Gould/Tiberghien/Aurora/Collon - Paganini, Mozart, Liszt, and Mendelssohn, 17 September 2016

Hall One, Kings Place

Images: Nick Rutter

Paganini – Twenty-four Caprices for solo violin, op.1: Caprice no.5
Mozart – Piano Concerto no.6 in B-flat major, KV 238
Liszt – Années de pèlerinage: Première année: ‘Suisse’, S 160: ‘Le Mal du pays’
Mozart – Piano Concerto no.5 in D major, KV 175
Mendelssohn – Symphony no.4 in A major, op.90, ‘Italian’

Thomas Gould (violin)

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)

Aurora Orchestra

Nicholas Collon (conductor)

Taking as its theme the touring programmes of musical prodigies, this instalment in the Aurora Orchestra’s five-year traversal of Mozart’s piano concerto, opened with the fifth of Paganini’s Twenty-four Caprices. It was well played indeed by Thomas Gould, intonation spot on, and with plenty of rhythmic impetus. Whether it really added to the programme, I am less convinced, but it did not harm in lieu of an overture.

Cédric Tiberghien took centre stage for the rest of the first half, with excellent results. First up was the lovely, shamefully neglected Sixth Piano Concerto. (Just because Mozart wrote greater concertos, there is no reason for us to forget his earlier works, which put most other composers to shame. The same goes for his operas.) A warm, lively orchestral tutti from the orchestra and Nicholas Collon was answered by Tiberghien with charm and precision, the first movement as a whole receiving a variegated performance, in the spirit of forerunners such as JC Bach, yet also looking forward to Mozart’s later works. Passagework as clean, well-oiled, and, just as important, melodically meaningful. The slow movement had the air of a Salzburg serenade, not least on account of its pizzicato strings, but not only on their account. In its way, this is quite a complicated movement, overtly so: it has little of the distilled simplicity of the later Mozart. Tiberghien cared for the cantilena just as much as he would have done in Chopin or Ravel – and rightly so. The finale was played with good nature, and a sense of fun, whilst still being taken seriously. There was something of Haydn (if only to our retrospectively attuned ears) to it, but equally a sense of drama that was entirely Mozart’s own.

 

Liszt’s Le Mal du pays offered a very different standpoint on the travelling virtuoso’s experience. The starkness of its opening seemed already to look forward to the visionary works of the composer’s old age. Tiberghien showed himself finely attuned to Liszt’s rhetoric but also to the sentiments that underlay the rhetoric. Like Liszt himself, he understood the ability of the piano to ‘speak’ and communicated that. Sadness, even bitterness, made for a poignant, pungent interlude. Once again, we were reminded that no one, not even Mozart or Beethoven, did more to make the modern piano and modern pianism what they are.

 

Mozart’s Fifth Piano Concerto opened with the unmistakeable celebratory fizz of the composer in D major. Collon drove the music quite hard, but it could take it. Tiberghien responded in similarly ‘public’ fashion. That is not to say his performance lacked subtlety, quite the contrary; melodic lines were just as finely crafted as in the previous concerto. Mozart’s surprises registered as they should. Attention to detail from all concerned ensured that music which, in lesser hands, might sound ‘conventional’, emerged as anything but. The orchestra, moreover, sounded as if it were enjoying itself: always a good thing. There was an engaging physicality here and elsewhere to its performances. The slow movement’s performance was eloquent. What again can actually prove quite complicated never sounded fussy; it was well directed, imbued with grace, yet with a place too for rhetorical flourishes. In the finale, we experienced a return to, even intensification of, D major extroversion. Display, as previously, was always musically grounded; the ebullience was impossible not to like. Mozart’s extraordinary achievement at the age of seventeen blazed in all its glory.

 

For the second half, we heard a symphony by another celebrated prodigy, Mendelssohn. Collon offered a performance rather in the spirit of his Mozart: colourful, exuberant, full of life. The second group in the first movement had charm too: Mendelssohn should never grimace; nor did he. The development section, moreover, sounded properly cumulative. At the opening of the second movement, Collon and his orchestra seemed keen to highlight Mendelssohn’s interest in Baroque music, Handel as much as Bach. It was not a dogmatic reading, though: there was plenty of ‘Romantic’ colour to come, not least from the Aurora woodwind. Darkness of mood, far from unrelieved, provided a welcome correction to many other accounts. The Minuet charmed, yet never sounded merely placid; there was much to occupy mind and senses beneath the veneer. Its trio proved just as ambiguous, if differently so. A fast and furious finale stood out for the intensity of the orchestral playing. One truly felt the virtues of a chamber orchestra ‘playing out’, of virtuosic instrumentalists coming together to make music.

Prom 21: Leleux/Aurora/Collon - Rihm, Strauss, and Mozart, 31 July 2016

Royal Albert Hall

Rihm – Gejagte Form

Strauss – Oboe Concerto in D major
Mozart – Symphony no.41 in C major, KV 551

François Leleux (oboe)

Aurora Orchestra

Nicholas Collon (conductor)




Tom Service presents Nicholas Collon and the Aurora Orchestra deconstructing Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 ‘Jupiter’ at the BBC Proms
Image: Chris Christodoulou/BBC Proms

The Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon opened this afternoon concert with the Proms premiere of the 2002 revision of Wolfgang Rihm’s 1995-6 work, Gejagte Form (the original version having been performed by the London Sinfonietta under Markus Stenz in 1998). Rihm’s ‘hunted’ form seems to suggest – and certainly did in performance – a search for form, to suggest a state of form, as it were, ever forming. Such an idea could hardly be more indicative of the composer’s deep roots in German Romanticism. Here the Aurora players, more ensemble than orchestra, proved sure guides – or, better, discoverers. The virtuosic, well-nigh diabolical violin soloists at the beginning (Alexandra Wood and Jamie Campbell) offered us expressionistic fiddling, seemingly both in contradiction with each other but also co-dependent; such, after all, is part of the difficulty of co-dependency. Already, with the double bass entry that followed, we seemed to catch an aural glimpse of that formal quarry; it soon escaped us again, returning briefly, yet differently, with the same instrument’s pizzicato. And so, the hunt was well under way, Messiaenic, jagged woodwind chords and, eventually, brass instruments too joining the throng.  Rhythmic frenzy seemed almost, yet not quite, ever-present; its absence seemed almost always to imply prior presence. Moments of stasis were rare; they too seemed, with thrilling drama, defined by their difference. Percussion perhaps hinted at Henze’s ‘Ride of the Mænads’ from The Bassarids. Rihm’s music revealed itself as a successor perhaps to the Schoenberg of the First Chamber Symphony, even to Stockhausen’s Kontrapunkte, perhaps more surprisingly still, in its near-balletic drama, to The Rite of Spring.

 

Following a brief yet eloquent discussion between oboist, François Leleux, and Tom Service, we heard Strauss’s Concerto, surely the greatest for the instrument. The opening cello motif proved properly generative; so, in its very different way, did Leleux’s long-breathed opening solo. Orchestra (very much of the chamber variety) and soloist together suggested a post-Mozartian aria. Leleux offered a stunning variety of colour and articulation throughout, without the slightest impediment to the longer line; one sensed, rightly or wrongly, that this was very much his vision of the work. Collon proved equally flexible, an estimable accompanist. Hushed playing truly drew one in, even in a less than ideal acoustic. The transition to the slow movement was well handled: not quite imperceptible, which is just as it should be, for change as well as continuity should register. Leleux’s oboe cantilena ravished, the best efforts of an army of bronchial activists notwithstanding. There was, moreover, considerable depth to the orchestral playing, not least from the wonderful Harmoniemusik – with all the musico-historical resonance that word brings to us, and did to Strauss. The oboe sang, so it seemed, as a messenger of hope, emerging from an orchestral voice of sadness. The finale caught the right note of reflective jubilance, with more than the occasional hint of the composer’s operatic œuvre: Capriccio, Daphne, Arabella, perhaps even Ariadne. This was a lovely performance indeed.

 

For the second half, we turned to Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony. It was introduced by Service, Collon, and the players; or rather, the finale was, breaking it down ably, in a thoroughly admirable example of exploratory educational work. ‘Analysis for all,’ one might say. More unusual still was the decision to play it from memory. Clearly that cannot be done with every orchestral performance, but there was undoubted energy, excitement too, to be gained from the experience. There could, moreover, be no gainsaying the excellence of the playing, although I was less enthusiastic about Collon’s conception of the work, or at least about aspects thereof. Symphonic understanding of it as a whole, as opposed to a suite, often proved elusive, at least to my ears. I also could not help but miss larger forces in this preposterously large, ill-shaped hall, but we had (strings 8.6.4.4.2) what we had.  

 

Agogic mannerism marred Collon’s presentation of the opening (similarly when repeated, and in the recapitulation) of the first movement; Harnoncourt et al. have much to answer for. Balance was often odd, brass (rasping trumpets, although modern horns were used) too often overwhelming the strings. The second subject fared better, sounding and feeling more ‘naturally’ breathed. There was a strong sense of dialectical conflict to the development section, but much less, sadly, seemed to be at stake in both exposition and recapitulation. The slow movement was strong on rhetorical contrast, rendering it full of character, full of life: all to the good, but sometimes achieved at the expense of the longer line. It was taken pretty swiftly for an Andante, but worked well at that pace. Minor-mode sections sounded duly dark; this was for me the most impressive movement in the performance. I did not take at all to the one-to-a-bar approach, however fashionable it has become, to which the Minuet was subjected. Robbed of its grandeur, it sounded both breathless and pompous, although that extraordinary woodwind chromaticism still sounded sinuous enough. The Trio was less impulsive and all the better for it. Alas, the finale, so ably discussed beforehand, proved hard-driven indeed in performance. (Just because one can play something so fast does not mean one must!) At least as harmful was the return of such brass-heavy orchestral balance. It was the quieter passages that proved more telling, not least a suspenseful approach to the coda. Brilliant though the playing was, and undeniably impressive though it was to have played it from memory, a more smiling, less hectic view of the work from the conductor would have been welcome.

‘Vienna Revisited’ – Schoenberg and Berg, 18 and 20 September 2014

Hall One, Kings Place

Schoenberg – Verklärte Nacht, op.4

Lied der Waldtaube

Chamber Symphony no.1, op.9

Berg – Seven Early Songs

Schoenberg – Brettl-Lieder

Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)

Alice Privett (soprano)

Chad Vindin (piano)

Members of the Aurora Orchestra

London Sinfonietta

Nicholas Collon (conductor)

 

‘Vienna Revisited’ has been the title of Kings Place’s mini-festival, ‘curated’ by Nicholas Snowman. I managed to attend two out of the four concerts, missing the Quatuor Diotima (Beethoven, Schoenberg, and Brahms) and the Aurora Orchestra (Webern, Berg, and Mahler). First up was an intriguing performance of Verklärte Nacht by six members of the London Sinfonietta (Clio Gould, Joan Atherton, Paul Silverthorne, Yuko Inoue, Tim Gill, and Jonathan Ayling), a performance which once again confirmed the superiority of Schoenberg’s original sextet version over its later orchestral incarnation. I say ‘intriguing’, since, especially for the sextet version, the spectre of Brahms was far less present than one might have expected, Wagner instead proving more a guiding force in a highly dramatic account, which might almost have been an operatic scene without words. One also had a very strong sense of six individual musicians – coming together, yes, but also with particular things to say. The veiled opening signalled, at least in retrospect, a dramatic ‘extreme’, for wonderfully expressive – not indiscriminate – vibrato was to come. Expressionism beckoned too. Without going to any perversely anti-Romantic extreme, there was great clarity; in some respects, I was put in mind of a Domaine musical recording, supervised by Boulez. Sections were clearly demarcated; one would not always want to hear it like this, but there was a stronger than usual sense both of the poem and almost of something akin to versicle and response. It was almost as if one were reading an illustrated short story. There was moreover, a strong impression given of the character – and meaning – of particular keys and their relationship to one another. An unfortunate instance of electronic interference, just before the final transfiguration, could not disrupt a fine performance.

 

Sarah Connolly joined a larger Sinfonietta ensemble under Nicholas Collon for the chamber version of the ‘Lied der Waldtaube’ from Gurrelieder. Connolly as soloist offered a wonderful range of colour and expression, her use of words just as impressive as her command of vocal line. Increasing richness of tone marked hers out very much as the ‘mittlere Stimme’ Schoenberg prescribes – even if I continue to love the recording Jessye Norman made with Boulez and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. After a somewhat wayward cor anglais opening line, the orchestra imparted an excellent sense of the febrile quality to this reduced instrumentation, although Collon’s conducting was somewhat fussy, stronger on the paradoxical clockwork element than the equally important late-Romantic profusion.

 

Collon fared better in the First Chamber Symphony, though the very fast tempo adopted at the beginning – whatever Schoenberg may have prescribed – perhaps proved self-defeating, and I could not help but wish for this, perhaps the sunniest of Schoenberg’s inspirations, to have smiled, Haydn-like, a little more. Expertly performed by old hands, this account was not inflexible, but sometimes a little too moulded by the conductor, at least for my taste. Still, there was incredible virtuosity to be heard, great clarity, and a fine blend of lines, all despatched with an impressive sense of kinetic energy.

 

The other, short concert I attended two days later, was given by soprano, Alice Privett and pianist, Chad Vindin, with a brief appearance from members of the Aurora Orchestra (Rebecca Larsen, Chris Deacon, and Sarah Mason). Berg’s Seven Early Songs came first. ‘Nacht’ displayed from the outset excellent diction. A slightly deliberate tempo worked very well, permitting detail and decadence alike to tell. And those harmonies, threatening to float, Jakobsleiter-like, into the ether! The paradoxical sense of convivial Einsamkeit was very well conveyed. ‘Schilflied’ struck a lighter note, without losing expressivity; we heard here Berg as heir to Liszt and Wolf. ‘Die Nachtigall’ was passionate, if perhaps a little strident. I wondered whether ‘Traumgekrönt’ might have been a little less deliberate, but it benefited from Vindin’s strong sense of the labyrinthine tendencies, even at this stage, to Berg’s harmonies. ‘Im Zimmer’ showed keen attention from soprano and pianist alike to the shifting moods and registers of the poem, for instance to the crackling fireplace, as well as the music ‘itself’. ‘Liebesode’ was grand, even grandiloquent, as arguably befits the poem, whilst the final ‘Sommertage’, if again a little strident in the vocal line, had a fine sense of the song as a whole.

 

Schoenberg’s Cabaret Songs followed. ‘Der genügsame Liebhaber’ immediately displayed a different mood: more playful, even ‘acted’, in short that of cabaret. Perhaps the piano was a little more reticent than it might have been, but that would not be a problem in subsequent songs. The mock stridency of ‘Einfältiges Lied’ was captured well by both artists, pictorial elements in the piano part coming across with admirable clarity. ‘Nachtwandler’ had the Aurora musicians join in. Those Musikanten, as the text would have them, did not always blend together so well as they might, but it is a tricky thing to walk on and perform for a single song. The real disintegrative tendencies to what might seem on the surface a simple song received fine, commendably flexible attention in the piano part. ‘Jedem das Seine’ was then taken more slowly, more reflectively than usual: more Romantic Lied, less evident cabaret, after which ‘Mahnung’ registered with proper Brettl-archness. (Weimar culture did not come from nowhere.)  A nicely coquettish account of ‘Gigerlette’ , a lively ‘Galathea’ (with a lightly post-Tristan fourth stanza), followed. Although there were a few slips in the final ‘Aus dem Spiegel von Arkadien’, this remained an impressive recital throughout.

Clare/Aurora/Collon - Bach, Mass in B minor, 21 December 2013

Hall One, Kings Place

Mass in B minor, BWV 232

Malin Christensson (soprano)

Jennifer Johnston (mezzo-soprano)
William Towers (counter-tenor)
Joshua Ellicott (tenor)
Benedict Nelson (baritone)

Aurora Orchestra
Choir of Clare College, Cambridge (director of music: Graham Ross)
Nicholas Collon (conductor)

 

 

And so, Kings Place’s year-long series, ‘Bach Unwrapped’, came to a close with one of the towering masterpieces of Western civilisation, the B minor Mass. The St Matthew Passion may – somehow – be greater still, at least for some of us, but choosing between them is akin to choosing between Tristan and Parsifal. It was a salutary experience to be reminded that this was the first performance of Bach’s mass I had attended since starting to review. I am not sure that they are very thick on the ground in any case, but for those of us not swayed by the claims of ‘authenticity’, opportunities are few indeed. It is difficult not to feel at least a little angry about the monopolisation of the repertoire by those whom Adorno described as saying Bach but meaning Telemann. (The cynical marketing practices of the recording industry are more guilty still.) We still have the great recordings of the past, of course: those of musicians such as Klemperer, Jochum, Karl Richter, and – albeit all too few in number – Furtwängler. Yet other musicians have been frozen out, the late Sir Colin Davis having spoken with great regret that the fulminations of ‘specialists’ had made it all but impossible for him to conduct Bach any longer. (Imagine a B minor Mass from him!) Pierre Boulez foresaw and experienced what would come to pass a good few years earlier, saying:

There are six performable [orchestral] works by Bach: the Brandenburg Concertos! And I’ve done them, the Brandenburgs, in my career as a conductor. But even as I was making my way forward, until about 1978, the specialists were simultaneously taking over. They were starting to say, ‘If they’re not played in the true baroque manner, with baroque instruments, it’s useless to play them any other way.’ Then one isn’t going to play them at all. 

Boulez also conducted a fair number of the cantatas, not that one would know from the airbrushed histories of Bach performance one encounters. Now we are subjected to competitions for the hairiest of hair shirts, the most meagre of forces (utterly disregarding Bach’s own 1730 memorandum to the Leipzig city authorities), and so on, with Bach’s music standing perilously close to the status Adorno also foretold of becoming unperformable.

 

It was, then, a particular joy to welcome a performance from the Aurora Orchestra under Nicholas Collon, with soloists and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge. Not that Collon’s reading was untouched by ‘period’ influences; indeed, his tempi were often decidedly upon the brisk side. More importantly, there was real musicianship here on display both from singers and the ever-impressive orchestra, which appeared far more concerned with performance, with communication, with the message of text and music, than with bogus concerns of ‘correctness’. The Clare Choir’s contribution stood pretty much beyond reproach. Of course, there remained something of an ‘English’ sound, which perhaps is not quite the best of matches, but there was more than enough compensation in the commitment and precision heard here. Bach’s counterpoint was throughout both audible and meaningful. There were times when greater weight might in principle have been desirable, but given that the performance took place in a small hall, those occasions were relatively few.

 

There was much to relish from the vocal soloists too. Malin Christensson’s delivery of her soprano arias was flawless, even when taken at breakneck speed the ‘Laudamus te’ being the only case to my mind where the tempo moved from quick to absurd. (I felt equally for the leader and solo violin, Alexandra Wood; requisite grace was simply not possible when taken so quickly.) Jennifer Johnston proved a rich-toned mezzo: most welcome indeed. I was a little puzzled as to why we had a counter-tenor as well. To my ears, the voice sounds more appropriate to Handel than to Bach, but that, I think, is simply a matter of taste; however, it was not clear why we needed both. That said, William Towers did an excellent job, eminently flexible and with considerably greater vibrato than many would have expected. Joshua Ellicott was just as impressive, his account of the ‘Benedictus’ plangently moving, whilst never confusing that plangency with the abrasive. Benedict Nelson was somewhat dry of tone, but sang his arias with intelligence. (It is perhaps here that an additional soloist would have been better employed, given the difference in tessitura between the ‘Quoniam’ and ‘Et in Spiritum Santum.’)

 

Though the violins, presumably acting upon instruction, were somewhat parsimonious with their vibrato – a problem not experienced from the rich-toned violas and cellos – the orchestra’s contribution was just as impressive. Woodwind and brass (for some reason, a modern horn but natural trumpets) were excellent; I cannot recall a single solo that did not impress. Both chamber organ and harpsichord were employed as continuo instruments. Collon seemed for the most part quite happy to let the music speak ‘for itself’, if, as I said before, somewhat quickly, rather than making points about it. When more personal intervention was made, it could sometimes be a little fussy – for instance, slightly laboured articulation in the ‘Kyrie’ – but could also prove telling, as in the cumulative power of the ‘Crucifixus’. It may not have been Klemperer, but it had its own integrity.

 

Crucially, we were never left in any doubt as to the stature of work – whatever the truth of its assemblage – and composer. As Furtwängler once wrote in an essay upon Bach, ‘historians sometimes wish to tell us that even a giant such as Bach, viewed in the context of his age … loses the superhuman quality we attach to him.’ However, the truth, as Furtwängler proceeded to argue, once again turned out to be quite the reverse, for never is the ‘astonishing superiority of Bach’s music clearer … than when one compares him with other composers of his time and environment,’ such as Vivaldi or Handel. If Furtwängler is perhaps a little harsh upon the latter, one nevertheless knows what he means when he describes Handel’s brilliance as seeming ‘strangely arbitrary, strangely capricious next to the quiet, unerring organisation consistent throughout Bach’s musical thought’. Let us be thankful that Bach is not yet quite lost to us.

 

Wagner 200: Aurora Orchestra/Collon - Wagner and Beethoven, 28 June 2013

Hall One, Kings Place

Wagner – Siegfried-Idyll

Beethoven - Septet in E-flat major, op.20

Henry Goodman (Wagner)

Dame Harriet Walter (Cosima)

Aurora Orchestra

Nicholas Collon (conductor)

 

 

In typically imaginative style, the Aurora Orchestra prefaced its performances of Wagner’s Siegfried-Idyll and Beethoven’s Septet with introductory monologues, sometimes shading into dialogue, sometimes tellingly at cross-purposes, between Richard and Cosima Wagner. Barry Millington ensured their historical accuracy, though I could not help wondering whether that preceding the Siegfried-Idyll was a little on the lengthy side. There was, of course, a great deal of information to impart: how they met, the progress of their relationship, and the events of that first, Tribschen staircase performance. Moreover, I suspect that those less well-versed in Wagner biography would have welcomed the opportunity to set the work in context. One theme that certainly shone through, as it does from even the most cursory glance at Cosima’s Diaries, was the crucial aspect of nineteenth-century gender relations, taken, as it were, to the extreme by Cosima’s extraordinary marriage of self-abnegation and sheer stubbornness. Henry Goodman summoned up a degree of Wagner’s protean nature, though the assumption too often shaded into mere arrogance; as so often, the charisma to which Wagner’s friends and acquaintances attested was less apparent. Harriet Walter penetrated more deeply – perhaps, ultimately, it is a more achievable task? – into the strengths and, in modern terms, ‘passive-aggressive’ contradictions of Cosima.

 

Nicholas Collon conducted the excellent Aurora players in the Siegfried-Idyll. Their soloistic skill combined with the Hall One acoustic to permit an uncommon degree of clarity, so much so that the birdsong seemed to point to Mahler, and even beyond, to Webern’s pointillism. Earlier on, there were a few occasions when I thought Collon might have yielded more, but the performance grew more flexible through its course. If anything, there was perhaps a little indulgence at the end, though it was readily forgivable. If it seems invidious to single any player out, I shall still do so, mentioning Oliver Coates’s especially sensitive turning of the crucial cello line; one might almost have listened to it in itself. Taken as a whole, this fine performance granted us the opportunity to hear that in one far from negligible sense, Cosima was right to view herself as the most fortunate of women, for who else has received a birthday present such as this?

 

Beethoven’s glorious Septet was played as true chamber music, Collon wisely leaving the players to themselves. In every movement the very particular marriage – not only Richard and Cosima deserve that epithet – of Mozartian serenade style with thematic working born of Haydn shone through, as sunny as the music itself. (Mozart’s wont was always to impart greater sadness, implied or otherwise.) Whatever tempi were settled on were made to work, and never, even when swift, to turn brittle, such was the sense of life in performance. The quiet dignity of the Adagio, for instance, contrasted tellingly with the swing of the following Minuet: so tricky to capture, yet effortlessly, or seemingly effortlessly, achieved on this occasion. Haydn’s influence certainly pervaded the fourth movement variations; I thought in particular of his late F minor/major set for piano. Above all, there was joy, which was just as it should have been.

Znaider/LSO/Honeck - Gynn, Schubert, and Brahms, 24 March 2013

Barbican Hall

Eloise Nancie Gynn – Anahata (world premiere)

Schubert – Symphony no.8 in B minor, D 759
Brahms – Violin Concerto in D major, op.77

Nikolaj Znaider (violin)

London Symphony Orchestra

Nicholas Collon, Manfred Honeck (conductors)

Eloise Nancie Gynn’s Anahata was the latest work to receive its first performance in the LSO Panufnik Young Composers Scheme. The best, alas, that could be said about it was that it was competently enough orchestrated, if relying far too heavily upon ‘eastern’ colour: bowed vibraphone, Tibetan singing bowl, and so forth. (Edward Said might never have existed.) Otherwise, the piece sounded akin to the sort of soundtrack one might hear on an average television programme: a few ‘effects’, which might have gravitated some meaning in conjunction with an external narrative, but with apparently zero musical justification. Tonal harmonies sounded rather more than shop-soiled. The work, one read, was ‘inspired by my [Gynn’s] exploration of spirituality through meditation. Finding a way through life and its obstacles and emotions; a journey inside, from the head and all its mental chaos, thoughts and “stuff”  ... into the stillness of the heart space, connecting to the peace within.’ I could go on quoting; on second thoughts, I am not sure that my stomach could withstand the effort. Nicholas Collon and the LSO seemed to give the piece a far more authoritative performance than it deserved. No matter; I doubt we shall hear it again.

 

I certainly cannot imagine that we shall hear it again in the company of the otherwise well-suited pair of Schubert and Brahms. Manfred Honeck, deputising for Sir Colin Davis, led a performance that for the most part convinced, though it sometimes went a little overboard in its pursuit of extremities, whether of tempo or of dynamic contrast. The opening cellos sounded dark, mysterious, yet controlled: just right. Perhaps the basic tempo adopted was on the fast side, but it soon yielded – arguably too much. Still, better to enjoy flexibility than Kapellmeister-ish straitjacket. Cultivated playing from the LSO alternated with furious eruption. It was the beauty of the softest playing, however, which ultimately lingered longest in the memory. Moreover, one certainly heard a good few of the harmonic seeds for Brahms, preparing the way for the second half. This was a musical landscape whose breadth tempted one to think of Bruckner, albeit with greater incident. Unwanted applause ensued. For the most part, the second movement flowed beautifully. ‘Beauty’, however, proved to be a slight problem, for however exquisite the opening of the second group sounded – and it certainly did – it sounded a little too much like an object of appreciation rather than a participant in a musical, indeed above all a harmonic, drama. It undoubtedly offered contrast with the outburst that followed, but the contrast seemed too much: an easy way out, however impressively controlled. That said, it was impossible not to warm to the echt-Viennese quality of Schubert’s Harmoniemusik: not just its exquisite tonal quality, for which the LSO players stood beyond praise, not only on account of its timbral differentiation, but also for its communication of the menace within the ‘heavenly’ material. With a stronger sense of continuity, this might have been a great performance. It is probably a good thing that I do not possess the vocabulary to describe those who applauded before the final chord had ceased to resound.   

 

Nikolaj Znaider joined the orchestra for Brahms’s Violin Concerto. The orchestra showed typically impressive symphonic heft in the opening, Znaider offering in response winningly-old fashioned silken sweetness, not that he lacked cleanness and precision. (Let us pass over the problematic cadenza.) Honeck proved an attentive ‘accompanist’, perhaps a little too much so, clearly following Znaider’s tempo fluctuations rather than emerging as an equal partner. As a whole, there was much to enjoy, but there is something a little amiss when Brahms sounds more ‘enjoyable’ than profound; I could not help but long for Menuhin and Furtwängler, or perhaps even Znaider and Sir Colin. The slow movement offered ravishingly beautiful woodwind playing, and not only from Fabien Thouand’s exquisitely turned oboe solo; once again, Vienna and even Mozart came to mind. When Znaider entered, he creditably sounded as first among equals rather than dominating soloist. With a flowing, uncontroversial tempo, this sounded as Brahms closer to Mendelssohn than to Schoenberg, but there is nothing wrong with that once in a while. The finale, however, proved somewhat awkward, a state of affairs that seemed more Honeck’s doing than Znaider’s. The ‘Hungarian’ rhythm of the principal theme was shaped with fine understanding, its rhythmic accent spot on. Alas, the music soon began to meander, for which Honeck appeared to over-compensate by bringing out an excessive, almost Tchaikovsky-like, array of primary colours as ‘interest’. Such vulgarity has no place in Brahms.

 

Aurora Orchestra/Collon - Bach, St John Passion, 16 March 2013

Hall One, Kings Place

 

Evangelist: John Mark Ainsley
Christus: Roland Wood

Malin Christensson (soprano)

Iestyn Davies (alto)
Andrew Tortise (tenor)
David Stout (Pilate/bass)

Choir of Clare College, Cambridge

Aurora Orchestra

Nicholas Collon (conductor)

 

 

I hope readers will forgive me if I make this review relatively brief, the reason being that events outside the control of the performers, or indeed the hall, made it rather difficult to come to a conventional judgement concerning the performance. A good part of the second part fell under the shadow of an audience member apparently losing consciousness, collapsing, and receiving medical treatment, most of that going on, immediately next to my seat, whilst the performance continued. I mention that not to over-dramatise, and certainly not in any sense to complain, my thoughts being very much with the man concerned, but simply to explain why inevitably, I am not in the best position to go into great detail.

 

This was the first time I had heard the Aurora Orchestra in Baroque repertoire, though I have had quite a bit of Mozart from them and from Nicholas Collon. The swift tempo for the great opening chorus had me worried, as did the relative reticence of the strings, but my fears were confounded; tempi were, at least by present-day standards, remarkably unobjectionable, and more than that well-chosen. Nor was there for the most part a lack of flexibility such as one all too often hears now in this repertoire. The orchestra was very small (strings 4.4.3.2.1) – though doubtless the ayatollahs of one-to-a-part ‘authenticity’ would dissent – but Hall One at Kings Place is not a large space, and for the most part, it was only in making mental comparisons with great recorded performances such as those by Gunther Ramin, Eugen Jochum, and Richter that one keenly felt the loss. Likewise, though warmer string tone would at times have been desirable, there was commendably little of the hair-shirt to the performance. I am having to rely on the evidence of my ears, but it sounded to me as though some at least, perhaps all, of the violins were employing gut strings. Vibrato was mercifully not absent – a noteworthy feature in our Alice in Wonderland world of Bach performance. The woodwind were especially fine, every obbligato solo assumed with excellence of technique and feeling. Oliver Coates’s cello stood out from the continuo group and indeed as a superlative obbligato instrument.

 

The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, offered fine performances, by turn angry and devotional, as text and role required. The turba choruses were vivid, the chorales heartfelt but clear-eyed. Diction, moreover, was thoroughly excellent. The tiny part of the Maid, taken by one of the choir members, was unfortunate in intonation, but otherwise there was little about which anyone might reasonably complain. John Mark Ainsley occasionally took his Evangelist to the limit of what might be desirably in terms of hectoring, but there was no doubting his commitment and understanding and, so long as one did not insist upon the mellifluous tones of an Ernst Haefliger, much by which to be moved. Roland Wood’s Christus was less individual, but well delivered, and that may indeed have been the point. He is not, after all, a ‘character’ in the conventional sense. All of the other soloists shone, Malin Christensson striking a fine balance between an almost operatic beauty of tone and attention to the text, likewise Iestyn Davies, the ‘operatic’ quality of whose outburst in the extraordinary ‘Es ist vollbracht!’ could hardly have been more arresting. (If I still find a counter-tenor more apt for Handel than Bach, still preferring the warmth of a mezzo or contralto, then that is arguably just a personal matter.) Andrew Tortise offered plangency and, again, detailed attention to the text, whilst David Stout’s baritone suggested a consolation consonant with that offered by the Aurora woodwind.    

 

That, then, is indicative of my experience, compromised though it was by events. It certainly augurs well for a December Aurora/Clare Mass in B minor. I wish, however, that the Kings Place website had not described the work as ‘Bach’s iconic St John Passion’. It is surely now time that that much-abused word be proscribed until further notice, if only so that it might regain a little meaning.

Die Zauberflöte, English National Opera, 13 September 2012

(sung in English as The Magic Flute)

Tamino – Shawn Mathey

Papageno – Duncan Rock
Queen of the Night – Kathryn Lewek
Monostatos – Adrian Thompson
Pamina – Elena Xanthoudakis
Speaker – Roland Wood
Sarastro – Robert Lloyd
Papagena – Rhian Lois
Two Priests, Two Armoured Men – Nathan Vale, Barnaby Rea
Three Ladies – Elizabeth Llewellyn, Catherine Young, Pamela Helen Stephen
Three Boys – Edward Birchinall, Alex Karlsson, Thomas Fetherstonhaugh

Nicholas Hytner (director)

Ian Rutherford and James Bonas (revival directosr)
Bob Crowley (designs)
Nick Chelton, Ric Mountjoy (lighting)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Fitzpatrick)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Nicholas Collon (conductor)

 

Images: Alastair Muir
Three Ladies (Pamela Helen Stephen, Catherine Young, Elizabeth Llewellyn),
Papageno (Duncan Rock), Tamino (Shawn Mathey)

‘The last-ever performances of Nicholas Hytner’s production of The Magic Flute,’ claims the programme. Maybe they are, maybe not; the same has been said before. It is, at any rate, difficult to think that they should not be. Quite why such reverence should be accorded what at best one might call a ‘straightforward’ production is beyond me. Some will doubtless applaud the lack of anything so strenuous as an idea or two, anti-intellectualism being so ingrained in certain quarters of this country’s commentariat. (Remember the outrage at the Royal Opera’s splendid Rusalka?) Some, ignorant of or simply uninterested in, the Rosicrucian mysteries of the work, will doubtless have been happy with a naïveté that sits at best awkwardly with our age, irreversibly ‘sentimental’ in Schiller’s sense. But surely even they would have found this revival tired, listless. Apparently some of them did not, however, given the raucous laughter issuing from around the theatre: any time a rhyming couplet appeared on the surtitles, some found it almost unbearably hilarious. Moreover, audience participation went beyond even the usual coughing, chattering, and opening of sweets. (A woman behind me must have made her way through a good quarter of the city’s stocks of Wine Gums). Someone even saw fit to disrupt the performance by shouting out a proposal of marriage to Papageno just at that saddest, pathos-ridden of moments when the music turns and he resolves to take his life. No matter though: it elicited a great deal of hilarity. And that of course is all that matters. Those who laughed at the priests’ dialogue may or may not have been aware how offended Mozart was at someone who did the same in the composer’s presence. Presumably the same people thought it ‘amusing’ to boo Adrian Thompson’s rather good Monostatos too. They seemed, however, a little hard of hearing, for their applause generally began long before the orchestra had concluded.

 

Jeremy Sams’s ‘English version’ doubtless egged them on in all their boorishness. I have asked before what is held to be wrong with Schikaneder. One can point to shortcomings, no doubt, though one should always bear in mind Goethe’s admiration. But the only good thing one can really say about this hodgepodge is that it is not nearly so bad as what Sams has inflicted upon The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. It remains intensely pleased with itself, drawing attention to itself rather than shedding light upon the drama, and remains distant enough that ‘version’ is wisely substituted for ‘translation’. Yet, given the difficulties so many of the cast had with delivering the dialogue, it really might as well all have been in German. That would also have relieved us of that terrible clash between the text we know in our heads – especially for the text set to music – and that we hear on stage and/or see in the titles (the latter two not always being the same). Different accents are ‘amusingly’ employed; one might have thought it offensive to find a Welsh accent (Papagena) intrinsically funny, but apparently not.

Pamina (Elena Xanthoudakis), Sarastro (Robert Lloyd), Tamino

 

Nicholas Collon’s conducting was disappointing. One often hears far worse in Mozart nowadays; yet, as so often, it was difficult not to long for great performances of the past (Furtwängler, Böhm, Klemperer, et al.), or indeed of the present (Sir Colin Davis). ‘Lightness’ was for the most part all, a peculiar mannerism being the falling off into nothingness at the end of many numbers. Quite why one would wish to make this score, often but a stone’s throw, if that, from Beethoven, sound so inconsequential, is beyond me; at least it was not brutalised, as ‘period’ fanatics would wish. That said, the brass sounded as if they were natural; they may or may not have been, since modern instrumentalists are sometimes instructed perversely to ape the rasping manner of their forebears, and I could not see into the pit. At any rate, the result was unpleasant. A few numbers were taken far too quickly, but for the most part it was the lack of harmonic grounding that troubled rather than speeds as such; we were spared the ludicrous Mackerras triple-speed approach to ‘Ach, ich fuhl’s,’ one of the worst atrocities I have ever had the misfortune to hear inflicted upon Mozart. But as for the lily-gliding of introducing a glockenspiel part into the final chorus... Mozart is not Monteverdi; he does not need to be ‘realised’, and certainly not like that. A good number of appoggiaturas and other instances of ornamentation were introduced to the vocal lines, not least to those of the Three Ladies at the beginning. The fashionable practice does no especial harm, I suppose, but nor does it really accomplish anything beyond drawing mild attention to itself.

Papageno and Papagena (Rhian Lois)

Vocally there was more to enjoy, though the record was mixed. Elena Xanthoudakis made for an unusually rich-toned Pamina. Best of all was Duncan Rock’s Papageno, for the most part quite beautifully sung, though his dialogue veered confusingly between outright Australian and something less distinct. Kathryn Lewek had some difficulties with her intonation as the Queen of the Night, but then most singers do; more troubling was her tendency to slow down to cope with the coloratura. Shawn Mathey resorted to crooning more than once during his Portrait Aria and was throughout a somewhat underwhelming Tamino. Robert Lloyd’s voice is, sadly, not what it was; Sarastro’s first aria sounded very thin, though matters improved thereafter. There was luxury casting, however, when it came to the Three Ladies; Elizabeth Llewellyn is already a noted Countess, and it showed. The Three Boys were excellent too: three cheers to Edward Birchinall, Alex Karlsson, and Thomas Fetherstonhaugh. Choral singing was a bit workmanlike but that may have been as much a matter of the conducting as anything else. One certainly had little sense of the kinship with Mozart’s other Masonic music.

 

The website and programme have the Two Armoured Men as the ‘Two Armed Men’, a strangely common yet baffling error: the German is perfectly clear. At least the production had it right, the men donning breastplates at the opening of that great chorale prelude. The Queen of the Night remains, for some reason, the ‘Queen of Night’.

 

 

Mozart Unwrapped (7): Immler/Melda/Aurora Orchestra/Collon, 15 September 2011

Hall One, Kings Place

Don Giovanni, KV 537: Overture
Die Zauberflöte, KV 620: ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen’
Concert Aria: ‘Per questo bella mano,’ KV 612
Concert Aria: ‘Ich möchte wohl der Kaiser sein’, KV 539
Divertimento for two horns and strings, KV 522, ‘Ein musikalischer Spaß’
Piano Concerto no.20 in D minor, KV 466
Symphony no.35 in D major, KV 385, ‘Haffner’

Lara Melda (piano)
Christian Immler (baritone)
Ben Griffiths (double bass)
Samuel West (narrator)
Aurora Orchestra
Nicholas Collon (conductor)

The best came both interspersed and last. First the interspersed: Samuel West’s delightful readings from Mozart’s correspondence. It may seem an obvious thing to say but what an enormous difference it makes to hear Mozart’s letters read by so fine an actor! The characterisation brought without exaggeration to Mozart’s words proved something of a master-class. Letters to Constanze, Leopold, and Mozart’s cousin, ‘Bäsle’ (Maria Anna Thekla, ‘his ‘first love’), gave a taste of the white heat of compositional inspiration and its accompanying mood swings. Not that one would ever think Mozart anything other than lovable: exasperating, perhaps, but as impossible to take against as his music. Puppy-like enthusiasm and melancholy were conveyed in equally moving manner by West.

The concluding Haffner Symphony proved the highlight of the musical performances. Its first movement sounded – it is difficult to imagine it otherwise – brilliant, extrovert, taken and maintained by Nicholas Collon at a well-judged tempo. Aside from a few passages in the development section, the strings, violins especially, were permitted enough vibrato, which had not always been the case earlier on. The Andante was not rushed but kept moving, pulsating with life, whilst the minuet, taken at a quickish three-in-a-bar sounded winningly earthy without crudity, its trio an elegant interlude. Finally, the closing Presto sparkled with Haydnesque brilliance, the players of the Aurora Orchestra revelling in the virtuosity required. Their reading under Collon was impeccably precise, bar one minor, brief lapse of ensemble, and more importantly still, exuded a real sense of the music's direction and purpose, with only the most occasional fussiness imposed upon it.

There had been much to enjoy during the first half too. The opening of the Don Giovanni Overture was taken, as is now the fashion, at an unmistakeably alla breve tempo, yet benefited from a full orchestral sound. (Though the orchestra is on the small side, so is the hall, so it worked.) The Allegro section was urgent, in Collon’s hands perhaps more aggressive than high-spirited, but there is arguably warrant for such an approach. Christian Immler joined the orchestra for two concert arias and ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen’. Throughout, Immler’s diction was excellent: one could discern not only every word, but a great deal of meaning behind every word. There was a certain dryness, however, to his vocal delivery, especially in the Magic Flute aria, though the glockenspiel (Simon Lane) enchanted. ‘Per questo bella mano’ benefited greatly from the obbligato double bass playing of Ben Griffiths: a rare chance to hear such virtuosity and musicality from the instrument. It almost sounded seductive! There was humour in the performance but, quite rightly, no silliness: if the combination of bass and double bass is a joke on Mozart’s part, it is better played straight. A rare opportunity to hear the Entführung-style music of ‘Ich möchte wohl der Kaiser sein’ was well taken in a spirited rendition: Immler sometimes acquired greater bloom to his voice, though there remained dry passages. To have such fine diction was a boon in an aria whose interest often lies as much in projection of the words, given its strophic form. To close the first half, we heard A Musical Joke, Mozart’s wicked parody of third-rate composition (and copying). It was played straight, as it must be, so that the humour was Mozart’s alone. Oh, the cultivated banality, the brilliance of the non sequiturs and mistranspositions! Thomas Gould played a superlative role as leader, especially in his slow movement solo passagework. I do not wish to hear this piece often, but when it is performed, may it be in a performance of this quality.

It was a pity, then, that the D minor Piano Concerto – perhaps a piece too many for the programme? – received a lesser performance, more on account of the soloist, Lara Melda, than the orchestra, though there one could not overlook, especially in the first movement, thinness to the string tone (there were only five first violins, boosted to six for the Haffner). At best, the piano part was efficiently despatched, nothing more: there was not the slightest evidence of Melda engaging either with the orchestra or indeed with the meaning of Mozart’s music. Looking ‘soulful’ and moving one’s head around during tutti passages is no substitute for the chamber-music interplay Mozart demands. Even the cadenza (Beethoven’s) was plodding. If there had earlier been a certain orchestral harshness to the opening movement, greater tenderness was permitted in the Romanze: woodwind sounded gorgeous, but the strings sounded warmer too. The piano part remained disconnected, almost as if the pianist were playing along to a Music Minus One recording, the central section heavy rather than stormy. In the finale, the Aurora players truly captured the spirit of Mozart’s D minor dæmon (reminding one of the Don Giovanni Overture, in a programme which, taken as a whole, took a tonal path that echoed its opening piece). I shall draw a veil over the bizarre cadenza. Melda, it seems, won the BBC Young Musician of the Year award in 2010. On the evidence of the present performance, she would benefit from further study before throwing herself further into the limelight.

Mozart Unwrapped (1): Aurora Orchestra/Collon, 6 January 2011

Hall One, Kings Place

Overture: La clemenza di Tito
‘Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!’ KV 418
Violin Concerto no.5 in A major, KV 219
‘Nehmt meinen Dank, ihr holden Gönner!’ KV 383
Symphony no.36 in C major, KV 425, ‘Linz’

Fflur Wyn (soprano)
Thomas Gould (violin)
Aurora Orchestra
Nicholas Collon (conductor)


Whether Shakespearean or pertaining to the Epiphany itself, Mozart on Twelfth Night seems equally apt. Some grumbled about over-exposure in 2006. There can, however, be no such thing as over-exposure for Mozart, unless – and this is a big ‘unless’ – the performances should fall short of the mark, as most, sadly, do. No conductor, then, could have been more suited to the task than that great Mozartian, Sir Colin Davis, scheduled to conduct this early instalment in Kings Place’s year-long ‘Mozart Unwrapped’ season. Unfortunately, Sir Colin fell ill, being replaced at short notice by the Aurora Orchestra’s founder and Principal Conductor, Nicholas Collon. His conducting of Gluck’s Alceste for the Chelsea Opera Group augured well, but Mozart presents a stiffer challenge even than his much-misunderstood operatic predecessor and contemporary.

Collon, creditably, proved his own man. There was relatively little to his interpretations suggestive of Sir Colin’s way with Mozart. The opening overture to La clemenza di Tito was brisker than Davis would be likely to have taken it, but not inflexible; indeed, there were occasional tempo variations that perhaps had more in common with a performance by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, though thankfully not so many. Moreover, the woodwind of the Aurora Orchestra, here and elsewhere, proved notably sparkling. (If, however, we must have Radio 3 presenters 'presenting' in the concert hall, also a characteristic of last year's Late-Night Proms, might someone at the BBC check facts and foreign-language pronunciation? Most glaring on this occasion were the claim that Leopold II was crowned 'Emperor', not King, of Bohemia, and the inaudible 'e' to 'Aloysia Lange'.)

Collon also proved an attentive and lively ‘accompanist’ in the two arias. The orchestra shone again in both, Thomas Barber’s obbligato oboe proving the crowning though far from the only glory of ‘Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!’ Pizzicato strings also delighted. ‘Nehmt meinen Dank, ihr holden Gönner!’ emerged on the fast side, but convincingly so, since Collon always permitted the music to breathe. The Aurora Orchestra’s woodwind again clearly enjoyed their spell in the Mozartian sun. Less impressive, I am afraid, was the soprano soloist, Fflur Wyn. Her diction was good, especially in the German aria, but the persistently tremulant quality to her tone production was hard to take, even in relatively short doses, especially when married to an all-too-bright chirpiness.

The evening’s other soloist, violinist Thomas Gould (also leader of the Aurora Orchestra) was far more impressive. Silvery, yet sweet-toned, his delivery of the solo line beguiled from the first entry, a very few intonational slips in the first movement notwithstanding. Crucially, he ensured, in a notably unhurried account, that ‘lively’ was not taken, fallaciously, to be interchangeable with ‘hard-driven’. Orchestral articulation in the opening bars of the slow movement was a little studied; Davis would doubtless have imparted a greater sense of overall line. Nevertheless, once soloist and orchestra sang together, a cantabile line was very much to be heard. Moreover, the minor-mode passages hinted at, yet never exaggerated, a truly Mozartian note of ineffable sadness. The finale opened graciously, eschewing the all-too-common easy route of ‘effects’, whilst imparting a nice lilt to the Scotch snaps in solo and orchestra. The Turkish music was characterful but never grotesque; indeed, it was here that Collon really seemed to come into his own, conveying a winningly operatic tendency. A concerto such as this is better than it can ever be played, far more difficult than any crowd-pleasing empty virtuosity; these players emerged most creditably in what was overall the best performance of the evening.

The final work on the programme was the Linz Symphony. One would be very likely to hear more mannered performances today, but Collon’s account was not entirely free of such tendencies, perhaps especially during the first movement. ‘Rhetoric’ is often pointed to by members of the ‘authenticke’ brigade as attempted justification for an inability to phrase; such was not the case here. Nevertheless, a greater sense of overall line would often have been welcome, likewise greater avoidance of a sense of the four-square, bar-lines sometimes proving a little too audible. (Consider the deceptive, that is to say hard-won, lyrical ease displayed by conductors such as Davis, Böhm, Bernstein, or indeed Klemperer.) There was often, though by no means always, a harshness to be heard that has little, or rather no, place in Mozart. Trumpets and drums in C major can sing more readily than this. There was also an unwelcome edge at times to the violin sound. Predictably perhaps, the slow movement did not linger, but the drawbacks of its predecessor were largely banished in favour of a beguiling sense of the outdoor serenade. There was also a straightforwardness to the path pursued, to which one could readily imagine Sir Colin – or Klemperer – responding, that path being audibly founded upon a sure sense of Mozart’s harmonic progression. Repeats made this a lengthy traversal, but here at least, there are far worse things to endure than ‘heavenly lengths’; indeed Schubert, perhaps even Bruckner, came to mind on occasion. A vigorous minuet was followed – a pity, this – by a somewhat fussy trio, but simplicity is an extraordinarily difficult thing to achieve. Vigour returned in the finale, in a largely convincing account that proved alive yet also possessed of necessary breadth. It sounded more like a true finale than often hears in more throwaway performances. Taking the second repeat seemed a mistake, however, since it very much came across as yet another repeat. Nevertheless, if wanting to hear Mozart’s music one more time be a failing, it is perfectly understandable.