, though the intrusion of at least four mobile telephone calls – three to the same person! – was greater still. The beauty of the CBSO’s woodwind section could not be entirely obliterated, however. Nelsons proceeded to attack the Allegro molto with great urgency, yet still more spellbinding was the stillness as the flute announced the movement’s second group. True defiance, terror even, characterised its closing pages. And – a sign of charisma this! – keeping his hands in the air miraculously forestalled gloomily expected minority applause, setting a precedent thereafter adhered to. That solo, or rather those solos, were beautifully taken in the slow movement, Alan Garner drawing on seemingly endless reserves of breath. Nelsons’s tempo seemed so right that one only really noticed it in retrospect. The combination of woodwind soloists and double bass pizzicato in the movement’s middle section was simply ravishing, as were the violins when they took over the theme. Once again, I thought this might have been a great continental orchestra. Perhaps the most delicate pianissimo playing I have heard in the Royal Albert Hall was blighted by yet another telephone call. (Can nothing be done about these miscreants?) The scherzo married Beethovenian muscularity to delightful local colour and lilt: Dvořák has nothing to fear from comparisons with Smetana, even in this respect, and certainly not with Nelsons and the CBSO on his case. Always the long line again – marking out Nelsons as so much more the real thing than many of his touted contemporaries. The opening bars of the finale sent shivers down the spine, thanks to the CBSO brass. Even during more tender moments – an exquisite oboe solo, for instance – Nelsons maintained and increased the underlying tension to the movement. If I am to be ultra-critical, there were perhaps occasions on which he drove a little hard, but truly I am straining to find anything ambivalent, let alone negative, to say. More importantly, I heard orchestral detail that I cannot recall previously having heard – and without any of the point-scoring perversity one associates with conductors such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt. The orchestral unisons just before the close gave Bruckner a run for his money. This was a wonderful performance indeed.