Passion, Music Theatre Wales, 13 October 2018

(sung in English)

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Images: Clive Barda
Jennifer France (Her) and National Dance Company Wales

Her – Jennifer France

Him – Johnny Herford

Dancers – Cyril Durand-Gasselin, Nikita Goile, Ed Myhill, Julia Rieder, Malik Williams, Queenie Maidment-Otlet

Michael McCarthy, Caroline Finn (co-directors)

Simon Banham (designs)

Joe Fletcher (lighting)

EXAUDI

Sound Intermedia (sound design, after original concept by Thierry Cudoys)

London Sinfonietta

Geoffrey Paterson (conductor)

Ten years ago, I saw one of the first performances of Pascal Dusapin’s Passion at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. Now, Music Theatre Wales and National Dance Company Wales give the opera its first United Kingdom production – in an English translation by Amanda Holden from the original Italian: the first time, I believe, that a Dusapin opera has been performed in translation. (I shall admit to a slight disappointment that it was not in Welsh: maybe next time.) The premiere took place two nights earlier in Basingstoke; I saw this resourceful, imaginative dance staging at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Titles might not have been a bad idea, but there is always something to be said for making an audience listen, or at least encouraging it to do so. (There was, alas, some extraordinary distracting behaviour from a few bad apples on this occasion, one woman near me aggressively scratching herself like an alley-cat throughout, another apparently running a tombola from her handbag. Such highly distracting goings on did not appear to be part of a directorial Konzept; perhaps, however, I was missing the point.)

Dusapin’s Orpheus or rather Eurydice, opera, the lovers abstracted to Her and Him, Lei and Lui, with shadowing support from ‘The Others’ (Gli Altri), takes its place in perhaps the most venerable of all operatic traditions. Orpheus, son of Calliope, Muse of Epic Poetry, and, according to some tellings of the legend, Apollo’s too, tamed animals, even charmed Hades itself, through performance on his lyre – here suggested, yet perhaps not merely to be identified with, the oud, Rihib Azar’s part and performance evocative, generative, and questioning towards the close. Orpheus’s purview – and that of Greek mousikē more generally – was greater than what we, in an age cursed by specialisation, might consider to be ‘music’: he was poet, enchanter and prophet; he communicated the qualities of all the Muses through his identity as a musical performer. Where, however, is Eurydice in all that? As ‘traditional’ a supportive figure, a victim, as ever? Here she is granted, or better she assumes, newfound agency. As Dusapin, quoted in the progamme, put it: ‘I sincerely wanted to do something with this myth, and yet I wasn’t really attracted to a story where a woman dies, engulfed by flames, sacrificed by the stare of an impatient man … So I thought: “What if the woman knew? And what if she suddenly decided not to go back towards the light?”’ Just as composers from Monteverdi to Birtwistle have retold, remade the myth in the light of their own concerns, the concerns of their times too, so have Dusapin and a splendidly integrated team of performers.

Johnny Herford (Him) and National Dance Company Wales

Worthy successors to the not inconsiderable team of Barbara Hannigan, Georg Nigl, Ensemble Musicatreize, Ensemble Modern, and Franck Ollu, Jennifer France, Johnny Herford, EXAUDI, the London Sinfonietta, and Geoffrey Paterson offered an outstanding musical performance, ably shadowed, incited, and criticised by a fine team of dancers. One had little doubt that the Sinfonietta and Paterson were not only presenting what one was ‘supposed’ to hear, but in the emphatic sense performing it, bringing it into life and revealing its form in the dramatic here and now. Comparisons make little sense in the case of an artist such as Hannigan; perhaps they do far more rarely than many of us would care to admit. France’s performance had us believe in this particular Eurydice, her particular concerns and ‘character’: what could be more feminist than that? Herford cheerfully yet wistfully consented to and furthered a remodelling of Orpheus’s role that leaves us all the richer. With none of Nigl’s sometimes disconcerting idiosyncrasies, he – as indeed did the rest of the team – suggested that we are all the richer for this recent chapter in the progress of the myth. A subtly raucous – yes, that is intended – duet between trombone and oboe; a recognisably celestrial yet menacing glimpse of heaven; a (false?) witness of the clavecin ‘past’; an approach to an expected final unison that proved not to be such at all: these and many more such moments attested to the fleeting quality of memory, the necessity of multiple standpoints in and of the present.

'The Arditti Quartet: 40 Years Young’ – Rihm, Hosokawa, Ferneyhough, Birtwistle, Dusapin, and Xenakis, 26 April 2014

Milton Court Concert Hall

Rihm – Fetzen I & II (1999-2001 and 2002)

Toshio Hosokawa – Silent Flowers (1998)

Ferneyhough – String Quartet no.3 (1987)

Birtwistle – Hoquetus Irvinius (2014, world premiere)

Dusapin – String Quartet no.5 (2004-5)

Xenakis – Tetras (1983)

Irvine Arditti, Ashot Sarkissjan (violins)

Ralf Ehlers (viola)

Lucas Fels (cello) 

A celebration in style for the Arditti Quartet: no fewer than three concerts throughout the day. I had hoped to attend all three, but in the event had to settle for just the evening concert, which boasted one of three world premieres, the others having been the third quartets of James Clarke and Hilda Paredes (Bitácora capilar). I also missed hearing works by Jonathan Harvey, Carter, Kurtág, Lachenmann, Hèctor Parra, Georg Friedrich Haas, and Ligeti. Still, what I heard offered a Birtwistle premiere, and works by Wolfgang Rihm, Tosho Hosokawa, Brian Ferneyhough, Pascal Dusapin, and Xenakis, so there remained plenty to fascinate to thrill, and yes, to beguile. A quartet which, since its first concert in 1974, has performed and recorded hundreds of new works, many of them Arditti commissions, has an extraordinary amount to celebrate looking back, of which this could only be a tiny fraction, but also still to anticipate, hence the premieres. The concert I heard was typically excellent, no fewer than six works granted advocacy as impressive as conceivable, indeed arguably more impressive than conceivable.

 

Rihm’s Fetzen (‘Scraps’) offered a wonderful ‘overture’, in many ways more individual than much of the composer’s music I have heard. The first is almost a mini-concerto, the first violin’s part more than first among equals; it put me in mind of Berg’s Concerto more than once, and indeed, much of the language of both seems recognisably post-Schoenbergian, the ‘Peripeteia’ of op.16 also coming to mind (despite the obvious differences in colour!) Repeated blows of demarcation bring the short movement to a close. Following a strikingly frenetic second violin opening, the second piece has the material taken up by the other instruments of the quartet; ‘mechanism’ at times seems somewhat Stravinskian, certainly quite a contrast with Fetzen I. The closing chorale, anything but triumphant, provides a fragile, even ghostly conclusion, the players’ hush not the least of this performance’s qualities.

 

Hosokawa’s Silent Flowers proved more abrasive than lazy Orientalist readings of its title might have suggested; this is certainly not Takemitsu. There is – and in performance was – a very strong sense of progression, of, as it were, the lives of these organisms unfolding. Kinship with Webern and Nono became increasingly apparent, though the work is – perhaps unsurprisingly – more expansive than the music of the former. The role of silences as well as quiet playing is particularly noticeable: one was, as with Nono and indeed Webern, made to listen. In the composer’s words, ‘Sounds also come from and return to silence.’

 

Ferneyhough’s third quartet concluded the first half. The expressivity, again not un-Schoenbergian of its febrile opening would persist throughout, making one listen again, albeit in a very different way. In a truer sense than the debased ‘neo-Romantic’ has sadly come to mean, and as remarked upon by Ralf Ehlers, this work, like Ferneyhough’s œuvre more generally, could readily be understood to stand as an idealistic heir to German Romanticism. There was irrationality, yes, but it was irrationality that was anything but ‘arbitrary’; Ehlers spoke of exactitude in notation that was yet akin to ‘notated rubato’. As with Schoenberg, something akin to the ‘Idea’ was the thing. Solo passages – for instance, the second violin at the opening of the second movement, the scintillating viola at its close – were as ‘expressive’ in their communication as the complex, yet never unduly complex, whole. Yes, as the composer put it, ‘the second movement explodes into an iridescent flood of irate images.’

Birtwistle’s Hoquetus Irvineus, dedicated to ‘Irvine and his lovely boys’, proved a winning pièce d’occasion with which to open the second half. The syncopations of hocket and something not so very far from post-Stravinskian swing offered an experience that both drew one in as a listener and was also, quite simply, good fun. Grinding of typical Birtwistle mechanisms propelled the music along, leaving one satisfied yet wanting more.

 

‘Ah yes, said Carnier, lente, lente, and circumspection, with deviations to right and left and sudden reversals of course.’ With those words from Beckett’s Mercier et Carnier, Dusapin begins the score of his fifth quartet. That ‘lente’ is certainly characteristic, though this is not a slowness that tires. The opening, high-lying first violin lyricism, accompanied by pizzicato from the others, certainly offered time to enjoy the view, whatever that may be, in properly Beckett-like fashion uncertain as to the destination, which may not even have existed. Quiet yet incessant chatter – late inheritance of Xenakis’s swarms? – offers quite another experience, prior to the relative resolution of the close.

 

Finally, Xenakis’s Tetras. From first violin to second violin to the quartet as a whole, the ‘uncompromising’ – perhaps a cliché by now, but surely apt in this case – opening proved characteristic of work and performance as a whole. The combination of novelty and familiarity to scales and arpeggios suggest a parallel, maybe alien world: more so, arguably, than the frankly extra-terrestrial ambitions of Stockhausen. One passage sounded as if it might have been musique concrète; I had to check that I was indeed listening to a string quartet. This final performance offered the commanding virtuosity of what, for this ensemble, has become a repertory piece. Silence at the close had no need to be enforced; it was the only possible reaction.

 

Prom 5: Braley/Capuçons/Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France/Chung - Messiaen, Dusapin, and Beethoven

Royal Albert Hall


Messiaen – Les Offrandes oubliées
Dusapin – Morning in Long Island: Concerto no.1 for large orchestra (BBC co-commission with the Mitto Settembermusica, Radio France, and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra: United Kingdom premiere)
Beethoven – Concerto for violin, violoncello, and pianoforte, in C major, op.56


Frank Braley (piano)
Renaud Capuçon (violin)
Gautier Capuçon (violoncello)
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
Myung-Whun Chung (conductor)


Messiaen’s early Les Offrandes oubliées provided a splendid, indeed resplendent, opening to this concert from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Myung-Whun Chung. Its tripartite form was admirably clear, though that is as much Messiaen’s doing as the performers’. The recognisably ‘early’ harmonies of the outer sections, marked ‘Très lent’ and ‘Extrêmement lent’ shone through, recalling the contemporary organ work, L’Ascension, later orchestrated by the composer, perhaps above all the fragrant ecstasy of its concluding ‘Prière du Christ montant vers son Père’. The OPRF’s string tone was recognisably ‘French’ in tone, vibrato sweetly pleasing. If I could have imagined the ‘Très lent’ section emphasising more the ‘très’ part of Messiaen’s instruction, there had to be room for contrast with the third, communion-based section’s ‘extrêmement’. At any rate, the earlier section flowed and thereby doubtless created less of a problem for Messiaen sceptics. The central, ‘Vif’ section provided a brilliant contrast, the musicians’ sharpness of attack and rhythmic command scintillating in its depiction of man’s depravity, though its post-Dukas harmonies sound less ‘characteristic’. It is a pity, however, that such a fine performance was introduced by such a poor programme note. Usually I pass such things over in pained silence; however, it would be remiss to fail to note that that whilst the writer says next to nothing about the music, he nevertheless finds time to make the following extraordinary claim: ‘Messiaen is almost alone among the major figures of the 20th century’s avant-garde years – Witold Lutosławski is closest to joining him – in leaving a substantial contribution to several repertoires which shows no sign of evaporating.’ Boulez? Stockhausen? Berio? Nono? Xenakis? Ligeti? Carter? Henze? I could go on and on, even before coming to composers from our own shores; I shall not go on, but it seems that Robert Maycock would benefit from a crash course in mid-twentieth-century music before writing another such note, especially for a festival such as the Proms, which has always prided itself on its commitment to new music.


‘Stasis’ is a word often employed in connection with Messiaen, perhaps slightly misleadingly: there is progression, but it is often as much ritualistic as, arguably more so than, dialectical in a Beethovenian tradition. Certainly the progression of Les Offrandes oubliées was far more purposeful than Pascal Dusapin’s Morning in Long Island, a BBC co-commission, here receiving its British premiere. I was disappointed, given that I have admired a number of Dusapin’s works, including his string quartets and his opera, Passion, which I reviewed in 2008 from the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Essentially it is a tone poem, though I doubt whether Dusapin would use the term, in three sections, not necessarily evoking in ‘direct’ terms a morning in Long Island, but apparently inspired by it. The first movement ‘Fragile’, culminating in an ‘interlude’, seemed to me the strongest. From the outset, the spatial aspect is to the fore, three brass players – trumpet, horn, and trombone – placed around the hall, inciting and commenting upon the action, providing incidentally a far better impression of a fanfare than Judith Weir’s piece for the First Night. There was certainly a sense of a Sibelius-like landscape, whom Dusapin admires, albeit transposed into more contemporary terms, many long-held, high-lying lines shifting and creating harmonic motion. In many ways, the music, excellently performed, so far as I could tell, proved quite hypnotic. What a pity, then, that the second section, ‘Simplement’, proved more of a trial. It seemed to go on for ever, though my watch claimed that it did not. Perhaps it was that Sibelius became more of a presence still. (I freely admit the Finnish composer to be a blind spot for me.) But there seemed to be no reason why it could not have been half the length, the apparently static music proving resolutely unmemorable, despite two contrasting loud outbursts. The final section, ‘Swinging’ struck me as merely embarrassing, all too redolent of the dreaded ‘trendy vicar’. Though the music may have tried to swing, it seemed studied, forced even, the Latin rhythms sounding all too evidently appliqué; Dusapin’s congested scoring certainly did not help. It never achieved the lift off of riotous apparent predecessors such as the ‘Hunt of the Menads’ from Henze’s The Bassarids or indeed the second of Boulez’s orchestral Notations, remaining resolutely earthbound.


Beethoven’s Triple Concerto seemed an odd companion piece. It would have done so even if Martha Argerich had been able to play, but her exit undoubtedly shifted the centre of programming gravity, even though she was ably replaced by Frank Braley. The problem, then, lay not with the soloists but with Chung, who, at least on the evidence of the present performance, is no Beethovenian. This concerto needs a sharp hand – think of Karajan – to prevent it from seeming unduly discursive; Chung, however, did little other than ‘accompany’. There was no fire; merely ‘pleasant’ Beethoven is, alas, barely Beethoven at all. Tutti passages sounded disconnected from the argument constructed by the fine chamber soloists. That was a great pity, for the Capuçon brothers in particular proved excellent soloists, showing how one might on occasion ‘love’ the music without disruption to its purpose. Renaud’s violin tone was often exquisitely sweet, yet never over ripe, recalling past masters such as Jacques Thibaud; I was left wishing for a ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata or two instead. Gautier’s responses sounded possessed of just as much quicksilver, with finely judged vibrato throughout; indeed, the opening of the Largo made me wish, not for the first time, that Beethoven had written a cello concerto. Braley’s tone hardened at times, especially when it came to repeated notes – it must be recalled that he was a late replacement – but at its best was almost an equal joy: pearly, yet never precious. Perhaps the most magical moment of all, however, was followed the cello opening to the finale, which had sung as beautifully as I can recall, when Renaud Capuçon’s response truly made Beethoven’s modulation tell. If only the subtle elegance with which he proceeded to turn his phrases could have been matched by such commitment from the podium.

Festival d'Aix en Provence: Pascal Dusapin - Passion, 4 July 2008

(Images - copyright: Elisabeth Carecchio)

Théâtre du Jeu de paume

Lei (Her) – Barbara Hannigan
Lui (Him) – Georg Nigl
Gli Altri (The Others) – Ensemble Musicatreize (direction: Roland Hayrabedian)

Giuseppe Frigeni (director, designs)
Amélie Haas (costumes)
Dominique Bruguière (lighting)

Thierry Coduys (electronics)
Ensemble Modern Frankfurt
Franck Ollu (conductor)

Passion is Pascal Dusapin’s sixth opera. Having received its premiere on 29 June, this was its fourth performance. Interviewed in Le Figaro, Dusapin speaks of the inspiration he has derived from Monteverdi and his age: ‘‘I have a very profound relationship with this period in musical history, which greatly resembles our own in its taste and its experimental research.’ The idea of music as research has a clear kinship with IRCAM and, before that, Darmstadt. Dusapin, following a brief spell of study with Messiaen, became Iannis Xenakis’s sole acknowledged pupil in composition. Yet Dusapin’s comparison, rooted as it may be in his own experience, is not without historical merit. The Florentine Camerata was a group of intellectuals whose theoretical discussions and experiments, attempting to restore a posited unity in Attic drama of speech and song, fully bore fruit in the operas and indeed many of the madrigals of Monteverdi. Use of Italian, in a libretto put together by Dusapin himself and Rita di Letteriis, inevitably brought one a little closer, as did the subject matter: another revisiting of the Orpheus myth, although here the ‘characters’ are not even named. An especially noteworthy aspect of Dusapin’s work is the greater interest shown in Eurydice.

That said, ‘influence’ upon Dusapin would seem, to be more a matter of working in a similar spirit – as the Camerata had renewed the spirit of Greece – than of any real stylistic revival, although there were a few instances if not of quotation than of affinity. An exception might appear to be the use of the harpsichord (Ueli Wiget), synthesiser (Hermann Kretzschmar), and harp (Saara Linnea Rautio), but their – extremely effective – employment was not really of a continuo variety; instead, the instruments were used both in solo and chamber contexts. It seemed to me that the instruments tended to be used separately from one another earlier on, with some sort of fulfilment or at least climax being denoted by their subsequent combination, a practice putting me in mind of – this may denote nothing other than coincidence – Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements. A memorable instance of solo employment is in the lengthy harpsichord music – sometimes punctuated by other instruments, but essentially a solo – that accompanies Orpheus’s mime as he dons the unicorn’s head. This seemed to me to hark back less to the Italian than to the French Baroque and there was indeed some music that approached the frankly tonal. The contributions from all members of the Ensemble Modern were excellent, with Franck Ollu keeping a tight but expressive grip upon proceedings. Extended instrumental techniques were sometimes used, though nowhere near so often as one might expect in, say, the work of Helmut Lachenmann, and there was no amplification. Insofar as I could tell from a first hearing, the role of Thierry Coduys in terms of electronic spatial direction appeared beyond reproach. In all of these respects, I cannot imagine that the score could readily have been served better.

Barbara Hanningan, whom I have recently heard give outstanding performances of music by Nono, Berg, and Webern, shone once again here. Occasionally I felt that she lacked the warmth of tone I had heard her project on previous occasions, but in a new work it is often difficult to know how much this might have been attributable to the demands of the music and interpretation. Certainly her range and precision were as impressive as ever, as was her acting. Georg Nigl was subjected to equally great demands in his part. He appeared to grow into the part, his tone sounding a little pinched earlier on but extraordinarily impressive subsequently in terms of ranging from the baritonal to the haut-contre. Once again, his acting skills were noteworthy. The varied contributions of the Marseilles-based Ensemble Musikatreize were throughout of the very highest order. Its members’ musical and dramatic versatility, both individually and corporately, would have been apparent to all. Their interventions on stage and throughout the theatre always looked and sounded well-judged.

The production also seemed to me a triumph. Giuseppe Frigeni eschewed an overly naturalistic presentation, in terms of a stylisation that worked. Every movement – unlike so many current productions one could name – appeared to have a justification, and therefore told most effectively. The production drew inspiration from, rather than pointlessly railing against, the text and music, although this should in no sense be taken to betoken an unimaginative literalism. Symbolism rather was the order of the day. Lighting and costumes contributed to an impeccable team effort. In the programme, Frigeni also drew our attention – although he hardly needed to – to the centrality of the sun, or ‘le sol(o)eil’, as he put it, punning on the French words for sun and eye. The senses of watching, of being watched, and also, crucially, of transformation of time, were simply but powerfully portrayed by the figure of the sun on stage and its movements. This helped deliver us to our destination, the unsettling conclusion, in which score, performance, and production worked so closely together, to ask us whether Orpheus and Eurydice had ever really been listening to each other – or, indeed, whether they had truly been looking at each other. Passion left us asking more questions than had been answered: not a bad sign at all.