Birtwistle: The Corridor/The Cure, Royal Opera, 18 June 2015

 Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House

Woman (Eurydice)/Medea – Elizabeth Atherton

Man (Orpheus)/Jason, Aeson – Mark Padmore

Martin Duncan (director)

Alison Chitty (designs)
Paul Pyant (lighting)
Michael Popper (choreography)

London Sinfonietta

Geoffrey Paterson (conductor)

 

Outstanding in pretty much every way – just what an opera house should be doing, in this case in collaboration with Aldeburgh and the London Sinfonietta. Although The Corridor was premiered in 2009, with the same cast, this was my first encounter; and The Cure had been given its first performance but a few days earlier, again in Aldeburgh. The two chamber operas could clearly work separately, and I hope that they will, in conjunction with any number of other works; in tandem, however, there are all manner of connections one may make, whether as performer, director, or audience. Agency, not least female agency, is but the most obvious, although that is not to minimise its importance. Identical instrumentation (violin, viola, cello, harp, flute, clarinet) and, in this case, an identical cast, served to strengthen unity, but also to allow us to consider what is different.

The Corridor takes us, once again, to that foundational musical myth so beloved of Birtwistle, that of Orpheus. But a moment – his turning back, wondering why Eurydice is not by his side – and then a lifetime’s reaction. David Harsent and his composer have us ask whether Eurydice in fact ever really wanted to leave Hades. She was lagging behind and Orpheus wonders where she has gone, turning around involuntarily. Love and tragedy are expressed in their laments following the event, but did they ever have a chance, second time around? She interacts with the players in Martin Duncan’s straightforward, powerful staging, not unlike one of those increasingly popular stagings of Bach’s Passions. Birtwistle’s score steers a fascinating path between tight rhythmic cellular writing and something more capable of subdivision, even perhaps rubato (or at least homage to Monteverdian freedom?) Stravinsky versus Schoenberg, we still might say. Or rather, Stravinsky and Schoenberg.

Birtwistle’s love of antique wildness exhibits itself once again: a reinvented antique wildness, not born from our paltry knowledge of ancient music, but something far more powerful. But there is no sense that we have heard this all before, for we have not. Fourths and fifths seem to speak to us from the age of organum – and beyond. The harp – what writing he has always offered for that instrument! – is no stranger to calamity, to catastrophic caesura. Vocal lines, in impassioned performances by Mark Padmore and Elizabeth Atherton, speak again of the invention that comes with longstanding assurance. Everything draws in – and makes us rethink what we thought we knew.

 

The Cure was conceived explicitly as a companion piece. Here, in the words of the excellent conductor, Geoffrey Paterson, the six solo instrumentalists of a work that had come close to ‘secular oratorio, for much of its duration’ coalesce ‘into a mini orchestra whose endlessly varied colouristic possibilities are at the service of a viscerally operatic scenario’. As ostinato builds up climactically, but never predictably, we reach the (again surprising) climax of a tale adapted by Harsent from John Gower, who in turn had adapted it from Ovid. Medea and Jason having returned to Colchis with the Golden Fleece, Jason offers to give ten of his years, that his father, Aeson, might regain some youth. Medea uses her magic instead, but did Aeson, partially transformed, actually want to be rejuvenated?

Again, then, we are made to think, and rethink. Birtwistle’s ritualistic response to Harsent’s ritual spells screws up tension – both conventionally and unconventionally. Duncan’s staging, with Alison Chitty’s typically primæval yet modern designs, again draws us in to a work that seems to take its cue perhaps more from the Birtwistle of The Minotaur than the composer of The Mask of Orpheus. Circles, numbers, and their properties: verbally, musically, scenically, they have us recall Gawain, yet also remind us that this is a different myth, a different response. The performances from all concerned seemed to me beyond reproach. Padmore and Atherton had us forget they had even appeared on stage before; Padmore even had me wonder whether it was indeed he singing both Jason and Aeson, so differentiated were his responses. Atherton's wild dignity struck just the right note. in every respect. 

 

 

My immediate reaction was to want to hear both works again. Then, doubtless, like the works themselves with respect to earlier tellings of their myths, my responses would both deepen and change. These are both chamber operas we shall need to hear again and again.

 

LSO/Rattle - Schumann, Das Paradies und die Peri, 11 January 2015

Barbican Hall

Peri – Sally Matthews

Narrator – Mark Padmore
Kate Royal (soprano)
Bernarda Fink (contralto)
Andrew Staples (tenor)
Florian Boesch (bass)
Francesca Chiejina, Eliszabeth Skinner, Bianca Andrew, Emily Kyte (vocal quartet: Peris)
London Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

 

Simon Rattle clearly has a soft spot for Das Paradies und die Peri, having conducted it with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as having chosen it as a Desert Island Disc. Each to his own, I suppose. There is some wonderful music here and the work has clearly been treated unfairly; there is certainly no reason to feel anything but gratitude for this rare outing and fine performance. However, I cannot imagine any conceivable circumstances in which I might prefer it over the St Matthew Passion, Tristan, or a host of other works. Thank goodness, though, that Schumann set a text in German some way ‘after’ Thomas Moore, rather than Moore’s own ghastly Lalla Rookh. To describe the latter as ‘flowery’ would be so much of an understatement as to mislead; indeed, when, on occasion, my eye wandered across the programme booklet page to see the English version of the text, it swiftly turned back to the German, far more readily comprehensible, let alone palatable. Even in the German, moreover, it is difficult to bring oneself to care about the rather trite moralism. This is no Tannhäuser, let alone Parsifal, although, to be fair, the poem never sinks to the level of poor Weber’s Euryanthe, let alone Oberon. Fortunately, however, I soon found myself (more or less) able to enjoy the musical setting without troubling oneself too much about the words either way.

Rattle’s direction of his forces was generally astute, the reservations I felt pertaining to points of detail – this conductor’s over-emphasis upon certain ‘interesting’ details so often his Achilles heel – rather than to anything more fundamental. The LSO, as so often, was on excellent form, the dramatic tension of the performance so clearly founded here, just as it should have been. For instance, the orchestral throbbing heard, cellos surely echoing Der Freischütz, in the Angel’s ‘Dir, Kind des Stamms’ proved both attractive and dramatically telling in itself, but also an incitement for what was to come. Flexibility in the Peri’s following ‘Wo find’ich sie?’ was highly commendable too. Echoes of Berlioz were to be heard in the chorus, ‘Doch seine Ströme sind jetzt tot’, reminding us of the orchestra’s second-to-none pedigree in that composer’s music under Colin Davis. (Indeed, I could not help but wonder what Davis might have made of this oratorio; Rattle’s occasional fussiness would surely have been avoided.) I wish that Rattle had not driven so hard in the final number of Part One, especially when the chorus was singing; he proved far more considerate, as has often been his way, as an ‘accompanist’ to the solo singers. But the orchestral playing and the singing of the London Symphony Chorus was outstanding, putting me in mind of the close to the first part of The Creation, another work these forces performed with such distinction under Sir Colin. Brahms, too, seemed to beckon.

 

A point of ‘detail’ in which Rattle’s approach was most welcome was the darkness of the orchestral interlude in the Narration, no.12, following ‘Kein sterblich Aug’ hat je/Ein Land gesehn voll höh’rer Pracht!’ The darkness of the words to come, so strongly in contrast, was tellingly foretold. There was great charm to the chorus with which the third part opens; it came across in a similar vein to spinning choruses such as those in Haydn, Weber, and Wagner. Wagner again, this time Das Rheingold, sounded clearly prefigured following the bass solo, ‘Mit ihrer Schwestern Worten’. It is a sad commentary upon our ‘authenticke’ times that the extraordinary neo-Bachian solo at the opening of Peris’ ‘Es fällt ein Tropfen aus Land’ was met with what was surely Rattle’s conception of minimising, though thankfully not eliminating vibrato; as if what mattered about Bach, let alone about Schumann’s response to him, were some alien form of puritanism. But that did not last long, strings warming as the number progressed. The sharpness of the general ‘dramatic’ trajectory, insofar as the poem permits there to be one, certainly seemed greater as the work progressed, although Rattle again, in the final ‘Chorus of the Blessed Spirits’, seemed to confuse driving hard with ‘drama’ as such. Speeding up throughout the number sounded a little too much like having misunderstood Furtwängler’s lessons. Still, the LSO and Chorus remained on scintillating form.

 

Most of the solo singing was excellent too. The only real exception was Kate Royal, her Maiden as dull and featureless as her disengaged countenance. Many of the words were quite incomprehensible, and her tone proved surprisingly squally. The orchestra, however, remained full of Romantic wonder. Otherwise, there were few grounds for complaint. If, at times earlier on, Mark Padmore’s Narrator sounded a little ‘old’, there was no gainsaying the intelligence of his way with the words. And by the time we had come to his solo just before the end of the second part, ‘Sie wankt – sie sinkt,’ his style seemed to have adjusted, sounding spot on for Schumann. His contributions in the third part were ‘narration’ in the best sense: emphatic, but certainly not overly so. I heard some people complain about Sally Matthews’s diction, but have to say that was not a problem for me. (These things can often be partly a matter of where one is seated.) The sincerity of her contribution and the musicality of her response to the words were for me quite enchanting: certainly the best performance I have heard from her. Bernarda Fink’s Angel solo in the Third Part was almost worth the price of admission on its own, her opening ‘Noch nicht!’ poised and pivotal: putting me in mind a little of the crucial turning-point, albeit given to soprano, in Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony. (That was far from the only point at which Mendelssohn sprang to mind, both that work and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the second part’s opening number.) Andrew Staples was on fine form, his tenor wonderfully sappy, every inch a Tamino. Florian Boesch, if sometimes a little dry of tone, offered undoubted intelligence in his response to words and music alike. The mixed vocal quartet of the first part brought welcome echoes of The Magic Flute. Last but certainly not least, the female quartet from the Guildhall revealed four singers – Francesca Chiejina, Eliszabeth Skinner, Bianca Andrew, Emily Kyte – full of character, every one of them vastly superior to the bafflingly ubiquitous Royal. I should not be surprised to hear more in the coming years from all of them.

Salzburg Festival (1) - BRSO/Haitink - Haydn, The Creation, 18 July 2014

Grosses Festspielhaus

Camilla Tilling (soprano)

Mark Padmore (tenor)

Hanno Müller-Brachmann (bass-baritone)

 

Bavarian Radio Chorus (chorus master: Peter Dijkstra)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

Bernard Haitink has waited until late his career to perform some of the greatest masterpieces of the choral repertoire. The Creation, the B minor Mass, and the St Matthew Passion are all works he has conducted for the first time in or approaching his eighties. ‘Authenticity’ has doubtless played a part here, as has Haitink’s typical modesty. Has the wait been worth it? Very much so, at least on the basis of this, the opening concert of this year’s Salzburg Festival.

 

Since Alexander Pereira added an extra week to the festival, having it open with an ‘Ouverture spirituelle’ programme of sacred music, The Creation, or Die Schöpfung, has featured first each time: a lovely invention of tradition. It would, I am sure, be fascinating to compare Haitink’s performance with those of previous years, not least the ‘period’ performance of Nikolaus Harnoncourt; alas, I am not in a position to do so. We all come with our own personal ‘traditions’, our own terms of reference, however. Passing swiftly over an unfortunate performance earlier this year from Richard Egarr, replacing the late Sir Colin Davis, my most recent performance had been with Sir Colin and the LSO in 2007; beyond that, the recording I tend most often hear in my head – and indeed to listen to – is Karajan’s classic first version (second, if you count his live Salzburg performance, issued much more recently). It seems inconceivable that anyone will ever match, let alone surpass, Karajan’s soloists, but it is a measure of the stature of this performance that Mark Padmore was anything but shamed by inevitable if odious mental comparison with the hardest act to follow, Fritz Wunderlich; indeed, Padmore’s was for me the finest vocal performance of all. And if my memories of the LSO/Davis performance – it has been issued on LSO Live, though I have yet to hear it – in general pip this Salzburg account, perhaps above all in terms of Davis’s inimitable way with orchestral Haydn, encompassing not only great musical wisdom but a sense of fun that is perhaps not Haitink’s strongest suit, then the distinctions will only be of degree. This was a fine performance, with no weak link, which crucially had one marvel anew not only at Haydn’s invention but also at one of the greatest monuments to the late Austrian Enlightenment.  

 

Perhaps one of the greatest surprises concerning Haitink’s performance was the size of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra: the strings ranged from ten first violins to four double basses. (Not that this need determine how we perform the work today, but it is of course a far smaller orchestra than Haydn, influenced by the monumental Handel performances he heard in London, either had in mind or received at the premiere.) There were a few occasions when I really felt that at least another couple of desks of violins would have benefited the performance – for instance, during Raphael’s Second Day accompagnato – but, even in a large house such as this, not very many. In any case, regret at the loss of Karajan’s deep pile was, if not entirely banished, largely compensated for by the alert, variegated playing of the scaled-down BRSO. Purpose and direction may be accomplished and communicated – or not – with any size of orchestra, and they were certainly present from the very opening of the ‘Representation of Chaos’. That first chord – well, not actually a chord, just a unison C, tonality itself still to emerge, like Heaven and Earth themselves – was magnificently ominous; the movement as a whole offered a properly Beethovenian essay in the symphonically generative. Indeed, it almost seemed to go beyond Beethoven. Whether at the fundamental level of harmonic rhythm, or at that of the detail of the menace imparted by clarinet figuration, everything was made to count – and was heard to be connected. (The contrast with the hapless exhibitionism of Egarr could hardly have been greater.)

 

The recitative which follows was taken beautifully slowly: a sense of the desolate, perhaps, or at least the empty, but pregnant with hope. The excellent Bavarian Radio Chorus intoned with sotto voce precision the Spirit of God’s moving upon the waters, before the celebrated outburst of ‘Light!’ It was perhaps not so overpowering as in some performances, yet made its point without exaggeration: typical Haitink. Uriel’s following aria was crisply played, anything but sentimental; Padmore offered – or seemed to do so – a slight stress – upon ‘Ordnung’, that crucial eighteenth-century preoccupation, again without exaggeration, certainly without the musical disruption some seem to think betokens attention to the verbal text. And in the chorus that followed, orchestral chromaticism was both sinuous and strongly symphonically generative, choral diction and pitching beyond reproach. A new created world indeed seemed to spring up at God’s command.

 

Hanno Müller’ Brachmann and Camilla Tilling, the other soloists, both had strong virtues. If Müller-Brachmann had, especially earlier on, a slight tendency to hector and indeed to bluff tone, that soon worked itself out. Tilling announced herself with ‘Mit Staunen sieht das Wunderwerk’, where I cannot help but hear Karajan’s Gundula Janowitz. Tilling was very different indeed: almost hoch-dramatisch, certainly forthright and unquestionably attentive to the libretto. It was intriguing, and perhaps a little surprising, that Haitink seemed keen to highlight Haydn’s Handelian legacy im ‘Rollend im schäumenden Wellen’, not just the dotted rhythms, but their rhythmic and harmonic implications. The Munich flautist worked especial wonders here with the ‘limpid brook’, as did the woodwind section as a whole in the following ‘Nun beut die Flur…,’ Tilling’s line here and elsewhere ornamented. ‘Stimmt an die Saiten’ sounded revealingly close to Mozart’s Handel – Gottfried van Swieten’s performances of alte Musik were of great importance to Mozart and Haydn – and the clarity with which it proceeded enabled both a panoply of orchestral colour as well as choral vigour. The fourth day’s sunrise again made its point without exaggeration, prefigured by the pretty recitative tinkling on an early piano by James Johnstone. Padmore brought echoes of Bach – perhaps inevitably – to bear, delicate yet purposeful. As the first part drew to a choral close, the heavens telling the glory of God, the only thing I missed was Haydn’s smile, or indeed his leaping for sheer, unadulterated joy; however, Beethovenian goodness and greatness of spirit were not entirely inadequate substitutes.

 

Orchestral playing was just as beautiful, just as variegated following the interval. Gabriel’s first aria brought a wonderful cooing synergy between Tilling and the Munich woodwind – though was her ornamentation of ‘Liebe’ just a little overdone? Müller-Brachmann’s gravity matched that of Haitink in the following recitative injunction to be fruitful and multiply. Haitink’s tempi were not entirely without surprise; for instance, ‘Der Herr ist groß’ was taken at quite a lick. Crucially, however, it was not harried; it came as release. If ‘Mit Würd und Hoheit angetan’ delighted rather than ravished, Wunderlich’s – and Karajan’s – shadow falls especially long there. In any case, the opening of the third part, three flutes and strings alike, was truly beautiful by any standards: this was a beauty that did not need to ask whether we had noticed it. The opening of the ‘Hymn’ was again taken at a fleet tempo, but if it did not offer the same kind of rapture as Karajan, its own variety was undeniably present. Müller-Brachmann as Adam again occasionally proved hectoring: perhaps the less agreeable side of Fischer-Dieskau’s influence? However, as this extraordinary number progressed, any minor doubts were dispelled. It was a delight, and a moving one. Haitink’s relatively small scale seemed especially apt here in Eden. And Tilling sounded very much a different ‘character’ as Eve. Moreover, Müller-Brachmann naughtily relished the quickening dew, celebratedly echoed in Haydn’s own Schöpfungsmesse. I am not sure that the final chorus has ever in my experience so clearly echoed the end of Die Zauberflöte, not the least associative achievement in a thoroughly admirable performance.

Padmore/Lewis - Die schöne Müllerin, 12 September 2009

Wigmore Hall

Schubert – Die schöne Müllerin, D 795

Mark Padmore (tenor)
Paul Lewis (piano)

At least so far as the vocal part was concerned, this was a peculiar account of Schubert’s first song cycle. There were some very good things in Mark Padmore’s performance. I shall come to those a little later, but I could not help wondering whether his was really an appropriate voice for this repertoire. Of course, there is room for all sorts of approaches, a principal distinction being whether to use a tenor or a lower voice, transposed, allowing artists as different as Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Fritz Wunderlich and Matthias Goerne, to put forward their interpretations; the cycle has even occasionally been borrowed by female singers, for instance Brigitte Fassbaender. The recording Pears made with Britten certainly does not present a typically German voice, of whatever variety, yet it works very well, not least on account of Britten’s superlative contribution, but also thanks to Pears’s marriage of verbal and musical understanding.

Padmore’s voice comes closer to Pears than to the other singers I have mentioned, but not only is it very much the sound of an ‘English tenor’, it is limited in tone, or at least it was here, and eschews vibrato to an extent that helps one understand why he is an Evangelist of choice amongst the ‘authenticke’ brigade. Use of the head voice was too frequent to make any particular point; it ended up merely sounding fey. Indeed, archness was markedly more characteristic of this performance than vernal freshness. Whilst diction was generally excellent, there were a few occasions when vowels sounded a little odd, often though not always when umlauts were involved. I was a little surprised to hear ‘heller’ for ‘frischer’ in Wohin? and ‘sagt’ for spricht in Am Feierabend, but too much could easily be made of such matters. More worryingly, there were several instances of questionable intonation.

However, there were, as I said, highly commendable aspects to Padmore’s performance too. His experience as an Evangelist often told, in the very real sense one had of a narrator – often more a narrator than a participant, it might be added, certainly more so than, say, with Peter Schreier. Padmore’s attention to the words themselves was often exemplary. To take one example, in Ungeduld, his leaning into the word ‘Dein’ on ‘Dein ist mein Herz’, conveyed a delivery of the heart from our hero to his beloved. The questioning tone at the end of Halt! really did give a sense of a participant, asking the inscrutable brook what it meant. Perhaps if the young man had been able to understand then what, if anything, he was being told, things might have turned out differently, but such is Fate.

Where this performance truly scored, however, was in the contribution from Paul Lewis at the piano. Lewis imparted a powerful, inexorable continuity to the unfolding drama, not unlike the contribution of Wagner’s orchestral Greek chorus. The opening number, Das Wandern, was a case in point, the piano part properly muscular, to borrow an apposite adjective from Gavin Plumley’s excellent programme notes. Moreover, one heard a subtle yet undeniable growth in intensity through the stanzas of this strophic song, initially matched by Padmore, though the latter drew back at the end: less, it seemed, on account of a response to the text, but rather because his vocal reserves demanded it. The presence of the brook was strong throughout so many of the songs; this, one truly felt, was another character, perhaps even the most important character of all. Another character was no less impressively, if fleetingly, introduced with the huntsman of Der Jäger. Impatience (Ungeduld) was immediately present in the song of that name, whilst the harmonic shifts in Morgengruß registered piercingly, yet without inverted commas. I was especially taken with, and disturbed by, the harmonic premonitions of Schumann to which Lewis pointed in Tränenregen. The echt-Schubertian melancholic tread of Die liebe Farbe responded in equal measure to the verbal text – suicide beckons – and to the repeated-note hints of Chopin (the so-called ‘Raindrop’ Prelude). This made me suspect that Lewis might have an interestingly Classical perspective upon Chopin’s music. One heard the Romantic horns of Die böse Farbe, whilst, in Trockne Blumen, the piano ensured that the flowers were truly withered, Finally, one could hardly resist the attraction of the waters in the closing Des Baches Wiegenlied, drawn in as the hero himself.

Padmore and Lewis are to record all three Schubert song cycles for Harmonia Mundi. Fans of either artist or of both will doubtless wish to hear their interpretations. Theirs did not, however, seem to me an ideal partnership. It occurred to me that Padmore might have been happier with, or at least more suited to, a fortepiano performance. Certainly his performance had its virtues. But listen, for instance, to Wunderlich and one hears such ease with the music, a performance that does not need to underline every verbal nuance; the music and the sheer beauty of the voice permit the words to speak for themselves. Listen to Goerne, especially his second recording with Christoph Eschenbach, and one hears something altogether darker, daring to look into an expressionist abyss. There is room for both and for much else besides. A Müllerin for devotees of Choral Evensong perhaps has its place, but it is not for me.

'Night music': Britten Sinfonia/Rysanov/Padmore, 23 October 2008

West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge

Stravinsky – Fanfare for a new theatre (1964)
Birtwistle – Prologue (1971)
Britten – Lachrymae: reflections on a song of John Dowland, op.48a (1950/1976)
Handel – Samson: ‘Total eclipse’ and ‘Thus when the sun’ (1743)
Woolrich – Ulysses awakes (1989)
Britten – Nocturne, op.60 (1958)

Mark Padmore (tenor/director for Nocturne)
Maxim Rysanov (viola)
Jacqueline Shave (leader/director)
Britten Sinfonia

This was an excellent concert, constructed around Mark Padmore’s choice of Britten’s Nocturne as a work with which to inaugurate a new collaboration with the Britten Sinfonia. The connections between the works were genuine and interesting but never merely didactic. It seemed generous of Padmore to share the limelight with violist Maxim Rysanov, soloist in two of the works presented, but that generosity was repaid with fine performances indeed.

Stravinsky’s brief fanfare – almost beating Webern at his own game – made for a splendid opening gambit. Two trumpeters, Paul Archibald and Tom Rainer, brought precision and tonal warmth, the echoes of the Toccata to Orfeo setting down a marker for John Woolrich’s Monteverdi explorations, as well as leading almost seamlessly into the world of Birtwistle’s Prologue. The baleful quality of Birtwistle’s writing was captured by Padmore and members of the Sinfonia, the reappearance of the trumpet underlining the connection between the two pieces. Padmore’s diction was not always beyond reproach but it was interesting to hear a somewhat Brittenesque tonal quality applied to Birtwistle; I thought it worked rather well.

This led us to Britten himself: his final work, Lachrymae, in the version for viola and orchestra. Rysanov sported a strange, somewhat vampirish outfit. There could be no doubts, however, concerning his performance, nor as to his direction of the other players. The first bars were played vibrato-less, allowing the music then to blossom, as if bringing distant music from Dowland’s time more sharply into focus in our own. I liked the occasional hint of contrast between Rysanov’s ‘Russian’ string sound and the more ‘English’ quality of his colleagues. This was not overdone and was far from ever-present, but it put me in mind of Britten’s friendships with Rostropovich and Shostakovich. I liked even more the occasional hints of Berg, stronger as time went on, the appearance of Dowland’s music reminiscent of – though it could hardly be expected quite to match – the appearance of the Bach chorale in the Berg Violin Concerto. The young Britten, it may be recalled, had greatly desired to study with Berg in Vienna, a desire frustrated by the parochialism of his teachers at the Royal College of Music. Rysanov brought the music to considerable heights of passion, underpinned by a finely judged balance between rhythmic freedom and security. Britten’s musical transformations were lain bare, but never clinically so; there was a true sense of the cumulative power of musico-dramatic progression.

Two arias from Samson followed. I was rather surprised, given Padmore’s lengthy association with ‘authenticke’ conductors, at the wideness of his vibrato here. Indeed, it seemed excessive and was toned down considerably upon the return to Britten. I also wondered whether less might have been more when it came to employment of the head voice. Diction was much better in the first aria, ‘Total eclipse’, Samson’s lament for his lost sight, though it was more variable in ‘Thus when the sun’. Padmore’s melismata here were perfectly handled: each note crystal clear, yet never at the expense of phrasing. I was much taken with the reassuringly old-fashioned sturdiness – though never heaviness – to the playing of the Britten Sinfonia. Handel, who nowadays suffers some truly appalling perversities in the name of ‘authenticity’, had his dignity restored at last.

The second half opened with Woolrich’s Ulysses awakes, for me perhaps the highlight of the programme. The opening double-bass line led perfectly into Rysanov’s viola line, permitting Monteverdi’s music truly to blossom in its new surroundings. This was a passionately ‘inauthentic’ treatment, though it never succumbed to all-purpose Romanticism. Almost Purcellian in its melancholy, the reminder of the English Orpheus presented a bridge not only between Woolrich and Monteverdi but also between Woolrich, Britten, and Monteverdi. I could not help but think of Britten’s superlative recorded account of Purcell’s great Chacony in G minor. Harmonic horizons broadened yet Woolrich always remained faithful to the spirit of Monteverdi. A modernist halo was provided by the players of the Britten Sinfonia, a powerful reimagining – and here I thought of Henze’s realisation of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria – of Monteverdi’s continuo ensemble. I wondered whether one or two vocal phrase-endings were ever so slightly tossed away but, in the face of such a magnificent performance from Rysanov, this must be the most minor of criticisms. Far more to the point was the apt vocal flexibility to his reading, heightened by the faultless interplay between soloist – first among equals – and ensemble. This performance was, quite simply, outstanding.

We came finally to Britten’s Nocturne. Once again, the ever-flexible Britten Sinfonia was on excellent form, both as an ensemble and as soloists. There were certainly many opportunities for soloists to shine, all of them well taken: bassoon, harp, horn, timpani, oboe, flute, clarinet, and strings. The interludes between songs were all extremely fine. Britten’s sound-world announced itself from the very first bar, the strings’ sense of uneasy undulation during the setting of Shelley’s Prometheus unbound unerringly caught. Padmore had mastered the trickiness of the Peter Pears-inspired vocal writing, accomplishing what Pears himself defined as the role of technique: the liberation of the imagination. There was a real sense of the magic and menace of Coleridge’s moonlight in The wanderings of Cain, not least thanks to the opening harp sounds and the gradual darkening of Padmore’s voice. Word-painting was attentive, for instance in the setting from Thomas Middleton’s Blurt, Master Constable. Here Padmore led us through the hopping of the cricket to the ‘peep, peep, peep, peep,’ of the goat, the latter with the able collaboration of Stephen Bell on French horn. Oboe and pizzicato strings made their mark in Owen’s The kind ghosts, followed by wonderfully flighty flute and clarinet in Keats’s Sleep and poetry. The scherzando quality those instruments imparted contrasted powerfully with the English stillness of the strings, Padmore not only connecting the two moods but leading and adapting to them. I thought, however, that his tone sounded bleached, even threadbare by the end of this movement: a pity, especially given the words: ‘... all the cheerful eyes that glance so brightly at the new sun-rise’. But there was compensation in the final Shakespeare sonnet (no.43) from the warm, ardent strings, and the sense of return at the end was impressively caught by all musicians.

It is worth saying a few words on presentation. Katie Mitchell and Lyndsey Turner were credited as ‘staging consultants’. There was, however, no ‘staging’ as would commonly be understood, save for the unavoidable fact of the performances taking place on a stage. It is not clear to me what can have been involved other than deciding where the musicians would be placed on stage and whether they stood or were seated. Such a task hardly seems to require two consultants but there was nothing objectionable to whatever it was they had done. To start with, I wondered whether having the musicians stand for Lachrymae was a deliberate evocation of the practice of earlier ‘players’ – as opposed to a modern orchestra – but in that case, it was far from clear why this should not have been applied to Ulysses awakes. No harm was done; perhaps I was missing something. On the other hand, the programme notes, were excellent: both the commentary to all but one of the pieces by Jo Kirkbride and the short essays from Padmore and Kate Kennedy. Woolrich wrote his own note, which deserves to be quoted in full, should that be the right phrase:

There are two great arias at the beginning of Monteverdi’s opera Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria: one for Penelope, and this one for Ulysses, waking on the shore of his homeland. In this retelling, the viola sings Ulysses.

Talk about letting the music speak for itself! Intentionally or otherwise, this seemed to me a clever strategy: without any more of a guide, one had to listen all the more closely. Perhaps, after the manner of Debussy giving titles to his piano Préludes at the end rather than the beginning, we could be treated to additional commentary following the performance...