Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (4), The Fiery Angel, 15 July 2018

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Renata – Aušrine Stundytė

Ruprecht – Scott Hendricks
Sorceress, Mother Superior – Agnieszka Rehlis
Mephistopheles, Agrippa of Nettesheim – Andreï Popov
Faust, Heinrich, Inquisitor – Krzysztof Bączyk
Jakob Glock, Doctor – Pavlo Tolstoy
Mathias Wissmann, Host, Porter – Łukasz Goliński
Hostess – Bernadetta Grabas
First Young Woman – Bożena Bujnicka
Second Young Woman – Maria Stasiak
 

Mariusz Treliński (director)

Boris Kudlička (set designs)
Kaspar Glarner (costumes)
Felice Ross (lighting)
Bartek Macias (video)
Tomasz Jan Wygoda (movement)
Małgorƶata Sikorska-Misƶcƶuk (dramaturgy)

Dancers

Chorus of the Polish National Opera (chorus master: Miroslaw Janowski)

Orchestre de Paris

Kazushi Ono (conductor)

Images: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2018 © Pascal Victor / artcompress

The footballing World Cup final made it unusually challenging to walk between the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume and the Grand Théâtre de Provence in time for my last Aix performance this year. Various thoroughfares were blocked as crowds gathered to watch the proceedings on screens across the city. Still, tired, overheated, and at times deafened by the noise of car horns, my friend and I made it, the journey definitely worth the struggle for this Fiery Angel. Mariusz Treliński did what he seems to do best: a ‘modernised’ yet essentially straightforward production, Boris Kudlička’s often spectacular set designs, Kaspar Glarner’s costumes, and Felice Ross’s lighting very much an integral part of that. Generally excellent vocal and stage performances offered much to enjoy and to provoke too.

 

Probably Prokofiev’s greatest opera, The Fiery Angel is, almost incredibly, based on a true story, that of Nina Petrovskaya, as told in Valery Bryusov’s Symbolist roman à clef. And yet, on the other hand, one might say it would have to be, for who on earth could invent so bizarre and seemingly incoherent a tale of demonic possession? Bryusov, again, one might say, for the tale is also invention, purporting to be a translation of a sixteenth-century manuscript, glorying in the excessive title, The Fiery Angel; or, a True Story in which is related of the Devil, not once but often appearing in the Image of a Spirit of Light to a Maiden and seducing her to Various and Many Sinful Deeds, of Ungodly Practices of Magic, Alchemy, Astrology, the Cabalistical Sciences and Necromancy, of the Trial of the Said Maiden under the Presidency of His Eminence the Archbishop of Trier, as well as of Encounters and Discourses with the Knight and thrice Doctor Agrippa of Nettesheim, and with Doctor Faustus, composed by an Eyewitness (translation, Richard Taruskin). Treliński captures that dichotomy well in some ways, less well in others. Perhaps, however, that will be the fate of any attempt to manage this unmanageable work, all the more so when it assumes operatic form.

 

His method is very much to emphasise realism until he can do no other, and to explain away or, perhaps better, account for some of the most surreal aspects, again until he can really do no other. Renata, then, is a very sad case already: a product of disadvantage of abuse, whose hallucinations, like those of many in the society around here, seem very much to be the product of narcotic substances. The charlatanry of the incomprehensible – to me, anyway – figure of Agrippa of Nettesheim is clear; or is it? How much are his multiple appearances, both to Renata and to the well-meaning if lustful Ruprecht, entirely the doing of a trip induced by their dealer, Jakob Glock? That we cannot entirely make sense of what is going on seems to me all to the good. Hallucinatory (we think) appearances of characters on all three levels of the set are far too much for any of us to take in at one setting: they are frighteningly real and yet at the same time clearly not at all real. Or some of them are, and some of them are not; we never really know. Yet is this perhaps not what might have been going on all along in the ‘original manuscript’? There is an oddly prevalent modern belief that drugs, their use and abuse, are somehow something new. Extreme, erotic ‘religious’ experiences and such causes, are anything but new, however. One only has to think of the visions of saints – who so very often had also been the basest of sinners. And so, the updating to a tawdry, flashy modern world of design hotels, sex shops, and gurus, is both true and untrue to the work – which, I think, is probably how it should be. One may make something of the knock-down Vegas walk-on parts or not, just as one might or might not in ‘real’ or ‘hallucinogenic’ life (or death).

 

Doublings are put, as if in Lulu, to excellent dramatic and not merely practical use. (If one wants ‘practical’, one might be better off opting for another opera.) Jakob Glock is also the Doctor; we think, perhaps, they are narcotic accomplices. Perhaps indeed they are, for are we quite sure that one is not an ‘actor’ – whatever that might mean in this context – and one is not? Mephistopheles and Agrippa of Nettesheim are one and the same – perhaps. Quite what we are to make of the scene in which Mephistopheles and Faust appear is in any case anyone’s guess.  Perhaps most tellingly, Heinrich, the object of Renata’s fixation is also not only Faust but the final act’s Inquisitor. There is something not only of the charlatan but, chillingly, the blind Jimmy Savile (!) to him too. Not for nothing do further visions – Renata’s, presumably, but who knows? – hark back to childhood, to gymnastic exercises, to an army of little Renatas in preparation for – well, preparation presumably for this. The notorious concluding convent orgy both does and does not happen. Is it all in her imagination, and is she now in hospital? Those expecting the acrobatic experiences of David Freeman’s celebrated Mariinsky production will be disappointed, which seems in part to be the point, but perhaps also intrigued, even moved to reflect. We do not always see and experience what we want to, however potent the drug, the magic, the God.

Prokofiev places Renata very much at the centre of the work: too much, some have said. Taruskin refers to ‘one of the reasons for the opera’s continued neglect’ beingf its unusual fixation on a single very difficult – and dramatically static – role,’ a state of affairs Prokofiev may well have rectified had he proceeded with his intended 1930 revision. I am less convinced that it is a problem, although lessening – I should not go so far as to say removal – of the novel’s autobiographical focus on Ruprecht certainly has its consequences. Whatever one thinks about the undoubted domination of the opera by the soprano in the abstract, it was surely vindicated in performance by the magnificent Aušrine Stundytė: obsessive, hysterical, and alarming, yes, but also vulnerable, human, and above all capable of expending an extraordinary range of colour, emotion, and dynamic contrast. Scott Hendricks’s Ruprecht had its moments, but he seemed less comfortable in the role. (Not that comfort is really the thing, here, I suppose.) ‘Weak’ roles are a difficult thing, of course; ask any Don Ottavio. However, I could not help think that he might have projected his own dilemma more strongly in musical terms. His Russian also seemed to me – this was confirmed by a friend who actually knew! – often quite indistinct. Otherwise, the host of bizarre characters came and went, starring as and when they could, almost all of them making strong impressions in their weird and wonderful ways. Andreï Popov, Pavlo Tolstoy, and Bernadetta Grabas, were perhaps first among equals here, but in such an ensemble piece, in such an ensemble performance, the whole proved considerably greater than the sum of its parts.

 

The other slight disappointment lay in Kazushi Ono’s direction of the Orchestre de Paris, especially earlier on. This was a fluent enough reading, which achievement deserves praise in itself, but a lack of bite in the first two acts in particular was often noticeable. Perhaps it was a reluctance to overpower the singers: surely a misguided reluctance in an opera such as this, in which so much is a manic struggle that may or may not ultimately make sense. The Polish National Opera Chorus sang splendidly, however, full of heft and far from without subtlety – except, of course, where subtlety is the last thing one wants to see or hear. Which, in this work…

 

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (2), Ariadne auf Naxos, 14 July 2018

Théâtre de l’Archevêché

Images: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2018 © Pascal Victor / artcompress

 

Music Master – Josef Wagner

Major-Domo – Maik Solbach

Lackey – Sava Vemić

Officer – Petter Moen

Composer – Angela Brower

Tenor, Bacchus – Eric Cutler

Wig-Maker – Jean-Gabriel Saint Martin

Zerbinetta – Sabine Devieilhe

Prima Donna, Ariadne – Lise Davidsen

Dancing Master – Rupert Charlesworth

Naiad – Beate Mordal

Dryad – Andrea Hill

Echo – Elena Galistkaya

Harlequin – Huw Montague Rendall

Truffaldino – David Shipley

Scaramuccio – Emilio Pons

Brighella – Jonathan Abernethy

The Richest Man in Vienna – Paul Herwig

His Wife – Julia Wieninger

 

Katie Mitchell (director)

Chloe Lamford (set designs)

Sarah Blenkinsop (costumes)
James Farncombe (lighting)

Martin Crimp (dramaturgy, including additional dialogue, translated by Ulrike Syha)

Joseph W Alford (movement)

Orchestre de Paris

Marc Albrecht (conductor)

Ariadne auf Naxos is in many ways the ultimate opera about opera. (Or should that be Moses und Aron?) Many, perhaps most, operas would seem to be ‘about’ Orpheus and his art in some way or another. (In a shameless plug, I should add that such is the subject, or at least the starting-point, for a chapter on operatic culture I have written for the soon-to-be-published – i.e., proofs already checked – Routledge Research Companion to Musical Modernism, edited by Björn Heile and Charles Wilson.) It would be far from absurd to claim that an artwork can fail to be ‘about’ its art form, its genre, itself in one sense or another; or would it? Always we seem to be brought back to those oppositions, those dialectics, that haunt, arguably determine Western history and culture, whether we like it or not. Yet Ariadne seems to take it all in, the ‘business’ as and the ‘art’, the artists and the characters, the metanarrative and the narrative, ultimately also the transformation that may or may not transcend – Hofmannsthal and/or Strauss? – as well as the manifold absurdities and frustrations at which one can only laugh, except that is, when one can only cry.

 

Productions can approach such a work – in practice, with the possible exception of Elektra, almost any work! – in any number of ways. There is nothing wrong with emphasising one strand, one particular reading: single-mindedness has its place, just as much for, say, a Hans Neuenfels as for a Furtwängler or a Klemperer. (The idea of a Klemperer Ariadne in particular intrigues, not least on the basis of his Pulcinella Suite, but I digress – and I have no Music Master to restrain me or indeed to inflict cuts, justified or otherwise.) Ranking is a game for politicians and accountants – although donors perhaps have their place in this world too – but I am not sure that I have seen a production that has kept so many balls in the air at the same time, investigated their nature, and added a few of its own, as Katie Mitchell’s for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.

The Prologue comes across as relatively conventional: not in the sense of wanting ‘pretty’ frocks and so on, but it sets the scene, as perhaps it should, ready for the transformations to come. It is full of life, full of character; there is probably, as doubles would be the case in watching any ‘making of’ documentary, more than one can take in in a single viewing, yet by the same token there is no sense of overload. It is not ‘busy’ for the sake of it, as often seems to be a temptation – perhaps a valid one – here. One enjoys the splendidly camp yet undeniably successful and talented Dancing Master of Rupert Charlesworth: watch him rehearse his dancers and you will see that he knows his stuff as well as owning the room. One sees that room transformed into a stage and an audience – with, rightly, a flexible curtain of a barrier in between. Lights taken down and replaced suggest something afoot: a distinction being made between reception room and desert island. We are not yet sure, however.

 

Perhaps most important of all, we see and feel – this is a musical thing too, of course, but also in Mitchell’s staging – the emergence of Zerbinetta as a real person, as a human being, to an extent uncommon, perhaps even unparalleled, in my experience. The tenderness of Sabine Devieilhe’s performance is something; she can do the coloratura fireworks too, as we shall learn. So too, however, is the direction: her placing with (and not with) other characters at particular times, her reactions to them, leading up to a moment quite justified and yet also shocking: the furious slap she gives the Composer after his/her (self-)righteous words at the close. Has (s)he not listened to a word Zerbinetta has said? Most likely not; for even in a world such as Mitchell’s, in which gender is fluid, indeed performed, there is no doubting that masculinity rules the roost. Molière after all wrote Le bourgeois gentilhomme, after all, thus in a sense initiating or at least provoking this particular drama. In connection with that, it is perhaps worth noting that Marc Albrecht seemed particular attuned to the connections – and implicitly the contrasts – with Strauss’s incidental music too. His, overall, was a wise and splendid reading, never seeking attention for itself, yet fully aware of when the orchestra should soar – above all at the close. If an orchestra is unlikely ever to sound at its best outdoors, the Orchestre de Paris, a few scrappy string moments aside, offered warmth, clarity, and chamber-music responsiveness throughout. Albrecht’s gentle yet authoritative guidance nevertheless remained an absolute necessity.

 

Back, however, to the stage. (How difficult it is even to write about keeping all those balls in the air!) Already, in that Prologue, Mitchell and her team have slightly prised open the work (and its ‘work-concept’). The dialogue has not been quite as one remembered it, perhaps, although we all know how memories can play tricks. In ‘reality’, Martin Crimp has added some lines to fit what we see, some others have gone, and the surtitles seem to offer a further level of commentary and critique: never too much, but enough to have one wonder. Without returning to the 1912 version, with or without Molière – what a missed opportunity that was in Salzburg in 2012! – elements return or rather are rethought and transformed. The Richest Man in Vienna is there, in a dress, as his wife, who literally wears the trousers. They not only offer interjections, new yet rooted in memories of 1912, at least to begin with; they are offered opportunity to learn, to be transformed. Indeed, they interact with the ‘cast’ almost at will. It is, alas, not clear what, if anything, they have learned; audiences and patrons can be like that. Perhaps, though, it is too soon to tell, for which of us has not on occasion learned more from a performance than might initially have seemed to be the case? The final words, appropriately enough, are given to M. Jourdain’s successor: the experiment has been interesting, but it is unlikely to show the way to the future of opera. That, we may retort, and probably do, is at least as much up to us as up to you, however much you may throw your cash around.

 

Such is the metatheatricality. Perhaps the real truths of Mitchell’s, Hofmannsthal’s, and Strauss’s opera(s), however, lie in what is too often overlooked: what this Ariadne, partly the Composer’s, partly all manner of others’, does as an opera. Angela Brower’s Composer, beautifully, intelligently sung, has not left the stage; (s)he conducts, at times, although it is unclear whether anyone knows or cares. The Opera concerns, above all, Ariadne on Naxos. Lise Davidsen’s Ariadne proved one of the finest I have heard, possessed of an almost infinite dynamic range, subtly inflected, and endless reserves of breath for the longest of Straussian lines. I do not think I have seen – and this was surely Mitchell’s doing too – her suffer so greatly. The sheer misery of her condition shone through, long before it was revealed that she had been left with child, to be delivered and claimed by a rather nasty – should he not be just that? – Bacchus (Eric Cutler, who again can certainly sing the role). The taunts of Zerbinetta’s troupe – perhaps not intentional, yet no less hurtful for that – sting particularly in such a setting. Indeed, their erotic table-dancing, preening, and squabbling, stage realising words and music in properly post-Wagnerian fashion, seems rightly both beside the point and absolutely of it. When Bacchus offers Ariadne the choice of life or death, we have no idea what she will choose, nor for whom. Right up until the end, we fear she might use the revolver that is one of his ‘gifts’. Will she shoot herself, her child, him, someone else, the entire assembled company? In the end, she does not. A child has been born; so too has an opera. Perhaps, whatever our host may think and demand, the future or a future of opera has been too. We shall see and/or hear – or not.

 

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (3) - Carmen, 13 July 2017

Images: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2017 © Patrick Berger / artcompress
Carmen (Stéphanie d'Oustrac), Don José (Michael Fabiano), Micaëla (Elsa Dreisig)

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Carmen – Stéphanie d’Oustrac

Don José – Michael Fabiano

Micaëla – Elsa Dreisig

Escamillo – Michael Todd Simpson

Frasquita – Gabrille Philiponet

Mercédès – Virginie Verrez

Zuniga – Christine Helmer

Moralès – Pierre Doyen

Le Dancaïre – Guillaume Andrieux

Le Remendadao – Mathias Vidal

Administrator – Pierre Grammont

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, designs)

Elena Zaitseva (costumes)
Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)

Maîtrise des Bouches-du-Rhône (chours master: Samuel Coquard)

Chœur Aedes (chorus master: Mathieu Romano)
Orchestre de Paris
Pablo Heras-Casado (conductor)

Carmen and Don José 

At last: a Carmen that takes a step back (from the work) and several steps forward (in every other dramaturgical respect). If one wants Carmen straight, as it were, Calixto Bieito’s Franco-era production will do very nicely indeed. As for borderline racists lusting after picture-postcard ‘Spain’ – it makes a change from lamenting the lack of blacking up in Othello – who cares? They certainly did, I am delighted to report. I do not know what the reaction was on the first night, but here various audience members, keen to show that the French wing of ‘Against Modern Opera Productions’ is pulling its weight, contributed greatly to the cabaret. Some booed during the performance; some shouted things out. Perhaps my favourite was one man who helpfully informed the cast that they were delivering ‘the wrong dialogue’. Bless him, or rather do not. An American family – the parents anyway: the children seemed fine – could be heard during the interval lamenting the ‘Eurotrash’ they had seen: surely a title la Carmencita herself would happily ‘reclaim’, although she might have to return with those visitors to the era of big-hair Dallas and Dynasty to do so. I should also not forget a woman seated not so far from me. At the end, she was visibly excited when Pablo Heras-Casado came onstage to take his bow. It was her moment, she knew, and she took it, starting to boo vigorously. Her husband then explained to her, a little too late, that Heras-Casado was the conductor, not the director. Who cares, though? When you want to make animal noises in a theatre and generally behave like an uneducated fascist, go for it. At least they all have a new hate figure to supplant Gerard Mortier; and what is petit bourgeois life without hate figures?

Dmitri Tcherniakov does far more, though, than épater les bourgeois – although I shall not deny the theatre in that itself. We all know the ‘monster opera Carmen’, as he calls it; and if we do not, we can do so at the click of a mouse. What is far too often lost – not, to be fair in Bieito, but in most productions, which are simply ghastly – is the drama. We do not actually know the opera at all, most of us; we know some tacky visualisations, often more fitted to a set of plates to be bought from a Sunday colour supplement. (Do they still exist? Do we care?) We play at knowing it, keeping our distance from anything that might challenge us. We, then, are the protagonists – albeit in a drama that is true to no one’s ‘intentions’, least of all to Bizet’s or Merimée’s. That is emphatically so here: we are confronted with what we – all of us – have done to Carmen and to ourselves, and by what we continue to do so.

And so, Tcherniakov presents us with a man of today, an Everyman even: Don José. Carmen is decentred; she will, like the rest of the cast, be brought in as and when required. The man, whoever, he is, clearly wealthy – a beautiful suit and shoes – is in a bad way. He needs therapy, and his wife is determined to have him undergo it. Should we not suspect her actions too, though? On what basis does she derive any authority in this treatment, or game, or drama, or whatever we want to call it, think of it? As this ‘thing’, let us call it an opera, progresses, we are certainly given reason, often quite subtle, to doubt her, to doubt everything and everyone: above all, we are given reason to doubt ourselves. (Will we be brave enough, even able, to do so, though? Tcherniakov helps; the performers help; but therapy requires preparation, consent, participation.) When the mysterious – or is he merely mundane? – Administrator explains what will happen to our (anti-)hero, he laughs, refuses to take it seriously. Michael Fabiano’s laugh is itself a thing of artistic horror, almost to put alongside that of Klytämnestra (in another twisted therapeutic context). But play the game of Carmen he must; or rather he decides to. Scepticism is palpable; we have surely all felt sceptical at some time towards dramas and productions that reveal things we should rather leave unrevealed. But once the game is afoot, wallet and telephone handed in for safe keeping, he must continue. Indeed, he refuses the advised option of calling it quits at half time. His progress has been such that he is about to be discharged. He wants to carry on to the end, and so he does.

Soldiers, Micaëla, and Don José 

Who are the expensive – opera is expensive – cast of characters and extras brought in for the game? His wife returns, in need of a role. She becomes Micaëla. But like him, we are sometimes a little unsure what is for real, and what is not. Are the troops who storm the stage at the end of the first act, to impose order, actually from ‘outside’? It is cleverly suggested – or I lazily assumed – that they might be; but no, we discover, in the Administrator’s next visitation and explanation (true, or not?) that they were part of the game. That is what opera is; is it not? Guns fire ‘smiley’ faces of approval; we are the customers, after all. No, of course we are not; we are the participants, but we, or at least some of us, like to think we are customers. No more in Carmen than in the Ring should that be the case. As Pierre Boulez once remarked, ‘opera houses are … like cafés where … you can hear waiters calling out their orders: “One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!”’ His playful suggestion, or rather hinted suggestion, a few years earlier was that an elegant solution would be to blow them into the air. Indeed. There are more ways, more interesting ways, of accomplishing that, of course, than with actual explosives. We might as well just read out the stage directions if we want to play at opera – which is precisely what happens here.

Carmen – or the woman playing Carmen – becomes deeply concerned about where things are heading. She wants out, but the Administrator says no. What are her feelings for the man she is paid (presumably) to help? Interestingly, even ironically, relieved of simply being Carmen, the ‘icon’, she becomes a more interesting, more complex, or at least less readily stereotyped, character. Her interaction with Fate thus acquires new meaning – and new questioning. Tragedy, however, reinstates itself. At the end, the man is broken more than ever before. Don José has killed him; Carmen has killed him; his wife has killed him; therapy has killed him. Others – neither ‘Carmen’ nor his wife, though – have been busily celebrating the end of the game, the end of the opera. Life and art are not like that, not at all. Do you want ‘picturesque’ scenery and a ‘heart-warming’ justification of your own existence, followed, perhaps, by a ‘nice meal’: go elsewhere. You – we – actually need this.

Mercédès (Virgine Verrez), Carmen, Frasquita (Gabrielle Philiponet), Don José

Fabiano gave a tireless, often terrifying performance in the central role. If there were occasions when his style was a little on the Italianate side, then who cares, especially on this particularly occasion? So much of what we were seeing and hearing in any case concerned the playing of roles. (I keep telling myself I should include myself in all of that – and I should, but do not want to seem still more solipsistic here. But what gives any of us the right to expectations, and should we not at least question them vigorously?) In any case, identification with something that was both Don José and yet was not became clearer and deeper as he and we penetrated role and game deeper too. I do not think I have seen a more tormented, possessed man on stage, certainly not for a long time. This was his drama – and by his, I mean at least as much Fabiano’s as the anonymous man’s or as Don José’s. And he can certainly sing too, with dark, repressed menace, just as much as with splendidly ‘operatic’, climactic passion. Liberated as discussed above, Stéphanie d’Oustrac, gave a splendidly thoughtful portrayal – or whatever we wish in this context to call it. Expectations subverted, she could present a woman who did not always know what to do for the best, and yet tried to do so, a woman with agency of her own, agency that was yet hemmed in by powerful forces from without. Sung with an elegance to offset and yet also to complement Fabiano’s passion, this was a performance to make one think just as much as his – provided one permitted oneself to do so.

Carmen, Escamillo (Michael Todd Simpson), assembled company, and Don José

Elsa Dreisig’s Micäela became more manipulative, less predictable: something to be heard as well as merely observed. Treating opera as drama creates opportunities for all, both on and off stage. (Both Joseph Kerman and Tcherniakov could have told us that; so could both Bizet and Boulez.) Michael Todd Simpson’s Escamillo – playing Micaëla’s extra-marital lover, or was he actually so? – was vocally disappointing, somewhat dry of tone; yet, as with so much else here, there were other ways of approaching what we saw and heard. Amongst the ‘smaller’ roles, everything was well taken; special mention, I think, should go to the voices of Gabrielle Philiponet and Virginie Perez. Choral singing was excellent throughout, as was the incisive, often colourful – yet not unduly touristic – playing of the Orchestre de Paris. Heras-Casado seemed to me to make a great effort as collaborator, not simply as ‘conductor’. (We all play roles, but that does not mean we should not reconsider them.) There was, throughout, a keen sense of engagement with Tcherniakov: not necessarily simply mirroring, for that is certainly not what orchestra or conductor should be doing. Taken as a whole, the musical performances engaged with, enabled, and criticised the production; as it did them; as all did the work. Ladies, gentlemen, however we wish to define and perform ourselves: welcome, whether you like it or not, to musical drama. It comes alive when you least expect it. It may sometimes not even work. Life is like that, but it is not life; it is both less and more, better and worse, than that.

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (2) – Orchestre de Paris/Ward - Stravinsky, Schubert, and Beethoven, 12 July 2017

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Stravinsky: Suite no.1 for small orchestra

Schubert: Symphony no.3 in D major, D 200

Stravinsky: Suite no.2 for small orchestra

Beethoven: Symphony no.4 in B-flat major, op.60

Orchestre de Paris

Duncan Ward (conductor)

This year’s Aix Festival has a ‘Stravinsky cycle’ of concerts to accompany its excellent Rake’s Progress. I am delighted to report that the two small Suites for small orchestra received splendid performances. Alas, the problem lay with the remaining ninety per cent of the programme; would that we had had more – much more – Stravinsky instead.

Perhaps not entirely unlike some of Schoenberg’s later tonal works, these little Stravinsky Suites offer an excellent introduction to Stravinsky’s processes without the ‘difficulties’ some may find in some of his music. Such was emphatically the case here; bite-sized the pieces may be, but they emerged as echt Stravinsky. The Orchestre de Paris imparted a pleasingly ‘French’ sound, suggesting kinship with Ravel, that was anything but inappropriate, although the particular colours were entirely Stravinsky’s own. In the ‘Española’ of the First Suite – and certainly not only there – rhythms proved tight and generative, even menacing. The Soldier’s Tale came to mind, but so, inevitably, did Petrushka, especially in the Second Suite. Stravinsky here sounded truly in puppeteer mode – although is he not always, in one sense or another? My only real cavil was Duncan Ward’s extreme holding back in the ‘Valse’. Parody is fine, up to a point, but that seemed too much for the material and its context. Otherwise, these were sparkling, colourful, delightful performances.

Schubert’s Third Symphony started promisingly. The introduction to the first movement sounded properly generative, very much in the line of Haydn, albeit with an intriguing, almost Mendelssohnian lightness to the sound. (It is not how I immediately think of Schubert, but it is surely a good thing to be challenged.) Alas, the rest of the first movement was hard-driven: more Rossini than Beethoven (or Schubert!) It was beautifully played by the Orchestre de Paris: actually one of the best performances I have heard from them, in purely orchestral terms. Moreover, there was nothing unduly distracting. Nevertheless, the formal dynamism that makes sonata form a form rather than a mould or even a mere structure was absent, save, perplexingly, for a darkly serious development section. It is a common problem in much of today’s symphonic conducting, yet no less grievous for that. (Memories of Daniel Barenboim’s outstanding recent Berlin performance will die hard.) Structure and form are not the same things; at least, they should not be.  There was winning intimacy to be heard from the Paris players in the Allegretto, but it emerged as an unduly sectional movement, whatever its very real incidental charms. The Minuet gained from being taken straightforwardly, but the Trio never settled; likewise a charming enough finale. What was truly missing, here and throughout, was a sense of harmonic rhythm, of much of the music being founded upon the bass line, curiously underplayed. Schubert’s music is not merely a string of melodies; nor is any music that is worth performing from the Austro-German tradition in which it stands.

Beethoven’s is certainly not, but yet again that was how it sounded. Ward’s direction of the Fourth Symphony was, for the most part, mercifully free of the perversities that characterise, say, the Beethoven of his mentor, Simon Rattle – so much so as to make it frankly unlistenable. That excellent omission, however, was alas pretty much the only positive aspect to the performance here: again, very well played, on its own terms, but quite uncomprehending of how Beethoven’s music works, let alone of what it might mean. The first movement, from the Introduction onwards, was taken very fast: nothing in principle wrong with that, but it never yielded, never breathed, and never actually spoke of, let alone in, sonata form and its processes. Ironically, there was more than a hint, both here and in the Schubert, of sub-Stravinskian parody. The slow – not at all slow – movement flowed by pleasantly enough; yet again, however, it seemed at best observed rather than lived, its existence entirely on the surface. Prolonged, extreme pianissimi were presumably intended to create tension; they ended up merely sounding weird. As the movement progressed, or regressed, it sounded more and more disconnected. This, at least, seemed very much in the line of Rattle’s Beethoven; the scherzo and finale behaved similarly, albeit in less pulled-around fashion. Ultimately, it was just all rather dull; I was never moved, never even interested. There were incidental orchestral ‘beauties’, but surely that is not what Beethoven is about? If it is, then God help us all. A pity we could not have heard, say, Petrushka instead.

Orchestre de Paris/Salonen - Bartók, 21 October 2015

Philharmonie, Paris

 

Dance Suite, Sz.77
Concerto for two pianos and percussion, Sz.115
Concerto for Orchestra, Sz.116

Katia and Marielle Labèque (pianos)

Camille Baslé, Eric Sammut (percussion)

Orchestre de Paris

Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

 

Yes, the new Parisian Philharmonie is a thing of wonder, especially when lit at night. Walking across the Parc de la Villette, I happened to be there just at the moment when the lighting, as if by magic, was turned on. Resplendent as a craggy mineral, the jewel-fancier’s find of the century, from the outside, the hall and its acoustic put any London counterparts to shame; as, of course, do the acoustics of so many. (Chamber music is, of course, another matter entirely.) This is the sort of thing London so desperately needs; alas, should we see a new hall, the City of London’s claim seems already a done deal. A new cultural quarter, perhaps in the East, say at Stratford, well connected by Tube, rail, and bus, would be a real Olympic ‘legacy’. Cue hollow laughter. Trident calls.

 

In this, my first visit, Esa-Pekka Salonen led the Orchestre de Paris in an all-Bartók programme. I was struck at the opening of the Dance Suite by the bassoon sound, as if a French instrument of old. However, the dominant orchestral sound, that of the strings in particular, was surprisingly Germanic. Salonen’s conducting seemed to match that: surprisingly dark and, at times, deliberate. Then it came to life in the second movement, not unlike The Rite of Spring’s defrosting. Debussyan languor was another surprise, not at all unwelcome, visitor. The suite came across, then, in strikingly cosmopolitan manner. One heard at times a more traditionally ‘Hungarian’ accent, but it was one among many. What a joy, however, it was to hear this work, so often the province of chamber orchestras, played with such large forces. And how, in this acoustic, the final chord resounded!

 

The Labèque sisters joined orchestra percussionists., Camille Baslé and Eric Sammut for Bartók’s orchestral version of the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. My reaction was much the same as when I have heard it in concerto form before; I do not mind the orchestral presence, but ultimately, do not feel that it adds so much, and should rather hear the ‘original’. The Labèques did ‘creepy’ well, for instance at the opening of the first movement; their percussionist colleagues played with masterly precision. However, much of the performance – who was in charge here? The pianists or the conductor? – seemed to sprawl somewhat: full of incident, but where was the direction? In the moment, though, soloists elicited sparks from each other, the layout and the hall permitting a welcome sense of spatial effect. Nocturnal mystery was palpable in the second movement, although again line was not always so apparent. Joyous contrast was the hallmark of the finale, almost as if this were Haydn reimagined. Bartók’s musical procedures spoke clearly; so did what they emotionally amounted to. The close was delightfully nonchalant.

 

It was the Concerto for Orchestra, however, which proved the highlight of the concert. Its opening offered dark, weighty sound from cellos and basses, deepened by the hall acoustic. The violin and flute response sounded almost frozen. Violas added warmth to the lower strings – a hint of the orchestral recitative in the finale to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – and one heard, as it were, the full orchestra gradually come into being. Brass imparted if not quite yet a sense of arrival, then at least of a crucial staging-post. Salonen’s tempi here and indeed throughout the work were highly varied, with some of the deliberation that had marked the Dance Suite but also some more conventional ‘excitement’. The second movement proceeded similarly, albeit with its own instrumental character. I especially liked the grave yet rounded beauty of the Parisian trombones and horns, and of course the trio of bassoons, wonderfully fruity. Salonen’s view of the third movement fascinated. It emerged in strikingly cellular, quasi-Stravinskian fashion, with an almost Mahlerian pathos at its heart, assisted by great depth of string tone. This Elegy truly sang as a song of grief. That grief seemed to carry through into the shockingly vehement opening of the fourth movement. Then the clouds suddenly lifted, although the shadows were, perhaps inevitably, not entirely dispelled. Salonen was in no hurry here; the time given for the violas to sing was especially welcome. But it was not so slow overall, rather varied. The Lehár/Shostakovich deliberate banality hinted, enigmatically, at catastrophe. An enigma it yet remained. The finale offered the excitement of culmination and climax, sounding new, even equivocal at times, in this particular performative context. Tempi were again highly flexible; string tone again proved wonderfully deep. Bartók’s genius, never in doubt, felt nevertheless reaffirmed.

Orchestre de Paris/Salonen - Richard Dubugnon and Mahler, 17 December 2008

Salle Pleyel, Paris

Richard Dubugnon – Violin Concerto (world premiere)
Mahler – Das klagende Lied (original version, 1880)

Janine Jansen (violin)

Melanie Diener (soprano)
Lilli Passikivi (viola)
Jon Villars (tenor)
Sergei Leiferkus (bass)
Members of the Tölzer Knabenchor (choirmaster: Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden)

Chœur de l’Orchestre de Paris (chorus-masters: Didier Bouture and Geoffroy Jourdain)
Orchestre de Paris
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

Swiss composer Richard Dubugnon’s new work was commissioned by Musique Nouvelle en Liberté and the city of Paris. It is dedicated to Janine Jansen and Esa-Pekka Salonen, who gave its world premiere at the Salle Pleyel. In his programme note, Dubugnon said that he had tried to reconcile the form and duration of the Romantic concerto with images, sounds, and colours from today, including some rhythms and harmonies taken from popular music: new wine into old bottles. The problem I had with much of this lengthy three-movement concerto – about three-quarters of an hour in total – concerned the wine itself. Frankly tonal, its harmonies were not only of the twentieth century, but of its earliest years. Various composers came to mind, including, in relatively conventional voice, Debussy, Bartók, and Scriabin, and, more interestingly in the slow movement, early Messiaen, but seemingly lacking an individual, let alone contemporary voice. As for the popular influences – ‘house’ and ‘funk’, according to the composer – these did not seem to go beyond odd rhythms, often repeated or recurring, rhythms which might equally well have had their origins in early or even ‘symphonic’ jazz. A few passages sounded as if they might have strayed in from a ‘Hooked on Classics’ sequence. The overall form was admirably clear; the old bottle did not leak. Nor, I think, would it have done, even if we had languished without Dubugnon’s comprehensive programme note. This is clearly a composer who can orchestrate, in an almost classically ‘French’ fashion, although Debussy or Ravel would never have relied so much upon stock combinatory effects. There was perhaps greater individuality in some of the writing for tuned percussion, although little that progressed so far as, still less beyond, Messiaen.

Salonen kept a tight grip upon proceedings and Jansen displayed great virtuosity and sensitivity. As a vehicle for her talents, the concerto worked well enough, some of the solo writing perhaps echoing that of Prokofiev, but I could not help thinking that there might have been better ways to show off her technique. One thing this definitely goes to show, however, is what nonsense are the malcontent attempts one sometimes hears to portray Pierre Boulez as some kind of dictator of French musical life. I think I can safely say that Boulez would never have been interested in such a work; its co-commissioning by the city of Paris itself signals a thoroughgoing musical pluralism.

It is not clear to me why Mahler’s Das klagende Lied was thought an appropriate companion-piece, or vice versa for that matter. For those who might have responded with greater enthusiasm to the violin concerto, it is difficult to imagine that they would have made many connections with Mahler’s first principal completed work, steeped in German Romanticism, yet also looking forward to his later symphonies, especially the First and Second, and even to Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. Never mind; it was a relatively rare opportunity to hear Das klagende Lied, here given in its original, 1880 version, as submitted for the 1881 Beethoven Prize. There were good things to the performance, yet, as a whole, I did not feel that it quite came together, almost as if this were a rehearsal rather than the ‘real thing’. Barring a few too many lapses of ensemble, especially in some of the offstage music, the Orchestre de Paris played well enough. I did not find the orchestra’s sound especially Mahlerian; the strings and indeed many of the other instruments came across a little too brightly for that. Nor was there especial depth to the bass, although this may have been at least partly a result of the Salle Pleyel’s notoriously difficult acoustic. There were, however, some splendid orchestral moments, not least the ominous kettledrum role at the very opening of Waldmärchen and the solos of leader, Philippe Aïche. The rumbustiousness of the public scenes in the final Hochzeitsstück was ably conveyed too; Tannhäuser’s arrival of the guests and indeed Hagen’s call to the Gibichungs were not so very distant. Salonen guided the work’s progress with considerable care for clarity in the orchestral textures, yet I was rarely gripped by an inexorable narrative as I had hoped to be. Lengthy pauses between movements did not help in that regard, yet even those three movements themselves came across as a little diffuse at times.

The soloists, impressive on paper, proved a mixed bunch in practice. Melanie Diener has an attractive voice but the quality of her diction varied enormously. Jon Villars came in and out of focus with disturbing frequency; there were some splendid Heldentenor-ish passages, whilst others sounded tentative and muffled. Sergei Leiferkus’s best days would, on this evidence, appear very much to be behind him. But Lilli Passikivi impressed as a true contralto, especially in her eery, Erda-like passages from Waldmärchen. Whilst far from flawless, the two boy soloists from the Tölz Boys’ Choir – anonymous, but this tends to be the practice – exhibited most movingly the extraordinary treble tone we know and love. That ghostly quality which Mahler demands for the murdered knight’s accusation was thereby chillingly conveyed. The choral singing was varied too, again moving in and out of focus, although this was less of a problem in the Götterdämmerung-like passages from the Hochzeitsstück. Again, I wonder how much of that resulted from the acoustic. I also wonder whether a second performance the following evening might have melded the parts into a more satisfying whole.