LSO CO/Martín - Mozart, 29 March 2026

LSO St Luke’s

Bassoon Concerto in B-flat major, KV 191/186e
Horn Concerto no.3 in E-flat major, KV 447
Sinfonia concertante for violin, viola, and orchestra, KV 364

Benjamin Marquise Gilmore (violin)

Eivind Ringstad (viola)

Daniel Jemison (bassoon)

Timothy Jones (horn)

LSO Chamber Orchestra

Jaime Martín (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

On the one hand, there can never be enough Mozart, whether that refer to works or performances; on the other, there can readily be more than enough, should the performances not at least come close to perfection. This LSO Chamber Orchestra concert oddly fell somewhere in the middle: a pleasant enough way to spend an hour and a quarter on a Sunday afternoon, lacking in the grotesqueries that disfigure most contemporary Mozart orchestral performances, yet also lacking in much to enable one to answer quite what the point of the concert had been, beyond giving LSO principals a chance to perform the works in question. All too often, what we heard sounded more like an accomplished run-through, skating on the Mozartian surface rather than plumbing its depths.   

Performances of the Bassoon Concerto – the only one that has survived, though Mozart may have written four more – are thin enough on the ground that this offered its own justification. There was much more than that: sensible tempi, clean, well phrased and articulated playing from soloist Daniel Jemison, and a largely cultivated sound from the orchestra. Here, it is probably fair to say that there are fewer depths for a conductor to plumb, and Jaime Martín offered decent enough leadership, though I could not help but think a little more insight might have been shown at his end. In the minuet-rondo finale in particular, less slow than sluggish, the orchestra sounded a touch reticent, even non-committal. Jamison’s playing was nonetheless excellent. Moreover, the opening Allegro sounded properly poised on the Rococo-Classical cusp; the slow movement enabled Jamison to show beguiling command of the long Mozart line. 

The Third Horn Concerto with Timothy Jones told a not dissimilar story, though its greater musical substance – not to diminish the Bassoon Concerto, but to elevate this – made relatively minor shortcomings more obvious, more keenly felt. Again, tempi were well chosen, and it was a relief to be spared fashionable ‘period’ mannerisms. Mozart needs more, though, and certainly here. He often received it, Martín and the orchestra pointing a syncopation here or a modulation there early on to good effect. A necessary sense of development was indeed strongest in the first movement. The slow movement unfolded without fuss, if occasionally with slight blandness, Jones’s lyrical playing not always matched by the orchestra. Still, one sensed Mozart’s tonal mastery, every inch the equal of Haydn and Beethoven’s. Jones’s navigation of the balance between hunting ebullience and subtle sorrow was sound in the finale, but alas Martín’s direction of the orchestra proved rather listless. Mozart, alas, is very difficult to get right; there is nowhere to hide, and sometimes it showed. 

The Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola is, of course, the acknowledged masterpiece of the trio. Here, expectations were highest. Although there was nothing especially wrong with the performance, again aspects of the orchestral direction in particular once again fell short enough to provoke slight disappointment. Violinist Benjamin Marquise Gilmore and violist Eivind Ringstad were excellent throughout, as was much orchestral playing, although there were some frays at the edges and a few too many phrases and paragraphs that did not tug the heartstrings as they might. The first movement started promisingly, Martín’s direction having regained the direction it had lost in the finale of the previous concerto. The great crescendo spoke for itself. solo playing was warm, lyrical, and wonderfully responsive. If there were a few instances of pulling the music round, emphasising the end of a phrase a little too much, we have all heard worse, far worse. The slow movement flowed nicely, but amiably; here, above all, we need to hear a grave, tragic beauty that flickered only intermittently. A bright, well-shaped collegial finale arguably offered greater tenderness, though the sense of loss related too much to what had preceded it rather than to emotional depths. If few Mozart performances offer the perfection Sir Colin Davis brought to the composer not so very long ago, with this orchestra and others, ultimately they should.

Le nozze di Figaro, English National Opera, 25 October 2014

(sung in English, as The Marriage of Figaro)

Coliseum

Count Almaviva – Benedict Nelson

The Countess – Sarah-Jane Brandon

Susanna – Mary Bevan

Figaro – David Stout

Cherubino – Samantha Price

Marcellina – Lucy Schaufer

Doctor Bartolo – Jonathan Best

Don Basilio – Colin Judson

Don Curzio – Alun Rhys-Jenkins

Antonio – Martin Lamb

Barbarina – Ellie Laugharne

Two Girls – Ella Kirkpatrick, Lydia Marchione 

Fiona Shaw (director)

Peter McKintosh (designer)

Jean Kalman (lighting)

Kim Brandstrup (movement)

Ian William Galloway (video)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Genevieve Ellis)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Jaime Martin (conductor)

This first revival of Fiona Shaw’s Figaro production genuinely surprised me. Last time around, it proved, at least in terms of staging, a dismal failure; this time, it is considerably improved. Although there is still too much additional ‘business’ going on, that was toned down, and more often than not, something approaching the drama created by Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, albeit neutered by a bizarre lack of receptivity to social tensions and by Jeremy Sams’s narcissistic translation, is permitted more or less to emerge. There are still, however, problems, too many problems. Do we really need people to don horns at so many points, in order to evoke a spirit of cuckoldry? More seriously, we certainly do not need the revolve to spin around so dizzyingly; and we still have no need of a strange excursion to the kitchen. Most seriously of all, Shaw continues to misunderstand the nature of this most sophisticated of comedies. She does not merely confuse comedy and the comic; she pushes it towards vulgar farce. Barbarina as drunkard and the Count with his trousers round his ankles are unedifying and, more to the point, entirely unnecessary spectacles. And yet, for reasons I am not entirely sure I can identify, the piece as a whole worked better than it had in 2011.

 

Perhaps that is a reflection of the ease with which the cast seemed to work together. Mary Bevan was the undoubted star of the show, hers a world-class Susanna, her singing as beautiful and as truthful as her acting. (If only we had been able to hear her in Italian!) David Stout’s Figaro made for a winning foil, and more than that in the fourth act, in which, quite rightly, he stood out against Shaw’s prevailing silliness. Unfortunately, the Almavivas were less impressive. There was little or nothing dangerous about Benedict Nelson’s Count, too much of a buffo figure, and on occasion worryingly thin of tone. Sarah-Jane Brandon’s Countess failed to engage one’s sympathies, her acting restricted to stock gestures, and more disturbingly, her vibrato too thick and her tuning too often awry. When one finally felt her role as agent of redemption, that was the orchestra’s doing rather than hers; her two arias seemed at best observed rather than experienced. (That is not, though, to excuse the appalling behaviour of those in the audience who applauded in the middle – yes, the middle! – of ‘Dove sono’, in the pause following ‘non trapassò?’ Would that I had had a machine gun at my disposal.) Lucy Schaufer made the very most of Marcellina, despite the loss of her aria. (Am I the only one to deplore the ‘traditional’ cuts in the final act?) This was as sharply observed and as vividly communicated a portrayal as I can recall, making use of the vernacular to such a degree as to come close to convincing a translation-curmudgeon such as I. Samantha Price’s Cherubino improved noticeably as the evening progressed, her success in presenting his awkwardness as a girl laudable indeed. Special mention should go to Martin Lamb’s thoroughly convincing Antonio: quite inside the role vocally and on stage.

 

Jaime Martin did a good job in the pit, with the ENO Orchestra generally on fine form: a far rarer thing for orchestras in Mozart than it should be. If there were occasions, most notably in the Overture, in which Martin pushed too hard, they remained the exceptions. Ebb and flow were in general nicely judged, likewise orchestral chiaroscuro. Mozart’s larger structures, such as the second act finale, were for the most part well-paced, those breakneck, would-be Rossini speeds that have become all too fashionable in certain quarters having no place here. One would hardly have expected the profundity of the late Sir Colin Davis, with a lifetime’s experience of the work, but Martin’s achievement in mitigating the worst excesses of Shaw’s production stands worthy of proper recognition.

 

Il barbiere di Siviglia, English National Opera, 25 February 2013

(sung in English as The Barber of Seville)

The Coliseum

Fiorello – Alexander Robin Baker

Count Almaviva – Andrew Kennedy
Figaro – Benedict Nelson
Rosina – Lucy Crowe
Doctor Bartolo – Andrew Shore
Don Basilio – David Soar
Berta – Katherine Broderick
Ambrogio – Geraint Hylton
An Official – Roger Begley
A Notary – Allan Adams

Jonathan Miller (director)

Peter Relton (revival director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Genevieve Ellis)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Jaime Martin (conductor)

 

ENO’s advertising emphasises the ‘25^th anniversary year’ of Jonathan Miller’s staging of The Barber of Seville. It holds the stage well enough without offering any especial insight – at least by now. The programme book mentioned commedia dell’arte: Tanya McCallin’s designs are of that world, certainly, even if there does not seem to be a great deal in Miller’s production that goes beyond the general ‘look’ of that tradition. Unlike many endlessly revived productions, this, then, is not in itself particularly tired, and one can readily imagine it offering the opportunity for new casts to come in and assume their roles without a great deal of stage rehearsal. By the same token, when compared with, for instance, John Copley’s considerably more venerable Royal Opera La bohème, which I happened to see earlier in the month, the staging does not especially sparkle, enlighten, or indeed charm either. It would do no harm to have a little Regietheater cast Rossini’s way. Either that, or assemble a cast whose sparkle would lift the work above the merely quotidian.

 

I say ‘the work’, but this performance, unfortunately, put me in mind of Carl Dahlhaus’s ‘twin musical cultures’ of the nineteenth century: too clear a distinction, no doubt, but nevertheless heuristically useful. On the one hand, one has the culture of the musical work, as understood in an emphatic sense, that of Beethoven and his successors; on the other, one has ‘a Rossini score ... a mere recipe for performance, and it is the performance which forms the crucial aesthetic arbiter as the realisation of a draft rather than an exegesis of a text’. The problem was that this performance, taken as a whole, simply did not sparkle as Rossini must. One therefore became of the score as a decidedly inferior, indeed well-nigh interminable work. Repetitions grated and a good part of the audience was espied, furtively or less furtively, glancing at wristwatches. If Rossini’s ‘musical thought hinged on the performance as an event,’ then this was an unhinged performance – and not, alas, in the expressionistic sense.

 

Jaime Martin’s conducting started well enough. There was throughout a welcome clarity in the score; this was not, at least, Rossini attempting and failing to be Mozart or Beethoven. Give or take the odd orchestral slip, there might have been much to enjoy in the contribution of the ENO Orchestra, considered in itself.  However, impetus was soon lost, and any ‘purely musical’ tension soon sagged. Whether the first act were actually as long as it felt, I am not sure, but many during the interval opined that it seemed as though it was never going to end. If Rossini’s repetitions as opposed to development serve a dramatic purpose, one can readily forget them; here they were apparent in unfortunately lonely fashion. I could not help but mentally contrast the extraordinary use to which Beethoven, for instance in the Waldstein Sonata, puts simple tonic and dominant harmony, to the tedium induced on this occasion. For some reason, the fortepiano was employed as a continuo instrument: a strange fashion, which has enslaved musicians who would never think of using it in solo repertoire. Performance, then, failed to elevate the ‘work’. At least the English translation, by Amanda and Anthony Holden was a cut above the average.

 

The greater fault in any case lay elsewhere, above all in Andrew Kennedy’s Almaviva. His casting seemed simply inexplicable. Almost entirely lacking in coloratura, let alone Florez-like facility therewith, he resorted to mere crooning, a state of affairs worsened by the application at seemingly random intervals of unnervingly thick vibrato. His stage presence was of a part with his vocal performance. Benedict Nelson’s Figaro started off in reasonably convincing fashion, but by the end was somewhat hoarse and throughout lacked the pinpoint precision that might have lifted the performance. By contrast, Lucy Crowe was an excellent Rosina. Her coloratura was impeccable, her gracious stage presence no less so. Andrew Shore reminded us of his skills as a comic actor in the role of Doctor Bartolo, and Katherine Broderick also took the opportunity to shine as Berta. Sadly, the increasingly lacklustre conducting and the embarrassing performance of Kennedy conspired to negate those positive aspects of the performance, rendering one tired with the ‘work’, however it were considered.