LSO/Roth - Ligeti, Bartók, and Haydn, 11 November 2018

Barbican Hall

Ligeti – Lontano

Bartók – Cantata profana

Haydn – Missa in Angustiis, ‘Nelson Mass’, Hob. XXII/11

Camilla Tilling (soprano)

Adèle Charvet (mezzo-soprano)

Julien Behr (tenor)

Christopher Purves, William Thomas (bass)

London Symphony Chorus (chorus director: Simon Halsey)

London Symphony Orchestra

François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

For the second of my armistice anniversary concerts, I moved across town from the Royal Festival Hall to the Barbican. Vladimir Jurowski, the London Philharmonic Choir, and the LPO had set the bar high; François-Xavier Roth, the London Symphony Chorus, and the LSO proved more than worthy successors. Again, there was no nationalist sentiment in (aural) sight; instead, we heard another fine, thought-provoking programme, with much to savour in performance too.

Ligeti’s Lontano, music from afar, offered an introductory object lesson in listening and thus a lesson in humanity too. What ill ever came of listening? Alas, as we remember the victims of war, we know only too well what ill comes of failing to listen. Infinite subtlety in work, performance, and yes, reception offered a far greater strength to the masculinist posturing of militarism. How much we heard, making us realise how much we often fail to hear. The LSO seemed to act as a chorus of its own, speaking words, messages that we might well fail to understand – and which yet were no less real for that. Final silence at the close truly inspired awe: a lesson for us all, albeit unlikely to be heard by those most in need of hearing it, of listening.


For Bartók’s Cantata profana, the LSC, tenor Julien Behr, and bass William Thomas joined Roth and the orchestra. In this particular context, the ballad of an uncomprehending father sending out his nine sons to hunt, those sons thereafter, having been transformed to stags, unable to return home, a grieving mother notwithstanding, took upon resonances perhaps not originally ‘intended’, yet no less real for that. The transformation taking place in words and musical form alike, a story retold, both similar to and yet different from its original telling, invited further resonances both old and new. It certainly did in performances both thoughtful and exciting, in the grip of yet also liberated by musical and verbal narrative. Sinister yet inviting orchestral polyphony at the opening itself seemed to refer to a Bluebeard’s Castle revisited and yet forgotten – perhaps even an earthy successor to Mahler’s Klagende Lied. This was before, let alone after, the entry of the chorus, a world still more primæval. Who narrated? The forest? Humanity? Particular participants? All and none of those, one could imagine at different times, as a magical, fantastical, yet unquestionably ‘real’ narrative unfolded. Multifarious voices, vocal and orchestral, spoke to us, but did we listen? Emboldened by Ligeti’s example, we made the attempt. We were amply rewarded too, whether in Behr’s near faultless handling of the cruel tessitura of his part, in the dark chocolate of Thomas’s performance that yet lacked nothing in precision, or in the outstanding command of the Hungarian text and its musical elucidation from the chorus. Masculinity showed its tender side here too; the ultimate tragedy nevertheless, quite rightly remained one of incomprehension – even to the extent of knowing whether it were tragedy at all.

Haydn’s Missa in angustiis, the so-called ‘Nelson Mass’, offered a different musical and indeed verbal narrative, one which could nonetheless be related to much of what we had previously heard. In its journey from darkness to light, from plea for mercy to divine peace, it offered delight as well as hope, as well, perhaps, as the fear that such might yet remain tantalisingly out of our twenty-first-century reach. The ‘Kyrie’ could hardly have proved more urgent, Camilla Tilling first amongst solo equals, her coloratura duly thrilling. The variegated tone of the LSO here and elsewhere offered a point of contact with Colin Davis’s more ‘traditional’ Haydn with the same orchestra. His way is not Roth’s; nor is there any reason it should be. There was no doubting the integrity of his more ‘period’-influenced approach, which seemed simply to correspond to his understanding of the music rather than to the application of ideology. It outstripped in every respect the meanderings earlier this year of András Schiff with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Haydn’s Harmoniemesse, which, whatever their external would-be ‘authenticity’, had shown little engagement with the actual material of the work. Roth’s command of form as dynamic structure was evident from this very first number, the return of the ‘Kyrie’ material as dramatically meaningful as the coming of any symphonic recapitulation.

The ‘Gloria’ had, to quote Haydn himself, my heart leaping for joy. Incisive, warm orchestral playing left plenty of room for darkness too. Behr and Christopher Purves offered finely judged responses to Tilling’s lead, mezzo Adèle Charvet’s subsequent ‘Gratius agimus tibi’ a further, properly symphonic development that lacked nothing in beauty of tone. And so it continued, Haydn’s setting our guide, the hallowed liturgical text remaining his – and our – master. If the opening of the ‘Credo’ were taken faster than one –at least I – might have expected, certainly faster than once would have been the case, it was certainly none the worse for that, likewise the ‘Crucifixus’ material. Once again, in the light of Ligeti’s invitation and, indeed, his invention, we seemed to hear so much more than might often be the case: for instance, a string quartet writ large in the ‘Et incarnatus’ section, those terrible sounds of war too, familiar and yet heard anew – just as they should be. There was no doubting Roth’s relish of Haydn’s invention in the vivid setting – depiction? – of the Resurrection, nor the superlative quality of choral singing, from which one might readily have taken dictation. Haydn’s good nature brought tears to the eyes; it could hardly have done so without such excellence of performance.

Awe in the ‘Sanctus’; emotional gravity in the ‘Benedictus’, further sounds of war and all, whose surrounding setting retained its roots in an older Austrian Baroque; an ‘Agnus Dei’ whose leisurely way brought due relief even as we continued to implore: all paved the way for a peace which, as ever with Haydn, passed both understanding and lazy assumptions as to what might be ‘fitting’. There were, then, lessons aplenty to be heard and, God willing, to be listened to too. Perhaps foremost among them was our continuing human need for a joy which, if hardly prelapsarian, might find good as well as ill in this, our created, fallen world.

Philharmonia/Salonen - Schoenberg, Gurrelieder, 28 June 2018

Royal Festival Hall

Gurrelieder

Waldemar – Robert Dean Smith

Tove – Camilla Tilling

Wood-dove – Michelle DeYoung

Peasant – David Soar

Klaus-Narr – Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke

Speaker – Barbara Sukowa

Philharmonia Voices

Choirs of the Royal Academy of Music

Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and Trinity Laban Conservatore of Music and Dance (chorus director: Aidan Oliver)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

Opportunities to hear, let alone to conduct, Gurrelieder do not come along very often. Simon Rattle must have had more of the latter than most. What a way, then, for Esa-Pekka Salonen to approach his sixtieth birthday, with a work he had conducted so successfully with this same orchestra, the Philharmonia, in this same hall, not far off a decade ago. (That performance was recorded, and released on Signum Classics.)

The opening Prelude glistened, lacking nothing in warmth or almost pointillistic potential. Salonen was no more likely to wallow than Boulez might have done, and all the better for it. Here one heard – almost saw – water and ice. It flowed, ran, even stood with commendable flexibility, suggestive of a tone poem (which, in a way, it is, even when words intervene). Particularly intriguing was his orchestral balancing, subtle yet telling, highlighting yet never exaggerating the music’s darker undercurrents: pitch, timbre, harmony. The later Schoenberg is not so far away: one only has to listen. This was music after Götterdämmerung as well as after Tristan: unquestionably ‘after Wagner’, in far more than the most obvious ways.

Alas, Robert Dean Smith’s Waldemar often proved something of a trial. An older-sounding Waldemar is fine, repeated uncertainty of pitch rather less so. For much of the first part in particular, he was at best effortful, an especial pity when Salonen proved so adept at balancing those tone-poem, even symphonic tendencies (Pelleas und Melisande often came to mind) with the music’s roots in the song-cycle tradition. (Schoenberg’s first conception had been of a shorter cycle for voice and piano. Zemlinsky would recall that the songs ‘were wonderfully beautiful and truly novel – however we both had the impression that, on that account, they had little prospect of winning a prize.’) There was no denying the through-composed nature of Schoenberg’s writing, but nor is there, after all, in what we generally consider the very first song-cycle, An die ferne Geliebte. Fortunately, Camilla Tilling proved far more able than Dean Smith not only to ride the orchestra but also to make something of the words and phrases, although, to be fair, when foretelling his haunting, this Waldemar proved more convincing. There was plenty elsewhere to ravish: not least the combination of delicacy and splendour from Tilling and upper strings as Tove bade her love join her in raising golden goblets, Tristan-like, albeit with a decidedly æstheticist twist, to mighty, beautifying death (dem mächtig verschönenden Tod). It seemed telling and indeed touching, perhaps indicative of Salonen’s plans for the Ring, that the chords presaging and indeed furthering Tove’s departure from the stage echoed so clearly in combination of harmony and timbre the magnificent, malevolent world of Hagen.

Michelle DeYoung entered stage-right as if a figure from Klimt. (I know it is far too obvious an association, but demeanour and dress were so strongly suggestive that I shall indulge myself.) Jill Crowther’s English horn recalled to us an alte – or perhaps better, an ältere – Weise. Yet even before the Wood-dove sang, Schoenberg’s interlude had proved a kaleidoscopic realm of love and terror, love as terror; she only put it into words – but how! – what we (mostly) already knew. DeYoung offered a song variegated dramatically as well as tonally, almost a little – well, not so very little – cantata in its own right. Her richness of tone against the darkness of harmony and orchestral colour both reminded us of Salonen’s and Schoenberg’s presentiments at the opening, whilst leading us to a shattering climax. Tod/death: after that, life could only fade away – or could it?

The opening of the Second Part quite rightly sounded as if a digest of what had gone before – only, as it would in one of Wagner’s narrations, be it verbal, orchestral, or both, with difference of detail, of standpoint, of import. Dean Smith proved more imploring than angry, but that worked in its way. The aftermath of Waldemar’s outburst was shockingly prolonged – in the best way – by Salonen. Monumental was the word for it.

Variegation again proved the key to the Wild Hunt. Neither here nor elsewhere was there any absence of power to the outstanding massed choral forces, but heft is not enough, nor did it have to be. Salonen ensured an array of colour, even when Schoenberg apparently confronted him and us with blocks of sound. The terror of the first ghostly cry, in reaction to, or perhaps oblivious to, the handsomely dark bass-baritone observations of David Soar’s Peasant, proved quite something: several leagues beyond anything to be heard or even imagined in Der Freischütz. The proper entry of the chorus sounded like nothing so much as Götterdämmerung on acid – which it essentially is. It was, however, the aftermath that truly chilled. So much is in Schoenberg’s scoring here, yet I do not think before now I had quite realised how much. Dean Smith at last recaptured something of Tristan’s delirium, movingly so, as the orchestra seemed to engage in act of self-dissolution – again, as much in timbre as in harmony, before reconstituting itself for what was yet to come.

Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke’s Klaus-Narr perhaps inevitably suggested Mime: even his orchestral ‘introduction’ seemed to do so. This seemed, however, a more ambiguous ‘character’ still, transformations in mood and/or self-projection of mood disconcertingly yet, in their way, honestly quicksilver. His reflections on – mocking of? – salvation rightly left one uneasy yet wanting to know more. ‘Dann muss ich eingehn im Himmels Gnaden… Na, und dann mag Gott sich selber gnaden.’ Sepulchral chorus and brass alike soon eerily set against piccolos, set the stage, so it seemed, for another orchestral rebirth, now very much an ensemble straining towards Pierrot lunaire. Nothing would ever be the same again – and perhaps, just perhaps, such had been the work of this ‘fool’.

Step forward Barbara Sukowa, as spellbinding as she had been for Salonen in 2009 – or indeed for Claudio Abbado on his Vienna recording. This Speaker was delirious, yet delightful; or was that our æstheticising something too close for comfort? Not only Pierrot, but a whole century’s worth of music thereafter flashed before our ears. ‘Still! Was mag der Wind nur wollen?’ Did these hallucinations, if that be what they were, speak of a bad or a good trip? Schoenberg, as so often, resisted the either/or. Violin and clarinet acknowledged Wagner once again, now the Siegfried-Idyll, paving the way to Schoenberg’s final, glorious, yet ultimately never quite convincing paean to the sun(god). We revelled in that final chorus, yet, whether or not we wished to do so, could never quite shake off those intimations of the ‘air of another planet’. The future was both upon us and not. Schoenberg’s time had come.

Kopatchinskaja/BPO/Rattle - Rihm, Ligeti, and Mahler, 12 February 2017

Philharmonie, Berlin

Rihm – Gruß-Moment 2 – in memoriam Pierre Boulez

Ligeti – Violin Concerto
Mahler – Symphony no.4 in G major


Camilla Tilling (soprano)
Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Simon Rattle (conductor)

It had been two years, almost to the day, since I had last heard the Berlin Philharmonic (in the flesh, anyway). Then it had been Mahler (with Lachenmann) in London; now it was Mahler (with Rihm and Ligeti) in Berlin. The contemporary (more or less) works fared splendidly on both occasions; Mahler, I think, fared much better on this, the interventionism that has latterly characterised Simon Rattle’s work with that composer less distracting, more convincing. The orchestra, of course, remains a great one, now as fearless in new music as its fabled earlier self was in Beethoven and Brahms.

Wolfgang Rihm’s Gruß-Moment 2 was not quite receiving its premiere: that had taken place on the first of these three performances. It is nevertheless emphatically a new work, albeit performed with a confidence that might suggest otherwise. Rihm’s piece – allegedly five minutes long, but significantly longer – is one of twelve commissioned by the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker from different composers, apparently given carte blanche as to how they approached their ‘album leaf’ compositions. It also follows Gruß-Moment 1, written for the Lucerne Festival, for Pierre Boulez’s ninetieth birthday in 2015; now, of course, we live in the shadow of Boulez’s death, and the piece is dedicated to his memory.

 

Rihm has written for what looks like an average-sized orchestra: neither Bach’s, nor Gurrelieder’s. There are interesting omissions, though: clarinets, bassoons (not contra-bassoon, however), and trumpets. On the other hand, there are four players apiece for flutes, horns, and percussion. It is with an English horn solo that the lament or tombeau begins, perhaps inevitably putting us in mind of Tristan und Isolde. (Whether I liked it or not, I could not help but find intervallic and rhythmic correspondences and differences with Wagner’s Shepherd Song.) Four horns follow on: as so often with Rihm, forging further links with German Romanticism, albeit more obliquely here than sometimes. Was that even a hint of Bruckner in the string unison lines to come? Oboe and trombone duetting, still more English horn and trombone duetting, put me a little in mind of Stockhausen’s Mittwoch, but that was probably just me; for one can play the game of correspondences all one likes, of course, and it is in many ways just a way of finding one’s bearing. It was only really with the sounding of the quartet of flutes and percussion together that my ears found something that might possibly remind me of Boulez, and then not overtly. Such, however, is not necessarily the point of a tribute. If this were a tombeau, it was not gloomy, some post-expressionist Angst prior to the close notwithstanding, but then why should it be? Perhaps this was more akin to an ode from Berlioz, Gluck, even Stravsinky; perhaps not. It intrigued, nevertheless, nowhere more so than in the soft, yet Fafner-like timpani of the closing bars: ‘dolce, quasi cantando’.

 

‘György Ligeti’s violin concerto is perhaps the most exciting violin concerto since Beethoven. It’s the concerto I most enjoy playing.’ Would that more violinists thought like Patricia Kopatchinskaja, whatever that might imply about some of those far from negligible concertos in between. (I shall except Schoenberg’s, since it is surely the most criminally neglected of all.) This was, it seems, the third time the Berlin Philharmonic had played the work, previous outings having come from Tamsin Little, also with Rattle, in 2003, and from Renaud Capuçon and David Robertson seven years later. There will doubtless always be a little personal eccentricity from Kopatchinskaja, but I cannot believe that her decision to play barefoot would have troubled anyone. If it did, so much the worse for him or her. (Our intrepid soloist even managed to persuade the leader, Daniel Stabrawa, to shed one of his shoes, when he joined her for a splendid encore performance of Ligeti’s very early (1950) Balad si joc.)

 

The solo opening suggested that this might be Ligeti very much in ‘process music’ mode. What especially intrigued about how both work and performance developed was that that was sort of true, but far from entirely so. That, one might say, is where music comes in. Kopatchinskaja’s solo line gradually distinguished itself more and more from the many other solo lines in this first movement Praeludium, taking on an almost ‘traditional’ virtuosic tinge, at least in the manner of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale (squared). Kopatchinskaja’s duetting with tuned percussion proved one of the multiple delights here. In the second movement, I initially reflected how viola-like her tone sounded – until the viola soloist entered. A sensibility that was far from un-Romantic grew, until the moment of typical Ligetian madness when a quartet of woodwind players, Pied-Piper-like, took up their ocarinas. If the chorale section inevitably brought Berg to mind, what greater inspiration could there be?

 

The high, fantastical writing with which the Intermezzo opens had me think of Prokofiev, although, of course, it went very much its own way. Such was the intensity of the climax that it felt as though the music were over all too quickly. The slow, inevitable, riveting progress of the Passacaglia brought, as the movement came to its climax, further thoughts of Berg. This was almost incredibly committed playing from all concerned. Prokofiev sounded as if he were unwinding in the final movement, soon characterised by the reinstatement of a virtuosity it is difficult not to think of in some sense as ‘Hungarian’. Rattle left the stage, deadpan, for Kopatchinskaja to play her own cadenza: great fun, both gesturally and musically. There was a sense of trying to goad him and the orchestra to come back, eventually successful when the conductor reappeared from the percussion to bring the concerto to a close.

 

The second half was devoted to the Mahler symphony. Its first movement cannot escape from a certain sense of molding, so perhaps sets itself up better for Rattle’s approach than some of the composer’s more (apparently, deceptively) simple inspirations. It certainly did not drag – unlike, say, the well-nigh unbearable performance I heard from Vladimir Jurowski last year. Rattle ensured that the score was treated affectionately yet not too much so, and at times, with a little yet not too much brusqueness. Stabrawa’s violin solo – and not just that – sounded sweetly sardonic, or should that be sardonically sweet? Mediaeval, or rather pseudo-mediaeval, pictorialism was appealing throughout, coexisting happily with Mahler’s idiosyncratic neo-Classicism. I was not sure what it all ‘meant’, but I am not sure that I should have been sure: that is not really the point, or at least need not be.

 

I was delighted to hear some vinegar in the second movement scordatura playing. Often, that ends up sounding ‘just’ dissonant, rather than making something (though never too much) out of the different tuning. Ligeti, I thought, would have approved. Counterpoint was admirably clear: one could really hear a multitude of lines, almost as if St Anthony of Padua were preaching to a shoal of particularly wayward, individualistic fish. However illusory, there remained a sense of essential simplicity to the slow movement, which sounded very much as if it grew out of Mahler’s four-part string writing: an expanded string quartet, almost. The sound was perhaps sweeter than one often hears, but not unreasonably so, and in any case often tended towards silver too. Not that the darker side was neglected, far from it, but the movement proved commendably un-hysterical. Thematic foreshadowings of the finale were nicely brought out, and that movement grew as ‘naturally’ as I have ever heard out of its predecessor, without a break, yet not rushed. Camilla Tilling offered one of the most interpretatively interesting accounts of the text I have heard. There was a greater range of vocal colour than one often hears, very much at the service of the words. Stylistically, she drew out, or so it seemed, the music’s kinship with the world of Hänsel und Gretel, whilst Rattle’s keen ear for instrumental detail enriched rather than overwhelming. Rarely have I heard so touching a performance of the final stanza, nor a more lingering, loving farewell from the harp. Mahler’s progressive tonality had indeed opened up a new, heavenly world.

 

Salzburg Festival (1) - BRSO/Haitink - Haydn, The Creation, 18 July 2014

Grosses Festspielhaus

Camilla Tilling (soprano)

Mark Padmore (tenor)

Hanno Müller-Brachmann (bass-baritone)

 

Bavarian Radio Chorus (chorus master: Peter Dijkstra)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

Bernard Haitink has waited until late his career to perform some of the greatest masterpieces of the choral repertoire. The Creation, the B minor Mass, and the St Matthew Passion are all works he has conducted for the first time in or approaching his eighties. ‘Authenticity’ has doubtless played a part here, as has Haitink’s typical modesty. Has the wait been worth it? Very much so, at least on the basis of this, the opening concert of this year’s Salzburg Festival.

 

Since Alexander Pereira added an extra week to the festival, having it open with an ‘Ouverture spirituelle’ programme of sacred music, The Creation, or Die Schöpfung, has featured first each time: a lovely invention of tradition. It would, I am sure, be fascinating to compare Haitink’s performance with those of previous years, not least the ‘period’ performance of Nikolaus Harnoncourt; alas, I am not in a position to do so. We all come with our own personal ‘traditions’, our own terms of reference, however. Passing swiftly over an unfortunate performance earlier this year from Richard Egarr, replacing the late Sir Colin Davis, my most recent performance had been with Sir Colin and the LSO in 2007; beyond that, the recording I tend most often hear in my head – and indeed to listen to – is Karajan’s classic first version (second, if you count his live Salzburg performance, issued much more recently). It seems inconceivable that anyone will ever match, let alone surpass, Karajan’s soloists, but it is a measure of the stature of this performance that Mark Padmore was anything but shamed by inevitable if odious mental comparison with the hardest act to follow, Fritz Wunderlich; indeed, Padmore’s was for me the finest vocal performance of all. And if my memories of the LSO/Davis performance – it has been issued on LSO Live, though I have yet to hear it – in general pip this Salzburg account, perhaps above all in terms of Davis’s inimitable way with orchestral Haydn, encompassing not only great musical wisdom but a sense of fun that is perhaps not Haitink’s strongest suit, then the distinctions will only be of degree. This was a fine performance, with no weak link, which crucially had one marvel anew not only at Haydn’s invention but also at one of the greatest monuments to the late Austrian Enlightenment.  

 

Perhaps one of the greatest surprises concerning Haitink’s performance was the size of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra: the strings ranged from ten first violins to four double basses. (Not that this need determine how we perform the work today, but it is of course a far smaller orchestra than Haydn, influenced by the monumental Handel performances he heard in London, either had in mind or received at the premiere.) There were a few occasions when I really felt that at least another couple of desks of violins would have benefited the performance – for instance, during Raphael’s Second Day accompagnato – but, even in a large house such as this, not very many. In any case, regret at the loss of Karajan’s deep pile was, if not entirely banished, largely compensated for by the alert, variegated playing of the scaled-down BRSO. Purpose and direction may be accomplished and communicated – or not – with any size of orchestra, and they were certainly present from the very opening of the ‘Representation of Chaos’. That first chord – well, not actually a chord, just a unison C, tonality itself still to emerge, like Heaven and Earth themselves – was magnificently ominous; the movement as a whole offered a properly Beethovenian essay in the symphonically generative. Indeed, it almost seemed to go beyond Beethoven. Whether at the fundamental level of harmonic rhythm, or at that of the detail of the menace imparted by clarinet figuration, everything was made to count – and was heard to be connected. (The contrast with the hapless exhibitionism of Egarr could hardly have been greater.)

 

The recitative which follows was taken beautifully slowly: a sense of the desolate, perhaps, or at least the empty, but pregnant with hope. The excellent Bavarian Radio Chorus intoned with sotto voce precision the Spirit of God’s moving upon the waters, before the celebrated outburst of ‘Light!’ It was perhaps not so overpowering as in some performances, yet made its point without exaggeration: typical Haitink. Uriel’s following aria was crisply played, anything but sentimental; Padmore offered – or seemed to do so – a slight stress – upon ‘Ordnung’, that crucial eighteenth-century preoccupation, again without exaggeration, certainly without the musical disruption some seem to think betokens attention to the verbal text. And in the chorus that followed, orchestral chromaticism was both sinuous and strongly symphonically generative, choral diction and pitching beyond reproach. A new created world indeed seemed to spring up at God’s command.

 

Hanno Müller’ Brachmann and Camilla Tilling, the other soloists, both had strong virtues. If Müller-Brachmann had, especially earlier on, a slight tendency to hector and indeed to bluff tone, that soon worked itself out. Tilling announced herself with ‘Mit Staunen sieht das Wunderwerk’, where I cannot help but hear Karajan’s Gundula Janowitz. Tilling was very different indeed: almost hoch-dramatisch, certainly forthright and unquestionably attentive to the libretto. It was intriguing, and perhaps a little surprising, that Haitink seemed keen to highlight Haydn’s Handelian legacy im ‘Rollend im schäumenden Wellen’, not just the dotted rhythms, but their rhythmic and harmonic implications. The Munich flautist worked especial wonders here with the ‘limpid brook’, as did the woodwind section as a whole in the following ‘Nun beut die Flur…,’ Tilling’s line here and elsewhere ornamented. ‘Stimmt an die Saiten’ sounded revealingly close to Mozart’s Handel – Gottfried van Swieten’s performances of alte Musik were of great importance to Mozart and Haydn – and the clarity with which it proceeded enabled both a panoply of orchestral colour as well as choral vigour. The fourth day’s sunrise again made its point without exaggeration, prefigured by the pretty recitative tinkling on an early piano by James Johnstone. Padmore brought echoes of Bach – perhaps inevitably – to bear, delicate yet purposeful. As the first part drew to a choral close, the heavens telling the glory of God, the only thing I missed was Haydn’s smile, or indeed his leaping for sheer, unadulterated joy; however, Beethovenian goodness and greatness of spirit were not entirely inadequate substitutes.

 

Orchestral playing was just as beautiful, just as variegated following the interval. Gabriel’s first aria brought a wonderful cooing synergy between Tilling and the Munich woodwind – though was her ornamentation of ‘Liebe’ just a little overdone? Müller-Brachmann’s gravity matched that of Haitink in the following recitative injunction to be fruitful and multiply. Haitink’s tempi were not entirely without surprise; for instance, ‘Der Herr ist groß’ was taken at quite a lick. Crucially, however, it was not harried; it came as release. If ‘Mit Würd und Hoheit angetan’ delighted rather than ravished, Wunderlich’s – and Karajan’s – shadow falls especially long there. In any case, the opening of the third part, three flutes and strings alike, was truly beautiful by any standards: this was a beauty that did not need to ask whether we had noticed it. The opening of the ‘Hymn’ was again taken at a fleet tempo, but if it did not offer the same kind of rapture as Karajan, its own variety was undeniably present. Müller-Brachmann as Adam again occasionally proved hectoring: perhaps the less agreeable side of Fischer-Dieskau’s influence? However, as this extraordinary number progressed, any minor doubts were dispelled. It was a delight, and a moving one. Haitink’s relatively small scale seemed especially apt here in Eden. And Tilling sounded very much a different ‘character’ as Eve. Moreover, Müller-Brachmann naughtily relished the quickening dew, celebratedly echoed in Haydn’s own Schöpfungsmesse. I am not sure that the final chorus has ever in my experience so clearly echoed the end of Die Zauberflöte, not the least associative achievement in a thoroughly admirable performance.