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.

Hannigan/LSO/Avni - Bowler, Ligeti, and Strauss, 5 March 2026

Barbican Hall

Laura Bowler: The White Book
Ligeti: Lontano
Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra, op.30

Barbara Hannigan (conductor and soprano)

Matthew Fairclough (live electronics)

Bar Avni (conductor)

London Symphony Orchestra

Barbara Hannigan’s LSO concerts – her concerts more generally too – always offer interesting, insightful programming as well as her extraordinary gifts as a performer. This was no exception, presenting the LSO’s new co-commission, The White Book, by Laura Bowler, with Ligeti’s Lontano and Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Clear that The White Book was not ‘a sing/conduct piece’, Hannigan elected to sing, whilst her protégée Bar Avni, Chief Conductor of the Bayer Philharmonic from 2021 to 2024 conducted. She then took to the podium alone for Ligeti and Strauss in the second half. 

Bowler’s response to Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-shortlisted novel bears the hallmark of loss: in the latter case, of the writer’s elder sister, who died just hours after her premature birth; in the former, the recovery of the composer’s mother from leukaemia, only to die in an accident before it was possible to say goodbye. I do not know the novel, so can only proceed from what I heard, but the encounter made a strong impression and was warmly acclaimed by a large Barbican audience. There was theatre to Hannigan’s ascent onstage, appearing as part of the performance, clad in a ‘one-of-a-kind confection of white silk and wool linen designed by … Yuma Nakazato,’ from his Glacier Collection, for which Hannigan apparently ‘needed a video tutorial to be shown how it worked’.  The piece unfolded – perhaps better. ‘dropped’ – like the sleeves that ignited the orchestral introduction to the first of the five movements, ‘Wave’. Its icy precision and character, much of it founded on long, oscillating instrumental lines, was partly matched by and partly contrasted in a vocal part that required and received a cornucopia of vocal techniques that were yet combined in single, long lines of their own. Repetition, maintenance, and oscillation of pitch sounded as the musical key to all, until its sudden stop. 

‘Breath-cloud’ sounded and even looked as its name suggested. Related yet distinct orchestral technique and atmosphere led to a rocking incantation of the biting words ‘On cold mornings’ in lengthy melismata as clear as the LSO’s razor-sharp playing. Eventually, it tailed off, unaccompanied, into ‘the empty air’. There was something cyber- or Olympia-like – one might also think of her vocal Ligeti – to the abrupt transformations in Hannigan’s voice in the following ‘Sand’: partly so. It was as if vocal and verbal half-lives were fated to almost-eternal recurrence: perhaps in recognition of and response to trauma. There was some quasi-traditional word-painting on the word ‘slipping’, both in vocal line and orchestral penumbra, though never predictably so, the beginning of upward slipping a case in point. The suspended animation of a close when music, perhaps even life, slipped ‘stubbornly through fingers’ made its point with a chill. 

The fourth movement, ‘Silence’, was not silent but eerily still with, yes, some crucial silences. The vocal line took up a pattern of descent from its predecessor, albeit in distinct, scalar fashion rather than ambiguously slipping. The orchestra often took a similar route, sometimes coinciding precisely, both reinforcing one another. Ironically, a long crescendo of orchestra and electronic echoes led to (as yet) the work’s greatest climax; the rest played out in its shadow. ‘All whiteness’ offered, naturally, a climax to the work as a whole. Occasional sounds, even harmonies, brought Messiaen to my mind, but I think that was more a matter of me than the writing as such. At any rate, this ‘whiteness’ was properly comprised of the colours of the spectrum, like the sense of the sacred invoked in the glacier of the text, ‘unsullied by life’. Vain verbal and musical repetition on the words ‘shafts of’ attempted to surmount something – tragedy? – that could not be surmounted. Again, the rest played out in disquieting shadowlands of the movement’s climax. 

Lontano’s opening brought oscillating correspondences with that of The White Book, soon turning in different directions. There was a keen sense in such fluctuation of the outset of something akin to a journey, the excellence of the LSO’s performance commensurate to the extraordinary achievement of the work. It imparted the sense, illusory or otherwise, of changing the way one listened, so that nothing would ever sound quite the same again. Moreover, Ligeti’s writing sounded more strongly as a successor to the particular Klangfarbenmelodie of Schoenberg’s ‘Farben’ in a way I had not previously appreciated, captivating in its eternal transformation (as opposed to earlier eternal recurrence). It felt almost as if melody itself, perhaps harmony too, were being created or recreated before our ears, out of something both older and newer.

Also sprach Zarathustra similarly opened – no news here – with a single pitch, again heading in very different directions, although its organ music in particular (Richard Gowers) intriguingly suggested points of contact with the manipulations and oscillations of the earlier pieces. There was a fine sense of irony to Strauss’s response to Nietzsche: too often missed in performance, but not here. The LSO’s performance was once again outstanding, boasting uncommonly rich string playing (not least for the Barbican acoustic). There was throughout a welcome sense of space to the work’s unfolding, without that in any sense implying slow tempi. Processes were as clear as in Ligeti, especially earlier on. Did the performance lose its way somewhat later on? Perhaps, though it is a notoriously difficult work to grasp as a whole, whether as performer or listener. There was, at any rate, something fittingly phantasmagorical to the whole.  

Kopatchinskaja/Shaham/LSO/Rattle: Bartók and Falla, 18 January 2026

Barbican Hall

Bartók: Violin Concerto no.2, BB 117; Five Hungarian Folksongs, BB 97
Falla: The Three-Cornered Hat

Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin)

Rinat Shaham (mezzo-soprano)

London Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

A busy few days for Simon Rattle and the LSO: first two concert performances of The Makropulos Case, then this concert with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Rinat Shaham. Both performances proved, moreover, of the highest quality. Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto is a substantial work by any standards; it seemed all the more so in this case. Whether it was actually a spacious performance, I do not know, but it felt like it in a positive sense, on a grand scale—that is, not a euphemism for dragging. Kopatchinskaja’s opening statement was relaxed, almost louche, but certainly not lacking in precision, any more than her highly energetic response. At times, she seemed almost shamanic, but from within, not without, the music. It was a highly personal account, though never without warrant, either in the score or in the more general ‘idea’ of the piece. Rattle has often seemed to me at his very best as an ‘accompanist’. This was no exception: he led the LSO not only in kindred precision, but kindred direction, colour, and atmosphere, always underpinned by harmonic understanding and communication. Kopatchinskaja proved every bit as responsive to the orchestra as vice versa. Her cadenza was spellbinding, an object lesson in line, commitment, and understanding. And throughout, performances sang—and showed, moreover, that they had something to sing, and that there were different ways in which to do so. 

Another such way was on offer at the beginning of the slow movement: fragile yet with undeniable inner strength, a testament of intimacy that could yet turn outwards. The LSO and Rattle wove a gorgeous tapestry of orchestral sound, which, in collaboration with the soloist, often turned towards chamber music. Take, for instance, Bartók’s extraordinary writing for violin, double basses, and timpani; or magical passages of well-nigh suspended animation for harp, celesta, and woodwind. As the path became ever more surprising, even when one ‘knew’, it remained ever secure and coherent, both here and in a finale that combined improvisatory freshness with deep knowledge and understanding. Various balances and relationship were key to this, whether between solo and orchestra, or harmony and rhythm. It was a fantastical, exhilarating performance that achieved that status through command of detail and its integration into a keen sense of musical narrative. The piece felt ultimately like a Mahlerian symphonic ‘world’: in idea, rather than expression, but as an utterance of that stature. Kurtág’s ‘Ruhelos’ from his Kafka-Fragmente said all that might be said as an encore, Webern to Bartók’s Mahler. 

Bartók’s Five Hungarian Folksongs made for an arresting opening to the second half, all the more so in such committed, comprehending performances as we heard when Rinat Shaham joined Rattle and the orchestra. My first and last question was: why on earth do we not hear these songs more often? My fist and last answer were alas identical: the language, of course. It is a great, if understandable pity. I cannot vouch for Shaham’s Hungarian, but I can certainly vouch for her communication, which often seemed so vivid as to transcend mere linguistic understanding. ‘In Prison’, the first song, offered a sense of direct witness from the soloist, to another beautifully woven orchestral accompaniment. From the house of the dead, one might say. As Shaham’s delivery became ever more declamatory, her witness chilled all the more. Every song was sharply characterised by all concerned, the LSO warm and precise in the ‘old Lament’, Shaham colourful, even whimsical, yet with something undoubtedly serious to the core of ‘Yellow Pony, Harness Jingling’. A poignant ‘Complaint’ preceded ‘Virág’s Lamps Are Burning Brightly’, delivered with palpable relish: a fine, spirited finale.

Seated at the back of the orchestra, Shaham crafted two excellent cante jondo interventions, one in the Introduction, one in the second act’s ‘Dance of the Miller’, to Manuel de Falla’s ballet The Three Cornered-Hat. That Introduction and indeed the whole of the first act seemed to need no theatre; theatricality lay in the score and the images its performance evoked. The world of puppetry never seemed far away: whether that of the composer’s puppet-opera El retablo de maese Pedro or, increasingly, Stravinsky’s Petrushka. Diaghilev kinship was certainly strong, though Falla’s score never quite sounded ‘like’ anyone or anything else—which certainly included the Spain of Frenchmen such as Ravel and Debussy. Fast and furious, this account shone a welcome midday sun on a dark and wintry London evening. In the second act, Rattle imparted a fine sense of inevitability, the Miller’s dance seemingly necessitating his arrest, which in turn necessitated his escape. The Beethoven parody was clearly, wittily handled and properly integrated into the narrative whole. The ‘Final Dance’ emerged as if a mini-ballet in itself, eliciting rapturous applause from a capacity Barbican audience.

The Makropulos Case, LSO/Rattle, 15 January 2026

 

Barbican Hall

Emilia Marty – Marlis Peterson
Krista – Doubravka Novotná
Albert Gregor – Aleš Briscein
Baron Jaroslav Prus – Svatopluk Sem
Dr Kolenatý, Strojník, Machinist – Jan Martiník
Vítek – Peter Hoare
Count Hauk-Šendorf – Alan Oke
Janek – Vit Nosek
Cleaning lady, chambermaid – Lucie Hilscherová

London Symphony Orchestra
Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

 

Simon Rattle’s twin traversal of the Janáček operas in concert in London and onstage in Berlin has now reached The Makropulos Case in the former, Claus Guth’s staging for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s having been its first ever. I suspect this may also have been the LSO’s first performance, though shall happily be corrected. At any rate, from the very outset, both Rattle and the LSO sounded entirely ‘inside’ the work, with all the security of a repertory staple, yet with all the freshness and exhilaration of discovery. It is only two months ago that the Royal Ballet and Opera staged the opera, in what was reported to have been Katie Mitchell’s feminist farewell to the genre. If so, Mitchell certainly went out with a bang in one of those rare productions that will prove not only memorable but also to have transformed our understanding of the work forever, expertly conducted by the RBO’s music director Jakub Hrůsá, and with a fine cast headed by Aušrinė Stundyte. That will have been fresh in the memories of many in the Barbican audience, but that did not prevent the hall from apparently selling out for not one but two concert performances; indeed, I suspect it aided that success.

That first-act Prelude constructed a frame for our listening thereafter, strings, timpani, and the rest, offstage brass included, ‘speaking’ in just the right way for opera: musically generative and full of dramatic content and commentary, almost more Wagnerian than Wagner, without ever sounding especially Wagnerian. Czech speech rhythms met the time-honoured craft of something approaching orchestral accompagnato in Rattle’s conducting, so that the composer’s twin poles of cellular radicalism and lyrical expansion proved not only compatible but mutually dependent and generative. At the beginning of each act, there was an unmistakeable sense of where we were, how we (dramatically) had got there, and of anticipation. For the LSO was on outstanding form. It would be invidious to single out any instrument or section, since all, from trombones to xylophone, contributed so eloquently. What struck was a sense of a myriad of lines, orchestral and vocal, combining in ever transformative fashion to a harmonic, contrapuntal, and dramatic whole.

The essence of opera in concert performance is complex: what it is, what it is not, what it might or might not be. Those of us had recently seen Mitchell’s staging will doubtless have come to the performance with different views of the work from those who had not, and so on. What is incontestably the case for everyone is that the orchestra literally takes centre stage, and we both see and hear its music very differently from when it emerges from a sunken pit. Singers must prove at least as verbally and musically communicative, since there is less room for staged expression; Rattle’s latest Janáček troupe certainly impressed in that and indeed in all other respects. It was almost like reading – or having read to one – a sung novella. In a typically livewire performance, Peter Hoare, one of two singers common to the Barbican and Covent Garden, could not but help but act. That early liberation acted as if to inspire the rest of the cast.

Marlis Petersen as Emilia Marty seemed just ‘right’ in all she did: voice, bearing, and unmistakeable sympathy. Doubravka Novotná’s rich-toned, spirited Krista proved the perfect foil—or better, one of them. From Aleš Briscein’s ardent Albert Gregor to Alan Oke’s magnificently vivid cameo (the other role shared from Covent Garden) as Count Hauk-Šendorf, this performance had a true sense of company even without staging. Jan Martiník’s three characters were sharply drawn as individuals, as was Svatopluk Sem’s Jaroslav Prus. Vit Nosek and Lucie Hilscherová likewise made the most of their roles, created through words and music, yet as human as if we had seen them onstage.  Such vivid characterisation drew back even those of us won over by Mitchell’s alternative vision towards the work ‘itself’. Those new to the opera will surely have been enthralled. A roaring reception suggested so.

For it was in the third act, as it must be, that Janáček’s drama palpably touched all as if for the first time. Here was most clearly redrawn in exultant urgency the twin clarity and abandon of E.M. to the increasing irrelevance of the men (and women) surrounding her, reminding us that ultimately, Mitchell’s staging grew out of the work’s essence rather than being imposed upon it (as uncomprehending criticism claimed). Taking a view does not necessarily mean betrayal; it is often fundamental to fidelity. Petersen and the orchestra’s transfiguration sent shivers down the spine in what came to seem, if you can imagine such a thing, almost a female, even feminist, Gerontius. Now there might lie a challenge to staging.

 

The Excursions of Mr Brouček, LSO/Rattle, 6 May 2025

Barbican Hall

Mr Brouček – Peter Hoare
Mazal/Blankytný – Aleš Briscein
Málinka/Etherea/Kunka – Lucy Crowe
Sacristan/Svatopluk/Lunobor/Domšík – Gyula Orendt
Würfl/Čaraskvouci/Councillor – Lukáš Zeman
Čišničeck/Child prodigy/Student – Doubravka Novotná
Kedruta – Hanna Hipp
Básník/Oblačný/Vacek- Arttu Kataja
Artist/Dohuslav/Vojta – Stephan Rügamer
Skladatel/Harfoboj/Miroslav – Linard Vrielink

Tenebrae (chorus director: Nigel Short)
London Symphony Orchestra
Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

Simon Rattle’s survey of the Janáček operas has proved a tale of two cities: Berlin (first the Philharmonic and latterly the Staatsoper) and London (the LSO). The latter has been mostly in concert, although it shared Peter Sellars’s concert staging with the Berlin Philharmonic. Now, on the back of Robert Carsen’s Berlin staging, originally seen at the Janáček Festival Brno, the LSO’s series reaches The Excursions of Mr Brouček to the Moon and to the 15th Century. 

Of those I have attended, this unquestionably marked the highpoint: one of those performances it is difficult immediately to imagine being bettered. At the heart of that was the magnificent playing of the LSO. Janáček had not previously played a large part in its repertoire, though I remember an interesting, also highly criticised Glagolitic Mass from Colin Davis. It hardly could, one might say, for a symphony rather than an opera orchestra, which incidentally reminds us of a long-term consequence of Davis and Clive Gillinson’s tenures, nurtured by their successors: regular performances of opera in concert, supplemented by occasional appearances in festival pits. Intimacy of acquaintance with Janáček’s writing, its melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, and timbral qualities, inextricably bound to the Czech language, told—as, I think, it did with Rattle, who has long championed this music and who no longer has anything to prove. Precision, heft, the way the orchestra ‘spoke’: this and so much more made for an ideal partnership, rendered all the more impressive by a uniformly impressive cast and chorus (the ever versatile Tenebrae choir, trained and sometimes conducted here by Nigel Short). 

From the opening of the first part, dance rhythms and orchestral colours, xylophone immediately recalled from Jenůfa, created a dramatic stage before our ears, so much so that it is difficult to imagine anyone truly regretting the lack of staging. Time of day, temperature (literal and metaphorical), place, and much more were palpable, indeed unavoidable. As dawn approached at the end of the first part, one felt it emotionally, overwhelmingly so, as well as temporally. For a tenderness embedded in the composer’s deep humanity was always apparent, in a reading that saw no reason to exaggerate the bizarre, zany elements, as perhaps did David Pountney in a memorable 2022 staging for Grange Park Opera. There is room for all, but this went deeper, also underscoring the extraordinary, innovative brilliance of the composer as a contemporary of Strauss, Schoenberg, and yes, Puccini. There was absurdity, yes, but in that absurdity lay deepest sincerity, and the second part, darker and more soulful from the off, proved more moving still. Soundworlds related yet distinct offered both contrast and connection between the opera’s two parts. 

Peter Hoare, who had also sung the title at Grange Park, proved if anything a still more captivating Mr Brouček, alive to his provincial, bourgeois absurdity, not without affection, yet quite without what would have been deadly sentimentality. Like his fellow cast, this was a portrayal that sprang from the page, deeply rooted in words, music, and their alchemy, without being bound by them. Lucy Crowe gave as fine a performance as I have ever heard from her, alternating various roles as Málinka, Etherea, and Kunka, bringing something special to each of them, refulgent of tone, yet acerbic where called for, and hinting without didacticism at what might unite them. Much the same might be said in principle of all those taking on multiple roles, world-class casting offered by the likes of Gyula Orendt, Linard Vrielink, and Aleš Briscein. Truth be told, there was not a weak link in the cast; more to the point, the drama lay in connection, collaboration, and of course conflict. We were fortunate, I think, to see and hear a cast that had mostly performed together onstage in Berlin. 

Dare we hope, then, for all of Janáček’s operas to feature in subsequent instalments? However tempting, we should probably retain perspective and simply enjoy them one at a time. Sometimes I worry that, in ever-straitening times, opera with full forces, be it staged or unstaged, might come to seem an ‘unaffordable’ luxury. Smaller versions, cleverly adapted, whether will slightly reduced orchestrations or full-scale reductions, can form a crucial part of our operatic ecology, but that must never be at the expense of the ‘real thing’. One can hardly hope for a better reminder of such ‘reality’ than the magical surreality of these Excursions.

LSO/Hannigan - Khayam, Haydn, Vivier, Debussy, Sibelius, and Bartók, 20 March 2025

Barbican Hall

Golfam Khayam: Je ne suis pas une fable à conter (UK premiere)

Haydn: Symphony no.39 in G minor

Claude Vivier: Orion

Debussy: Syrinx

Sibelius: Luonnotar

Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin: Suite

Gareth Davies (flute)
London Symphony Orchestra
Barbara Hannigan (soprano/conductor)

The second of Barbara Hannigan’s two March LSO concerts opened with a UK premiere: Golfam Khayam’s Je ne suis pas une fable à conter, which Hannigan commissioned and has already performed with the Iceland Symphony, Radio France Philharmonic, and Gothenburg Symphony orchestras. Khayam being unable to travel to after hearing hearing her speak on Iranian music, receiving a reply and offer a collaboration within two hours of sending her message. They settled on a poem by Ahmed Shamlou. There are, it seems, elements of improvisation, though without knowing the work it is impossible to know how much. Opening with cellos and double basses, joined by other, deep-pile LSO strings, the piece effects, especially after voice and flute entry, an ‘east-west’ encounter in vocal and instrumental arabesques, and in combination of tonal and modal (at least to my ears) writing. It seemed to suggest eventual passage from mourning to light, or perhaps better, to glimpse it almost Janáček-like, at the end of our current tunnel. Not that it sounded in any way like Janáček, but perhaps there something in that sensibility was held in common. Perhaps it was no coincidence that here the words turned from French to Farsi. 

Haydn’s Symphony no.39 received a fine reading, Hannigan revelling in its quirks and surprises—considerably more so, it seemed to me, than her slightly disappointing way with the so-called ‘London’ Symphony no.104 last week (an altogether more Classical concern). From the off, she and the LSO relished its Sturm und Drang energy, silence as much part of its activity as sound in the first movement. It developed and returned, almost in a flash, yet certainly not without our knowing that it had. Here and in the ensuing Andante, there was nothing generic to form and process, deeply rooted as they were in Haydn’s particularities. And what a joy it was to hear the LSO in such music, unburdened by ‘period’ affectation. In her programme note, Kate Hopkins described the minuet as stately. It might have done with being a little statelier here, or at least sterner. Still, in its more flowing though not rushed way, it ‘spoke’ clearly, just as its delectable trio sang. The finale, full of incident, might in some ways sound ‘theatrical’ but proved, quite rightly, above all symphonic. 

Claude Vivier’s Orion followed, essentially a theme and five variations. Throughout, it was characterised by a strong sense of liminality, doubtless born, as Tim Rutherford-Johnson’s helpful note pointed out, of Vivier’s preceding opera on death and the afterlife, Kopernikus, and its foretelling; ‘You will hear the music of Orion and the mystical seven sages.’ Distinct echoes of various music – the Stravinsky of the early ballets, Messiaen, Grisey (or was that the Wagner of the Rheingold Prelude) – sounded both too close not to be intentional, yet also too fully integrated to be the point. Above all, it seemed to refer only to itself and, in the two percussionist cries of ‘hé-o’ to the mystery of human subjectivity set against something implacably cosmic. 

The second half opened with a solo from above (at least in the Stalls), Gareth Davies in a beautifully free yet coherent performance of Debussy’s flute Syrinx. Hannigan again led for Sibelius’s Luonnotar. But of course she can sing Finnish whilst conducting… It made for a fascinating combination, the Sibelius possessed of a keen narrative thrust born of words and music alike, all the drama of the ballad rooted in febrile LSO strings. It emerged as a kindred spirit to Mahler’s Das klagende Lied, albeit in (relative) miniature. 

Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite rounded off an eclectic programme. For me, it is one of those cases in which I always regret the loss of material. Habits of early encounters with Boulez doubtless die hard. Nonetheless, on its own terms, there was much to ‘enjoy’, if that be the right word. Hannigan and the LSO seemed more focused on the harder edged elements to the score: a steely frame that seemed to invite comparisons with more or less contemporary Prokofiev (Le Pas d’acier and even the later Fiery Angel). Occasionally ear-splitting in the Barbican’s awkward acoustic, it danced its way to a final, ever wilder climax.

Degout/LSO/Hannigan - Roussel, Ravel, Britten, and Haydn, 13 March 2025

Barbican Hall

Images: Mark Allan

Roussel: Le Festin de l’araignée (symphonic fragments)
Ravel, arr. Anthony Girard: Histoires naturelles
Britten: Les Illuminations
Haydn: Symphony no.104, ‘London’

Stéphane Degout (baritone)
London Symphony Orchestra
Barbara Hannigan (soprano/conductor)

Barbara Hannigan is unquestionably a star in today’s musical firmament. Anyone who has heard (and seen) her Ligeti Mysteries of the Macabre, live or recorded, would neither doubt nor forget that. I have been an admirer, even a devotee since I first heard her, singing songs by Berg and Webern with the Scharoun Ensemble and none other than Pierre Boulez in 2008. Her more recent, yet by now established, forays into conducting, often in combination with song, have never failed to interest and to excite. And she clearly has a deep fondness for Haydn, regularly conducting symphonies from across his œuvre. What, then, is not to like, especially in combination with the LSO and another outstanding artist, Stéphane Degout? 

Very little, in fact, though I found myself somewhat disappointed by the Haydn symphony this time around, it seeming not yet really to have settled. Proceedings nonetheless got off to a fine start with the suite, once popular yet now somewhat out of fashion, from Roussel’s 1913 Diaghilev ballet Le Festin de l’araignée. The parade of animal victims for the spider in his web had a keen narrative thrust, full of character, and vividly but far from only pictorial. Hannigan and the LSO above all imparted a sense of how it ‘moved’, even without dancers. It may not have the magic of, say, Ravel and Debussy, but it charmed, without overstaying its welcome. However different it may be in most respects from more celebrated Ballet russes commissions, there was kinship to be sensed, both in work and performance. It was far-sighted, moreover, of Roussel wittily to write a part for mobile telephone to coincide with nightfall on the lonely garden. Who would have imagined? To quote Edward Bhesania’s programme note on the music itself, ‘Nothing has changed and yet everything has changed.’ 

A piece Ravel did not orchestrate will probably always be too tempting for composers to resist, even if others have had a shot before them. I wish I could say Anthony Girard’s orchestration of Histoire naturelles offered revelations, but it sounded more workaday than that. It was skilful enough and could hardly fail when it came closer to what Ravel himself might have done, but the somewhat heavy string writing (doubtless a sense of mock-gravity to depict the peacock, but was it quite the right sense?) at the opening of the first song, ‘Le Paon’) gave a distinctly odd impression, especially given Degout’s seemingly effortless way with words and music alike. Indeed, his performance offered a masterclass in French song, all the supposed difficulties (they are real enough) with the language melting away. Again, I could hear Girard’s intent in the percussive clatter of ‘Le Grillon’, but it did not seem quite right. I was more persuaded by the closing guinea-fowl song, whose orchestration seemed genuinely to have one see, even to feel, with her. So too of course did Degout’s vividly communicative vocalism: not a million miles from the theatre, yet subtly distinct. 

Hannigan both sang and conducted for Britten’s Les Illuminations, the Rimbaud text making it seem more at home with its predecessors than otherwise it might have done. Lucy Walker’s point, in her programme note, that ‘perhaps sheltered by the non-English language here, Britten seems to be letting his hair down and channelling some of Rimbaud’s … spirit,’ seemed to me very well captured by the performance, Hannigan clearly inspired rather than inhibited by the exigencies of her dual role. The LSO, never less than very good, seemed a few notches more incisive here, doubtless partly as a result. From the opening bars, richness of string sound seemed to take us to a different level. Hannigan as soloist proved just as communicative as Degout, as were other, instrumental soloists, first among equals leader Benjamin Gilmore in ‘Phrase et Antique’. Rhythms were tight or swung, as required. A well-nigh operatic ‘Marine’ proved key to necessary transformation of mood. ‘Being Beauteous’ captured its particular qualities, not least the sense of a young heart racing. Throughout, Britten and his interpreters permitted Rimbaud to speak: not unmediated, for that would be a nonsense, but heightened, or at least a little transformed. ‘Assez connu. Les arrêts de la vie. Ô Rumeurs et Visions! Départ dans l’affection et le bruit neufs!’ Indeed. 

The first movement of Haydn’s final London Symphony, no.104, augured well. It had grandeur in its introduction, nowadays too often missed, as if Hannigan recalled Boulez’s extraordinary recording with the Vienna Philharmonic. (Perhaps she did.) It had no tedious mannerisms and was very well balanced, inner string parts sounding as if in a quartet. Tempo – not only speed, but mood – was similarly well judged. A dignified account of the slow movement offered generally good command of line and detail, held nicely in balance, though there were a couple of occasions in which tempo seemed to slip rather than to be knowingly modified. The minuet, taken fast, had a fine swagger. Alas, an excessive, almost endless holding back at the beginning of the trio and in several cognate passages made a mess of that (at least for me). The finale seemed to me just too fast, lacking in that grandeur that older conductors, not only Boulez, brought to the work. Playing, though, was excellent, and Haydn’s invention could still be relished.

LSO Chamber Ensemble et al./Pascal - Boulez, 27 January 2025

Milton Court

Initiale
Messagesquisse
Dérive 1
Sonatine for flute and piano
Anthèmes 2 for violin and live electronics

Benjamin Marquise Gilmore (violin)

David Cohen (cello)

Gareth Davies (flute)

Joseph Horvat (piano)

Sound Intermedia

LSO Chamber Ensemble

Guildhall School Cellos

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

The Boulez centenary celebrations are underway. If London’s – and much of the rest of the world’s – response so far looks more muted than one might have hoped, something is better than nothing and there is all the more reason to cherish what we have. Following an afternoon symposium (oddly timed on a Monday, when most of us must work) the Barbican Centre offered an excellent chamber concert of five works, from LSO musicians and friends, directed where appropriate by Maxime Pascal.

What could have been better as an opening than the 1987 brass fanfare Initiale, which I had last heard at the opening of Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal thirty years later? Although Milton Court lacks a ready possibility – at least unless electronics are employed – for the Gabrieli-like spatial element deployed in Frank Gehry’s Berlin hall, the LSO players’ balcony elevation nonetheless signalled development of our concert expectations beyond Boulez’s ‘museum’ of the musical past. Metrical complexity, rubato implied through exactitude, was there from the off. More kaleidoscopic and varied in mood than your typical fanfare, its cascading, proliferating echoes of Répons helped establish aural expectations for what was to come.

Messagesquisse was given by David Cohen and six cellists from the Guildhall School (Gabriel Francis-Deqhani, Kosta Popovic, Nathaniel Horton, James Conway, Theo Bently Curtin, and Seth Collin), conducted by Pascal with properly Boulezian precision and commitment. I was again intrigued and delighted by the tricks music could play on my perception—or perhaps the other way round. Initially, I could have sworn one cello was not playing, only to see and then hear that it was, at a pitch I had mistakenly thought another was: a smaller-scale sense, perhaps, of that sense of spatial magic squares that would so inform a later masterwork such as sur Incises (via, perhaps, common inspiration ultimately in Les Noces). Brimming with melody, impassioned of mood, harmonically compelling: it was everything Boulez is, and everything his detractors would say his music is not. Dynamic contrasts and all manner of other post-Beethovenian dialectics abounded in ‘organised delirium’. Contagious proliferation of a single line suggested at times a very French inheritance in the music of the clavecinistes. At times, I even thought of Nono. And what performances these were, reminding any who might need it of the crucial role of performance in Boulez’s music.

The shifting transformations of Dérive 1 proved an similar yet different delight, music spiralling before our ears in a mesmerising tour of aural pleasure. The temptation was to ask for more, which of course we should eventually have in its successor, Dérive 2. This music, though, spoke for itself, no mere precursor but a masterwork of proliferation in its own right.

The Sonatine for flute and piano received an outstanding and confounding performance from Gareth Davies and Joseph Havlet. No one would dispute the work’s allure, yet the array of elements in its first movement that might – just might – have to them something of the more neoclassical Schoenberg (and Debussy) seemed more than ever to rejoice in the necessity of internal and eternal explosion and destruction. It might not sound quite ‘like’ the Second Piano Sonata, but the Sonatine’s progress suggested ever closer kinship, emotionally and intellectually. Here, it felt, was instantiated a post-Notations world of infinite possibility.

Last up was Benjamin Maruise Gilmore with Ian Dearden and Jonathan Green of Sound Intermedia in Anthèmes 2. Its world of violin and electronics sounded, like much else, both old and new: not so very different from Messagesquisse or other works with solo and double/shadow, and yet… Echoes expected and unexpected beguiled and surprised as music from plainchant to Messiaen and beyond ricocheted around us. Indeed, an unsuspected harmonic sweetness suggested what remain less acknowledged lessons learned from Boulez’s teacher. As waves of sound lapped upon our consciousnesses, it was Debussy’s La Mer, endlessly transformed, that next suggested itself as fons et origo; that and, of course, the composer’s own endless imagination. The museum lives and develops; so do music and performance history of Boulez, one of its newer recruits.

LSO/Volkov - Lachenmann and Beethoven, 28 November 2024

Barbican Hall

Lachenmann: My Melodies (Music for Eight Horns and Orchestra)
Beethoven: Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92

LSO Horns
London Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

This concert was the latest casualty of François-Xavier Roth’s absence from the concert platform. Whilst Ilan Volkov, another conductor with considerable experience in both new and older music, made good sense as replacement, it was difficult not to feel losses of connection in programming concept and, to a lesser extent, between conductor and orchestra (if only through Roth’s long association with the LSO). 

First up was My Melodies by Helmut Lachenmann, who had celebrated his eighty-ninth birthday the day before. Eight horn players (Diego Incertis Sanchez, Timothy Jones, Angela Barnes, Jonathan Moloney, Katu Woolley, Annemarie Federle, Richard Watkins, and Ben Goldscheider) were seated at the front, encircling the conductor, in front of the strings. Volkov offered a brief introduction, with musical examples: welcome as far as it went, though it did not go beyond identification of a few musical figures. What we used to call extended techniques, which have long since passed into common instrumental practice, elicited baffling, uproarious laughter from sections of the audience, some of whom proceeded to leave, both then and throughout the actual performance. It is certainly not the case that Lachenmann and his music lack humour, but it is not really to be found there, at least not intrinsically. Perhaps that was why Volkov forewent further analysis, understandably if so. 

The LSO sounded in its element for the opening éclat, razor sharp, full of colourful, and ably guided by Volkov, if perhaps without quite the sense of what was going on beneath the surface Roth might have conveyed. (I wonder whether it may in part also have been the difficult Barbican acoustic, to which Roth would have been more accustomed.) Even when the horns played together, as often they did, forming a single ‘macro horn’, parts as well as sum were apparent through the necessary workings of sound. Passages of stillness in motion were equally given their due. I loved the interplay with the orchestra, seemingly incited and infected, and vice versa, ‘conventional’ sounds coming across all the more freshly: dialectically rendered anew, even in a single piano note or chord, or harp arpeggios. The impression of wandering in pitch, even when objectively it was not, fascinated and further incited. Sometimes, a horn echo sounded, miraculously, as if it from the distance, though again clearly it did not. This was a performance that could be heard and felt viscerally and spatially, lines darting across the orchestra, not unlike, say, Webern or Boulez, albeit less geometrically. It was exhilarating, confounding, and yes, inspiring; but equally, there was an unmistakeable quality of Romantic solitude, even loneliness. Through the horns in particular, Lachenmann showed himself once again an heir to Schumann and Caspar David Friedrich, as well as to Nono and the postwar avant garde.

To follow My Melodies with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony made excellent sense then. Volkov’s reading had its moments, yet, save for an excellent Allegretto, did not quite seem to have settled. The first movement was a case in point, as indeed was its introduction: expectant, yet lacking a sense really of heading anywhere. Some of the LSO’s playing was strangely abrasive: by ‘period’ design, I imagine, far closer at any rate to the world of John Eliot Gardiner than that of Colin Davis. The exposition blazed rather than blared and had a stronger sense of form, as did the rest of the movement, though it still lacked that necessary goal orientation. The second movement, by contrast, was given as if in a single breath, with a keen sense of expanding from a chamber ensemble, and darkly developmental throughout. The scherzo and trio seemed to have exchanged characteristics: the former at times, again seemingly by design, turning strangely inward, save for on its more convincing second reprise; the latter possessed of considerable strength. The finale went where it needed to, yet never quite took flight, dogged from beginning to end. I have certainly heard worse, but I have also heard better.

Dego/LSO/Rustioni - Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Schubert, 7 November 2024

Barbican Hall

Liszt: Les Préludes, S 97
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, op.64
Schubert: Symphony no.9 in C major, ‘Great’, D 644

Francesca Dego (violin)

London Symphony Orchestra

Daniele Rustioni (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

This was a slightly curious concert: much to admire and very little, if anything, to which to object, the LSO on excellent form throughout. Yet the performance of Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major Symphony rarely ignited as it might have done, a case of being almost yet not quite there under Daniele Rustioni’s direction, and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto received an unusual, interesting, yet again not entirely convincing performance from Francesca Dego. 

Liszt’s symphonic poem Les Préludes came off best, in an outstanding performance from orchestra and conductor alike. From the opening bar, they conjured up a splendidly Lisztian sound – easier said than done with orchestra, as opposed to piano – and showed themselves adept at managing those all-important transitions and transformations. What can all too readily sound stiff, even from the most exalted names, here evinced first-rate continuity and flexibility; it was refreshingly free of brashness, let alone vulgarity, too. Lyrical, even operatic, it seemed to confirm Wagner’s unhistorical placing of Liszt’s symphonic poems as an intermediate stage between Beethoven’s symphonies and his own music dramas. Exemplary woodwind playing and blend, melting strings (with an especially spirited cello section, where called for), and big-hearted climaxes that lacked nothing in power combined to form a performance of power and sensitivity.

 

Rustioni’s way with the Mendelssohn was often as impressive. He began the first movement swiftly, yet never drove too hard, and lightly emphasised its darker undercurrents, as if to confound absurd preconceptions of this as ‘pleasant’ music. Dego’s sound was often on the smaller, silvery side, worlds away from, say, Anne-Sophie Mutter, yet always cut through, and line was secure and finely spun; any qualms were really a matter of taste. She had a nice line in telling rubato too. The cadenza in particular was captivating, likewise the closing accelerando. Her tone in the slow movement was often a little nervy, even wiry: again, clearly an interpretative choice, since it was not always like that, but a little odd. There was nothing routine to the performance, though, which showed commendable metrical flexibility. A quicksilver finale pulsed with life and good humour, with all the give and take of chamber music. It made me smile, and goodness knows we need something like that in the world right now.

The introduction to the first movement of the Schubert trod a middle path between old and new. (The labels make little intrinsic sense, but perhaps remain the easiest way to describe broad interpretative trends.) It was certainly alla breve, yet sounded less rushed than has became the case, nonetheless lacking the grandeur – and meaning – of ‘old’, whether Klemperer and Furtwängler, or Colin Davis and Daniel Barenboim (Barenboim’s 2015 VPO performance in Berlin by some way the best live performance I have heard). It was elegant and euphonious, and had a sense of heading somewhere, the movement ‘proper’ then being taken at a perfectly reasonable tempo. Likewise, it evinced vigour and rigour, still flying by, all the time retaining creditably cultivated orchestral sound. The Andante con moto was bracingly swift, yet retained flexibility and an admirably Viennese sound. Solo playing was comfortably the equal of any one would hear around the world, and the orchestra as a whole offered a winning match of transparency and warmth. The third and fourth movements, both played very well and far from lacking in energy, nonetheless seemed to outstay their welcome, repetition supplanting development: a pity, given the swagger of the scherzo and the initial excitement of the finale.

LSO/Rattle - Jolas and Messiaen, 15 June 2023

Barbican Hall

Betsy Jolas: Ces belles années
Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie

Faustine de Monès (soprano)

Peter Donohoe (piano)

Cynthia Millar (ondes Martenot)

London Symphony Orchestra

Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

Simon Rattle’s tenure as Music Director of the LSO has been cruelly cut short by English nationalism. The United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, together with Theresa May’s spiteful quashing of a new concert hall project on the grounds that it had been supported by her political enemy George Osborne, ultimately proved too much. And who can blame him, with a family in Berlin? There is only so much fighting one can do. If a great city such as Munich made me an offer, I should be off like a shot. Not that London in general or the LSO in particular has seen the last of Sir Simon; he will return as Conductor Emeritus, not least to continue the Janáček opera series whose Katya Kabanova this January was so resounding a success. The world is grim right now; Britain is grim right now. Perhaps, though, we should not entirely despair. Even in straits as dire as these, the LSO and many of our cultural and intellectual institutions continue to punch far above the weight our miserable, philistine rulers accord them. And a concert such as this, Rattle’s last at the Barbican as Music Director, can still prove the equal, even the envy, of the musical world.  

The first part – one can hardly say ‘half’ when it must have come to about a sixth the length of the rest – was a new work by Betsy Jolas: Ces belles années. Given its first performance the night before, so not strictly a premiere, it proved typical of the composer, arguably typical of the musical and broader culture in which she is rooted, in both proving eminently ‘approachable’ and yet reticent in yielding its secrets. The opening, untuned percussion ceding, or perhaps transforming/being transformed into, the sounds of an orchestra neither small nor large, sounded ominous, harmony either playing a surprisingly ‘traditional’ role or pretending to do so. Whether that were play or something more ‘late’ and reconciliatory remained, at least for me, in the balance. It is difficult, of course, not to think of the work of a composer well into her nineties as ‘late’, just as one did with Elliott Carter at that stage and beyond. (With Carter, one found oneself resorting to ‘late late…’ and eventually simply to ‘most recent’.) But here there did seem, however, obliquely, to be a sense of looking back on a life or lives well lived, perhaps as much a tribute, intentional or otherwise, to Rattle as anything else. There was unease in the petering out of rejoicing: sung words and lines, delivered with laser-like, charismatic artistry by soprano Faustine de Monès, and also orchestral applause and foot-tapping.

Were the soprano’s words, ‘for the occasion and without pretension’, quite so straightforward, even anti-literary, as they might seem? ‘Oh, la joie de ces beaux jours. Célébrons sans cesse ces beaux jours, toutes ces belles années, venez, venez, amenez vos amis. Et toi le tout petit dans ton berceau tu viendras aussi. Et vous là-bas qui passez, venez aussi. Chantons tous ensemble, chantons la joie.’ Perhaps, or was there at least a hint of despair or resignation in having reached this stage, whoever the subject may be, only to fall back on them. Who knows? That may be more a question for the listener than the performer. Not everyone, after all, immediately resorts to Beckett or Mahler. The finely crafted precision of Jolas’s writing is difficult not to stereotype as ‘Gallic’. In a way, why should one try, so long as it does not save one the effort – and rewards – of actually listening. If I found less of an infectious sense of play than I often have with Jolas’s music, maybe I shall just have to try harder—and/or listen differently. I should certainly welcome the opportunity. 

No such doubts here concerning Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, though many have had them over the years, not least Pierre Boulez, first among equals in Messiaen’s galaxy of great pupils. Boulez celebratedly or notoriously performed only the three ‘Turangalîla movements’ out of the complete ten, in a 1973 Proms performance of what he once derided as ‘brothel music’. Some brothel! Whilst in many ways a conductor in Boulez’s own line – Rattle’s exploratory programming and collegiality surely bear Boulez’s stamp – Rattle, not so far as I am aware a composer, has broader and also younger sympathies. Indeed, as Boulez once pointed out, prior to conducting an Olga Neuwirth premiere, whilst it might once have made sense for him to declare Schoenberg dead, that was hardly a pressing concern for Neuwirth and her generation.

 

There were hints, in a good way, of a Boulezian way in Rattle’s performance here. Further laser clarity, ironically helped by the difficult, dry Barbican acoustic which, miraculously, did not overwhelm, was certainly one of them. One could hear every note, every line, every balance—or at least fancied one could. (There is Klingsor-Ravelian magic to Boulez too, after all.) And there were at times signs of a Boulezian ‘modern classicism’, to borrow from Arnold Whittall, which one does not necessarily expect from Rattle. The final movement, indeed, sounded and functioned far more like a traditional symphonic finale than I can recall, earlier performances by Rattle included. Indeed, the work’s unfolding, pli selon pli if you like, was not only remarkably patient and inevitable; it made perfect sense of form and structure in a way I have not always found from Rattle in Austro-German repertoire.

The warmth, though, even in the Barbican was entirely Rattle’s own—well, his, Messiaen’s, and the superlative performers’. Temperature could cool, as in those three ‘Turangalîla’ movements, but the base line was higher, could rise, and did. (Not that Boulez could not be warm too, but in a different way.) The sheer big-heartedness of Messiaen’s vision, as well as its paradoxically earthy mysticism, reaching for the stars and yet penetrating – certainly penetrating – deeper, did not merely came across; it grabbed one by the throat and anything else that took its fancy. Peter Donohoe’s pianism would have been spellbinding in itself, cadenzas scintillating and plumbing depths that brought affinities to Russian composers such as Mussorgsky to vivid light. As part of this orgiastic rite and riot it was all the more so. Likewise Cynthia Millar’s ondes Martenot: so much more than a strange ‘effect’, akin to a continuo gone rogue, whose duetting and ensembles with all manner of other instruments was quite something aurally to behold. Much the same could be said of Elizabeth Burley on celesta and Zeynep Özsuca on keyed glockenspiel. Melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, and a sheer joy in creation to rival Bach or Haydn were both determined and radically free. There were no soloists here; rather all took their place in a zany cosmology both developmental and static, for no and for eternity, of Messiaenic love.

Both LSO concerts were filmed for future broadcast on Marquee TV and Mezzo; this, the last of the two, was recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Stankiewicz/LSO/Roth - Schubert and Zimmermann, 19 February 2023

Barbican Hall

Schubert: Rosamunde, Overture and Entr’actes to Acts I and III
Zimmermann: Oboe Concerto
Schubert: Mass no.5 in A-flat major, D 678

Olivier Stankiewicz (oboe)

Lucy Crowe (soprano)

Adèle Charvet (mezzo-soprano)

Cyrille Dubois (tenor)

William Thomas (bass)

London Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Gregory Batsleer)

London Symphony Orchestra

François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

Trenchant opening chords giving way to a delightful oboe solo (Juliana Koch): the beginning of the so-called Rosamunde Overture, really the overture to Der Zauberharfe, offered a version in miniature of the first half of this LSO concert, arguably even of the concert as a whole. The introduction was undeniably on a grand, Romantic scale, though a fizzing ‘Allegro molto moderato’ proved more suggestive of Rossini than of Mendelssohn. François-Xavier Roth took it very fast, but crucially it worked, proving both nimble and full of incident, and if the lack of string vibrato surprised my ears, they (more or less) adapted. Ultimately, it put a smile on my face and proved a fine curtain-raiser. For the darker first entr’acte likewise proved suggestive of the theatre, of stage action about to commence. Its successor’s episodes offered delectable woodwind solos: not only oboe, but clarinet (Sérgio Pires) and flute (Gareth Davies) too. More veiled than sweet, the outer sections offered a different kind of intimacy given Roth’s non-vibrato approach. Signing off with string quartet rather than full strings proved a lovely idea. 

Olivier Stankiewicz joined the orchestra for Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s 1952 Oboe Concerto. Its first movement, ‘Hommage à Stravinsky’, pulled the older composer’s neoclassicism in multiple directions: homage, yes, but also embroidering and deconstructing. It was all despatched, as throughout, with the cleanest of lines, good humour, and a sign or two of something darker, carried forward into the central ‘Rhapsodie’, full of post-Bartókian night music. Magical solo (and other) evocations helped construct – for there was no ultimate doubt of the composer’s constructivism – a postwar pastoral, hinting at least at so much of what that historically might imply. Stankiewicz played this as the repertoire piece it should be, ably partnered by the LSO and Roth, the finale presented as a brilliant clash and reconciliation between serial and neoclassical tendencies: not only the earlier Stravinsky but Hindemith too. Passages of dissolution suggested men and machines, mannequins too, threatening to break down yet surviving—perhaps a metaphor for the work as a whole and, indeed, much of Zimmermann’s œuvre. 

What a joy, in the second half, it was to hear Schubert’s Mass in A-flat major. Why we do not hear Schubert’s masses all the time, I really do not know. It is a tremendous loss, and many will surely have been encountering this work for the first time. I doubt they will have been disappointed, especially in so sensitive and exultant a performance as this, a fine team of soloists and the excellent London Symphony Chorus now partnering Roth and the LSO. The opening exhortation for mercy sounded with humility, preparing the way for each of the soloists to introduce themselves with distinction in response: ‘Christe eleison’. This Kyrie as a whole had a splendid developmental quality, lightly worn, yet nonetheless telling: not the least example of Roth’s discerning musical judgement. Schubert sounded as a child of Mozart, yet with undeniable affinity to Beethoven, even to his Missa solemnis, as characteristic textures, ultimately to be reduced to no case of ‘influence’, were revealed before our ears. 

A whirlwind of praise was unleashed in the first section of the Gloria, incessant fiddling offering a flickering, moving halo to the choral company of heaven. Those cries of ‘Gloria’ could hardly fail to recall Beethoven, but not to the detriment of a more general impression of abiding, Austrian (perhaps rather than Viennese) loveliness. Lucy Crowe’s soprano duet with clarinet, paving the way once more for the entry of other soloists, in the second section, ‘Gratias agimus tibi…’ was not the least example of that; likewise Adèle Charvet’s rich mezzo solo a little later on, again entwined with clarinet, as well as bassoon. Once again, the LSO’s wind excelled themselves. Roth’s ear for orchestral colour suggested, in that well-worn cliché, a sensitive restoration of an old master painting, for instance in the Credo’s unusually colourful profession of faith. All concerned understood the task, varying in difficulty, of reconciling theological and musical imperatives, the ‘Crucifixus’ section’s pivotal ambiguity erupting in the glorious release of resurrection. Roth directed and shaped, without ever giving the impression of undue moulding. The censer swung in suggestion again of a characteristically Austrian otherworldliness in the Sanctus, both personal and beyond the personal. The Benedictus’s heavenly solo trio, soprano, mezzo, and tenor (an ardent Cyrille Dubois) must surely have had a few hearts skip a beat or two. Then the return of William Thomas’s dark-hued bass for the Agnus Dei rightly imparted a sense of completion: sadness and hope, even before the call to grant us peace.