Stefanovich/Dennis/BBC SO/Brabbins et al. - Boulez Total Immersion Day, 30 March 2025

Milton Court Concert Hall and Barbican Hall

Domaines for solo clarinet
Piano Sonata no.2
Dialogue de l’ombre double

Deux Études de musique concrète
Douze Notations
Incises
Cummings ist der Dichter
Pli selon Pli

Beñat Erro Díez, Lily Payne (clarinets)

Hannah Miller (recording engineer)

Tamara Stefanovich (piano)

Anna Dennis (soprano)

BBC Singers

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Images: BBC/Mark Allan

Boulez at 100. It does not seem long since we were celebrating his 90^th here at the Barbican, with another BBC Total Immersion Day, likewise culminating in Pli selon pli, from Yeree Suh, Thierry Fischer, and (neither for the first nor the last time) the BBC Symphony Orchestra. It even does not seem so very long since, as a student, I came down to London to hear Boulez himself conduct the work at the Festival Hall for his 75^th. Strangely, it very much does seem like another world thinking back just five years earlier, to when I bought my first Boulez CD, having heard on Radio 3’s Building a Library the first movement of his now legendary Mahler Sixth with the Vienna Philharmonic and rushed out to spend a good few pennies I barely had, knowing this was something I must hear and have. It remains the recording closest to my heart (and mind) of the Mahler symphony closest to my heart (and mind). Given Boulez’s long association with the BBC, it was fitting and enlightening to begin the day with a cinema showing, first of a deftly assembled compendium of BBC material, presentationally fronted and fused with typical verve and light-worn learning by Tom Service, followed by a film from the late, greatly lamented Barrie Gavin. 

A quick break for lunch was followed by an equally fitting and enlightening panel, chaired by Jonathan Cross, discussing Boulez at the BBC, musicians (harpist Sioned Williams and Daniel Meyer) and former Controller Nicholas Kenyon sharing memories, experience, and acute critical ears for what made those years so extraordinary and some aspects of their legacy. Every path to what increasingly seems to have assumed, Répons and Le Marteau sans maître notwithstanding, the stature of Boulez the composer’s popular masterwork – in its final form, it is unmistakeably finished, or at least seems so – will be different. This was no exception, but there was, even before the event, a sense of heading in that direction: appropriately enough from all directions, temporal and other. In a nod to his work with young musicians – we saw and heard tantalising excerpts from his National Youth Orchestra Gurrelieder on both films – and a statement of belief in the future of his music and his vision, we moved to Milton Court for a concert involving Guildhall School musicians, two clarinet works sandwiching the Second Piano Sonata, pli selon pli. Tamara Stefanovich, who has very recently issued her recording of the work, heroically stepped in at the shortest of notice for an indisposed Guildhall student, to add to a not inconsiderable workload later in the day (and a demanding programme, Structures II included, the previous night in Cologne). 

We had heard Domaines but three weeks earlier in London, in a London Sinfonietta programme juxtaposing Boulez and Cage. Lily Payne’s performance had little to fear even from such an exalted comparison (Mark van de Wiel). Indeed, save for the different layout, music stands arranged in a line, aptly highlighting symmetry (Original-Miroir) rather than the circular (centrifugal) approach spatialised at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, thoughts did not turn at all to comparison. One concentrated, rather, on the here and now. Crystal clear in the Milton Court acoustic, it was as beautiful as it was meaningful, line spun, indeed created, with seemingly infinite variegation. 

As it triumphantly reinstated the role of performance and the performer in Boulez’s music, so  did Dialogue de l’ombre double from Beñat Erro Díez and his taped self (with Hannah Miller as recording engineer, and a little help from piano resonance too). Lights off signalled a distinctly later proliferation of sound in the shadow not only of the clarinet (and clarinettist) but of Répons too. It was a wondrously ‘achieved’ experience, both as work and performance, clarity of line, however complex, as strongly to the fore as in Domaines. Boulez’s ‘invisible theatre’ seemed born as much of Wagner as of Claudel, the magic of Bayreuth reborn in a strikingly different environment—ironically, perhaps, given his own lament that Wagner’s theatrical innovations had been so resolutely ignored by the actually existing theatrical ‘business’ of the opera houses whose destruction he (as Wagner) had once suggested. Here, perhaps, was the Boulez opera we never had, in darkness, light, and shadows.   

This was a welcome reminder from both clarinettists that, for young players, Boulez’s music is first and foremost music, not an object of controversy. It never really was for my generation either; we all knew, which doubtless separates us from those who truly had to fight (in that case either), though we surely must continue to fight for it to be heard, given the ever-more-deplorable cultural reaction around us. It makes little sense, in any case, for young musicians to declare ‘Boulez est mort’. They relish its challenges, which will remain in one form or another, just as those of Bach and Beethoven do, but their essence will change, as Boulez takes his place in his own fabled ‘Museum’ of musical history. The Royal Academy of Music’s performance of sur Incises a few nights earlier, on Boulez’s birthday itself, was by all accounts a splendid, enriching experience for all concerned. It stands now at the heart of the repertoire of Berlin’s Boulez Ensemble, founded by Daniel Barenboim. There is cultural reaction, yes, as there is political reaction, but there is also hope. 

As indeed there was in Stefanovich’s spectacular performance of the Sonata. I have a confession to make here. When I first heard the pianist perform it, I was too much in thrall to my won preconceptions of what it ‘should’ sound like. It was not even that I did not ‘like’ it; I did, very much, but part of me, brought up above all on Maurizio Pollini, unconsciously wondered whether I ‘should’, when it sounded so very different. Memories of that 2015 encounter remained with me, though, marinating in the ombre of conscious and unconscious alike, and I slowly realised it had begun to change my understanding of the work and its possibilities. What a joy, then, to celebrate the composer’s centenary not only with a new recording, but with so magnificent and, in the circumstances, unexpected a performance, which spoke of Boulez’s own advice to Stefanovich to think of reaching into a beehive. 

The first movement ignited and transformed those memories, revealing a far more ‘universal’, less specifically ‘French’ Boulez, its molten lava that of the composer’s fire-breathing youth, its logic all the more clearly post-Schoenbergian. In fidelity was born the most personal expression, Boulez’s claim that he would be the first composer without a biography almost touchingly forlorn. The tumult of a trill, the momentum of a repeated note, the terror of a silence: all these and more were not only to be heard but to be felt in a rich slow movement that celebrated parenthesis yet nonetheless ‘cohered’, not entirely unlike late Beethoven (as well as quite unlike it). The scherzo’s making music through intervallic and other parameters fused through astonishing willpower a marriage of Debussy and Webern we only take for granted now on Boulez’s account. It gazed into the abyss and something – reflection, shadows, something else? – stared back. The fourth movement unleashed a very particular character, again from within, exultant in its Artaud-inspired cruelty, Beethoven annihilated and yet in some sense reborn, like Boulez himself in its after-shock. 

Further discussion, led by Kate Molleson, Jonathan Cross joined by Gillian Moore, a longstanding, leading figure in Boulez’s later London appearances, offered a substantial, duly provocative apéritif for the evening concert. It also reminded us just how much London and the world’s appetite for such enrichment activities owed to Boulez’s own example. I myself learned more from his own pre-concert discussions than from a host of other concerts, even festivals. There would doubtless have been other paths and they can be interesting to speculate about. ‘Virtual’ history can have its own, well, virtues, in helping us refine understanding of what did happen. But Boulez, IRCAM, and more did, just as Beethoven, Wagner, and Mahler did. We were reminded, quite properly, of more awkward encounters and memories too. Was Boulez’s return to France at the expense of figures such as Xenakis? Perhaps. There is always danger in schematicism, although in practice that is more likely to come from the derrière than the avant garde (and despite the arrant nonsense one hears from some, even now, on Boulez and William Glock).

Heard partly in that light, the opening number in the Barbican concert reminded us of a path Boulez did not really take, though it was perhaps not entirely without issue in later encounters with tape and indeed live electronics. Two 1951-2 Études for tape suggested to Boulez above all the limitations of existing technology, as well as ‘Pierre Schaeffer’s “do-it-yourself” studio methods,’ to quote Caroline Potter’s informative programme note. There is always, at least for me, the oddity of hearing purely electronic music, without performers, in a concert setting. How will, even should, the audience react? Here in awkward silence, before Stefanovich returned for more piano music. It was a fascinating opportunity nonetheless to hear these serial manipulations of percussion sounds from the eve of Le Marteau sans maître. Whether intended whimsically or not – I doubt it, at least consciously – there was a winning air of that spirit, which certainly characterised some of Boulez’s difficult diplomacy with musicians and institutions, as we had heard in the first of the two talks. 

Stefanovich renewed and extended our appreciation of Boulez the composer for piano. Dull souls will claim the earlier Boulez was the ‘real’ Boulez, or some such nonsense. They are perfectly entitled to their preferences; we all are. But if you cannot hear wonders in Incises and indeed sur Incises, to your taste or otherwise, just as you can in the Second Sonata, you are probably not hearing them in either. It was unmistakeably later, though far from late, Boulez—just as Dialogue de l’ombre double had been. The toccata-quality of the score was immediate, immanent even, in a scintillating journey suggestive also of earlier piano fantasias, Bach and beyond, and every bit as protean as the Sonata, just differently so. The twelve Notations that preceded it enabled us to hear another, similarly absorbing example of post-Romanticism, the bagatelle spirit of late Beethoven reborn and reheard via Bartók, Schoenberg, Messiaen, and others. The dialectic between mystery (IX) and mechanism (X) penetrated, both in work and performance, to the heart of the whole. 

It would, given their long, incredibly productive association with Boulez, have been a great pity not to hear from the BBC Singers on such a day. That we can do so at all is, of course, no thanks to the corporation itself; for now, let us give thanks that we can, whilst remembering how strong the forces Boulez and so many others, aesthetic foes included, have had to fight against. Joining Martyn Brabbins and the BBC SO, their pinpoint precision was, in proper Boulezian style, never an end in itself, but rather the foundation of a exquisite, multi-directional (in that centrifugal, serialist and post-serialist sense) account of Cummings ist der Dichter. Warmth, as in Boulez’s own later performances of his music, was a hallmark, so was a hyper-expressivity that surely had its roots in Schoenberg as much as Webern, Debussy too.  Given in a single, endlessly variegated whole, this offered opera-less drama that emerged almost like a tapestry that spoke and sang: a fusion, if you like, of Boulez’s earlier dark surrealism and his late fascination with Szymanowski, seeds of which one could imagine one heard here.

And so, to Pli selon pli. Memories, whether of that earlier Second Sonata performance or of other readings of this ‘portrait of Mallarmé’, are necessarily part of our experience. ‘Must I once again sing the praises of amnesia?’ Boulez once asked, and the answer in context – out of which the rhetorical question has too often been shamelessly extracted – is of course yes. Memories will never be obliterated, but they can too readily become Mahlerian ‘tradition’ as Schlamperei, to invoke once more one of Boulez’s most illustrious composer-conductor predecessors. This performance, from Anna Dennis, the BBC SO, and Brabbins, seemed to me the equal of any I have heard, probably surpassing that of ten years ago, even approaching the fina lencounter I heard from Boulez himself, in 2011 conducting Barbara Hannigan. That is not really the point, though. The past cannot be obliterated, nor did one of the most penetrating of all conductors of works from the ‘Museum’ ever think or wish it to be. He simply wished us to turn attention to the present – even the ‘present’ of the Museum’ – as we could and did here.

The opening of ‘Don’ issued an invitation to enter that none could refuse, trademark éclat followed by the seduction (and seductive birth!) of a ‘nuit d’Idumée’. Beautifully voiced and connected, this was a performance led by a conductor who, in quiet, unflashy security not unlike that of Boulez, showed that he ‘got it’, that he could and would be our guide to the work’s unfolding. Nowadays particularly, we hear much other music folding in but this is infinitely more than synthesis; it is a personal ‘voice’ that yet extends far beyond mere ‘personality’. Mesmerising in Mozartian qualities that already announced a period of ‘modern classicism’ (Arnold Whittall) in Boulezian works, in its seduction it no more brooked dissent than Così fan tutte (or Szymanowski). We had entered a  Bergian labyrinth and never wished to leave.

The first of the three central ‘Improvisations’ brought Webern and Debussy more evidently to the fore, but intriguingly also the very idea of a composed improvisation, recreated before our ears. In a sense, that is simply ‘performance’, though one can too readily lose sight of that, especially in an age still haunted by the ‘authenticity’ Boulez abhorred. Dennis’s way with the words was all: their sound as much as alleged ‘meaning’. As humans, we naturally wish to interpret, but sometimes we need simply to enjoy too. The wide range of her line and performance in a magical second ‘Improvisation’ (‘Une dentelle s’abolit’) seemed both to incite and be incited by the orchestral tapestry woven and re-woven around her—and us. Was that an echo of Prélude à l’après-midi I heard in the third? Perhaps—and perhaps it pointed to another fold to incorporate. There is no single ‘right’ answer, nor ever could there be. That sonic recreation of textures before ears and minds alike was the thing—and what a thing. Webern’s influence so thoroughly assimilated one barely noticed, until one did, both in and across the orchestra. It also felt haunted by the vocal and instrumental laboratory of Bach’s cantatas, a world that also exerted great fascination for Boulez, though, in a further indictment of current compartmentalisation of musical life and history, seldom do we hear about it. 

This, then, was a world of ever-shifting, ever-transforming folds of silk, transposed into music—and/or vice versa. Its culmination in ‘Tombeau’ was the culmination of an intense orchestral drama with voice: that invisible theatre once again, conceived before Boulez’s incursions into the operatic world, revised after them. Maybe it was the chance connection of the moment, yet Pelléas and Parsifal seemed more than usually present. There will always be ghosts at any musical feast, not least Boulez’s own. Not the least of this performance’s wonders was both to hear and to feel how his music is now taking on new directions in his absence. Boulez est mort; vive Boulez.

Nash Inventions - Stravinsky, Holt, Grime, Davies, Carter, Casken, Matthews, and Anderson, 18 March 2025

Wigmore Hall

Stravinsky: Concertino
Simon Holt: Acrobats on a loose wire (world premiere)
Helen Grime: Long have I lain beside the water (world premiere)
Davies: String Quintet
Carter: Mosaic
John Casken: Mantle (world premiere)
Colin Matthews: C.A.N.O.N. (world premiere)
Julian Anderson: Van Gogh Blue

Claire Booth (soprano)
Nash Ensemble
Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Founded in October 1964 by Amelia Freedman at the Royal Academy of Music, a shortish walk away from the Wigmore Hall, the Nash Ensemble is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary season, this the culminating concert in a day’s events of ‘Nash Inventions’ that was but one part, broadly speaking the ‘new music’ part, of that season. As Harrison Birtwistle noted, quoted in the programme, the Nash is and has been unusual in ‘dedication to the old and the new’. Here, no fewer than four world premieres were heard alongside other Nash commissions, plus Stravinsky’s Concertino. 

Stravinsky’s 1920 piece for string quartet received a performance making it sound as new as the day it was born, now of course more than a century ago. Incisive, even aggressive, the Nash’s account showed that rich tone was not inimical to such qualities, quite the contrary. Quite rightly, this singular work sounded unlike anything else, although certain approaches to The Soldier’s Tale made a welcome impression.

Simon Holt’s new work, Acrobats on a Loose Wire, for flute (in the balcony above and behind) and string trio draws inspiration from a painting by Jusepe de Ribera. Its clear trajectory, the flautist moving from piercing piccolo to alto flute and finally to (standard) C flute, seemingly unaware of the string trio on stage proved engaging and brimming with melody of a kind one might almost, borrowing from Wagner, call ‘unendlich(e)’. 

Soprano Claire Booth and conductor Martyn Brabbins joined flute, clarinet, string trio, and harp for the premiere of Helen Grime’s  Long have I lain beside the water in its chamber version. Originally, it was the final song in a cycle for orchestra and solo soprano, to words by Zoe Gilbert. ‘A lament’, to quote Gilbert, ‘by a murderous sister, a tale of jealousy and love,’ it opens with a single pitch passed from woodwind to soprano, other instruments joining around them (descending). Words and music seemed to form an indissoluble union, both as work and performance, whether melismatic or syllabic. In that, they gave a taste – rather more than that – of gripping drama in which every note counted: both song and scena, it seemed. Typically vivid of timbre, it made me keen to hear the larger work from which it comes. 

Next came Peter Maxwell Davies’s 2014 String Quintet. Whether it was quite the right time and place to hear it, I have my doubts. It made for a long evening with this broad span of four movements. Still, if there were few surprises here, there was unquestionably compositional craft. The first movement in particular, entitled ‘Chacony’, might initially have sounded conventional, and the music is naturally distant from the anger of the composer’s youth; its ambiguities nonetheless suggested something more elusive the closer one listened. An oblique ‘Reel’, a broad, sometimes anguished ‘Slow Air’, and the whirlwind of a vigorous closing ‘Stamash’ brought us to the interval. 

Elliott Carter’s 2004 Mosaic, taking a further decade’s step back, proved a fine counterpart in context to the Grime piece. Once again, every note counted in a bejewelled mosaic for flute, oboe, clarinet, harp, string trio, and double bass. It evinced all the vigour of a young composer and all the wisdom of the composer’s actual years in a setting so exquisite one might reach for the word ‘Mozartian’. There was certainly no gainsaying the vibrance of the performance. If every aspect of form were not immediately to be grasped, it was certainly, like a mosaic, to be perceived as a whole. 

Returning to 2024, John Caskeen’s Mantle for piano and wind quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn) offered a different sort of ‘classical’, perhaps in some ways closer to Stravinsky’s brand (though hardly to the Concertino heard on this occasion). Again, one sensed, even if one could not necessarily grasp, the music mapped out before us in another vividly present performance. As with most of the music heard this evening – excepting the Davies Quintet – there was a suggestion of it having covered such ground as might have been expected from a considerably longer piece, its span if not short, then certainly not long. It pulsed with life and clear, sonata-like direction. 

Colin Matthews’s new commission, C.A.N.O.N. for soprano and piano trio, took its leave from a 2022 setting of Christopher Reid’s poem ‘O’ for what would have been Oliver Knussen’s 70th birthday. Its first part, ‘C’ for Claire, did not actually include Claire Booth: instead, we heard a wistful, even Romantic movement for piano trio. Instant contrast was offered with an ‘A’ vocal movement (as with the rest, words by Reid) for ‘Anonymals’, ‘the numberless nameless ones’, but also for ‘Amelia’. Both singer and composer truly used the words to shape music—and, so it seemed, vice versa. ‘N’ for ‘Nightingale’ and ‘Nash’ offered the bird’s voice, I think, first in the trio, then reflected in the vocal writing. ‘O’ was clearly very much the heart of the material; that I could tell before having read the composer’s note. And ‘Narwhals’, once again for ‘Nash’, felt from the outset as a finale, its music founded on yet never merely dictated by the words it ‘set’.

Again without prejudice to any music in particular, I felt the second half might have benefited from one fewer piece. Julian Anderson’s Van Gogh Blue, for which Brabbins returned to conduct an ensemble of flute, two clarinets, harp, viola, and cello, nonetheless made for a characterful and characteristic conclusion. Sparer though also more luxuriant, perhaps more ‘Gallic’ in sensibility, it formed a beautifully crafted homage to Van Gogh’s paintings in musical images of the colour blue from dawn to midnight. The brightness of the latter made for a fitting, somewhat disturbing evocation of Starry Night in light of the painter’s suicide: clarinets again above, a quarter-tone apart.

 

RSB/Brabbins - Mendelssohn and Stravinsky, 16 March 2024

Konzerthaus

Mendelssohn: Symphony no.4 in A major, op.90, ‘Italian’
Mendelssohn: Hymne, op.96
Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments
Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms

Denis Uzun (mezzo-soprano)

Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Philipp Ahmann)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Mendelssohn and Stravinsky might not seem the most obvious bedfellows, but this Berlin Radio Symphony (RSB) concert, originally planned with Andrew Davis but conducted by Martyn Brabbins, offered pause for thought as well as enjoyment. Both composers had fraught relationships either with Wagner or his music—and, by extension, with that strain of musical Romanticism. (Even Liszt, that most generous spirited of composers, could refer dismissively to the ‘opposition’ as ‘leipzigerisch’.) The nature of their (neo)classicism is far from the same, but it offers an interesting perspective, even when the music performed is not so markedly in that mould. One could certainly spill a good deal of ink in discussing the relationship of the two Stravinsky works here to ideas and practice of neoclassicism. That, you will doubtless be relieved to know, must await another day, but such initial thoughts offered a frame through which to hear the works concerned. 

The RSB played Mendlessohn’s Italian Symphony with irresistible élan, string sheen and sunny woodwind a delight throughout. Brabbins was surely on the fast side for ‘Allegretto vivace’, but many conductors are.  Throughout, he imparted a proper sense of development to Mendelssohn’s writing, nowhere more so than in the featherlight counterpoint of the development section proper, though that certainly continued in the recapitulation. There was Abruzzo-like heat too in a reading full of colour and incident, aptly foreshadowing the processional of the second movement, which similarly benefited from transparent textures and a keen sense of direction. A graceful minuet, replete with trio that went properly beyond it in more than one direction, led to a saltarello both disciplined and wild, its contagion as impressive as its chiaroscuro. 

The op.96 Hymne, ‘Three Spiritual Songs’ (as they are known in the version with organ) plus a concluding ‘Fuga’, received a winning performance, mezzo Deniz Uzun and the Berlin Radio Chorus joining Brabbins and the orchestra. Telling detail could be heard without exaggeration, variety in scoring (the opening of the second, an especially lovely ‘hymn’, setting solo voice against woodwind consort) registering in every case. A lively third, with growing sense of jubilation, revealed once again what a fine chorus this is: ideal in weight, balance, and clarity. Much the same could be said of the concluding fugue. 

Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments sounded as seductive and rebarbative as ever, a perfect objet trouvé that find itself somehow chiselled to still further perfection. Apparently ossified lines suggestive of The Rite of Spring were imbued with radically new life, the performance as a whole splendidly alive: a liturgy in itself, to which we were permitted audience if not participation. If Boulez was an ideal interpreter (celebrant?) of this hieratic music, I could not help but think Stockhausen must have loved it too. At any rate, it made for a splendid introit to the Symphony of Psalms, whose similar strangeness registered visually in orchestral layout (famously, no violins and violas, nor clarinets) before a note had been heard. 

It proved another labyrinth, as full of incident in its way, above all in the first movement, as Mendelssohn’s Symphony. Glorious choral sound was well complemented by the orchestra; if there were occasions when the two threatened to go their separate ways, it never quite happened. More to the point, the inscrutability of Stravinsky’s musical devices – utterly characteristic ostinato in the first movement, the double fugue of the second – proved once again to pass all ‘expressive’ understanding, the composer’s ever-surprising ear made musically manifest. What a strange ‘response’ to the text Stravinsky offers in the words from Psalm 150 in the third movement. He would doubtless have said he was not responding at all, but simply setting them. That can readily become play with words, for ‘expression’ here, if hardly Romantic, was no less powerful for being what it was: quite the contrary. Brabbins took the opening daringly slow, providing all the greater contrast with what was to come. Music seeming at times to circle the worlds of the Symphony in Three Movements and even the Circus Polka never seemed remotely incongruous; roots and essence led to a hypnotic, even sanctified close.

Das Rheingold, English National Opera, 18 February 2023

Coliseum

Images: Marc Brenner
Rhinemaidens (Eleanor Dennis, Katie Stevenson, Idunnu Münch)

Woglinde – Eleanor Dennis
Wellgunde – Idunnu Münch
Flosshilde – Katie Stevenson
Alberich – Leigh Melrose
Mime – John Findon
Wotan – John Relyea
Fricka – Madeleine Shaw
Freia – Katie Lowe
Froh – Julian Hubbard
Donner – Blake Denson
Erda – Christine Rice

Loge - Frederick Ballentine  
Fasolt – Simon Bailey
Fafner – James Creswell

Richard Jones (director)
Stewart Laing (designs)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Sarah Fahie (movement)
Akhila Krishnan (video)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

 

Nibelheim

Like the Biblical cosmos, that of the Ring offers more than one creation myth, not necessarily entirely consistent with one another. Therein lies the dramatic rub. Richard Jones’s new production of Das Rheingold brings the second creation myth to the fore before the first, the generatio æquivoca of the Prelude, is heard—at least for those mature enough not simply to laugh uproariously at the mere sight of a naked man. (Disruptive audience members who seemed throughout, without evident justification, to believe they were watching Carry on Rhinegold may have been better advised to stick to Donizetti, but doubtless we should ‘respect their choices’.) What the primæval figure does is the thing: he carries wood hewn from a tree across the stage, the wood diminishing in size (and distancing itself from life) in proportion to the civilised clothes he acquires. The World-ash tree and Wotan’s act of ecopolitical violence against it are placed centre-stage—and then, E-flat… 

A hallmark of Jones’s staging throughout is indeed the clarity of its narration. Where Keith Warner’s late Royal Opera staging clearly had ideas, many extremely worthy on paper, the director struggled, so it seemed, to bring them to visual clarity (not to be confused, necessarily, with simplicity) and much seemed confused rather than complex. There may not be much in the way of conceptual complexity; this will not, it seems, be a Ring that changes our conception of the work. But it – the Rheingold, anyway – is as well shaped as Martyn Brabbins’s conducting of the score, both (greatly to my surprise) transformed out of all recognition from the miserable preceding excursion for Die Walküre. The Rhinemaidens’ amoral hedonism is evoked by their fitness wear and activities, a cruel contrast with a clearly unfit Alberich. The golden cyber-child they guard – not very well – is the Rhinegold, original state and potential for capitalisation imaginatively conveyed. And, as throughout, the deed of violence in its theft furnishes a due moment of dramatic horror. It is straightforward rather than reactionary, but in many ways none the worse than that; it certainly compares favourably with the listless soap-opera inconsequentiality of Valentin Schwarz at Bayreuth last summer.

Alberich (Leigh Melrose)

Objects, a crucial, far-too-often overlooked aspect of Wagner’s drama are well dealt with too. The spear, hewn in turn from the ash-wood, appears properly centre-stage. Those new to the drama will see that it is important and be aided in understanding why; more experienced Wagnerites will connect it with the rest of the action and ideas of their own. The Tarnhelm and ring, as well as the hoard more generally, are likewise clearly represented and, just as important, their role in the drama is clearly delineated. Nibelheim’s essential basis as a modern factory is immediately apparent – excellent sound design helps beforehand, in bringing the sound of its anvils immediately before our ears – and Alberich, transformed out of all recognition into a horrifying dictator of modern capital, wields his capitalist ‘whip of hunger’ (George Bernard Shaw) over Nibelung kinsmen with immediate and clear effect. His further transformations, courtesy of the Tarnhelm, again make their point starkly: first, he truly is, as he tells them, ‘everywhere’, his forms multiplying in surveillance and punishment (sorry, ‘incentivisation’); second and third, metamorphoses into dragon and toad are handled simply and without any of the attendant usual confusion. (Again, quite why some engaged in bellyaching laughter at the moment of Alberich’s capture, I cannot imagine. Strange, at best.)

Erda (Christine Rice), Erda (John Relyea)

The final scene makes for powerful dramatic cumulation, well supported by keen Personenregie. Erda’s appearance in pyjamas, keen to resume her sleep, sand of time spraying from her hands, makes a number of important points without fuss; so too does another point of violence, Wotan kissing her—and seemingly changing all. Schoolgirl Norns in attendance may (or may not) know. Freia’s deep affection for Fasolt, in the light of his for her, is  moving, not least on account of deeply sympathetic performances from Katie Lowe and Simon Bailey. That Freia, as well as Loge, wishes to dissociate herself from the entrance into Valhalla is also genuinely moving, as indeed is the mounting of the gold to hide her form in the giants’ removal lorry. Rainbow lighting evokes Froh’s bridge with a delightful sense of the aesthetic that is yet not spectacle for its own sake. When furious, desperate Rhinemaidens, heard offstage, return to the stage to demand return of their gold, Wotan battens down the fortress hatches. The die is cast—as Loge, his bag packed, knows only too well. 

Loge is always a character well-placed to steal the show. Frederick Ballantine’s quicksilver portrayal certainly did that, securely poised on what might otherwise be a tightrope between personability and tales of political alienation. Key to his success, and to that of many other cast members, was crystal-clear diction, enabling the truths of John Deathridge’s excellent new singing translation to hit home with force – the truth that Wagner requires us to think for ourselves, his text a springboard rather than our dramatic destination not the least of them. John Relyea’s Wotan captured, in another strikingly mature portrayal, so many of the nuances and contradictions in the god’s complex, world-winning (perhaps) personality.

Loge (Frederick Ballentine), Alberich

Leigh Melrose’s Alberich was, quite simply, spellbinding. The shift from repressed dwarf to would-be world-dictator owed much to costumes and make-up, but was ultimately his. We sympathised, though not too much; the erotic urge (liebesgelüste, Wagner’s lower case) Wagner noted in Alberich’s case in a letter of 1851 was already a menace. We cowed, with the Nibelungs. And we felt, through his work and the orchestra’s, the ominous power of the curse. Indeed, every member of the cast contributed to this overall success. Madeleine Shaw’s uncommonly sympathetic Fricka, Christine Rice’s surprisingly deep-toned Erda, James Creswell’s contemptuous Fafner, among them. This trio of Rhinemaidens, for instance, would aurally adorn any house. 

The innermost core of Wagner music drama lies, we all know, in the orchestra, his Greek chorus. ENO here likewise had little to fear from the most august of comparisons, not that one felt compelled to draw them. For a signal virtue of this Rheingold was that one sensed how all aspects had come together as so much more than the sum of their considerable parts; had the production been different, so would the singing, and so on. Brabbins’s collegial, structurally comprehending – and communicative – conducting presented itself above all as an enabler of dramatic action and was well experienced as such. I can only imagine orchestral and sung contributions will go from strength to strength over the course of this run.

Donner (Blake Denson), Froh (Julian Hubbard), Wotan, Fricka (Madeleine Shaw)

What a difference, then, fifteen months make, and how great a pleasure it is to report so. When ENO’s new Ring opened in November 2021, oddly with its second instalment rather than its first, neither staging nor performance induced much enthusiasm. Now, at a time of existential concern for the company’s future, its presentation of Das Rheingold proves in most respects a triumph: a vindication for those fighting the philistine atrocities perpetrated by the Arts Council – sorry ‘Arts Council England’ – and the ‘government’ it all too readily serves. Roll on England’s Götterdämmerung, in more than one sense.

Gloriana, English National Opera, 8 December 2022

Coliseum

Queen Elizabeth I – Christine Rice
Robert Devereuz, Earl of Essex – Robert Murray
Frances, Countess of Essex – Paula Murrihy
Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy – Duncan Rock
Penelope, Lady Rich – Eleanor Dennis
Sir Robert Cecil – Charles Rice
Sir Walter Raleigh – David Soar
Henry Cuffe – Alex Otterburn
A Lady-in-Waiting – Alexandra Oomens
The Recorder of Norwich, A Ballad Singer – Willard White
A Housewife – Claire Barnett-Jones
The Spirit of the Masque – Innocent Masuku

Ruth Knight (director)
Sarah Bowern (costumes)
Corinne Young (wigs, hair, make-up)
Ian Jackson-French (lighting)
Barbora Šenoltová (video)

English National Opera Chorus (chorus director: Mark Biggins)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Images (c) Nirah Sanghani
Frances, Countess of Essex (Paula Murrihy), Queen Elizabeth I (Christine Rice)

Britten’s Gloriana is a strange work, both in itself and considered as a ‘coronation opera’. It is no Clemenza di Tito, idealising, instructing, and even gently warning a king, at least in Mozart’s version, that affairs of state must always have precedence over those of his own heart. Or is it, even if not by intent? The first Queen Elizabeth, as presented here by Britten and William Plomer, after Lytton Strachey, does not exactly prosper by indulging her favourite, the Earl of Essex. It is not, however, difficult to understand why many thought the presentation of an ageing monarch inappropriate as a way to greet the new reign of Gloriana’s twentieth-century successor. In many ways, The Crown has nothing on this—save for superior dramaturgy. If the strangeness of Gloriana’s (verbal) archaisms can be explained, perhaps even understood, the awkwardness of its first act in particular surely would have merited revision, had opportunity presented itself. Plomer certainly did Britten no favours. 

Similar things may be said, though, of many operas. We have what we have, and ENO did it proud, in just the sort of performance the company and its supporters alike needed to hear. Electrified by the moment of the Arts Council’s latest disgraceful philistinism—scrapping its grant altogether and bundling it off to Manchester, without so much as a word of consultation with venues, existing companies, or local government—this felt like a true coming together, to bless a problematical work more completely than may have been the case upon its first outing and, in my opinion, when revived at Covent Garden in 2013, sixty years after its premiere. Martyn Brabbins and the ENO Orchestra proved at least the equals of Paul Daniel and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. If anything, I think they may have been more incisive, still more committed. There was certainly a strong sense of grounding in Britten’s music; one could draw many a comparison with other of the composer’s dramatic music, dating back past Billy Budd and The Rape of Lucretia at least as far as Peter Grimes, yet sometimes also peering into the future. There is not a huge amount that can be done about some of the duller passages, and a masque without dancing is not ideal, but there remained enough at least to intrigue. Ruth Knight’s direction and the ‘concert staging’ in general were obviously limited in what they could achieve, yet as a framework for something considerably more than a concert performance worked well: perhaps something of a model for further revivals, should ENO fare better than Essex in escaping the executioner’s axe. 

There was much to enjoy and admire in the singing. In the title role, Christine Rice offered imperious and internally conflicted as very much two sides to the same Elizabethan coin. Robert Murray’s Essex seemed particularly at home with the particular blend of verbal and musical line required here, not least in the lute songs with which he would seduce his queen. Paula Murrihy proved an affecting Frances, doubtless in part a reflection of the more interesting standpoint of her role, although it remains necessary for an artist to grasp that opportunity—here accomplished in captivating fashion. Duncan Rock, a memorable Don Giovanni, presented a splendidly rutting Mountjoy; if the role fizzles out somewhat, there is very little that can be done about that. Eleanor Dennis’s Penelope complemented him and the other intriguers nicely. 

Earl of Essex (Robert Murray), Countess of Essex,
Charles Blount (Duncan Rock), Lady Rich (Eleanor Dennis)

There was no weak link in the cast, and crucially a strong sense, even in this single performance, of a company coming together as more than the sum of its parts. Two ENO Harewood Artists (Alexandra Oomens and Innocent Masuku) shone, a nice symmetry since Lord Harewood, the second Elizabeth’s cousin, according to some accounts cajoled her into accepting the dedication—and had her and Prince Philip attend a prior dinner-party run-through, at which the royal couple may not have been entirely amused. So too did two former Harewood Artists: Alex Otterburn and the wonderfully spirited Claire Barnett-Jones as a housewife in the penultimate scene. Will someone with power and influence take note? Who knows? Someone certainly should—and fast, before ENO’s death warrant is executed.

The Cunning Little Vixen, English National Opera, 22 February 2022

Coliseum

 

Images: Clive Barda

Forester – Lester Lynch
Vixen – Sally Matthews
Forester’s Wife, Owl – Madeleine Shaw
Schoolmaster, Mosquito – Alan Oke
Priest, Badger – Clive Bayley
Poacher – Ossian Huskinson
Innkeeper, Cock – John Findon
Fox – Pumeza Matshikiza
Innkeeper’s Wife, Chief Hen – Gweneth Ann Rand
Dog – Claire Barnett Jones
Pepík, Woodpecker – Alexandra Oomens
Frantík, Jay – Ffion Edwards
Harašta – Ossian Huskinson
Dragonfly – Joy Constantinides
Frog – Robert Berry-Roe
Cricket – Ethan James
Grasshopper – Kavya Kutsa

Jamie Manton (director)
Tom Scutt (designs)
Lucy Carter (lighting)
Jenny Ogilvie (movement)

Children’s Chorus (chorus director: Patrick Barett)
Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus director: Mark Biggins)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Failure to love the operas—more generally, the music—of Janáček would be a strange, soulless thing indeed. It seems more to be opera companies, strange, incomprehensible entities, than opera-goers, be they casual or more seasoned and committed, that accomplish that strange, incomprehensible failure. Fortunately, since opera returned to London, we have had opportunity to see a Janáček opera at Holland Park, Covent Garden, and now at the Coliseum too, with Glyndebourne adding to the tally not so far away. Holland Park’s Cunning Little Vixen last summer makes ENO’s claim that the opera is ‘rarely staged’ especially peculiar, but arts advertising is another strange and incomprehensible world. We can and should be grateful for Janáček wherever we find his works staged; that is surely the important thing, not least at a time when humanity stands in danger of extinction from so many catastrophes at once.

The idea of Jamie Manton’s new production seemed to be that the human world aged more readily and found itself less capable of regeneration, perhaps in light of its incomprehensible despoliation of Nature, than the natural world of animals, to the detriment of the slow-witted former and probably the quicker-witted latter too. Deforestation was, I think, part of that tale, felled logs across the stage, living wood turned dead at the hand of man. Silent child and/or adolescent versions of certain characters—the Forester, his Wife, the Vixen, and the Dragonfly—heightened the sense of cyclical, generational narrative, freer than their elder selves, without merely getting in the way. Just as important, they and other silent roles gave opportunity to child performers, as of course did the children’s chorus. Vivid, painterly impressions of human life and the seasons were unfurled: always a dramatic reminder that what we think of as Nature, or at least what we can ever know of it, will always remain an uneasy compromise with the natural world 'itself'. 

There was also an intriguing sense of the story, or at least the human part of it, lying closer to earlier Janáček works such as Jenůfa and Katya Kabanova. When the Forester took the Vixen home, it was indoors, to a claustrophobic setting that would not have been out of place in a typical ‘contemporary’-minded production of either of those. This Moravia was far from a rural idyll, though it arguably had more in common with the stage of life at which Janáček wrote his opera, memories of his relationship with Kamila Stösslová colouring the Forester’s strange love for the Vixen and ultimately that sense of transcendental communion engendered by that love.

Martyn Brabbins led a loving—perhaps in the third act, a little too loving—musical account, especially strong in conveying not only the metrical implications of Janáček’s use of Czech speech rhythms, but how evidently felt they might be by performers and audience alike (even in English translation). Here was a score clearly internalised, whether its moments of rapture or its (often overlooked) harder edges, chiming nicely with what we saw on stage. By the nature of the work, a Vixen performance needs to be a company effort. That was certainly what we saw and heard here.

Sally Matthews shone in the title role, her bell-like soprano emotionally adaptive to a variety of situations, Pumeza Matshikiza’s Fox similarly likeable and (strangely?) relatable. The journey of Lester Lynch’s Forester offered a crucial dramatic counterpoint, ably supported and brought into relief by a host of sharply drawn cameos. It would ultimately be a little pointless to go through the large cast, but Madeleine Shaw’s Forester’s Wife and Ossian Huskinson’s Harašta seemed to me particularly vivid portrayals, in stage and vocal terms. Storm Eunice, the natural world in notably hostile guise, may have put paid to the premiere, but there will always be more to come, further opportunities. Like the Forester, we human beings must learn better how to take them—before it is too late.

Die Walküre, English National Opera, 19 November 2021

Coliseum

Siegmund – Nicky Spence
Sieglinde – Emma Bell
Hunding – Brindley Sherratt
Wotan – Matthew Rose
Brünnhilde – Rachel Nicholls
Fricka – Susan Bickley, Claire Barnett-Jones
Gerhilde – Nadine Benjamin
Ortlinde – Mari Wyn Williams
Waltraute – Kamilla Dunstan
Schwertleite – Fleur Barron
Helmwige – Jennifer Davis
Siegrune – Idunna Münch
Rossweisse – Claire Barnett-Jones
Grimgerde – Katie Stevenson

Richard Jones (director)
Stewart Laing (designs)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Sarah Fahie (movement)
Akhila Krishnan (video)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Images: (C) Tristram Kenton
Siegmund (Nicky Spence) and Sieglinde (Emma Bell)

I wanted so much to like this more than I did. It is not quite ENO’s return to the Coliseum after you-know-what, but in many ways it felt like it. (A Philip Glass revival and a new production of Gilbert and Sullivan will have had their devotees, but they are not my potion of forgetfulness.) Anneliese Miskimmon, ENO’s Artistic Director, could not have been more welcoming in her brief address from the stage before the performance. And what could be a greater declaration of intent for a new era than a new Ring? Perhaps a Schoenberg or, still more so, a Stockhausen series? But even then, the Ring retains for many the status of non plus ultra. Its all-encompassing nature continues to surpass all competitors; no artwork has more to tell us, so it seems, at any juncture in our dubious human development.

No Ring is therefore going to be perfect; even the most exalted performance, let alone staging, will have imperfections. It would be too easy to judge perfection a lesser thing; it is not, necessarily, but it is a different thing—one which Mozart (often) has covered. Yet if a Ring in performance will always fall short, it should not fall so short as Richard Jones’s half-hearted attempt at a production, which detracted all too much from a mixed musical performance laying claim to not inconsiderable virtues. Perhaps more would have been gleaned had we seen Das Rheingold first. Starting with the second instalment is not without precedent, but I remain unconvinced that it is a good idea. Berlin’s Deutsche Oper has had to present Stefan Herheim’s new Ring as and when it can, but that is a different case, planned performances having to be cancelled, given without an audience, and so on. (How I long to see what Herheim has done!) Yet it is difficult to imagine that much light being shed on a Walküre (sorry, Valkyrie, as ENO obstinately continues to refer it) seemingly without a concept or indeed much of an idea at all. Presumably, money was tight, for what we see is not so much minimalism as people wandering a little lost around a stage that sometimes has scenery and sometimes does not. As in Jones’s recent, wretched La clemenza di Tito for the Royal Opera, there was a vague look: in this case, noir-ish ‘Scandinavia’, though it would be difficult to say anything more precise than that. ENO’s publicity suggests the idea that this is a family saga: well, sort of, I suppose, but only if that is taken to be the crucible for something greater. Use of video to show Alberich (‘Nibelung’ tattooed on his forehead), Grimhilde, and Hagen when referred to in Wotan’s narration—nothing more, just show them—seemed both patronising and pointless, though perhaps in a greater context it contributes to the banal theme of family feud. The appearance of Hunding’s clan on stage might have contributed further, but ultimately undirected (like so much else), they proved little more than a distraction, the lack of much to distract from notwithstanding.

 

Alberich (Jamie Campbell), Brünnhilde (Rachel Nicholls), Wotan (Matthew Rose)

Maybe the strange claim (Christopher Wintle) that opened one of the programme notes offered a clue to the lack of any exterior, let alone political element: ‘Most of us can agree that The Valkyrie is “about” incest.’ I do not know precisely to whom ‘us’ refers; certainly not to me, anyway. Wagner’s drama is no more ‘“about” incest’ than The Flying Dutchman is ‘about’ sailing. The point of Siegmund and Sieglinde’s love is that it breaks the violent, cruel bonds of marriage, family, and custom (which Wagner specifically identified with Fricka); that it leads Siegmund to reject immortality, and thus to put Brünnhilde on her way to doing likewise, to attaining the superior status of ‘purely human’; and precisely that it does not matter whether the Volsung twins are brother and sister, not that it does. Here, occasional straining towards a familial idea, for instance Hunding’s physical brutality to Sieglinde, seemed little more than striving after effect, given a lack of embedding in anything more than an IKEA catalogue. The production team sported more interesting clothes than those given to the cast; maybe they should have swapped.

Grimgerde (Katie Stevenson), Rossweisse (Claire Barnett-Jones),
and Siegrune (Idunnu Münch)

 

Or maybe they should have given them to the curious animals that pranced around the stage, Wotan’s ravens (I think) included: more Sesame Street than creatures of the forest. Whether the concept were malevolent or ironic, neither possibility was achieved. For some reason, a lone tap dancer did her stuff during the Ride of the Valkyries, whilst actors in horse costumes struggled around on tip toe. Why on earth Grane, understandably fidgeting, was made to balance in this way through the entirety of the final scene—and not only then—I have no idea; but then I have little idea about anything else either. Inability to set the stage ablaze at the close was attributed to a late intervention from Westminster City Council. Alas, Wotan’s protracted fumbling to attach to Brünnhilde a harness that would awkwardly suspend her above the stage, without the slightest sign of flames that had intermittently flickered earlier, seemed all too apt a metaphor. Quite what the Met, where Jones’s third (!) attempt at the Ring is heading, will make of it is anyone’s guess. It is certainly devoid enough of intellectual content to satisfy Friends of Otto Schenk. But the ‘look’, for that is all it is, and lack of discernible stage action will surely trouble many. 

Martyn Brabbins’s conducting was sane, measured, and doubtless sensitive—perhaps too sensitive—to the needs of his singers. Brabbins clearly appreciates the need to think in the broadest terms about Wagner’s structures, yet often seemed to confuse that with maintaining a slow speed throughout, occasionally changing gear when that could not conceivably be maintained any longer. A few understandable fluffs—every performance has them—notwithstanding, the ENO Orchestra played beautifully, if often in strangely subdued fashion, especially in the first act (!) I do not know how long it lasted in actual minutes, but it felt like the longest I had ever heard. By contrast, the third act often seemed rushed, if hardly short. This was clearly a work in progress, but there may be considerably more hope for improvement here than in the staging.

 

Brünnhilde

Had it not been for an initial announcement, no one would have known Nicky Spence was suffering from a cold. Siegmund is clearly a role for which he is ready—and for which he has well prepared. There are strength, vulnerability, and many other of the qualities we need, even in so unpromising a setting as this. It was difficult to discern much in the way of chemistry with Emma Bell’s Sieglinde; nor did this seem to be ironic or deconstructive detachment. However, considered on its own terms, her performance also impressed, indicative of a woman bruised yet determined to command her own destiny. Dart-playing Rachel Nicholls, lumbered with a strange skater-girl look, trod a fine, shifting line between Brünnhilde's youthful impetuosity and the glimmers of something more moving, more human—which is to say she understood what was at stake, even if Jones did not. Matthew Rose, lumbered with, well, being a lumberjack-turned-television-detective, offered a typically detailed and thoughtful performance as Wotan, though the third act did not show him at his strongest. These things vary from night to night. Brindley Sherratt's focus as Hunding varied too, though at its best it offered something darkly psychopathic. One of the strongest, most committed and sustained performances came from the team of Susan Bickley (finely observed, on stage) and Claire Barnett-Jones (also finely observed and with gleaming tone, from a box above) as Fricka. This, again, was a performance that truly used words, music, and gesture to suggest drama beyond Jones’s imagination.

 

So too did John Deathridge’s new singing translation. It was in many respects remarkably faithful not only to what Wagner said but, crucially, to what he did not, employing suggestion and ambiguity in the right places. It had an intriguing line too in something akin to Stabreim. Word order and stress played their part, as did various other considerations one might find—with profit—in reading Wagner’s own Opera and Drama. This did not, like many of ENO’s translations, attempt to draw attention to itself, still less to elicit inappropriate laughter; rather it participated in the dramatic effort in a way the singers and orchestra, if hardly the director, did. The sort of people who drone on about ‘the Coli’ and alleged halcyon days of Reginald Goodall will doubtless bemoan the lack of Andrew Porter, but their parochial concerns need not be ours.

 

Fricka (Susan Bickley) and Wotan

‘Mark well my poem,’ wrote Wagner to Liszt in 1853, enclosing a copy of the Ring in verse; ‘it contains the beginning of the world and its end.’ One might argue that beginning(s) and end happen elsewhere in the Ring; but were this the generic television ‘show’ from which Jones & Co. appeared to have taken non-inspiration, it seems doubtful, even in the unlikely event of a decision to renew for another ‘season’, that many viewers would have been remaining. To achieve not only an Annunciation of Death, but an entire Walküre, in which nothing whatsoever seemed to be at stake, was a peculiar, perverse and strangely pointless achievement. Either Jones needs to rethink—the prefix ‘re-’ may be too kind—or ENO should act decisively with courage and substitute another production or concert performances. With Wagner, in Wagner, much is or should be at stake.

BBC Proms (6) – Connolly/BBC SO/Brabbins: Payne, Berlioz, and Beethoven, 13 August 2021

Royal Albert Hall

Anthony Payne: Spring’s Shining Wake
Berlioz: Les Nuits d’été, op.7
Beethoven: Symphony no.6 in F major, ‘Pastoral’, op.68

Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

It was a lovely idea to open this concert, originally to be conducted by Andrew Davis, with a work by Anthony Payne, who died earlier this year. Spring’s Shining Wake is an interesting piece in conception, shadowing the course, as Payne put it, of Delius’s In a Summer Garden, without ever quoting from it. Opening with ‘an entirely personal and independent ground …, only very loosely related to the model, the work then proceeds to find equivalents in my vocabulary for every structural and textural move in the Delius.’ Such music—Delius and ‘other late-Romantic English composers’—had been very close to Payne in his youth; only then, in 1980-81, did he feel he had attained the detachment necessary to attempt such an experiment. For me, the soundworld seemed closer to Schoenberg than to Delius, though it could hardly be taken for either. In that respect, this might almost have been a tribute to the Five Orchestral Pieces, op.16: not only in harmony but in motivic writing too, albeit more strongly obbligato than Schoenberg’s opening, so-called ‘recitative’ movement. Dawn-like, moving into a fuller awakening in more Bergian climax, the work evoked fine playing from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, whether its string bedrock or wind soloists. Martyn Brabbins’s direction seemed spot on too: never intrusive, yet guiding Payne’s score clearly, revealing it as a tone poem of unusual yet, in some sense, strangely familiar qualities. A telephone call—alas, not the last of the concert—offered an intriguing touch of audience participation.

Sarah Connolly joined the orchestra for a moving performance of Berlioz’s song-cycle Les Nuits d’été. ‘Villanelle’, the first song, proved aptly welcoming and sharply etched, Brabbins and Connolly providing plenty of space for solo instruments to speak. The nervous energy generated was not exactly allayed but rather transmuted in ‘Le Spectre de la rose’, its long melodic lines finely shaped by soloist and orchestra alike. There was something ineffably uncanny and poignant to the memories and sentiments of nostalgia evoked, providing not only a crucial connection to the songs to come but also to Payne’s Spring’s Shining Wake. ‘Sur les lagunes’ was gravely beautiful, a deeply Romantic vision that prepared the way for the sadness of ‘Ah! Comme elle était belle et comme je l’aimais! Je n’aimerai jamais une femme autant qu’elle.’ Taken slowly yet never ponderously, ‘Absence’ showed again that a certain lightness is often necessary to plumb Berlioz’s depths. The moonlight of ‘Au cimetière’ might almost have been our destination, and so it momentarily felt, before the invigorating sense of departure, of adventure, in the closing ‘L’Île inconnue,’ its spirit quickened by both voice and orchestra, often in tandem. This was a performance full of light and shade, whether in timbre or something more metaphysical.

Fresh, lively, detailed, the opening of the Pastoral Symphony promised much, somewhat in the line of Berlioz. Subtle inflections that told without disruption likewise spoke of an ability to balance competing demands. If the first movement turned out to be quite a brisk stroll, less imbued with metaphysical meaning than many great performances of the past, Brabbins guided it with intelligence and a welcome lack of self-indulgence. The ‘Scene by the Brook’ flowed nicely, in not dissimilar vein, though here I came to feel more urgently the lack of a propelling ‘voice’, Beethoven’s vision edged more closely toward conventional tone-painting. Its successor movement, swifter and lighter than usual, continued in like-minded fashion, though the Trio dug in more. Rustic within symphonic bounds, its lack of silly ‘effects’ was welcome. The Storm was somewhat well-behaved; I could not help but wish that a little more had been at stake, while admiring the scrupulous balance struck between pictorial and symphonic. Beethoven’s transition to the finale, though, was admirably, respectfully handled. If that final movement itself glowed and proceeded with intelligence, I was ultimately left asking what it had all meant. This is not of course the Fifth Symphony, but it still needs—at least for me—something more.