Alexander Goehr 90th Birthday Concert – Goehr, Richards, and Anderson, Nash Ensemble et al., 22 March 2022

Wigmore Hall

Goehr-Stravinsky: ….around Stravinsky, op.72, for violin, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon
Emma-Ruth Richards: de Stâmparare, for solo oboe
Goehr: Largo siciliano, op.91, for piano, horn, and violin
Goehr: The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, op.102, for voice, clarinet, and piano (world premiere)
Julian Anderson: Ring Dance, for two violins
Goehr: Combat of Joseph della Reina and the Devil, for two sopranos, mezzo-soprano, tenor, piano, and viola (world premiere)

Héloïse Werner, Emilia Bertolini (sopranos)

Clare Presland (mezzo-soprano)

Joshua Ellicott (tenor)

Nash Ensemble

Alasdair Beatson (piano/director)

Alexander Goehr will be 90 in August; here the Nash Ensemble, longstanding Goehr champions, got in a little early with a celebratory concert including no fewer than two Goehr premieres and three other of his works. Compared to his two ‘Manchester School’ colleagues, Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies—John Ogdon and Elgar Howarth being very different cases—Goehr has latterly, perhaps always, had a raw deal in terms of public and institutional approbation. It is never too late to start setting things right, though; and if it is long past time for our opera houses and orchestras to rise once again to the challenge, this Nash Inventions concert will surely have confirmed the faithful in their habit and made a number of new converts. 

The Nash Ensemble premiered ….around Stravinsky twenty years ago in 2002. It is difficult to imagine a more sparkling, witty, and involving performance than that given here. With Stravinsky’s Pastorale at its heart, Goehr ‘remembers and refers to the piece “around” which it is performed’. And so, first we heard rich-toned solo violin (Benjamin Nabarro), in the movement ‘Dushkin’, which had at least a little, I fancied, of Stravinsky’s singular way with the instrument, albeit more rooted in German tradition (Schoenberg and Bach). Stravinsky himself, as automated music box, roaring towards (first version) and out of (second, as heard here) the Twenties, yielded to solo violin once more, this time an ‘Introduzione’, as eloquent as its predecessor, in character both related and different. Its proportions, not simply temporal, but also vertical and horizontal, sounded just right to me, beautifully handled both as work and performance. For a concluding Rondo, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon returned. One might initially have thought this Stravinsky, or at least Stravinsky-adjacent, but distance increased as it went on its merry way: not only a neat but an expressive and enjoyable conceit. 

Emma-Ruth Richards’s de Stâmparare received a fine performance from oboist Gareth Hulse. Based on a Romanian folk song, Hora Spoitorilor, it sang, cried, and in the tradition of the doina, seemed to invoke help or solace from beyond. Microtones woven around its (broadly) tonal core, it remained both direct and ambiguous, phrasing lightly deconstructive or developmental. 

Written in 2012, Goehr’s Largo siciliano stands precisely midway, temporally, between ….around Stravinsky and today. It refers, strikingly and surprisingly, to Messiaen’s Mode de valeurs et d’intensités, with what I think of ultimately as a respectful lack of respect. Throughout its sequence of variations for piano, horn, and violin, fascinating shadows and echoes of very different music emerge: melodic lines, rhythms, and harmonies all transformed. There is some splendidly gestural music, not entirely foreign to Messiaen, but darker, Brahmsian tendencies and related variegation are more typical. Indeed, the greater connection that struck me to Messiaen was less harmonic, than pertaining to a way of listening to harmony. (Or perhaps that was just me. At any rate, the analysis lectures I heard Goehr give at Cambridge, in which he argued the importance of mixture chords, as opposed to endless ‘growth’ of harmony in the guise of ‘new’ chords, seemed much to the point.) With counterpoint and harmony in fine balance, developing variation propelled us along a path whose transformational treatment of variations put me in mind of Liszt or the Beethoven of the Diabelli Variations. These were but reference points, though; I do not think there was anything so straightforward as ‘influence’. This may not have been serial music, which had long since become too predictable for the composer, but there seemed to me an idea, maybe even an Idea, at work not entirely dissimilar. Through the voices of three highly independent instruments, a whole world of potentialities opened up—and closed. 

Goehr’s The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba visits the Queen’s own visit to St Anthony in a Flaubert parody from Ulysses. Immediately, its combination of fantasy and the sardonic captivates, indeed even from its purely instrumental introduction. Full of incident and with a keen sense of musical narrative, it is overflowing with Schoenbergian lyricism that satisfies as much as it beguiles. A typically animated and detailed performance from Héloïse Werner, stepping in at very short notice for an indisposed Claire Booth, extended our understanding not only of Goehr but of Molly Bloom, leading us to the calculated disruption of the wake-up call: ‘You are a poor old stick in the mud. Go and see life. See the wide world.’ 

Julian Anderson’s early Ring Dance (1987) for two violins followed. Its grating—in a positive sense—Hardanger fiddling truly dug into the instruments of Nabarro and Michael Gurevich; or rather, they did, in its service. Work and performance served up an arc clearly felt, experienced, as well as observed, its notes worked for and achieved. Whilst it could hardly be considered spectral music, perhaps some of its processes fulfilled a similar function, not unlike Goehr’s transformations for serialism. It is, at any rate, a work newly released by the composer for public performance, and which he considers ‘to some extent … a prototype for everything I’ve composed since’. 

The second of two premieres was of Goehr’s setting, somewhat in the manner of Janáček’s Diary of One who Disappeared, of a Kabbalistic ‘Jewish Faust’ story, presented some time ago to the composer by Gerschom Scholem and latterly translated by Goehr from German intro English. The ‘combat’—a nod to Goehr’s beloved Monteverdi, in the guise of Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda—of a rabbi with the Devil, the rabbi and his disciples setting out to climb the mountain where the Devil and his consort Lilith live, summoning Elijah, angels, and archangels along the way to help, only to be told that help his impossible, and having succeeded, failing through trickery and temptation at the last is told with dry wit yet expressive generosity (so long as one actually listens). A sweet-toned Joshua Ellicott, as the Teacher, was echoed and elaborated at the first by solo viola (Lars Anders Tomter), and latterly the full ensemble in varied, differentiated fashion, modes of not un-Brechtian Verfremdung lightly worn yet richly and amusingly expressive. The Schoenberg of Moses und Aron and smaller choral works stands in the background of the writing for the three disciples when heard together, yet each (Werner, Emilia Bertolini, and Clare Presland) was given plenty of scope for individual, shiftingly cast portrayal. 

These passages of narration, in which roles merged and separated, fascinated as much as the dialectical, rabbinical wisdom at the musical as well as philosophical heart of the work; indeed, the former seemed to emerge from the latter. Each of ten episodes had its own integrity, yet contributed to ascent as a whole. Viola harmonics, as the Angel Sandalphon vanished, echoing collaboration between the two high angels Metatron (loud) and Katrie (pianissimo), and a sense of time occasionally suspended, yet often pressing on furiously contributed to a work of well-judged proportions, leading ironically in the light of where the evening had begun in violin terms, with victory for the Devil, depravity for the rabbi, and intriguing survival for one of the disciple-narrators. ‘Only I remain to tell the tale.’ Make of that what you will—and that seemed to be the invitation. 

Now, please, for a revival of Goehr’s Brechtian masterpiece, Arden Must Die. ENO, are you listening? In time for the fiftieth anniversary of its 1974 British premiere at Sadlers Wells?

The Winter’s Tale, The Hermes Experiment, 13 December 2016

Cockpit Theatre, Marylebone

 

Images: Cathy Pyle

Leontes – William McGeough

Hermione – Sadie Parsons
Polixenes, First Gentleman – Robert Willoughby
Paulina – Louisa Hollway
Mamillius, Camillo, Antigonus, Officer, Second Gentleman – Christopher Adams
Perdita/Soprano – Héloïse Werner
Florizel – Stephen Williams (clarinets)
Anne Denholm (harp)
Marianne Schofield (double bass)

Kim Ashton (composer) 

Nina Brazier (director)
Sophie Mosberger (designs)
Damian Robertson (lighting)
Hanna Grzeskiewicz and Héloïse Werner (co-producers)

Much of the most interesting art of our time seems to ask questions of us rather than to answer them. Sociologically, there are doubtless many reasons for that, many of them blindingly obvious if we pause to consider the world around us. (And who amongst us is not doing that at the moment?!) That is certainly my experience of most recent worthwhile opera (theatre, more broadly) staging. Our lot, whether we like it or no, is metatheatrical, and a good deal of other meta-things too. On the whole, I like it; I certainly value it.

In that spirit, this new ‘musical reimagining’ of The Winter’s Tale from The Hermes Experiment asked questions of itself and of us, not least concerning genre. I had been expecting an opera of some sort; that was certainly not what I got. We heard an hour’s worth of Shakespeare’s text, very well delivered, well acted too, with music. Rarely were words and music opposed, although sometimes they were. There were elements of song, but more often, boundaries between words, music, and gesture (I always seem to fall back upon Wagner at some point), between actors and musicians, between most components present or believed to be present, were questioned, blurred, negated, perhaps even, dare I suggest it, transcended.  

Polixenes (Robert Willoughby)

Adaptations have long been part of Shakespearean reception; there would be little reception to speak of without them. Garrick’s Florizel and Perdita is an obvious example here; (semi-)opera-lovers will immediately think of Purcell’s Fairy Queen. There was no pastoral, but so what? No one was claiming this to be a performance of the ‘original’; insofar as I thought of what this ‘was’, or perhaps better of where I might locate it, somewhere between a version with incidental music and a (mostly spoken) cantata-cum-music-theatre-piece might have come closer than many attempts. But I did not really spend my time trying to locate what I saw and heard. I took it, I hope, for what it was, and enjoyed it, my Shakespearean appetite whetted rather than sated. When contrasted with the bizarre Glyndebourne-Royal Opera House Macbeth opera, I know which I found more involving, by a country mile.

Kim Ashton’s name was given as composer, but not in the traditional top billing, for this seems to have been a genuinely collaborative effort. I was put in mind of Schoenberg’s futuristic vision of studios at musical work: ironic, given his emphatic self-understanding – ours too, surely – as Teutonic, Romantic ‘genius’. Here, however, there was nothing ironic, nor falsely modest. As Ashton himself explained in the programme, ‘My position as ‘composer’ of the piece is precarious: while my name appears at the top of the score (a compilation of instructions, including only sparse musical notes), the music is as much by The Hermes Experiment as it is by me, since most of what you will hear is being improvised live, according to musical shapes and behaviours agreed in advance.’ That would only work, at least in the sense that it did here, with excellent preparation, for which director, Nina Brazier should, I presume take a good deal of credit too, likewise everyone else involved.  

Hermione (Sadie Parsons) and Perdita (Héloïse Werner)

For instance, again to quote Ashton, ‘The “folk song”,’ which certainly had that air, ‘in the second half is a case in point – particularly since it is the first tonal piece I have ‘composed’ in about 15 years!’ (As Schoenberg admitted, there were still good tunes to be written in C major, although this was not, if I remember correctly, in C.) ‘When someone suggested that a folk song would suit one scene well, the soprano Héloïse [Werner] sketched out its opening melody; I then fleshed this out into a rough whole; finally Héloïse, Anne [Denholm] (who plays it later on the Harp) and I all tweaked it here and there until I no longer remember who was originally responsible for which note.’ The darkness of the bass clarinet and its interjections made their points, not necessarily translatable into words; so too, did the harmonic – and melodic – resonances of the double bass.

Similarly, actors came close to music – do they not always, in Shakespeare? – and in some cases, definitely crossed any such a boundary. The inability to handle Shakespeare’s verse – there are many ways, of course, but there are also failures – is the bane of many a contemporary Shakespeare performance. Not here, for all conveyed both its beauty and its meaning, Robert Willoughby perhaps my favourite in the former respect. William McGeough offered a subtle portrait of wounded masculinity as Leontes, Sadie Parsons an intriguing voice (Hermione) whom we wanted to believe, and whom we knew we were correct to believe, but who could yet sow some of that doubt experienced by Leontes. I could go on, but it was a company effort, symbolised perhaps, by Héloïse Werner’s wordless soprano – a voice from beyond in more than one sense, I think – becoming Perdita. Likewise, instrumentalists (the other members of the Hermes Experiment all outstanding) were called on not only to employ extended techniques but also, music-theatre-style, to participate in the ‘dramatic’ action.

Hermione 

There was, then, a particular, one-off sense of enchantment to the night’s proceedings. I shall not say ‘more, please’, since that would seem rather against the spirit of what was seen and heard; I was, though, delighted to have been there.