Performances of the Year 2009

This really has been a year full of wonderful performances. Even singling out a goodly number entails almost arbitrarily excluding others. It becomes all the more difficult with opera in particular, since the odds of a production and performance having nothing with which one might quibble verge upon the fantastical. Moreover, even when it comes to concert life, there can often be one or two outstanding performances amongst others, which, relatively speaking at least, disappoint. Nevertheless, I have managed to come up with a list of twelve performances - one for each month, on average, but not one from each month - which give some indication of the musical riches on offer in London and beyond this year.

Back in January, I was fortunate enough to attend four concerts as part of the annual Salzburg Mozartwoche. The pick of the bunch, if only just, was an all-Boulez concert, presented by Jörg and Carolin Widmann, the Experimental Studio of the Südwestrundfunk Freiburg, and Hidéki Nagano, who gave the Austrian premiere of Une page d’éphéméride. Carolin Widmann's Anthèmes 2 was simply mesmerising. Further proof, as if any were needed, as to the ongoing importance, indeed necessity, of the man who may justly be accounted the conscience of modern music.

From Boulez to the music he has done so much to champion: that of the Second Viennese School, in this case early Schoenberg. A performance of the Gurrelieder would be hard put not to be a special event. Nevertheless, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia conjured up something unforgettable for the inaugural concert of their 'City of Dreams' festival.

Murray Perahia and the Concertgebouw under Bernard Haitink in Schumann's piano concerto, followed by Bruckner's Ninth Symphony: somehow, this concert lived up to and even surprassed expectations. I summarised the Bruckner thus: 'It was desperate but never Mahlerian, a true (non-)conclusion to a truly great performance. Haitink at eighty has never been greater.'

I initially prevaricated about including the Staatsoper Unter den Linden's new Lohengrin. Not every element of the musical performance quite matched up to Stefan Herheim's extraordinary, brilliant new production, though Klaus Florian Vogt made a powerful case to be considered the world's leading Heldentenor. Herheim's production, a worthy successor to his Bayreuth Parsifal, simply demands to be seen.

Matthias Goerne and Christoph Eschenbach have been performing the three Schubert song cycles together recently - and will perform all three at next year's Salzburg Festival. I caught their Wigmore Hall Winterreise, which was utterly devastating.

July took me to Aix en Provence, for an extremely pleasurable few days. Truly outstanding here was a concert from Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the Berlin Philharmonic, and Boulez as conductor. Bartók, Ravel, and Boulez (piano and orchestral Notations) would seem an almost stereotypical Boulez programme, but there was nothing routine to this concert.

Haitink returned to London for the Proms, conducting Mahler's Ninth Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra. I had been stunned earlier in the year by Daniele Gatti's performance of the very same work with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Haitink's reading was very different but equally powerful - and, forced to choose just one, the magnificent playing of the LSO would win out. Debating whether this extraordinary symphony, is ‘about’ life or death misses the point; Haitink showed that one cannot consider one without the other.

Daniel Barenboim brought his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra to the Proms for a trio of concerts. I could justifiably have chosen all three (Waltraud Meier in Fidelio was utterly unforgettable), but perhaps the finest of all was a chamber concert, which worked surprisingly well in the Royal Albert Hall. Barenboim's musicians were left to their own devices - and how! - for a magical performance of Mendelssohn's Octet. The Berg Chamber Concerto saw Barenboim return to the podium, his son Michael the violin soloist and Karim Said the piano soloist. Many find this work intractable; I have never understood the problem. But even the naysayers would surely have been bowled over by this incendiary account, which led us into a labyrinth from which no one would wish to depart.

The programming of much of the Philharmonia's City of Dreams festival was a little disappointing: no Webern, for instance, in a series dealing with Vienna 1900-35! However, the final concert, a semi-staged performance of Wozzeck, proved a shattering experience. Simon Keenlyside was close to definitive in the title role, whilst having the orchestra on stage rather than in the pit permitted Berg’s writing to resound as rarely it can.

A second Wigmore Hall Winterreise was equally demanding of inclusion, this time from Wolfgang Holzmair and Andreas Haefliger. Holzmair's very Austrian-sounding tenor is a very different instrument from Goerne's dark baritone. This was a Winterreise that refused to subordinate dramatic truth to musical beauty, often more akin to a poetry reading than a conventional Liederabend. I was chilled to the bone.

It had been many years - nine in fact - since I had heard Christian Thielemann live. I wish the wait had not been so long, but it was nevertheless worth it. The Berlin Philharmonic was here on home territory, in the Philharmonie, in a programme of Brahms and Schoenberg. Three Brahms choral gems, all far too infrequently heard, prepared the way for Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande, which for the first time in my listening experience fell into place. Thielemann’s long-term structural understanding set me wondering what Furtwängler would have made of a work I have long underestimated.

Finally, we return to the opera house, for Oper Leipzig's Al gran sole carico d'amore. Almost unbelievably, I saw two different productions of Nono's second 'opera' within a matter of months. Salzburg boasted the Vienna Philharmonic under Ingo Metzmacher, with Katie Mitchell directing. Leipzig's performance, however, was rendered all the more revolutionary immediate by Peter Konwitschny's searingly committed production. And the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra was pretty good too...

May I take this opportunity to wish my readers a very Happy New Year for 2010? I hope that the coming year will prove as rewarding as this one has.

Wozzeck, Philharmonia/Salonen, 8 October 2009

(semi-staged performance)

Royal Festival Hall

Wozzeck – Simon Keenlyside
Captain – Peter Hoare
Marie – Katarina Dalayman
Drum Major – Hubert Francis
Andres – Robert Murray
Doctor – Hans-Peter Scheidegger
Margret – Anna Burford
First Apprentice – David Soar
Second Apprecntice – Leigh Melrose
The Idiot – Ben Johnson
A Soldier – Peter WIlman
Marie’s Child – Louis Watkins

Jean-Baptiste Barrière (video direction)
François Galard, Pierre-Jean Bouyer (image realisation)
Isabelle Barrière (live video)
Alexandre Barrière (staging)
Sian Harris (costumes)

Children’s choir amalgamated from London schools (musical director: Nicholas Chalmers)
Philharmonia Voices (chorus master: Aidan Oliver)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

And so, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s exploration of Viennese musical culture from the turn of the century to 1935 culminated with probably the greatest opera of the twentieth century, Wozzeck. (The only reason I say ‘probably’ is a nagging doubt concerning Moses und Aron, but it remains pretty much sui generis.)This was a magnificent performance, over which I have almost no reservations. Even the staging worked well. Sorry to sound jaded, but after Christof Loy’s assault upon Tristan und Isolde, I am beginning simply to feel grateful for something that tells a story straightforwardly and does not patronise the audience. I should take Alexandre Barrière’s necessarily modest contribution any day over something that tediously insists on subversion without due cause. The video added little, I thought, and occasionally distracted, but one should not exaggerate. I shall register my only real gripe first of all, which relates rather to the series than to its culmination; then we can hasten towards the fulsome praise.

I have not attended as many of the concerts as I might have expected, partly because of bad timing, but also on account of a slight disappointment in terms of the repertoire being explored. No one loves Mahler more than I do, yet, in a festival such as this, did he need to be quite so heavily represented? Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony made a welcome appearance and was superbly performed. But the absence of Webern seemed incomprehensible, especially since his music would have seemed very much Salonen’s thing; perhaps other forces were at work. One might not have expected the complete works, even though they would have fitted into a few concerts, but might not the kinship between Mahler and Webern as well as Mahler and Berg have received a nod? Rather oddly, indeed disturbingly, some of the programmes for the Philharmonia’s continental tours were more adventurous; for instance, it seemed odd that London missed out on Dame Mitsuko Uchida playing the Schoenberg piano concerto. That said, Wozzeck could hardly have been a better choice with which to climax.

Simon Keenlyside was superb as Wozzeck. Every word, every note registered. One felt the pathos; one felt the misery; and one believed utterly in the character. Some might have found him too cultured; they doubtless felt the same, magnified to the nth degree, about Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. It is their loss. Katarina Dalayman was an equally credible Marie, deploying her considerable musico-dramatic resources to powerful effect; the Bible scene was as moving as I can recall, perhaps even more so. Hubert Francis had a suitably nasty swagger and self-belief as the preening Drum Major; dislike him though one might and should, one could understand how someone in Marie’s wretched position would act as she did. Robert Murray put in an excellent turn as Andres, subtly subordinate, never trying to steal the show, but crucial in his way. And, brief though her contribution may be, Anna Burford’s rich voice made its presence felt in the role of Margret; I should like to hear more of her. Peter Hoare and Hans-Peter Scheidegger properly pointed up the buffo elements in the characters of the Captain and Doctor, without neglect to their pernicious nature. And if the children’s voices could hardly sound idiomatically German, the treble Louis Watkins was truly moving as the child about whom the next drama will have to be told.

I took a little while to warm to Salonen’s performance. The first scene sounded a bit chilly, though even then the Philharmonia’s playing, give or take the very occasional, quite forgivable slip, was very fine. Having the orchestra on stage rather than in the pit permitted Berg’s writing to resound as rarely it can. Whilst it is perhaps unfair to single out players in particular, the woodwind section was truly outstanding throughout, likewise the solo strings. It was as the work progressed that I realised Salonen was playing a game of long-term strategy. Scenes were characterised, musically and dramatically, yet also formed part of a greater whole. One heard the myriad of colours that makes up Berg’s palette, with nods to Debussy and even correspondences – it would be misleading to speak of more than that – with Szymanowski, but above all, as should surely always be the case, Wagner. After the mess Antonio Pappano had made of the second act of Tristan a few days previously, I fell to thinking, as I had after Salonen’s Gurrelieder, that he would potentially make a fine Wagnerian. The dramatic punch of that final, terrible interlude shook me as perhaps never before. The final scene proved almost unbearable; there was no point even attempting to hold back the tears from my eyes. And then, it stopped: perhaps the most terrifying halt in all music. Salonen ensured that this rupture, this caesura without anything to follow – a truly negative dialectic – registered with overwhelming power. Disregard my earlier caveat over Moses und Aron: after hearing this performance, I was in no doubt as to the identity of the greatest opera since Wagner.

Philharmonia/Salonen - Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, 12 March 2009

Royal Festival Hall

Schoenberg – Verklärte Nacht
Zemlinsky – Lyrische Symphonie, op.18

Solveig Kringelborn (soprano)
Juha Uusitalo (bass-baritone)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

London buses spring to mind – an unusual reaction, I suspect, to so Viennese a programme: Schoenberg and Zemlinsky. But whilst Verklärte Nacht seems ubiquitous in terms of recordings, it had been a while since I have heard it in concert, or at least it had been until Tuesday’s Britten Sinfonia lunchtime concert. That, however, presented the original sextet version, whereas here we heard the second of Schoenberg’s orchestral versions, from 1943. I have always ultimately preferred the Brahmsian sound of the original, but there is certainly compensation in the sheer luxury of the sound from a full orchestral string section – such as Karajan’s Berlin Philharmonic, still to my mind the greatest orchestral recording, or, in a performance I heard a few years ago, the Vienna Philharmonic under Boulez. I have less frequently been convinced by the chamber orchestra approach: neither one thing nor the other, although I should make an exception for Heinz Holliger’s wonderful recording with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, which manages to combine many of the best aspects of both. This, anyway, is a preamble to saying that Esa-Pekka Salonen wisely opted for a full complement of Philharmonia strings.

Did this choice pay off? On the whole, yes. I have little to quibble about in terms of the orchestral performance. These are not, of course, the strings of Vienna. Nevertheless, any hint of thinness was but fleeting; indeed, there was often a truly Brahmsian richness, not least in the tremolo passages from double basses and ’cellos. On occasion one even heard a sweetness suggestive of the ‘City of Dreams’, which gives its name to this concert series. There were more than a few hints of Mahlerian neuroticism, for instance in the increased intensity of vibrato upon certain notes. The solo work of leader Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay was as aristocratic as we have come to expect but no less noteworthy for that.

What reservations I had, and I should not wish to exaggerate them, relate to Salonen’s interpretation rather than the Philharmonia’s execution. The work was played very much as an orchestral piece, which is fair enough, and sounded very much conducted, which of course it was. I liked very much the Nordic cool imparted to the opening bars but the race was a little frantic towards the hothouse and I am not sure that the latter should really have been our destination. We are concerned, after all, with a moonlit forest, both literally and symbolically. Sometimes, the reading sounded a little too consciously moulded; art is often better employed to conceal art. The often extreme shifts of tempo worked better on some occasions than others, though it is only fair to note the considerable excitement of the faster, almost operatic passages. Where I felt short-changed was in the relative lack of transfiguration. The final section lacked that sense of elevation, programmatic and tonal, which the finest performances will variously impart. Salonen’s superlative Gurrelieder was always going to be a hard act to follow.

Nevertheless, the conductor managed to do just this in Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony. This work, I think, is close to a masterpiece; there is true greatness to be heard here – and heard it was. Schoenberg, no less, opined in 1949: ‘I always firmly believed that he was a great composer and I still believe this. It is possible that his time will come sooner than we think.’ Salonen could well be the man to make sceptics reconsider, for there could be no doubt from this performance that, unlike the increasingly bizarre claims heard from a vocal gang of Korngold devotees, Schoenberg’s words are worth considering, even if ultimately they might transpire to be a little generous. The Royal Opera would certainly be better off considering a Zemlinsky sequel to Die tote Stadt rather than reviving the ludicrous Das Wunder der Heliane, a work heard in all its dubious glory a little over a year ago from the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski. Where Korngold, even at his best, conjures up effect, Zemlinsky clearly means what he says in the Lyric Symphony.

From the fatalistic opening, with its crucial motif intoned by three trumpets and three trombones, underpinned by crashing rolls on the kettledrum, to the very end, the commitment and accomplishment of Salonen and the Philharmonia could not be faulted. The orchestra in this work is, after all, a truly Wagnerian Greek Chorus. Febrile strings imparted menace to the introduction but could just as easily be transformed into purveyors of a late-Romantic outpouring of love. Solo passages, from wherever they came in the orchestra, were uniformly excellent. Paul Edmund-Davies’s flute arabesques, which accompanied the textual evocation of his instrument – ‘O fernstes End, o ungestümtes Rufen deiner Flöte!’ – would have taken the listener anywhere this Pied Piper might have led him. In the second movement, Visontay’s opening violin solo was just as it should be: skittish and sweet. A little later, we heard the girl’s chain crushed under the wheels of the Prince’s chariot: a vivid piece of tone-painting from the lower strings. The thrilling vocal and orchestral climax that followed not only impressed in itself but also led us with flawless symphonic ease into the third song. Motivic development was always surely attended to, here and elsewhere. Elspeth Dutch’s horn solo in ‘Du bist die Abendwolke’ was truly melting, whilst in the following, fourth movement, Visontay and David Cohen presented an almost Bergian duet, which warned us all too clearly of the perils and indeed madness of Romantic love. The nauseating orchestral fantasy that followed was Klimt-like in its colours, celesta (Shelagh Sutherland) and harp (Hugh Webb) especially worthy of mention. This was, of course, a wicked, pleasurable nausea, and all the more discomfiting for that. Salonen captured masterfully the furious scherzo-like onslaught of the fifth movement, its outburst of violence over in a flash, before Mahlerian violas and two trombones offered illusory consolation in the introduction to the sixth. The sense here of still desolation was eerily captured by the ever-present pedal on the double-basses, played here to ominous perfection, granting an apt sense of claustrophobia to this horrifying movement. And when the orchestra was once again truly given its head in the postlude to the final movement, it sounded unambiguously magnificent, as if this were a work that featured as a staple of its repertory.

This is, of course, a lyric symphony, so what of the voices? Juha Uusitalo took a while to settle, his intonation somewhat wavering in the first movement. However, by the time of the third, in which he reappears – soloists sing in alternate movements, never together – his voice sounded cleaner and winningly ‘honest’, the latter quality intriguingly suggestive of Wagner’s Fasolt. Uusitalo’s diction was perfect throughout; if his German were slightly accented, as often seems to be the case from even the most celebrated of low Finnish voices, one could nevertheless hear every word without the slightest strain. I was also impressed by the Lieder-singer’s attention he devoted to words and their meaning. Intonation was not always spot on in the final movement but nor was it unduly troubling. Solveig Kringelborn was rapt in her lyricism, equally attentive to the dictates of musical line and verbal meaning. It is more difficult, of course, for a soprano to render every word audible, but she did not fare badly on that score. There was again a welcome sense of the Lieder-singer to her reading. Indeed, so involved was she with the text that she could not resist a little operatic throwing of her ruby chain as the Prince passed by her door. Conscious or no, it was a special moment. And this was a special performance.

Philharmonia/Salonen - Gurrelieder, 28 February 2009

Royal Festival Hall

Waldemar – Stig Andersen
Klauss-Narr – Andreas Conrad
Tove – Soile Isokoski
Wood-dove – Monica Groop
Peasant – Ralf Lukas
Speaker – Barbara Sukowa

City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)
Philharmonia Voices
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

This was a wonderful opening to the Philharmonia’s series: ‘City of Dreams: Vienna 1900-1935’. A performance of Gurrelieder could hardly fail to be an occasion but the performance was excellent in pretty much every respect. I was reminded me quite how much I love this extraordinary work. It certainly evinces its composer’s unswerving integrity, even if the Wagner references in the choral writing can draw a little close for comfort. It is the most heartfelt of farewells to the nineteenth century yet it also looks forward, especially in the Speaker’s melodrama, to so much of what is to come. Indeed, the work’s progress, marked by its increasingly ‘modern’ orchestration – Schoenberg broke off that work between 1903 and 1910 – enables us to experience an ongoing critique of its earlier self, without any cost to our appreciation of the sheer gorgeousness of Part I.

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s performance with the Philharmonia captured perfectly the ever-shifting balance between late Romanticism and early modernism, without ever so much as hinting at the temptation to become duly astringent. We have all, I am sure, heard passionless, anti-septic performances of music from the Second Viennese School, which might have put us off for life. The point is not that Schoenberg’s modernist music becomes less ‘emotionally’ intense, quite the contrary; the sheer concentration of such intensity is what some listeners still find difficult to cope with. Rather to my surprise, the opening was a little shaky, the woodwind – especially flute – figures not sounding fully integrated and exhibiting a certain rhythmic insecurity. Yet there was barely another weakness to the performance. The Philharmonia was on good form as I can ever recall, perhaps even better. Certainly the warmth and silkiness of its strings would have put many Continental orchestras to shame, whilst the orchestral blend was, following that initial uncertainty, almost faultless. To marshal such huge forces is an achievement in itself but Salonen’s true achievement was to go beyond such ‘traffic control’ to engage musically with the work. After the bitter disappointment of Monday’s Flying Dutchman, in which the conductor had proved unable or unwilling to maintain any musical line, this was an object lesson in how to do so. Tempo variations were all successfully integrated into a varying, supremely flexible pulse. Orchestral detail, for instance the beautiful harp figurations, was highlighted, but never too much. And, in the balance, or rather dialectic, between symphonic cohesion and motivic definition, Salonen proved himself as true a Wagnerian as a Schoenbergian. I do not think I have ever heard, in the Wood-dove’s lament, the ’cellos’ evocation of the monk’s sounding of the Angelus so beautiful and so closely integrated into the dove’s narrative. Yet it never stood out as ‘mere’ pictorialism; it contributed to the ‘purely’ musical development rather than detracted from it. What Willi Reich called ‘the work’s infinitely subtle motivic cohesion’ was superlatively served on this occasion. Now I want to hear Salonen in Wagner.

The singing was throughout of a very high standard. Stig Andersen and Soile Isokoski proved sure interpreters of their parts. One might at times have thought them just a little ‘safe’, but it is no mean achievement to have presented so musical and coherent a reading. Isokoski’s experience in Lieder-singing shone through; thought had clearly gone into every word and its relationship to the music. Andersen’s slightly elderly-sounding Heldentenor sounded quite appropriate to Waldemar; unlike so many of his ilk, he can sing the part and never resorted to barking. I do not think I have encountered a better Wood-dove than Monica Groop, her lament as plangently moving as it is possible to imagine and her storytelling impeccable. Ralf Lukas was an admirable Peasant, whilst Andreas Conrad was a truly Mime-like Klaus-Narr, bringing home the similarity to an extent I do not recall previously having appreciated. Barbara Sukowa was at least as excellent a Speaker as she was on Claudio Abbado’s superlative Vienna recording. Her text was so internalised that she could deliver it with a freedom, always intimately connected to the music, which apparently transcended any impression of rehearsal. It was a great pity, though, that the use of microphones was not only so clearly audible, but so crass that she sounded as if she were almost in an entirely different acoustic. Perhaps it is necessary, or advisable, to use microphones here, although I doubt it; if so, however, it really needs to be handled better. The choral singing was equally excellent, the Wild Hunt duly terrifying and ghostly – shades of the Dutchman, mediated very heavily by Götterdämmerung – whilst the sheer honest exultance of Schoenberg’s final hymn to the sun was captured ecstatically.

It was a good idea to provide surtitles, rather than have everyone spending half the time at following the programme – often a line or two behind. However, the translation left more than a little to be desired, not so much in terms of accuracy as with respect to strange infelicities of style, unsure whether it was aiming at archaism or efficient modern rendering. The appearance of ‘Gurre-on-Sea’ was unfortunate, to say the least, evoking images of Clacton rather than Teutonic mystery. And the audience was sadly on typical form when it came to shuffling and coughing. Sometimes the latter is unavoidable, I know, but surely the woman sitting next to me could have waited a little longer than the end of the second bar. The shifting impressionistic textures of the Prelude suffered particularly in this regard. Yet such irritations remained minor in the face of so movingly assured a performance. If the rest of the series lives up to the expectations now engendered, London and various other European cities are in for a rare treat. Next stop: Verklärte Nacht and Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony.