Tenebrae/ECO/Short - Handel, Messiah, 10 December 2014

Cadogan Hall

Grace Davidson (soprano)

Martha McLorinan (mezzo-soprano)

David de Winter (tenor)

William Gaunt (bass)

 

Tenebrae

English Chamber Orchestra

Nigel Short (conductor)

 

Time was, etc., etc. Now we account ourselves fortunate to have the opportunity to hear any Handel, even the Messiah, on modern instruments. But of course, things are not quite so simple as that. Not just Baroque, not just Classical, but even Romantic music and beyond have been increasingly surrendered to the strange hybrid of allegedly ‘period style’ – in reality, as Richard Taruskin has long argued, a thoroughly contemporary style – and a mixture of instruments from any combination of periods that appears to suit those performing. One London conductor has, for instance, recently, bizarrely used ‘period’ trumpets alongside modern horns (and strings) in Haydn, in performances whose principal purpose seems to have been to rush through the music as quickly as possible, with occasional distending of tempo apparently just ‘because he can’. The meaningless of post-modernism – and this is where Taruskin’s critique seems to me to have things quite the wrong way around – has been the victor, not modernism.

 

There was nothing so extreme here, thank goodness. But it was difficult not to suspect that the English Chamber Orchestra’s string playing was somewhat hampered by instructions at odds with their modern instruments. Modern, that is, save for the bizarre appearance of ‘period’ kettledrums, which certainly made an impact but an impact which seemed intended for another performance entirely. It was far from clear, either to me or to the violinist friend who attended with me, that what the violinists were doing with their right hands was compatible with the actions of their left hands. Lower strings seemed better off in that respect. Playing was generally reasonably cultivated, but surely would have been far more so, had the players been encouraged to rejoice in the capabilities of their instruments. It was notable that leader Stephanie Gonley’s violin solo in the penultimate ‘If God be for us’ – not the happiest of choices in the version of the work offered in performance – was far freer in style, greatly to its and our benefit.

 

Nigel Short’s tempi were sometimes a little on the fast side, but there was nothing unduly objectionable in that respect. For instance, if ‘Ev’ry valley shall be exalted’ was more energetic than we are used to, a convincing enough case was made for the decision. Although a small choir, twenty-strong, Tenebrae was perfectly capable of making a full sound, not least in ‘Surely He hath borne our griefs,’ which emerged furiously, and the (relatively) mighty conclusion to the final chorus. Alas, the ‘Hallelujah!’ was largely disrupted for me by a man a couple of rows behind, who insisted on jangling loose change in his pocket throughout its course, a strange updating of the custom of a segment of the Viennese public to jangle keys in order to disrupt Schoenberg’s concerts. The freshness of the choral voices had been immediately apparent in ‘And the glory of the Lord,’ and continued to give considerable pleasure and enlightenment.

 

Finest of the vocal soloists was an outstanding Martha McLorinan, described in the programme as an ‘alto’, although she sounded more of a mezzo. It was a pity that she was not given more to sing. She edged closer to Handel’s operas in the B sections of ‘But who may abide the day of his coming?’ and ‘He was despised and rejected,’ although never too much. There was contrast and continuity, then, and Charles Jennens’s text was ably communicated. Alas, the contrast between McLorinan and the strangely pop-like – I said we were in post-modernist territory! – delivery of the soprano, Grace Davidson, was especially glaring during their duet, ‘He shall feed His flock.’ Davidson made little of the words there and elsewhere. Although her light soprano might initially have sounded attractive enough, both it and her performance lacked any greater depth. Her coloratura was correct but strangely robotic. Tenor, David de Winter, opened promisingly. His first accompagnato, ‘Comfort ye, my people’ was splendidly imploring, gaining in strength as it progressed, the following aria nicely variegated. However, despite a gloriously lingering ‘Thy rebuke hath broken His heart,’ the aria, ‘Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron’ proved somewhat strained. There is a good oratorio voice there, though, without doubt. So is there in the case of bass, William Gaunt, whose attention to both words and music impressed throughout; moreover, he was not afraid to employ fuller tone on occasion.

Wishing C.P.E. Bach a very happy 300th birthday...

In case you thought that the music of the most original, most misunderstood, and, above all, the greatest of Bach's sons need sound charmlessly emaciated and absurdly hard-driven, listen to this from 1967. Rarely has Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's sounded with greater enlightenment - and Enlightenment. The concerto emerges as both good fun and a substantial work to be reckoned with: just the right balance for the forces, here deployed to excellent effect. Raymond Leppard conducts the English Chamber Orchestra. The four harpsichordists are the sorely underrated - at least today - George Malcolm, Simon Preston, Geoffrey Parsons, and Valda Aveling. For more on music at the court of Frederick the Great, please click here.





Here below are a few recommended recordings of CPE Bach's music, vocal, instrumental, and orchestral. There is more to explore, but I hope that these will offer a taste:

ECO/Vermunt - Handel and Adrian Thomas, 4 July 2013

St Paul’s Cathedral

Handel – Te Deum for the Peace of Utrecht, HWV 278

Adrian Thomas – The Idea of Peace (world premiere)
Handel – Jubilate for the Peace of Utrecht, HWV 279

Gillian Keith (soprano)

Lucy Hall (soprano)
Kamilla Dunstan (mezzo-soprano)
Emily Kyte (mezzo-soprano)
Mark Wilde (tenor)
Martin Hässler (baritone)

Choristers of Utrecht Cathedral Chior School

Toonkunstkoor Utrecht

Canon Michale Hampel (narrator)

English Chamber Orchestra

Jos Vermunt (conductor)

 

The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, concluded the long-running War of the Spanish Succession and signalled the final nail in the coffin for Louis XIV’s aspirations to universal monarchy. Accompanying commercial treaties – the Treaty itself actually a series of treaties – laid the way for economic expansion, so the ‘peace’ seems an especially appropriate settlement for the City of London Festival to be celebrating its tercentenary. Given the death toll, variously estimated at somewhere between 400,000 and 1.251 million, I could not also but help think of Voltaire’s Candide, in which the tradition of the military Te Deum joins the list of items for excoriation:

There was never anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so well disposed as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, and cannon made music such as Hell itself had never heard. The cannons first of all laid flat about six thousand men on each side; the muskets swept away from this best of worlds nine or ten thousand ruffians who infested its surface. The bayonet was also a sufficient reason for the death of several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls. Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.

At length, while the two kings were causing Te Deum to be sung each in his own camp, Candide resolved to go and reason elsewhere on effects and causes. He passed over heaps of dead and dying, and first reached a neighbouring village; it was in cinders, it was an Abare village which the Bulgarians had burnt according to the laws of war. Here, old men covered with wounds, beheld their wives, hugging their children to their bloody breasts, massacred before their faces; there, their daughters, disembowelled and breathing their last after having satisfied the natural wants of Bulgarian heroes; while others, half burnt in the flames, begged to be despatched. The earth was strewed with brains, arms, and legs.

It is no coincidence that the eighteenth century was especially ripe with schemes for ‘perpetual peace’, from writers such as the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Rousseau, and Kant. Not that any of them had the slightest chance of being considered as anything but wild utopianism, as the European states system continued to dictate foreign policy. (We might bitterly recall New Labour’s claim to have been adopting something called an ‘ethical foreign policy’ whilst launching a series of murderous invasions.)

 

Returning to 1713, Handel, newly settled in London, in today’s unlovely parlance an ‘economic migrant’, wrote his Te Deum and Jubilate for the Chapel Royal, and had them formally premiered in St Paul’s Cathedral in July, as here, though a public dress rehearsal had actually taken place in March of that year. It took my ears a while to adjust to the notorious St Paul’s acoustic, the dome swallowing up so much of the sound, and the reverberation continuing longer than anywhere else I can think of. Jos Vermunt wisely did not push the music of the Jubilate; trying to do battle with the echo would only result in victory for the latter. There were even times when that echo helped, or at least added a notable additional quality to the performance, for instance in the halo surrounding the words ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’. In this relatively early Handel, there are already borrowings from some of his Italian music, but also kinship conscious or otherwise, with French ceremonial music – Lully and Charpentier – also made its mark, albeit with a welcome lack of bombast. There is plangency too, here conveyed with skill both by the ECO, oboes especially, and the soloists. ‘When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man’ was taken wonderfully slowly, and successfully sustained, for which particular credit should go to mezzo-soprano, Kamilla Dunstan. The following a cappella quartet, ‘When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death’ seemed to look forward to the unaccompanied chorus, ‘Since by man came death,’ from the Messiah, benefiting from excellent balancing between the soloists; it likewise is followed by concerted rejoicing. Echt-Handelian trumpets made a fine appearance upon ‘O Lord, save thy people,’ though curiously accompanied by a lengthy ad lib from an audience noseblower; his command of rhythm was more commendable than his timing. All of the soloists acquitted themselves well. Having already mentioned Dunstan, I should also single out the baritone, Martin Hässler, who combined beauty of tone with verbal clarity and understanding; I hope to hear more of him.

 

Choral singing, somewhat hampered by the acoustic, seemed to gain a degree of focus in the premiere of Adrian Thomas’s The Idea of Peace, the Toonkunstkoor Utrecht now joined by choristers from Utrecht Cathedral Choir School. The City of Utrecht had commissioned the work, which here received its first performance. Alas, whilst performances, not least from the two soloists, Gillian Keith and Mark Wilde, seemed excellent, the work itself disappointed. Hampered by an over-enthusiastic gathering of texts from disparate sources by Arjen Eijenraam, Thomas had little success in transforming lines such as ‘People are infinitely precious/Take them as they are,’ or ‘Bring dialogue, benefit, and joy into the world’, into something idiomatically vocal. He was certainly fortunate, however, in having Keith to despatch words of Queen Anne, ‘We have this business of Peace so much at heart’, with pinpoint melismatic skill. (The accompanying chimes sounded an uncomfortably ‘New Age’ note, however.) Vague orientalism, for instance in a prominent cello solo, put me in mind of another occasional piece, from one Francis Grier, my first Cambridge college, Jesus, endured for its quincentenary; the sole comfort from this work’s protracted progress was that none of us would be likely to hear it ever again. If soft-centred, anodyne harmonies, allied to excessive reliance upon the harp and weirdly jaunty settings of words such as ‘Non Violence, Truthfulness, Tolerance/Respect and Partnership not only be/renewed though Kingdoms, States/Dominions and Provinces...,’ be your thing, then you might have looked more kindly upon it. Or, as a tedious refrain had it, ‘Listen, talk, and learn and flourish together,’ might have been a little more the order of the day; to my ears, it sounded more akin to the soundtrack for a primary school ‘learning activity’, run hopelessly out of control. How one longed, amongst this paradoxically glib worthiness, for a true message of the horrors of war: A Survivor from Warsaw perhaps, or Il canto sospeso.

 

What one longed for still more was the return of Handel, whose Jubilate therefore proved all the more welcome. Dunstan’s duetting with trumpet proved a delight, as indeed did all the expressive instrumental and vocal solos (Handel limits himself to three here). The darkly chromatic setting of ‘For the Lord is gracious, His mercy is everlasting,’ peered forward towards Mozart, who would surely have loved Handel’s setting, had he known it. A resplendent final doxology brought together the ECO and choir in harmony infinitely more convincing than that attempted during the previous piece, enthusiastically presented though it might have been. Handel nevertheless emerged unscathed, ready for another three hundred years.

 

 

More from Baker, Leppard, and the ECO...

This time, Ottavia's lament, 'Disprezzata regina,' from the greatest of all seventeenth-century operas, Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea. A fine paradox this: Monteverdi's music is so intimately tied to the words, yet, such are the integrity and intensity of the performance that one should most likely glean their meaning without even a smattering of Italian.

Janet Baker and Raymond Leppard in Gluck's 'Le perfide Renaud me fuit'

As a pendant to the recent review of Acis and Galatea, here are Dame Janet Baker and Raymond Leppard, again with the English Chamber Orchestra, in the supremely moving 'Le perfide Renaud me fuit', from Armide. Is any of our great musical dramatists, with the possible exception of Schoenberg, more scandalously neglected than Gluck?



For the excellent full collection of Gluck arias from these artists, click on the link below.



For a review of Armide in Berlin, directed by Calixto Bieito, and which might not quite have been Dame Janet's cup of tea, click here. (In relation to which, what tantalising news it is that Bieito will direct Carmen for ENO! Although almost anything would be preferable to another Met co-production...)

ECO/Leppard - Messiah, 15 December 2010

Cadogan Hall

Mary Bevan (soprano)
Sarah-Jane Lewis (contralto)
Joshua Ellicott (tenor)
George Mosley (bass)

Rodolfus Choir (chorus master: Ralph Allwood)
English Chamber Orchestra
Raymond Leppard (conductor)


The ghost of Christmas past? What a joy to hear Raymond Leppard conducting Handel very much in the Advent present. Times have changed, of course, and a musician who once stood at the very heart of Baroque performance, in this country and across the world, has long been considered at best politically incorrect by the merely fashionable. Where a contemporary such as Charles Mackerras embraced much of the period-performance wave, the treasure trove of Leppard’s musicianship from Monteverdi onwards has endured a frankly disgraceful press from many who should know better, rather more so indeed than that of Neville Marriner, another contemporary resistant to the dubious calls of ‘authenticity’. One eminent conductor recalled not so long ago his determination to bring period instruments to Glyndebourne for Mozart, and this at a time when the festival, he claimed, was still performing Monteverdi’s music as if it were Brahms. Anyone listening to the fine DVD of L’incoronazione di Poppea from 1984 could never seriously have thought, let alone said, such a thing, but sadly the days when Monteverdi, or indeed Handel, could be approached as music rather than as pseudo-archaeology are long past.

Many of Leppard’s greatest triumphs have been with the English Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble with which he has worked for more than fifty years – that is, when it was still the Goldsbrough Orchestra. It was doubly welcome then to have the ECO/Leppard partnership reunited for this performance of the Messiah. This was an accomplished performance, perhaps not the most exciting will ever hear, but with a splendidly collegiate sense. Indeed, with the young voices of the Rodolfus Choir, all ‘veterans’ aged between sixteen and twenty-five from the Eton Choral Courses, there was more than a hint of a superior Oxbridge performance, albeit far better rehearsed than would generally be the case with undergraduate musicians. For there could be no gainsaying the skill of the choral singing, well prepared by Ralph Allwood. There were occasions when, even in the relatively small surroundings of the Cadogan Hall, I might have preferred larger forces –strings were scaled 6-5-3-3-1 – but intimacy reaped its own rewards. Sir Thomas Beecham is a wicked treat, which perhaps spoils us for everything that comes after, but it would clearly be as wrong to elevate Beecham’s Messiah over all others as puritanically to denigrate it. And the occasional thin moment aside, the cultivation of the ECO strings proved a joy. Not that there was anything sentimentally ‘Romantic’ about the performance, far from it, as the harsh passion music of ‘He gave his back to the smiters’ reminded us; but passion had another side too, as Leppard soon demonstrated in the aptly deliberate tempo adopted for the tenor recitative, ‘Thy rebuke hath broken His heart,’ plangently delivered by Joshua Ellicott. Moreover, the siciliano lilt to the ‘Pastoral Symphony’ both pleased and, in its tenderness, intimated sadness foretold.

The emphasis lay upon letting Handel’s music speak for itself, rather than imposing ‘effects’, as currently favoured by a number of fashionable ‘specialists’, although Leppard’s own edition nevertheless threw up a number of surprises, for instance the duet version for mezzo and soprano of ‘He shall feed his flock,’ the use of solo voices as well as chorus in ‘But thanks be to God,’ and the inclusion of the tenor recitative, ‘Their sound is gone out into all lands’. There is, thank God, no ‘correct’ text of the Messiah; it is always interesting to observe which choices a conductor and/or editor might make. Ornamentation was employed throughout, at times quite ornately, yet without exhibitionism. A particularly good example would be ‘O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion,’ when, aside from imaginative use of solo violin (leader, Stephanie Gonley), the reprise presented complemenornamentation from both soloists, Gonley and mezzo-soprano, Sarah-Jane Lewis.

Vocal soloists proved somewhat variable. Lewis had her moments but sometimes sounded a little soft of focus; I had the impression that this was a voice that will undergo considerable further development. Bass George Mosley, on the other hand, sometimes sounded dry, as if his voice had lost its bloom. In ‘The trumpet shall sound,’ the ‘B’ section sadly proved as startling a drop of inspiration as ever, but it was not helped by considerable drying of tone and intonational problems. That said, Mosley and the other musicians proved movingly sincere in the reprise of the initial material. Ellicott on occasion had a certain gravelly tone to his voice, but it soon disappeared; perhaps he was a little under the weather. At any rate, ‘Thou shalt break them,’ emerged in virile fashion, demonstrating that one does not have to be an heroic tenor in the mould of Jon Vickers (Beecham’s tenor) to impress here. Soprano Mary Bevan was the most consistently impressive of the soloists, beautiful of tone and long of breath. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ was a true highlight of the performance. Diction was excellent from all.

We stood for the ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus, which doubtless helped to send shivers down the spine. But even in a relatively restrained performance such as this, Handel’s genius would doubtless have accomplished that, likewise in the final ‘Amen’ chorus. Leppard did not at all play the showman, but his understated musicianship ensured that the extraordinary message embodied both in Handel’s score and in Charles Jennens’s selection from Scripture provoked wonder and thought. As we prepare to celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation, that is just as it should be.

ECO/Davis - Haydn, Mozart, and Berlioz, 13 May 2009

Cadogan Hall

Haydn – Symphony no.94 in G major, ‘Surprise’
Mozart – Clarinet concerto in A major, KV 622
Berlioz – Les nuits d’été

Antony Pike (clarinet)
Dame Felicity Lott (soprano)
English Chamber Orchestra
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)

This programme seemed to be organised around composers in whose music Sir Colin Davis has long excelled, rather than any particular connections between the works being performed. Sir Colin’s association with the English Chamber Orchestra must extend back for almost half a century. There could be no doubt from this evening’s performances that the players love working with him. It is rather unusual to have the ordering symphony – concerto – song-cycle, but there is nothing wrong with that and it was quite right to save the radiant Dame Felicity Lott until the last.

Davis’s Concertgebouw set of Haydn’s London symphonies remains a failsafe recommendation; I find it almost impossible to choose between it and Eugen Jochum’s recordings with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. (Karajan and Bernstein are certainly no also-rans.) It was therefore with great relish that I looked forward to his performance of the Surprise Symphony, no.94. This was a lighter, perhaps also brighter performance, with a smaller band: the strings throughout the concert were sized 8.6.4.4.2. The Cadogan Hall is not a large venue, so what might have sounded a touch undernourished in, say, the Barbican, did not here. Light and shade were equally apparent in an extremely well-judged introduction to the first movement. Momentary untidiness of ensemble at the opening of the exposition was soon a distant memory; when repeated, there was no such shortcoming. The woodwind struck me as especially fine, a highlight amongst highlights being the oboe trills. A strong bass line, despite the smallness of the section, underpinned rhythm, harmony, and the combination of the two, whilst Davis attended to the symphonic logic, of which there could be no doubt. The slow movement variations brought an equally strong sense of development, if different in kind. Crisp but never dry strings balanced well with ravishing woodwind. There were sterner moments, for instance the turn to the minor mode in the second variation and the ensuing contrapuntal writing, but one could hear Haydn smiling behind such learning. In the third variation, the oboe soloist once again impressed greatly, as did William Bennett’s contribution on the flute. Trumpets imparted a military impression in the next variation, but it was still fun. To my surprise, Davis took the minuet one-to-a-bar. Still, it was never hard-driven and this music is harmonically less complex than late Mozart. Haydn can take such treatment, especially when taken with a swing such as here. The finale was fast but not too fast; the violins sparkled as if their notes were fountain water at Schönbrunn – or, perhaps better, Esterháza. (Yes, I am well aware that the symphony was written for London.) Harmonic security was very much the key to the fizz that accompanied the music; never did it degenerate into a scramble, as too often it can. Drive and grace were shown to be far from antithetical. Most important, there was always a smile upon the face of the music we heard. And how much more natural this sounded than so many, more consciously ‘moulded’, Haydn performances; indeed, I do not think it could have sounded more natural.

If Davis has long been estimable in Haydn, he has reigned supreme in Mozart since the death of Karl Böhm. (When I count the present-day conductors I should positively wish to hear in Mozart, I find myself unable to go beyond five.) I was not, however, entirely convinced by the first movement of the clarinet concerto, which I felt was taken a little too fast. Granted, there were plenty of opportunities for the music – as well as the soloist – to breathe, but the mood seemed unduly lacking in that almost Brahmsian autumnal quality which, for me at least, is one of the hallmarks of so much late Mozart. (Another would be the bewildering dialectic between simplicity and complexity, supremely evident in The Magic Flute.) Antony Pike, himself a member of the ECO, provided a well shaped solo lone, nicely flexible, and inviting of tone. The low notes of his basset clarinet sang out beautifully, although he encountered a few technical problems. I had no qualms whatsoever concerning the slow movement. It was warm, aria-like – was that the Countess I heard? The music was nostalgic but never mawkish, home to true Mozartian ambivalence – how utterly different he is from Haydn! – especially through the orchestral shadows. Here the warming yet fragile rays of the sun upon an autumn afternoon could certainly be felt. Clearly, the musicians loved this music deeply – and how could they not? The finale exhibited an apt sense of play but did not go undisturbed by shadows. Its hunting compound duple rhythm notwithstanding, joy was not nearly so unalloyed as it would have been with Haydn. Yet, if sometimes we were smiling through tears, we were still smiling.

The second half was devoted to Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été. There were occasions here when I felt the lack of a greater body of strings, but they were perhaps surprisingly few. For instance, upon the climatic words of Sur les lagunes, ‘Et comme je l’aimais!/Je n’aimerai jamais,’ the ECO’s strings impressively showed how much strength they really could muster. Their pizzicato palpitations during the haunting – in more than one sense – Le spectre de la rose – were equally fine. There were once again some splendid woodwind solos, and Sir Colin – unsurprisingly – put not a foot wrong, every tempo sounding right, every transition perfectly judged. It was only really in the first song, Villanelle, that the musicians sounded a touch ill at ease, and this should certainly not be exaggerated. Dame Felicity also truly came into her own in its successor, Le spectre de la rose, incalculable wealth of meaning subtly invested in a single word such as ‘virginal’, even if the transformation, such as it was, were only apparent in retrospect; for one could certainly hear a twinkle in her voice on the final line of each stanza in Villanelle. The restlessness of Berlioz’s orchestration in Sur les lagunes was apparent throughout. Lott imparted a grave beauty to Théophile Gautier’s words – and Berlioz’s setting – though never at the expense of style. The very occasional edge to her voice in Absence was irrelevant in the face of such artistry, the repetitions of ‘Reviens, reviens’ ever the same and yet ever different. It should be said that, here as elsewhere, her every word was crystal clear. Au cimetière was properly unsettling, a true child of the strange phenomenon that is French Romanticism. Berlioz’s weird harmonies were never turned into a freak show and therefore emerged all the more meaningfully. And the Romantic expectation that could be conjured from a single word such as ‘éveillée’ (awakened) once again provided an object lesson in vocal artistry. The final song, L’île inconnue, brought the right sense of adventure but also a hint at fears of what the unknown might bring. I especially liked the bubbling woodwind in the final stanza, gently mocking the girl who naïvely wished to be taken to a shore where love might last forever. This was a fine performance indeed.