Tallies of concert and total (concert and opera) performances, 2018

Before Christmas, I posted my tally of opera performances attended during the year. Having attended my final concert of the year last night, I can now do the same for concerts and, below, combined. I may have miscounted, forgotten the odd thing I did not review, etc. Encores are not included (if only because I have not always noted them down). One appearance in a single programme counts once. What does this show? Not very much, perhaps. It certainly does not reflect what is performed; I naturally tend to choose performances I think will interest me. On the other hand, if no possibilities to hear Webern had presented themselves - which sometimes they do not - I should not have been able to hear his music on six different occasions. Moreover, if I can hardly lay claim to anything approaching gender balance here, it is good to see three women composers - Charlotte Bray, Helen Grime, and Olga Neuwirth - receive more than one performance. Neuwirth would have had another, had bronchitis not had me miss one of hers.


It is good, in any case, to see Brahms - often the target of a bizarre loathing more suited to the nineteenth century than the twenty-first - come on top of the concert list and indeed to share second place in the aggregated list with Wagner. If Mozart comes out on top, I am certainly not going to complain. Click here, for the sake of comparison, for the lists for 2017.

Concert tally

11 Brahms

9 Haydn

8 Debussy, Schubert

7 Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky

6 Schoenberg, Webern

4 Berg, Mahler, Mozart, Schumann, Stockhausen

3 Ligeti, Liszt, Prokofiev, Strauss, Tchaikovsky

2 Bartók, Berio, Charlotte Bray, Dvořák, Helen Grime, Janáček, Olga Neuwirth, Ravel, Frederic Rzewski, Szymanowski, Tallis, Wagner, Zemlinsky

1 Mark Andre, Berlioz, Gerald Barry, Biber, William Bolcom, Lili Boulanger, John Browne, Bruckner, Byrd, Uri Caine, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Cavalli, Chausson, Unsuk Chin, David Robert Coleman, John Corigliano, William Cornysh, Dario Costello, Louis Couperin, Brett Dean, Duparc, Duruflé, Andris Dzenītis, Elgar, Fauré, Andrea Gabrieli, Gesualdo, Glière, Gounod, Christoph Graupner, Handel, Reynaldo Hahn, John Harbison, Hasse, Henze, Anders Hillborg, Holst, Philippe Hurel, Kódaly, Krenek, Lachenmann, Lassus, Gordon Lightfoot, Magnus Lindberg, Matthew Locke, Steven Mackey, Alma Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Emilie Meyer, Milhaud, Mosolov, Thea Musgrave, Mussorgsky, Offenbach, Palestrina, Edmond de Polignac, Poulenc, Purcell, Rebecca Saunders, Sciarrino, Scriabin, John Sheppard, Nat Shilkret, Ravel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Antonio Sartorio, Takemitsu, Alexander Tansman, Taverner, George Thalben-Ball, Ernst Toch, Joan Tower, Turnage, Weber, Hedy West, Jörg Widmann, Charles Wuorinen, Wolf, Peter Yarrow

Overall

13 Mozart

11 Brahms, Wagner

10 Haydn

9 Debussy

8 Schubert, Strauss

7 Beethoven, Schoenberg, Stravinsky

6 Webern

5 Stockhausen

4 Berg, Janáček, Mahler, Prokofiev, Puccini, Schumann, Tchaikovsky

3 Ligeti, Liszt

2 Bartók, Berio, Benjamin, Bizet, Charlotte Bray, Dvořák, Handel, Helen Grime, Olga Neuwirth, Poulenc, Ravel, Frederic Rzewski, Szymanowski, Tallis, Turnage, Weber, Zemlinsky

1 Ondřej Adámek, Daniel Blanco Albert, Mark Andre, Lennoz Berkley, Berlioz, Gerald Barry, Biber, William Bolcom, Britten, Lili Boulanger, John Browne, Bruckner, Byrd, Uri Caine, John Casken, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Cavalli, Chausson, Unsuk Chin, David Robert Coleman, John Corigliano, William Cornysh, Dario Costello, Louis Couperin, Peter Maxwell Davies, Brett Dean, Duparc, Duruflé, Dusapin, Andris Dzenītis, Gottfried von Einem, Elgar, Fauré, Andrea Gabrieli, Gershwin, Gesualdo, Glière, Gounod, Christoph Graupner, Handel, Reynaldo Hahn, John Harbison, Hasse, Henze, Anders Hillborg, Hindemith, Holst, Humperdinck, Philippe Hurel, Elfyn Jones, Kódaly, Krenek, Lachenmann, Edward Lambert, Lassus, Gordon Lightfoot, Magnus Lindberg, Matthew Locke, Steven Mackey, Alma Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Emilie Meyer, Milhaud, Monteverdi, Mosolov, Thea Musgrave, Mussorgsky, Offenbach, Palestrina, Edmond de Polignac, Poulenc, Purcell, Rebecca Saunders, Sciarrino, Scriabin, John Sheppard, Nat Shilkret, Ravel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Antonio Sartorio, Takemitsu, Alexander Tansman, Taverner, George Thalben-Ball, Ernst Toch, Joan Tower, Turnage, Philip Venables, Huw Watkins, Hedy West, Alastair White, Jörg Widmann, Charles Wuorinen, Wolf, Peter Yarrow, Na’ama Zisser

Mariani Piano Quartet/Watkins - Charlotte Bray and Emilie Meyer, 16 October 2018

Purcell Room

Charlotte Bray: Invisible Cities (2011); Beyond (2013)

Emilie Meyer: Piano Quartet no.2 in G major

Bray: Oneiroi (2013); On the Other Shore (2014); Zustände (2016)

Philipp Bohnen (violin)

Barbara Buntrock (viola)

Isang Enders (cello)

Gerhard Vielhaber (piano)

Huw Watkins (piano)

In Aix this summer, I heard – and enthused about – Charlotte Bray’s new work for solo viola, In Black Light. I was therefore very keen to hear a concert back here in London, largely of her music; moreover, I was certainly not disappointed. Invisible Cities, the first piece on the programme, is also for viola, albeit with piano. Barbara Buntrock and Huw Watkins gave a performance full of nervous energy. Its first movement of four, marked ‘vivid, frenetic’, certainly proved vividly variegated, opening with memorable contrast and synthesis – I think – of post-Schoenbergian harmonies with jazzy-Gallic syncopation.  ‘Unnerved, intimate’ is the marking for the second movement and so again it proved, with an intangible yet unquestionable sense of development from its predecessor. Buntrock truly dug into the strings, preparing the way for what I hope it is not too Romantic to describe as organically developing third and four movements, the latter climactic in both anticipated and unanticipated ways. Piano repeated notes offered counterpoint according to various understandings, viola harmonics seemingly generative of new yet related material, music and performance (piano and pizzicato viola) eventually fading into nothing.

Beyond, for solo violin, was sensitively and indeed commandingly performed by Phillip Bohnen. It offered a nicely elegiac pendant to the preceding, longer work, considerable use of the violin’s lower register offering both continuity with and difference from the viola. Further continuity was to be found in an equally keen sense of longer line, silence included: again in a fashion reminiscent of, yet never to be assimilated to, much Austro-German Romanticism.

Emilie Meyer’s 1857 Piano Quartet in G major proved the only disappointment. Such was not a matter of performance, the Maniari Piano Quartet doing everything one could reasonably have asked for. Although we could enjoy a lovely chamber music sound, there was little to the work 'itself'. In the traditional four movements, it fared best when songful: pleasant enough, if hardly individual of voice. A few scattered passages aside, for instance the opening of the scherzo, the composer struggled to impart much in the way of formal dynamism or even coherence. What might have passed muster as background music overstayed its concert hall welcome.

Following the interval, however, there was to be more Bray – and most welcome it proved. First up, Watkins returned to perform Oneiroi for solo piano with what seemed to me an ideal match of passion and humanity. According to the composer, ‘its muse was principally other music, that of Hans Werner Henze and Oliver Knussen particularly’. Ghosts of Henze’s piano music I certainly heard: perhaps again that post-Schoenberg inheritance, or maybe that is just me? There seemed to be at work a fruitful, generative dialectic both in work and performance between (surface?) freedom and tight, underlying organisation.

On the Other Shore, for solo cello, received a fine performance from Isang Yenders. In Bray’s words, it ‘represents an idea … of observing something from afar whilst not able to get close to it’. That comes very close to what I imagined I heard: a sense of intimacy at distance, of coming into and falling out of focus. As with the earlier piece for solo violin, both the long line and its possible constructive allusions and illusions came strongly to the fore.

Finally, we heard Zustände for violin, viola, cello, and piano, performed by the Mariani players. Its three movements take inspiration from various ‘states’ – as in the title – of ice, the first ‘Brittle, frozen, slowly disintegrating’, the second ‘Freely, fiercely independent’ as a ‘majestic, lone iceberg’, the third ‘Bright, alert,’ located, we are told, ‘within the highly energised, at times threatening, environment of an ice field’. There was certainly icy tension to be heard at the opening, imbued with a paradoxical, productive sense of desire, albeit thwarted, to suspend time. It moved, and rightly so. The piano was silent for most of the second movement, which seems to rise, aptly enough, from the cello line up. It is glacial, perhaps, in a way not dissimilar to some of Bartók’s music. Bray describes the final movement as ‘varied and unpredictable’. Once more, so it sounded in performance before I had so much as looked at the programme note. Control of material and the expressive means to which such control is put were never remotely in doubt. Zustände and other solo and chamber works (Beyond, Invisible Cities, and On the Other Shore included) may be heard on a new RTF Classical CD: on this basis, highly recommended!

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (1), ‘L’Alto à l’honneur’ – Loeffler, Bray, Liszt, Kodály, and Brahms, 13 July 2018

Conservatoire Darius Milhaud

Charles Martin Loeffler: Quatre poèmes, op.5

Charlotte Bray: In Black Light (world premiere)

Liszt: Romance oubliée, S 132

Kodály: Adagio for viola and piano

Brahms: Zwei Gesänge, op.91

Tabea Zimmermann (viola)

Andrea Hill (soprano)

Edwige Herchenroder (piano)

An oddly patchy concert, this: alongside the most unidiomatic professional Liszt performance I can recall and only intermittently successful Brahms, we heard a highly convincing world premiere and fine performances of two other works hitherto unknown to me: one indeed written by a composer of whom I had not previously heard. That composer was Charles Martin Loeffler, one of the works his Quatre poèmes, op.5 of 1893. Or should that have been Karl Martin Loeffler? So consumed with hatred, it seems, had the young Karl been for Germany that, even following his emigration to the USA, he would claim to have been born not Prussian but Alsatian and changed his name accordingly. Quatre poèmes was doubtless chosen because it would involve all three musicians performing in this concert, but it seemed to me on a single hearing fully to justify inclusion on merit. One heard, aptly enough, what seemed to be a largely yet not exclusively German sense of harmony with a more French taste in verse, melody, and sometimes texture too. The first song, a setting of Baudelaire’s La Cloche fêlée, seemed to mediate both as work and performance between Duparc and Brahms, Tabea Zimmermann’s viola-playing – Loeffler was an early enthusiast for the viola d’amore – becoming more Romantically ardent as the piece demanded or suggested. It offered development in a more conventionally instrumental sense, yet seemed also to have something of a Franco-Flemish (Franck, perhaps soon Debussy too) taste for the cyclical. It certainly convinced, moreover, as a response to the poem. The Verlaine ‘Dansons la gigue’ was gypsy-like – at least in a nineteenth-century sense – whilst also seemingly responding to Carmen in its more reflective moments. Verlaine was the poet for the remaining two pieces too. An atmosphere of general sadness, relieved somewhat by finely spun piano arabesques from Edwige Herchenrode, characterised ‘Le Son du cor s’afflige vers les bois’. The vocal line in the closing ‘Sérénade’, and Andrea Hill’s delivery of it, hinted at la vieille France, but this was no pastiche, instead a dramatic evocation of another time, ‘mandoline’ and all. I even fancied there were suggestions of the darker Ravel: presentiments, though, given the date. Fascinating: I shall be keen to hear more Loeffler.

I have always been keen to hear more Charlotte Bray too. The world premiere of In Black Light, for solo viola, furthered that keenness. It struck me as having some aspects of variational form – developing variation if you will, but also something more ‘traditional’ than that – within an overarching framework that has something of what would once have called a tone poem to it. Rhythms and intervals help generate style and idea. Following a grave opening of (relative) pitch extremes, a broad canvas emerges, upon which composer and performer alike offer a commanding variety of musical strokes: one section ‘jagged and fiery’ (Bray), another ‘a kind of broken waltz’, another ‘a mysterious pizzicato miniature’, and so on: related yet contrasting. The rhythmic profile is certainly sharp – and was certainly sharp in Zimmermann’s commanding performance, clearly highly attuned to the work’s contours and expressive requirements. The opening theme’s return did indeed sound, to quote the composer again, ‘urgently present and expressively charged’.

Liszt’s Romance oubliée has always seemed to me – perhaps unsurprisingly – superior in its piano solo version. That, however, is no reason to shun any of its others, especially when ‘actual’ Liszt chamber music is so thin on the ground, the composer’s tendency being, not unlike Wagner’s, to write chamber music within works for larger forces. The opening solo line certainly suits the viola, yet this proved for violist and pianist alike a strangely constricted performance, tentative to the point of incoherence. Kodály’s Adagio, first written for violin, then arranged for viola, proved much more Zimmermann and Herchenroder’s thing. Its darkly Romantic opening sounded almost Elgarian – at least to this Englishman. Zimmermann spun a rich, yet far from indulgent line, which enabled the material to develop in far from predictable fashion. If her pianist seemed very much the ‘accompanist’, she performed well in that role. As she did in the two closing Brahms songs; to begin with, indeed, we might have been about to hear a newly discovered sonata for viola and piano. Taken as a whole, though, those performances might have been more attuned to the songs’ form. Lack of direction, even meandering, married to a reticent way with the words (Rückert’s) from Hill sometimes made for heavy Brahmsian weather. If only they had been performed as if written by Loeffler.