Prom 39: Hartwig/BBC SO/Oramo - Turnage, Vaughan Williams, and Elgar, 15 August 2022

Royal Albert Hall

Turnage: Time Flies (UK premiere)
Vaughan Williams: Tuba Concerto in F minor
Elgar: Symphony no.1 in A-flat major, op.55

Constantin Hartwig (tuba)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Three very different English composers were to be heard here, in excellent performances from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo. Elgar’s First Symphony was for me unquestionably the highlight, but the varied conspectus will have offered something for many. It is especially welcome just now to be reminded that, notwithstanding unremitting hostility from our fathomlessly philistine government and media, there can still be something to celebrate in English artistic endeavours, past and present. Nadine Dorries does not yet hold all the cultural cards.  

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Time Flies is a co-commission from the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, and the BBC SO. Its premiere, like so many, fell victim to Covid, as did the Tokyo Olympic Games at which it was due to take place. The piece’s three movements, ‘London Time’, ‘Hamburg Time’ and ‘Tokyo Time’, the last considerably more extended than its predecessors, last about twenty-five minutes in total. ‘London Time’ opened with an urban confidence, metallic and syncopated, perhaps more redolent of London a dozen years ago than now. Upbeat and playful, that opening material nonetheless fell downward through disorienting, corrosive chromaticism, until we reached one of Turnage’s trademark saxophone solos, prior to a final section in which various tendencies are combined. Hope for the future? Perhaps.

The opening trumpets of ‘Hamburg Time’ seemed to recall Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man or, after a while, the Janáček of the Sinfonietta. Stravinsky too came to mind, especially as woodwind became more prominent. But these were ghosts; Turnage’s is the fundamental voice. A sense of wide-open space similarly dissolved in unease, reassertion of something perhaps not so very different from socialist or at least collectivist realism the hallmark of what follows. Jazz rhythms, sonorities, and attack of ‘Tokyo Times’ were refreshingly distinct from faded orientalist tropes. Turnage evokes them, of course, rather than simply recreating them, another sign of Stravinsky’s presence (perhaps Henze’s too). An enigmatic chorale at the centre—post-Messiaen, or is it post-Weill?— cautioned against easy answers.

Vaughan Williams’s Tuba Concerto was treated to a splendidly nimble reading from Constantin Hartwig and the orchestra. The first movement’s liveliness was justly ambiguous, culminating in a beautifully played cadenza imbued with a sense of longing the more impressive for not being milked. The central ‘Romanza’ offered a fine instance in miniature of Vaughan Williams’s ability to create something folklike that is entirely composed rather than found. Again, there was longing without cloying, let alone sentimentality. The tuba part sounded at times almost like a descant, albeit amidst or beneath orchestral textures, at any rate in intriguing counterpoint. The finale offered darker, even diabolical, play not so distant perhaps from Prokofiev, though certainly speaking with a different accent. Another cadenza, different in character, proved equally fine in execution. A sudden end underlined the composer’s achievement in concision, never outstaying his welcome. That, alas, is more than can be said for a dreary encore, apparently Paul McCartney’s Blackbird, which served mostly to underline Vaughan Williams’s skill in tuba-writing.

Oramo’s studied tempo for the opening of the Elgar avoided sentimentality without going down the more common road of swiftness. Articulation further underlined a premonition of shock, even shellshock. When the full orchestra entered, it sounded glorious, as much maestoso as Elgarian nobilmente, without a tinge of regret. Did it, though, lead to the Allegro material, or was it more a matter of sectional contrast? I missed something, a sense of connection, however intangible, characterising performances otherwise as different as Boult and Barenboim. That, however, was my only doubt concerning this fine performance; given the excellence of everything else, I am happy to allow the fault may have been mine. For Oramo captured even-handedly Elgar’s Wagnerian and Brahmsian tendencies; as did the BBC SO’s sound. And the return of the opening material unquestionably arose from preceding breakdown, mood-swings necessitating something both old and new. It was not only Brahms and Wagner, though: the most liminal qualities of this movement evoked, yet never merely recreated, both featherlight Mendelssohn and phantasmagorial Strauss, the latter especially at the point of disturbing recapitulatory collapse. If the frame of reference were not so wide as that of Barenboim’s extraordinary recent performances, we had likewise travelled a long way from the Boultian ascendancy.

The second movement similarly had a Mendelssohn-cum-Brahms underpinning to its steely (anti?)-militarism. As with Mahler, who increasingly came to mind, there were startling new vistas to witness, though the light, often the half-light, crucially was different in quality. For all the alleged serenity of the third movement, there were darker forces at work too. Harmonies summoned Hagen from his watch. At the close, there prevailed a rapt inwardness not so different from Schumann’s Innigkeit, albeit exquisitely and even tragically late. Disorientation, even brokenness, marked the onset of the finale, the question being ‘is this irreparable?’ It was no easy question to answer, a struggle of Brahmsian order indicated. If here, Elgar comes perilously close on occasion to imitation of Brahms, it is a fault in the right direction—and here a winning one. Ultimately, nobility in both work and performance won out, not despite but on account of the slings and arrows.

 

Proms 29 and 30 – Swedish CO/Dausgaard - ‘The Brandenburg Project’: Bach, Turnage, Hillborg, Caine, Neuwirth, Dean, and Mackey. 5 August 2018

Royal Albert Hall

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.1 in F major, BWV 1046

Mark-Anthony Turnage: Maya (2014, UK premiere)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.3 in G major, BWV 1048

Anders Hillborg: Bach Materia (2017, UK premiere)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.5 in D major, BWV 1050

Uri Caine: Hamsa (2015, UK premiere)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.4 in G major, BWV 1049

Olga Neuwirth: Aello – ballet mécanomorphe (2016-17, UK premiere)

Brett Dean: Approach – Prelude to a Canon (2017, UK premiere)

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.6 in B-flat major, BWV 1051

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.2 in F major, BWV 1047

Steven Mackey: Triceros (2015, UK premiere)

Fiona Kelly, Claire Chase (flutes)

Per Gross, Katarina Wiedell (recorders)

Lisa Almberg, Daniel Burstedt, Mårten Larsson (oboes)

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)

Göran Hülphers, Terése Larsson (horns)

Pekka Kuusisto, Antje Weithaas (violins)

Brett Dean, Tabea Zimmermann (violas)

Maya Beiser (cello)

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

Uri Caine (piano)

Swedish Chamber Orchestra

Thomas Dausgaard (conductor)

It is always a fascinating prospect to hear contemporary and indeed earlier composers respond to repertoire works. Think of Mozart learning from and adding to Bach and Handel. Last year in Vienna, I heard newly commissioned responses from eight composers to Le Marteau sans Maître, interspersed with the movements of Boulez’s work. This summer, Bach’s were the masterpieces, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra having commissioned six composers to write companion pieces to each of his Brandenburg Concertos. Rarely if ever will all contributions be of equal stature or prove equally satisfying to different tastes. Such was certainly not the case, in my experience, with the responses to Boulez; nor was it to be so here. Alas, only two of the new works seemed to me to have been worth the effort; the other four proved at best over-extended and, in at least two cases, probably more, meretricious. Still, even in somewhat variable performances of the ‘originals’, Bach, as Boulez would have put it, remained.

First up was the first of Bach’s set of six. Its first movement was light, airy, not unlike Claudio Abbado’s late way with these pieces with his Orchestra Mozart, if not quite so secure. Although there was much to admire in the playing of the Swedish CO under Thomas Dausgaard, here and elsewhere, rarely if ever did I gain the feeling of being truly grounded in Bach’s music; it seemed as much an excursion to them as, perhaps still more so than, the new works. Still, it breathed – just about, and was well balanced, in itself no mean feat. What a relief, moreover, it was to hear modern horns in this music. The following Adagio enjoyed some delectable oboe playing; I also loved the dark, velvety bassoon tone. Its successor danced freely – not, thank goodness, in the bizarrely dogmatic ‘This is a Baroque dance and this is how a Baroque dance must sound and be experienced, exterminate, exterminate…’ so prevalent in certain circles. Mahan Esfahani, playing harpsichord continuo throughout the first concert, never failed to work with Bach’s harmony, to call it by name and thus create it anew (if I may slightly misquote Adorno). If certain ‘effects’ in the Polacca irritated, the closing dances nevertheless beguiled. Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Maya perplexed – that is, before it merely bored. Beautifully played by all concerned, not least cello soloist, Maya Beiser, its status as response, companion piece, anything at all to the Bach work was less unclear than absent. It did not employ the same musical forces, had no connection, at least so far as I could hear, to its material; worst of all, though, it came across as a frankly cynical prolongation of what might have been a couple of minutes or so of television serial mood music. Vaguely blues-y at times, vaguely threnody-like, it might initially have filled a gap in a concert programme; soon, however, I developed a suspicion that the gap would have been better left unfilled.

Bach’s Third Concerto offered cultivated modern playing, albeit with very small forces. (Is that really a sensible way to treat this music in the Royal Albert Hall?) It was not hard-driven as so many authenticke performances tend to be, even if it lacked a good deal in gravitas. Again, it was the continuo playing that afforded the greatest pleasure, grounding the harmony and rendering Bach’s form dynamic. About Anders Hillborg’s ‘new’ second movement, the less said the better. On a slow day, it might, I suppose, have taken five minutes to jot down. The third movement (Bach’s, thank God) was very fast yet not unreasonably so; something of Bach’s spirit and humanity remained. Hillborg’s Bach Materia opened intriguingly, out of the orchestra’s tuning up. Alas, it was all downhill thereafter. The music moved into vaguely minimalist churning out of violin arpeggios from soloist Pekka Kuusisto, offered ‘effects’ aplenty, from silly chirping noises to shouted interjections as Kuusisto and double bass player Sebastien Dubé improvised. The collaboration showed Dubé to better advantage than Kuusisto. Should unpleasant wailing be your thing, however, there was some of that too. Again, the sense was of filling in time that really had no need to be filled in. When bits of Bach returned, there was some enjoyment to be had, soon not so much dashed as dissipated. Attempts to be ‘right on’ rarely prove edifying; this, frankly, was just a mess.

The Fifth Brandenburg Concerto was for me the unquestioned highlight of the first concert and indeed of the Bach performances as a whole. Here, it seemed, the soloists, especially Esfahani, took the lead rather than Dausgaard and turned what they were doing into a performance in the living, emphatic sense. The first movement was lively and breathed, its contours and formal dynamism not only apparent but felt, experienced. Esfahani’s way with the cadenza not only impressed, but reminded us what astounding music this is. It would be foolish to imitate Furtwängler, even on the piano, but his incredible recorded 1950 performance from Salzburg remains the model here. Esfahani proved a worthy successor. The second movement was true Kammermusik: flexible, beautifully balanced, with all the give and take one might have hoped for between harpsichord, flute (Fiona Kelly), and especially violin (Antje Weithaas). Bach’s closing Allegro danced with far greater ease than any of those aforementioned self-conscious ‘Baroque Dance Lessons’ and, naturally, went far deeper. These were not soloists who, again to borrow from Adorno, said Bach yet meant Telemann. Its contrapuntal complexity was embraced; that complexity embraced both performers and audience in return. It was perhaps a little puzzling not to have a ‘response’ that involved the harpsichord, but Uri Caine’s Hamsa was doubtless written with himself in mind as piano soloist. There is no doubting the quality of his pianism; his tone was often to die for. Hamsa, named after the Arabic word for ‘five’, seemed to me sincere and ambitious. It certainly confronted Bach in quotation, allusion, and, in its way, vaguely neo-Classical procedure. Again, it seemed far too long for its material, whose treatment began to sound merely arbitrary. Perhaps I simply did not ‘get’ Caine’s aesthetic. There was certainly no gainsaying the quality of the performances here.

Bach remained, of course, and endured into the second concert. The Fourth Brandenburg Concerto reverted somewhat to the more tentative or at least constricted ‘early-ish’ style of the First and Third, at least so far as the orchestra and Kuusisto were concerned. Per Gross and Katarina Widell on recorders, however, offered infectious enthusiasm. Dausgaard seemed overly keen to mould the central Andante; its fussiness continued into the finale, which alas, had something of that ‘This is a Baroque Dance’ quality to it. A somewhat disappointing performance, then, prefaced Olga Neuwirth’s brilliant Aello – ballet mécanomorphe, to my ears by far the strongest of the new works. In three movements, like its companion, it immediately spoke with the tones – in every sense – of a serious composer at work. Figures remembered from Bach, whether melodic, rhythmic, or both, sounded as if trapped in a machine. Or were they actually perfectly happy to be there? Claire Chase on flute, shadowed by two muted trumpets, offered breathtaking virtuosity, set against an ever-changing ensemble that included synthesised harpsichord and glass harmonica as well as portable typewriter. Machines can be fun as well as serious – indeed sometimes especially when they are serious. So too can Bach. An almost Berio-like malaise, material dragged down into something mysteriously different yet related, led, toward the end of the first movement, into a reinvention of Bach and Neuwirth in almost jazzy style (all the more convincing for making no claims to be jazz ‘itself’). The glass harmonica soundworld of the second movement, however ‘artificial’ – what art, by definition, is not? – seemed to incite more ‘traditional’, arabesque-like flute writing which yet did not lose its ‘mechanical’ edge. Jesting with form – or perhaps simply my lack of understanding! – had me think for a while we were embarked upon a transition to a finale in which Bach would reassert himself, only to realise that ‘transition’ had been the finale along. I very much look forward to hearing it again.

Brett Dean’s Approach – Prelude to a Canon was written to preface the Sixth Concerto. Its opening busy counterpoint seemed to evoke, in melody and harmony, a Bach who may or may not have been ‘real’. Different moods, never predictable, whether ludic or songful, prevailed at different times, sometimes suggesting a more ‘modern’ conception of double concerto for the composer and fellow violist, Tabea Zimmermann, sometimes very much a reinvention of Bach’s own terms. Emotional and intellectual tension was often coincident; when not, the disparity proved equally suggestive. If I responded more strongly to Neuwirth’s piece, there was no doubting the accomplishment of Dean’s either. Bach emerged from its final bars. Again, my ears had been tricked; I had expected another section of Dean. This is a very difficult work to bring off. However, if I found the first movement unreasonably fast, Bach’s dark colours nevertheless shone through (or whatever the more appropriate verb for darkness here would be). The outer movements benefited from being Dean and Zimmermann taking the lead as soloists; the central Adagio ma non tanto seemed less certain in direction.

Bach bade farewell with his Second Brandenburg Concerto. It was hard-driven and light-textured in the now fashionable way. Nevertheless, balance came across very well: no mean feat in this of all works. Perhaps the highlight was the central Andante: not, I hasten to add, because the excellent Håkan Hardeberger was not playing, but because it flowed more freely, again taken as chamber music. I am afraid I could not get on with the machine-like approach to the finale. Even Stravinsky, I imagined, might have asked Dausgaard and company to calm down a little. That said, it helped pave the way for Steven Mackey’s Triceros, which followed without a break, a held trumpet note for transition. Its initial (post-)minimalism passed amiably enough. It certainly came across in polished, even accomplished fashion when contrasted with the offerings by Turnage and Hillsborg. Again, the aesthetic is one to which I find it difficult to respond, so I shall not say too much, other than again to say that it could have done with being half, even a third of the length. Note-spinning may have been the way of many a sub-Telemann composer; it was never Bach’s. Bach, however, remained – and always will.

Turnage: Coraline, Royal Opera, 31 March 2018

Barbican Theatre

Coraline – Mary Bevan

Mother, Other Mother – Kitty Whately
Father, Other Father – Alexander Robin Baker
Miss Spink, Ghost Child 1 – Gillian Keith
Miss Forcible – Frances McCafferty
Mr Bobo, Ghost Child 2 – Harry Nicoll
Ghost Child 3 – Dominic Sedgwick
 

Aletta Collins (director)

Giles Cadle (set designs)
Gabrielle Dalton (costumes)
Matt Haskins (lighting)
Richard Wiseman, David Bruitland (magic consultants)


Britten Sinfonia

Sian Edwards (conductor)

 

This was not quite the premiere: that had fallen two nights previously. In many ways, though, I was very happy to be there for a more ‘ordinary’ performance: as it happened, a Saturday matinee. For one thing, it was good to have a sense of how children received Mark-Anthony Turnage’s fourth opera, expressly written for children, Coraline, and presented at the Barbican by the Royal Opera. I was charmed, for instance, to hear in the bar beforehand, an adult telling a child, perhaps his own, to remember that, ‘in the opera, we listen; we don’t sing along.’ Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, to sense a somewhat different audience excited about the prospect of a magical theatrical occasion, rather than to hear Soprano X, in order to complain that it was not Soprano Y, was refreshing enough.

 

Still more, perhaps, was the behaviour of the audience, far better than that of the entitled bunches who often fill our opera houses. They were not silent, but when the occasional question was heard from another row, it was pertinent and genuinely added to the experience. There was certainly none of the idle chatter that so often detracts from a performance. That immediately leads to the caveat that this was not necessarily intended for me at all: again a salutary lesson. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the piece and found the objections I came up with on behalf of a young audience – was it perhaps a little too long? – apparently confounded. There was certainly no sign of such. We do well not to speak on behalf of others, especially when they are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves.

 

The opera is based upon a children’s novella by Neil Gaiman, converted into an opera libretto by Rory Mullarkey. I suspect the original and various adaptations – film, musical, comic book, video game – will have been familiar to a good few of various ages in the audience. Not to me, however, so I shall have to refrain from comparisons. One of the things that struck me about the story as we encountered it here, however, is how much it had in common with other children’s story tropes – nothing wrong with that, for what piece of literature or theatre is unconnected to anything else? – and yet also how one, or at least I, could appreciate it for itself. Dissatisfaction with the mundanity of home and parents, escape to an alternative life and ‘reality’ that promise everything and are thus clearly too good to be true, and a renewed appreciation for what one has, allied to an overcoming of personal fears, stand at the heart of the story. But so do ‘incidentals’: curious neighbours, fun machines, body parts that operate on their own, and so on. A world that is both close to ours and yet is not is created; an audience experiences that creation and even, to a certain extent, reflects upon it. Drama has always done that, and always will. The devil tends to be in the detail, and here the detail seems to me good.

 

This is also opera, of course. Turnage, operating within a broadly post-Stravinskian sound- and rhythm-world, generally tonal, but not in any reactionary sense, gives no sense of condescending to his audience. Indeed, like many composers, he seems perhaps to be liberated by the particular requirements of the commission. (You may wish for everything in the world, as the story tells us, but you do not necessarily want it; nor will you necessarily get it.) Typical, yet far from stereotypical, dance rhythms, propel an action that is not merely of the stage; so, too, do different instrumental combinations and colours, different harmonies, different tonal mises-en-scène, if you like. This is not a score of the complexity of Moses und Aron, but it is not trying to be, nor is there any reason why it should be. After all, its subject matter is entirely different. It steers away from the artifice of much opera; word-setting is rarely melismatic, although nor is it always syllabic. Perhaps that is no bad thing for children. Whether or not, however, they would have had a ‘problem’, with something with which they suspect we might, that does not in itself dictate how a composer should write. The history of opera, after all, is littered, often productively, with aesthetic debates, even wars, in which composers, librettists, impresarios, performers, audiences, theorists, and others have triumphed on both, or many, sides. Such debates will often stimulate; they will never, however, offer more than a provisional word on anything. Ask Richard Strauss.

 

With a splendid cast such as this – all fine actors as well as fine singers, an ensemble in the very best sense – combined with a fine orchestra and conductor, musical magic will nearly always have opportunity to emerge: which I distinctly had the sense it did for many in the audience, not all of them young. If I do not dwell on the performances as such here, it is not intended as any disrespect; all were first-rate. But I think it is sometimes, perhaps especially in a ‘children’s opera’, a good idea to step back and to ask other questions too.

 

How, in any case, could anyone truly dislike a show boasting a couple of ‘magic consultants’? A serious point here, though: this, I think, would really have made a good introduction to many children – perhaps not just to children – to the magic of the theatre. (Again, I emphasise the caveat that, as a non-child, or at least far-too-overgrown child, I may not be the best placed to see.) There are plenty of other options, available, of course, but another one does no harm, indeed does good. Aletta Collins’s staging does not shy away from showing that this is theatre, not television, not film: we see what theatre can suggest, whereas more realistic media will often (not always, I know) will find themselves merely portraying. Coraline walks to another door in the building, and we see the set move around: no big deal for us, nor perhaps for the children, but who knows?  Lighting and costumes likewise take part in a degree of play between the realistic and something else. Moreover, I heard, in the row behind me, an adult explaining at the curtain call, how it was that there were fewer people on stage than there had been characters. The child seemed both to understand and to sense some of that magic we can all too readily for granted. Need it have been an opera, as I have heard some ask? Maybe not. But why should it not have been? And what might come next? It is not always ‘about us’. And perhaps we too have fears to overcome in terms of surrender to the theatre, to opera, to art.

Prom 28 - Power/BBC SO/Knussen - Dukas, Turnage, Schuller, and Scriabin, 6 August 2015

Royal Albert Hall

Dukas – L’Apprenti sorcier

Turnage – On Opened Ground
Schuller – Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee
Scriabin – The Poem of Ecstasy

Lawence Power (viola)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Oliver Knussen (conductor)

 

Try as I might, I could not discern a common theme or line to this programme, although there were certain connections to be made between some of the pieces. No matter: it opened my ears to two new works (new both to me and to the Proms), and was all very well performed.

 

Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is not heard so often as one might expect. I am not sure I have heard it sound so hard-edged before; ideas of something childish or even childlike were banished on no uncertain terms. Oliver Knussen’s reading began quite deliberately, the opening offering a languor that perhaps drew it a little closer to Debussy. It was full of expectation too, before taking an angular course, which yet remained rather jolly. A strong sense of narrative was imparted throughout, without detracting from the musical substance.

 

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s On Opened Ground was commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra for Yuri Bashmet; Lawrence Power, who gave the British premiere in 2004, joined the BBC Symphony Orchestra for its first Proms performance. The first movement, ‘Cadenza and Scherzino’, gently upsets preconceived notions of ordering. More important than that, its subtle opening, with quiet accompaniment – had I not known otherwise, its hinting at refractions of the viola might have had me thinking of electronics – captivates, draws one in to an absorbing exploration of the viola and its potential relationships with the symphony orchestra.  Later, the ‘Scherzino’ section dances, hints at post-Bergian blues – Berg’s Violin Concerto more than once came to mind – and, above all, sings in a voice that is recognisably Turnage’s. The stillness of the close proved magical: testament to a fine performance as well as mastery of orchestration. The second of the two movements, ‘Interrupted Song and Chaconne’, begins in rapt fashion I am tempted to call ‘pastoral’ or at least ‘elegiac’. There develops some sense of conflict between soloist and orchestra, as if the latter is determined to thwart the former, but Turnage’s keen sense of drama permits another way, resolving itself through the working out of a chaconne: at times Big Band-ish, at others, frankly Romantic, its Romanticism seemingly arising from the material rather than the easy option beloved of so many neo-tonal composers. I have not always responded warmly to Turnage’s work, but certainly did so on this occasion.

 

The other Proms premiere was of Gunther Schuller’s Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee: suite-like, and full of incident, often quietly surprising. The opening ‘Antique Harmonies’,  hieratic orchestrally as well as harmonically, prepared the way for a delightfully quirky, even capricious ‘Abstract Trio’, played only by three instruments at any one time. ‘Little Blue Devil’ offered a possible connection with Turnage and jazz: very much at home rather than depicting or imitating. ‘The Twittering Machine’, by contrast, seemed to move between other, quite different, 1950s style: a journey, one might say, from swarming to pointillism; or, alternatively, a hint of early Stockhausen (or is it perhaps amused by him?) with a dash of Amériques-like material (albeit with far more sparing use of the orchestra). Flute arabesques from the Gallery, soon joined by other instruments in counterpoint, were the abiding memory of the curiously Orientalist ‘Arab Village’. ‘An Eerie Moment’ is more than a little suggestive of various movements from Schoenberg’s op.16 Five Orchestral Pieces, the contrast with the concluding ‘Pastorale’ perhaps the greatest of all. Klee-like? I am not sure; perhaps I am too wedded to the idea of Webern as the musical manifestation of Klee. But that is neither here nor there, really; I should happily hear more where this came from.

 

Finally, The Poem of Ecstasy. I cannot really take the piece seriously, although many musicians I greatly admire, Knussen amongst them, clearly do. Such music, even if one discounts the composer’s megalomania, tends to have me reflect how economical Wagner is with his climaxes. Scriabin’s meandering is clearly deliberate, but I am never entirely sure to what end. Knussen and the BBC SO nevertheless offered an enjoyable, wholehearted performance, opening with luscious, vibrato-laden languor (a possible connection with the opening of the Dukas?) Although Scriabin’s climaxes come thick and fast, Knussen shaped them with great skill, in as lucid a reading as I can recall. There was some wonderfully evocative afterglow to be experienced, and it is always a joy to hear the Albert Hall organ. Those bells, though…?

Greek, Music Theatre Wales, 22 October 2013

Linbury Studio Theatre

 

Gwion Thomas and Sally Silver as Eddy's parents
Images: Clive Barda

 

Eddy – Alastair Shelton-Smith/Michael McCarthy

Eddy’s Mum/Waitress/Sphinx – Sally Silver
Eddy’s Sister/Waitress who becomes Eddy’s Wife/Sphinx – Louise Winter
Eddy’s Dad/Café Manager/Chief of Police – Gwion Thomas

Michael McCarthy (director)

Simon Banham (designs)
Ace McCarron, Jon Turtle (lighting)
The Music Theatre Wales Ensemble
Michael Rafferty (conductor)

 

After the bitter disappointment of Anna Nicole, came this reminder – both sad and hopeful– that Mark-Anthony Turnage was once capable of writing urgent, exciting music theatre. Indeed, from this composer I have heard nothing finer, perhaps nothing to match, this, his first opera, to Steven Berkoff’s libretto after his own Oedipal play, Greek. Adverse circumstances notwithstanding, this performance and production from Music Theatre Wales offered everything one could reasonably hope for, and more. Marcus Farnsworth, who had been ailing on the first night, had awoken with no voice, to be replaced by an heroic combination of the flown-in-from-Berlin-that-afternoon Alastair Shelton-Smith to sing the part on stage and Michael McCarthy to act, to mime the sung passages, and to deliver the spoken text. If anything, the practice added to the feeling of alienation, social and theatrical, but it would have come to nothing without such committed performances. From the word go, or rather a somewhat bluer word than that, when McCarthy hastened toward the stage, scarily impersonating an irate member of the audience hurling abuse at the audience, he inhabited the role visually and gesturally. His own production frames the performance convincingly, offering a return into the audience as Eddy is rejected by his family, those who supposedly love him unable to stomach his desire to ‘climb back inside my mum’. Shelton-Smith’s assuredly protean yet deeply felt vocal performance fully deserved the rapturous reception it received from audience and fellow cast-members alike, and would have done so even if it had not been for the particular circumstances.

Sally Silver and Louise Winter as the Sphinx

 

 

But the other performances were equally assured. Sally Silver and Louise Winter proved as versatile in vocal as in acting terms, their combination as lesbian separatist sphinx being sleazy and savagely humorous in equal measure. Gwion Thomas was just as impressive in the other male roles, the sad would-be patriarch as much as the brutal police chief. The Music Theatre Wales Ensemble under Michael Rafferty played Turnage’s score as to the manner born: angry and soulful, biting and tender, urgent and yet offering oases for reflection. Whether called upon to play in conventional terms, to shout, to stamp, or even to strike a pose, there could be no gainsaying the level of artistry on offer from players and conductor alike.

 

McCarthy’s production places the work firmly in the tradition of music theatre – doubtless partly out of necessity, but, unlike in the opera, virtue certainly arises out of fate. Props are minimal but used to full effect, the cast in proper post-Brechtian fashion undertaking the stage business too. Video projections of key words, not least Berkoff’s inevitable ‘Motherfucker’, heightens both drama and alienation. But perhaps the principal virtue is that of allowing the anger of Berkoff and Turnage’s drama to unfold, within an intelligent yet far from attention-seeking frame. The transposition of the Oedipus myth to 1980s London now seems both of its time and yet relevant to ours. It works as a far more daring version of the original EastEnders might have done, yet with injection of magic realism. Both Berkoff’s ear for language – the ability to forge a stylised ‘vernacular’, which yet can occasionally shift into knowingly would-be Shakespearean poetry – and Turnage’s response and intensification, whether his pounding protest rhythms or the jazzy seduction of his beloved saxophone, work just as McCarthy’s staging does: they grip and yet they will also, if not always, distance. Above all, one continues to feel and indeed to reiterate the anger felt by outcasts in the brutal Britain of Margaret Thatcher. Incest offers not only its own story, but stands or can come to stand also for other forms of social and sexual exclusion. Hearing of the plague, one can think of it as Thatcherism and the ignorant, hypocritical right-wing populism that continues to infest political discourse, or one can turn it round and view it as the guardians of morality most certainly would have done at the time of the 1988 premiere, as the fruits of sexual ‘deviance’: the tragedy of HIV/AIDS.

 

That space to think, to interpret is not the least of the work’s virtues, fully realised in performance. Its musical lineage is distinguished; on this occasion, those coming to mind included Stravinsky, Andriessen, magical shards of Knussen, and, alongside the music theatre of the Manchester School, that of Henze too, especially the angry social protest of Natascha Ungeheuer. But it is its own work, now with its own performance tradition, of which Music Theatre Wales’s contribution is heartily to be welcomed.    

Samantha Brick: The Opera?

Let it never be said that I fail to keep my finger on the pulse of popular culture, if at times a little tardily. Many readers will have heard about the extraordinary, not to say beautiful, Ms Brick some time before I did; indeed, I am still not at all sure who she is, or what she does, aside from having written a now renowned article in the Daily Mail. (This will, I trust be the one and only time I provide a link to that particular website.) Is there not, however, something wonderfully operatic about this woman's delusions, her grasping towards and her sudden attainment of that greatest of modern idols, celebrity? Does she not present a weird, if undeniably down-market, cross between the Woman in Schoenberg's Erwartung and the telephone obsessive in Poulenc's (and Cocteau's) La Voix humaine? So, is it to be a monodrama, or something more along the lines of Powder Her Face (roles at the very least for the stewardess and the pilot), or Anna Nicole even? A chorus of Daily Mail readers would make horrifyingly good musical drama, perhaps thereby offering a nod to Moses und Aron? Samantha in Sprechstimme, a Golden Calf of celebrity around which Mail readers eagerly shed their suburban inhibitions? Perhaps even a male Samantha, underlining the Mosaic precdent further? Bookmakers are presently declining to offer odds against a Linbury Theatre outing in 2013. Suggestions for composer, librettist, and vocalist(s) are most welcome...











O Wort, du Wort, das mir fehlt!

Nash Inventions - Turnage, Goehr, Matthews, Davies, Birtwistle and Harvey, 13 March 2012

Wigmore Hall

Turnage – Returning, for string sextet
Goehr – Clarinet Quintet
Colin Matthews – The Island, for soprano and seven instruments
Davies – The Last Island, for string sextet
Birtwistle – Fantasia upon all the notes, for flute, clarinet, string quartet, and harp (world premiere)
Harvey – Song Offerings, for soprano and eight instruments

Claire Booth (soprano)
Nash Ensemble
Lionel Friend (conductor)


Almost exactly four years ago (12 March 2012), three of the six works on this programme were performed at the Wigmore Hall as part of a ‘Nash Inventions’ programme, two of them, Colin Matthews’s The Island and Alexander Goehr’s Clarinet Quintet, as world premieres. It was interesting to welcome them back, not only to hear them again, but to hear them again in different company. Sir Harrison Birtwistle had been present in 2008, on that occasion with pieces from his Orpheus Elegies; this time, he had a world premiere, that of his Fantasia upon all the notes. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, another member of the ‘Manchester School’ – whether that school retains any meaningful identity is a question I shall leave on one side for the moment – was represented by The Last Island, for string sextet (2009), which forces also offered Mark-Anthony Turnage’s 2007 Returning, the third of the pieces in common between the two programmes. Last, but certainly not least, was Jonathan Harvey’s Song Offerings, by some distance the earliest of the works, dating as it does from 1985.

Turnage’s Returning, written for his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, made a similar impression to last time. It has an intriguing opening sound world: harmonics, shard-like writing, and a strong vein of ‘English’ nostalgia. Its sense of thawing came through powerfully in the Nash Ensemble’s performance, possessed of a wonderfully rich string tone, the impassioned central climax supported by a fine sense of line throughout. If its harmonic language tends to sound somewhat conventional in the company of these other works, this remains a work worth hearing.

Goehr’s Clarinet Quintet continues to intrigue and to delight. I cannot say that I subscribe any more than I did in 2008 to the composer’s own description of it as an austere work; at times, and perhaps especially in this performance, there is a sense of playfulness and, by contrast, almost of the ecstatic. There is an arresting – post-Bartókian – opening, whose rhythmic character as well as melodic inflection set up a number of possibilities later to be followed through, though certain melodic contours also bring to mind echoes of Brahms. (I do not think that is just a matter of the forces employed, though they doubtless make a difference.) The clarinet (Richard Hosford) acts both in a quasi-soloist role and as a member of the ensemble. Post-Schoenbergian rigour is of course present, but is in general lightly worn, though I was intrigued by the hints later on both of the First Chamber Symphony and the Suite, op.29. The work’s twelve sections are apparent but so, more clearly, is the sense of the work as a whole, for which again the performers must surely share the credit. One garners a sense of something akin to variations, though not quite the same; I thought fleetingly of Stravinsky’s Variations: Aldous Huxley in Memoriam. But above all, there is a warmth, often a richness of harmony too, which prove inviting and satisfying, and make one very keen to hear the work again soon.

For The Island, a short song cycle on Rilke’s Nordsee, in Stephen Cohn’s translation, Claire Booth joined members of the Nash Ensemble. Her performance was every bit as excellent as one might have expected, indeed more so, precision and warmth in ideal balance. Matthews’s melancholy landscape was painted evocatively by the instrumentalists, the interlude between the first and second of the three songs a fine case in point of seamless yet perceptible transformation, the process furthered in the new vistas – ‘outside the course of galaxies, of other stars or suns’ – of the third.

Davies’s The Last Island returned us to the world of the string sextet. Its title, according to the composer, refers to the further of two small islands off the coast of Orkney, the sextet attempting ‘to invoke the island’s unique atmosphere – essentially peaceful and full of the wonder of ever-changing light of sea and sky, yet strangely threatened with menace, even on the brightest of days’. That gives a pictorial impression, which is certainly part of the story, but some older Davies preoccupations, notably magic squares and plainsong – ‘an unusual plainsong version of Ave maris stella’ – are also apparent. Hints of the viol consort characterise the opening; indeed there is very much a sense of historical refraction throughout the contrasted turns the material takes. I was taken by the frankly – at least to my ears – Schoenbergian writing of one section, put in mind of Verklärte Nacht and the first two numbered quartets in particular. The fading al niente of the plainsong material on high violin harmonics proved an evocative conclusion, whether pictorially, musically, or better, both.

I had assumed that Birtwistle’s Fantasia upon all the notes would be offering some sort of Purcellian reference, but Bayan Northcott’s note to the piece disabused me: ‘Rather, Fantasia upon all the notes hints at how, each time the harpist shifts a pedal between sharp, natural, or flat, a new scale or mode is set up, and – in this work – how a shifting sequence of harp modes can interact with and guide the harmonies of a surrounding ensemble’. It came as little surprise that we should hear a dangerous, violent archaic world presented, as hieratic as anything in Stravinsky or Boulez. Symphonies of Wind Instruments, despite the very different instrumentation, loomed large, and was that a reference in the angular rhythmic treatment of material and the crucial role of the harp to the Symphony in Three Movements too? And yet, there is acerbic beguiling to be heard too, perhaps our longing for the real world of Orpheus. Lionel Friend, as in the other works he was conducting – Matthews, Davies, and Harvey – proved as sure a guide as his players. Birtwistle learned, whilst working on the score, of the death of his sometime publisher Tony Fell. The work is marked at the end: ‘for Tony Fell in sorrow and anger’. It was commissioned by the Nash Ensemble, with funds provided by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Wigmore Hall itself.

Harvey’s Song Offerings was quite a revelation. Written for soprano, flute/alto flute, clarinet, piano, string quartet, and double bass, its settings of Rabindranath Tagore in his own translation from Bengali express and further a ravishing sensual and sexual mysticism. Booth once again excelled herself, as indeed did all the performers. Sleep – ‘Ah, sleep, precious sleep – prevailed for a while in the first song, with a splendid sense of lulling, whilst the second was marked by the combination of captivating instrumental glistening and exciting vocal arabesques: playful ecstasy, perhaps. Harvey’s eroticism throughout the four songs conveys a sense of Messiaen’s spirit without ever actually sounding like him. (If I occasionally thought of Zemlinsky, I think that was more a matter of Tagore’s verse than the music.) Languor and rush were combined to highly sensuous effect in the final song, ‘Death, O Thou the last fulfilment of life’.

World premiere: Anna Nicole, Royal Opera, 17 February 2011

Royal Opera House

Anna Nicole - Eva-Maria Westbroek
Old Man Marshall - Alan Oke
The Lawyer Stern - Gerald Finley
Virgie - Susan Bickley
Cousin Shelley - Loré Lixenberg
Larry King - Peter Hoare
Aunt Kay - Rebecca de Pont Davies
Older Daniel - Dominic Rowntree
Blossom - Allison Cook
Doctor - Andrew Rees
Billy - Grant Doyle
Mayor - Wynne Evans
Runner - ZhengZhong Zhou
Daddy Hogan - Jeremy White
Gentleman - Dominic Peckham
Trucker - Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts
Deputy Mayor - Damian Thantrey
Four Lap Dancers - Yvonne Barclay, Katy Batho, Amy Catt, Amanda Floyd
Four Meat Rack Girls - Kiera Lyness, Marianne Cotterill, Louise Armit, Andrea Hazell
Onstage Band - John Parricelli (guitar), John Paul Jones (bass guitar), Peter Erskine (drums)

Richard Jones (director)
Miriam Buether (set designs)
Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)
Mimi Jordan Sherin and D M Wood (lighting)
Aletta Collins (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Antonio Pappano (conductor)


From the sublime (Parsifal, the night before) to the not-even-ridiculous. It would be difficult to come up with a more contrasting work than Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Anna Nicole, not simply, nor even principally, from a gendered standpoint. Written in collaboration with librettist, Richard Thomas, we have a new opera, which, as almost everyone by now will be aware, is based upon the life of Anna Nicole Smith. Having spoken to a considerable number of people over what must be approaching a year, I can only recall one having heard of her, but apparently she is more celebrated in other quarters. A woman who physically suffered and financially gained from excessive breast enhancement, Smith ‘apparently’ died from a drugs overdose. Such is not the inspiration for Anna Nicole, in that little effort seems to have been expended to produce an independent artwork; rather we have something akin to a report of what the lawyers have permitted Thomas and Turnage to reproduce. Apparently changes had to be made very late in the day indeed, which may or may not be connected with the setting aside in January of this year of Howard K Stern’s conviction for providing Smith with controlled substances.


The music is more or less entirely without interest. One barely notices it, beyond dubious pastiche, in the first act. At best, it aurally resembles sub-sub-Broadway Weill, with hints of even further sub-sub-Berg. Closed forms are the order of the day, but they come across as short-winded, formulaic even, rather than polemical. Weirdly selected near-bits of Stravinsky are thrown in, for instance, passages for woodwind almost straight out of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments. And a parody that is barely a parody, of the Wedding March from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream music, covers over the cracks for Anna Nicole’s wedding to Old Man Marshall. The music for the second act, supposedly more tragic in tone, is mawkishly sentimental and, like everything else about the act, sounds over extended by at least half an hour. (Both acts last for about an hour.) Puccini might just have made something of this; Turnage cannot. Moreover, the writing for chorus, which makes up so much of the first act, suddenly disappears. Doubtless the claim will be that that ever so subtly marks a tightening of tragic focus. However, like the increasingly tired feel of the sets – even Richard Jones and his design team can only do so much with such material – the impression is of an attempt to spin out something that has long since been exhausted.

The jokey-cum-profane libretto is worse, attention-seeking and utterly banal. One tires of its childish provocations quickly, indeed within a few seconds. Incessant swearing tires rather than shocks. Perhaps someone finds a litany of alleged synonyms for breasts amusing; perhaps that would be the same person who has a real-life interest in this sorry tale. Nothing is remotely erotic; the opera is more akin to The Benny Hill Show. Anna Nicole is not, to put it mildly, Lulu. The legal wranglings arising from the deaths of Marshall and Smith might have made useful dramatic fodder, but these are not explored. Perhaps it as well, for one cannot imagine, to put it mildly, Anna Nicole becoming The Makropulos Case.

I am suspicious of any work that seems designed to disallow almost any adverse criticism. Stravinsky accomplished that magnificently in The Rake’s Progress; yet, as so often, he seems to be a glorious exception. Anna Nicole is not, etc. If one complains about the ‘musical’ element, one will doubtless be assailed as ‘élitist’, as if somehow wishing for the best were something of which to be ashamed. Likewise all the popular culture elements. If one questions the banality of the libretto, not only ‘élitism’ but prudishness will also be alleged. Far from it, in my case: I find much of what is said straightforwardly puerile, and not in the slightest shocking, let alone hilarious. (An audience that laughs uproariously at crudely rhyming ‘profanities’ may need to get out a little more.) Puerility will then doubtless be part of ‘the point’, but one can say that about anything. This seems merely trashy rather than ‘about trashiness’. Question the musical language, insofar as it may exist, and one will be accused of ideological ‘élitism’: the horror – the ghost of Darmstadt!

Whether dealing with music or text, true characterisation approaches zero; everything is simply a matter of plot and situation. Is that the point? Again, if so, ‘the point’ is surely wrong. Certain works can operate very well, even achieve greatness, without conventional characterisation at their heart, instantiating in its place an idea. However, Anna Nicole, is not, to put it mildly, Fidelio. Not only Stern but even Anna Nicole herself seems a mere caricature, without the caricature making a dramatic point. Nor is there anything of interest in the way the story is told. Hopes rise when Anna Nicole’s mother, Virgie, dissents from the way Stern tells a part of the story – the death of Anna Nicole’s son, Daniel – and it seems as though we might be in for some sort of re-telling from a different perspective. It is really just a matter, however, of recounting her dissent. Anna Nicole is not, to put it mildly, The Mask of Orpheus.

The opera – it actually seems more like an attempt at a musical – is also offensively and, frankly, childishly anti-American. Many of the rest of us have noticed that capitalism is not a solely American phenomenon. The use of ‘American’ accents, sometimes more successfully Texan or indeed American than at others, is odd at best. We do not ask singers in an opera with a French setting to sing as if they were Inspector Clouseau. It all seems intended to make fun of a cultural setting of which the writers seem to have little more knowledge and understanding than many of the rest of us. Imagine the horror that would rightly be expressed, were someone to decide to do something similar about India, Zimbabwe, Argentina, or indeed just about anywhere else. This is, with apologies to Edward Said, Occidentalism that is not even interesting.

Everything, moreover, seems to hang on the fact that this is ‘based on a true story’. We seem to be led to believe – and I tend to believe it myself – that it would be of no interest to anyone, if the story were presented fictionally. At best, then, the work becomes reportage, concerning an unfortunate soul to be cruelly mocked; for those of us who have little or no interest in the life story of the aforesaid unfortunate soul, it is not clear what the point might be. At least an opera such as John Adams’s Nixon in China deals with a political event of considerable importance, whilst remaining musically negligible. In ‘historical’ operas worth their salt, the ‘history’ is not the sole point, but a spur to artistic invention. Anna Nicole is not, to put it mildly, L’incoronazione di Poppea. Perhaps worst of all, the treatment of Smith herself and, still more, her son seems straightforwardly exploitative. Is this a proper way to memorialise Daniel Wayne Smith? (I am unsure even whether to mention him here.) Does he deserve to be served up as entertainment? These people’s predicament is not, despite the presence of a press pack, really explored, let alone analysed; it is just retold.

Jones does what he can, with great attention to detail, and colourful sets, especially during the first half. Moreover, the opera is truly cast from strength, whether with respect to members of the Royal Opera Chorus, such as the Four Lap Dancers and the Meat Rack Quartet, or the starring roles. The cast is huge, putting one in mind of another recent Jones production, though Anna Nicole is not, to put it mildly, The Gambler. Yet the unsubtle amplification, whilst ensuring that every word can be heard, crystal-clear, begins to tire as much as the melodramatic antics of the plot. The ever-reliable Susan Bickley makes the best of what she is given as Virgie. Alan Oke proves frighteningly credible in age as Old Man Marshall and sings as well as we have come to expect – which is very well indeed. Eva-Maria Westbroek gives a truly bravura performance in the title role; the lack of characterisation is not hers. If Westbroek’s gifts were wasted, then I do not know what the term would be for the squandering of Finley’s resources. Antonio Pappano seemed to have the measure of the score, marshalling his forces with tight rhythmic control. The orchestra played with verve, as well drilled as one could imagine. To what end, though?

Was the increasing high pitch of the promotion – it seems to have worked, for performances have sold out – possibly related to a fear that the music and text were so weak? One has to take risks with new works; it is heartening that the Royal Opera was willing to do so. Let us hope that the next new work will prove more fruitful, and perhaps – dare I suggest it? – take the world, not just this country, as its compositional oyster. Previous commissions include works by Henze, Goehr, Birtwistle, and Berio. Just think of the time – I wish I could have been there – when Stockhausen’s Donnerstag received its premiere at Covent Garden. Better luck next time, I suppose…

Prom 71: CSO/Haitink, 8 September 2008

Royal Albert Hall

Turnage – Chicago Remains (European premiere)
Mahler – Symphony no.6 in A minor

Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

The warmth of applause for Bernard Haitink as he walked towards the podium testified once again to the affection and gratitude London and this country more generally will always feel for the saviour of the Royal Opera. This, however, is the first time that we have had the opportunity to hear Haitink as Principal Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. What was immediately striking – and continued to be so throughout – was the extent to which Haitink has continued Daniel Barenboim’s work in ridding this great orchestra of the excessive brashness that could sometimes disfigure its performances under Sir Georg Solti (and beyond him, Fritz Reiner). At the same time, however, a little more bite might not have gone amiss in the otherwise excellent performance of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony.

First on the menu was the European premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Chicago Remains. Following hot on the heels of a fine performance of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, I was inevitably reminded of the earlier work by the opening percussion figures, although difference announced itself too: the mechanical sounds of the city rather than pantheistic ecstasy. The suggestion of a train whistle brought to mind Chicago’s Union Station. Indeed, I fancied that the entire progress of the quarter-hour work suggested a train journey, with as much emphasis upon the journey as upon the train, thereby distinguishing it from a work such as Honegger’s Pacific 231. The gleaming Chicago skyline was almost audibly visible too, and so was a seamier side to city life, jazz being suggested through instrumentation and turns of phrase rather than compositional method, which was undoubtedly more substantial. Few composers would neglect the opportunity to allow this orchestra’s fabled brass section to shine; Turnage did not. Following some more brutalistic moments, characterised by trumpet fanfares and great chordal slabs of orchestral sound, the final section of the work proved touchingly elegiac, not least in a superbly-taken oboe solo melody. Haitink is not most noted for commitment to contemporary music, although a glance at his Concertgebouw programmes belies any suggestion of undue conservatism; recordings can often deceive. At any rate, it is difficult to imagine that Turnage could have hoped for better advocacy than he received here, either from the orchestra or from the conductor, who had also premiered his song-cycle Some Days at the 1991 Proms.

The first movement of the Mahler began at quite a brisk pace, relentless even, which is not inappropriate. Once again, I do not think the Royal Albert Hall helped, since there were some odd balances from my seat, in spite of Haitink’s general care with blending. Whilst the orchestra played superbly, it lacked that last ounce of ‘character’ of some ensembles, at least at their best. One of Haitink’s strengths was illustrated by his willingness to let the development take its time, to linger even in some passages. This seems to be a more pronounced characteristic of his present view of this work than earlier recordings would suggest. Whilst there was not a radical reinterpretation of this movement, it was not so ‘tragic’ as it can often sound.

In the Scherzo, placed second, the opening properly shadowed the opening of the first movement. This underlined the rightness of Haitink’s decision concerning movement order: musical considerations came first. The woodwind’s skeletal shiver was well-nigh perfect and the horns in concert sounded marvellous. There was great rhythmic strength but also a duly ‘Classical’ – if not in the authenticists’ sense – yielding for the trio sections. Moreover, and perhaps slightly to my surprise, Haitink did not shrink from bringing out the modernistic strangeness of the orchestration. Each section was clearly characterised, with sometimes daring contrasts of tempo, and if I occasionally wondered whether this was slightly to the detriment of the whole, my doubts were confounded, since it ultimately ‘worked’. This movement marked, I think, the true highpoint of the performance.

The opening of the third movement was somewhat neutral – and rightly so. It needs plenty of space to be built upon, and even then, not too much. There is – and was in this performance – no contradiction between the salon-ish quality of the theme and the wealth of musical riches that Schoenberg discovered in his celebrated analysis of the movement. Haitink traced the contours of the principal theme’s progress as lovingly as Schoenberg had. A beautiful horn solo pointed the way forward to the Nachtmusik of the Seventh Symphony. Yet there remained a nagging doubt that the movement was just a little underplayed, a little too placid, although this is certainly preferable to erring in the opposite direction. (Remember ‘Gergiev’s Mahler’?) The great climax was, however, all the more powerful for its lack of exaggeration. Indeed, its non-neurotic quality was positively Brucknerian, perhaps not surprisingly given Haitink’s greatness as a Bruckner conductor. The end of the movement found a wonderful peace, physically and metaphysically, subsiding into a blissful nothingness.

With the opening of the finale, it seemed that unalloyed tragedy had finally come upon us. (Should it have been there from the outset? I cannot deny that that would have been a preferable course to me, but there are alternative paths.) Yet the movement as a whole still exhibited at times a ‘Classical’ restraint, although terror certainly raised its head with the cataclysmic hammer-blows. The contrapuntal music was as well handled as I have ever heard, exhibiting both clarity and tonal weight, in a fashion that reminded me of the final movement of the Fifth Symphony. Haitink was clearly alert to links, thematic and otherwise, between the three Rückert symphonies. The brass sounded predictably yet nevertheless wonderfully Fafner-like at the end and there was true desolation as we achieved nihilistic closure. My only real reservation was that, in the final analysis – and this probably goes for the performance as a whole – the performance did not quite sound as though it had been conceived in one long span, Haitink’s long experience in the symphonic repertoire notwithstanding. It is unfortunate that I still had Pierre Boulez’s Berlin performance from last year resounding in my memory. Not only had Boulez’s reading exhibited that Furtwänglerian quality of Fernhören – even in non-Furtwänglerian repertoire – but it had truly sounded a fitting performance for Holy Saturday, as Christ lay in the bonds of Hell. Despite Boulez’s reputation, it was Haitink’s performance that ultimately sounded more ‘observed’ and ‘detached’.

Nash Inventions, Wigmore Hall, 12 March 2008

Wigmore Hall

Turnage – Returning, for string sextet (London première)
Birtwistle – Pieces from Orpheus Elegies, for countertenor, oboe, and harp
MacMillan – Horn Quintet (London première)
Goehr – Clarinet Quintet (world première)
Colin Matthews – The Island, for soprano, alto flute, horn, piano, harp, viola, and cello (world première)

Nash Ensemble
Claire Booth (soprano)
Andrew Watts (countertenor)
Gareth Hulse (oboe)
Lucy Wakeford (harp)
Paul Watkins (conductor)

This concert proved a marvellous way to highlight the Nash Ensemble’s continuing commitment to new music. Five works by British composers were performed, four of which were receiving some sort of première, two of them of the world variety. Indeed, the ‘early music’ was Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Orpheus Elegies, which dates back all the way to 2003-4. All five composers were present, along with a number of other significant figures from the ‘new music world’.

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Returning (2007), for string sextet, provided a relatively easy ‘way in’ to the music, although I doubt that many in the audience would have been unaware of what was on offer. It was evidently a genuinely felt offering for the composer’s parent’s fiftieth wedding anniversary, which, although it could hardly have been said to have strained at the bounds of compositional technique, utilised the sextet forces admirably and worked to a clear narrative plan. The marking ‘Almost as if frozen’ described the opening perfectly. Thereafter, the music appeared to thaw, with proliferating instrumental underneath the predominating high melodic line. Gathering in intensity – in both work and performance – the somewhat frenetic climax subsided again, although, as Anthony Burton pointed out in his programme note, less to freeze than to thaw. Much of the music sounded, in harmony and in texture, recognisably in a tradition of English string music.

There did, however, appear to be a world of difference between this sextet and the masterwork Orpheus Elegies, from which Birtwistle selected eleven of its twenty-six movements, each based upon one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus. Birtwistle’s original intention had been not to set the texts, but ‘simply to let them influence the instrumental music,’ with a quotation at the end of each movement, rather like the ‘titles’ to Debussy’s piano Préludes. But the texts would not leave the composer in peace, so he decided to include some of the sonnets, or at least lines from them, and to introduce a countertenor. This performance will have provided many in the audience with a curtain raiser for London’s forthcoming operatic Birtwistle events: two (!) productions of Punch and Judy and the world premiere of The Minatour. Indeed, Andrew Watts will be singing in the latter. Here one was in the presence of an utterly personal voice, with never a note wasted. The composer spoke of ‘the problem of the combination of oboe and harp: how do you avoid making that combination sound like occasional music?’ I hardly need add that there was no chance of that happening here; Birtwistle may write incidental music, such as that to the National Theatre’s Oresteia, but there is nothing remotely occasional about his compositions.

The combination of oboe and harp, with countertenor for four of the elegies, proves every bit as vigorously haunting as one would expect from this composer’s pen. The oboe, Birtwistle explained, is ‘the voice of Orpheus,’ the countertenor the narrator, and the harp represents Orpheus’s lyre, although he added the caveat, ‘very generally speaking’. Whilst there is an undeniable element of such role-playing – hardly surprising in the work of a born musical dramatist – what also struck me was how it did not seem at all fanciful to gain an overall impression of regaining the ancient music we have lost: not in any reconstructive or even restorative sense, but as a reimagination of the primæval world of the Orphic lyre. Violence and beauty are fiercely present, with the countertenor providing an appropriately unearthly timbre and also a link to the world of the Baroque aria, presenting a single emotion rather than development (think of Alexander Goehr’s The Death of Moses). Indeed, the way no.13 (Sonnet II) subsided into a silence both earthly and unearthly, following the words ‘in den Himmel, den ihr Hauch nicht trüht,’ was quite spell-binding, for which equal credit must be granted the performers. The coruscating harp glissando upon the word ‘mädchenhandig’ should have banished any suspicion that Rilke’s feminine Lament (Klage) might cloy. No.8, which ends with the words ‘Sieh, die Maschine’ was almost onomatopœic in its mechanical quality, to which both instruments contributed equally (again, nothing ‘occasional’ here!) Gareth Hulse’s oboe almost seemed to speak in the scherzo-like no.23 (‘Ordne die Schreir, singender Gott!’): this could have been a refraction of the memory and afterlife of Orpheus himself. The concision of no.24 put me in mind of Webern: everything that needed to be said was said and then it stopped. And the memory of the only occasionally – in a very different sense – but most movingly relieved monotone of the vocal line of the second half of no.20 (Sonnet V) will remain with me for a long time. To be ‘hearers and a mouth for nature,’ in that sonnet’s words, was what Birtwistle truly accomplished in inimitable fashion.

James MacMillan’s Quintet for horn and string quartet (2007) provided quite a contrast. This was an exciting, extrovert work, which relished the hunting resonances of the horn, of which the splendid Richard Watkins took full advantage. The turbulently striking opening grabbed one’s attention from the outset, as towards did the singing of the richly full-toned viola line of the equally splendid Lawrence Power. A theatrical effect was attained by having the horn player leave the ensemble whilst the quartet continued to play, to be answered from offstage by a haunting horn call, almost reminiscent of Mahlerian Nachtmusik.

The second half brought us the concert’s two world premières. With Alexander Goehr’s quintet for clarinet and string quartet (2007) we returned to the ‘Manchester School’, although it is not clear that the music of Goehr and Birtwistle ever had much in common. If Stravinsky acted as godfather to much of the latter’s music, it is Schoenberg who has exerted so much of an influence over the former, not least via Walter Goehr, himself a Schoenberg pupil. (It is characteristic of a composer who has been so generous with his time and experience to younger composers and to other musicians that, when I spoke to him before the concert, he was far more concerned to enquire after my current research on Schoenberg than to talk about himself and his works.) And beyond Schoenberg, of course, lies Brahms. Brahms is liable to come to mind in any clarinet quintet, but I did wonder whether this single-movement work in twelve sections was in some sense a homage to that most richly autumnal of composers. There was certainly an almost Brahmsian beauty to the string writing, married to an equally characteristic post-Brahms/Schoenberg integrity of motivic working out. This was the case both for work and performance, in which, astonishingly, every line was made to tell as if the Nash Ensemble were presenting an established masterpiece. (I firmly believe from this first hearing that the work will prove to be just that.) The tenth section, an almost Bachian sarabande, provided a still centre to the work’s progression. Once again, the synthesis between counterpoint and Classical form evoked Brahms, or rather an historically mediated memory of his tradition’s concerns. Interestingly – and somewhat enigmatically – the composer himself referred to the inspiration of masses by Josquin and Ockeghem, which, he wrote, ‘probably accounts’ for the quintet’s ‘rather austere and motet-like character’. This, I must admit, was not at all how I heard the music, which I found warm, classically dramatic, and not at all austere.

The final work was Colin Matthews’s The Island (2007), also based upon Rilke, in this case his Neue Gedichte. The three poems of Rilke’s North Sea ‘Insel’, in Stephen Cohn’s excellent translation, are set as a continuous span with instrumental interludes. The vocal line, here treated to a commanding and apparently perfectly judged rendition by Claire Booth, is frankly melodic. At first, it soared above the instrumental ensemble, whose role was definitely to accompany, albeit with a beautiful array of colours and harmonic shifts. Occasional echoing of the vocal line, for instance by the richly expressive alto flute and sweet-toned violin, gradually blossomed into a greater independence for the ensemble, fully exploited during the two evocative interludes. The dark piano chords at the close of the second poem, ‘Upon the outer dyke a sheep appears/larger than life and almost ominous’, were themselves as ominous as the tolling of funeral bells. By the time we reached the third poem, there was a sense both of maintaining the impetus of instrumental development and of completing the cycle by returning or, perhaps better, renewing the opening mood. We had moved on from a tide that ‘wipes out the path across the flats’, to encompass, without forgetting, something ‘outside the course of galaxies, of other stars or suns’. As in every work this programme comprised, the Nash Ensemble and friends did the composers prouder than one might have thought possible.