Horton - Chopin and Ravel, 16 January 2026

Wigmore Hall

Chopin: Nocturne in C minor, op.48 no.1; Nocturne in F-sharp minor, op.48 no.2
Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales
Chopin: Scherzo no.1 in B minor; Scherzo no.2 in B-flat minor, op.31; Scherzo no.3 in C-sharp minor, op.39; Scherzo no.4 in E major, op.54

The op.48 Nocturnes, two of Chopin’s greatest, make for an arresting opening to any recital. This, the latest in Tim Horton’s Wigmore Hall series, was no exception. Again, I was struck by the freshly considered nature of the pianist’s interpretations: not so as to be different for the sake of it, but rather with good musical warrant that had me think – and rethink – pieces I thought I knew well. Both outline and detail of the Nocturnes seemed to stem from their ternary (A-B-A) form. The first section of the C minor Nocturne sounded with stronger differentiation than one generally hears between melody and accompaniment, setting up greater contrast both with the beautifully voiced four-part harmony of the middle section and with the newly turbulent accompaniment of the elaborated return, arising from and audibly growing out of both. The F-sharp minor Nocturne offered, naturally, a different relationship between harmony and counterpoint at its opening, again properly contrasted, and with a different, equally convincing synthesis at the close. This may sound simple, indeed dry, in written form, but in performance offered the key to understanding. 

Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales likewise offered ternary form complement and contrast, both in themselves and with respect to Chopin. Rhythmic and harmonic insistence in the first waltz ensured that what followed – not only its immediate successor – could melt and charm, but consequently. Indeed, that sense of the greater whole was a particular strength throughout: these are not pieces to be heard individually, gaining rather from their place in the sequence. Ravel’s emergence from within the spirit and writing of Chopin was clear and meaningful. The tonal interferences to which Jim Samson referred in another excellent programme note – not the least contribution to this series – offered just the right amount of ‘bite’, as we hurtled if not quite to the threshold, then at least in the direction, of La Valse. 

Presenting four Scherzi in a row might be thought of as tempting fate. Would they work better as record than concert programme? Not a bit of it, at least in the right hands, that combination of complement and contrast in (broadly, modified or perhaps better ‘extended’?) ternary form again helping shape their success. Without forcing them into too overt a sense of progression between the four, that sense manifested itself through performance and listening: a quasi-sonata of sorts. Extremity of contrasts in the B minor Scherzo’s opening material set the parameters for what was to come, in a way not so distant from Beethoven. (There are scherzos/scherzi after all, even if without Beethoven’s gruff humour.) Yet for all the Classicism of form, which in any case can readily be exaggerated, there was a parallel, even opposing modernism in the fragmentary nature of certain figures. The trio sang, preparing the way (not unlike the Nocturnes at the beginning) for greater fury in the scherzo’s reprise. A resolute lack of sentimentality – who wants to hear a sentimental scherzo? – carried through into the Second, progressively integrative, again connecting back to the opening Nocturnes, and just a little enigmatic. Generative rhythm – present, even when in abeyance – characterised the Third. Might it have been a little more grandiloquent, in keeping with the Lisztian boldness of its opening? Perhaps, but there is no one ‘right’ way in such music, and this offered its own rewards. The turn from minor keys to E major for the Fourth Scherzo maintained impeccable line that took us in new directions, whilst nicely concluding those preceding. Structural integrity underlay keyboard wizardry and poetic expression alike.

Tally of concerts attended 2025

 

No question whatsoever whose year 2025 was: both in his first placing by a country mile and even in the composers who followed him, many with strong associations to him. That latter point must in itself say something about Boulez's influence both on musical life and thinking in general and on my interests in particular. The other major centenary, that of Berio, fared substantially less well: not, I think, what we should have been likely to expecr even 20 years ago. Why that might be is not immediately obvious, at least to me, but it is surely worth considering.

(As ever, one composer appearance in a concert scores; no further performances in that concert do.)

13 Boulez

5 Debussy, Mahler

4 Bach, Ravel, Stravinsky

3 Beethoven, Chopin, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert

2 Berg, Cage, Carter, Dvořák, Mendelssohn, Liszt

1 John Adams, Eduardo Aguilar, Julian Anderson, Benjamin Attahir, Bartók, Orlando Bass, Georg Anton Benda, Berio, Birtwistle, Brahms, Britten, Bruckner, John Casken, Layale Chaker, Anthony Cheung, Peter Maxwell Davies, Anthony Davis, James Dillon, Marcel Dupré, Giovanni Gabrieli, Helen Grime, John Harbison, Hasse, Henze, Simon Holt, Eva-Maria Houben, Dorothy Howell, Janáček, Golfam Khayam, Kurtág, Lachenmann, Ligeti, Ursula Mamlok, Philippe Manoury, Colin Matthews, Cassandra Miller,  Messiaen, Farnaz Modarresifar, Karl von Ordonnez, Purcell, Daniel Purcell, Respighi, Roussel, Kareem Roustom, Saariaho, Schoeck, Schoenberg, Schumann, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Stockhausen, Strauss, Varèse, Claude Vivier, Weber, Webern, Weill, Austin Wulliman

Salzburg Festival (6) - Aristidou/Klangforum Wien/Cambreling: Ravel, Boulez, and Varèse, 23 August 2025

Haus für Mozart

Ravel: Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé
Boulez: Improvisation sur Mallarmé III
Boulez: Éclat/Multiples
Varèse: Déserts

Sarah Aristidou

Klangforum Wien

Sylvain Cambreling (conductor)

Images: © SF/Jan Friese

Sarah Aristidou, Klangforum Wien, and Sylvain Cambreling presented another splendidly Boulezian programme for the concluding concert of the Salzburg Festival’s ‘À Pierre’ series. In one sense, it helped complete – with due provisos concerning eternal work-in-progress – Boulez’s Salzburg 1960 debut, which included the first two Improvisations sur Mallarmé, by presenting the third, alongside Eclat/Multiples, Varèse’s Déserts (with tape sections), and Ravel’s response to Pierrot lunaire, the Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé.

Quasi-Symbolist harmonies fashioned a magical portal to the concert as a whole, instrumental opening responded to by Aristidou in a deeply sympathetic performance attentive to words, music, and an alchemy that involved ‘meaning’ but went considerably beyond it. In all three songs, we heard Ravel as if through Schoenberg, the second song ‘Placet futile’ seemingly approaching Debussy too, though the melodic impulse could only ever have been Ravel’s. Klangforum Wien’s approach, perhaps unsurprisingly, sounded all the more fashioned from a new music standpoint—which is not to say that it lacked warmth, any more than Boulez’s own music-making did, far from it. The suspended song – to borrow from Nono – of ‘Surgi de la croupe et du bond’ seemed to offer a further opening to the explorations ahead as a conclusion to those so far.

Nowadays, we are more likely – when we have chance at all – to hear Pli selon pli as a whole; it was interesting to step back and hear it in part, like this as part of such a varied, yet coherent programme. Moreover, Klangforum Wien and Cambreling seemed to approach it more as an ‘early’ performance, closer to Boulez at the time of composition or not long after, as opposed to his increasingly luxuriant, even Romantic way with the score in the twenty-first century. Bar some early stiffness in Cambreling’s direction, it worked well, with initial contrast between something more rebarbative – these things are relative – and Aristidou’s spinning of the vocal line, ravishing melismata and all, in itself instructive. Ensemble tapestry grew before our ears, four flutes crucial to that proliferation. It was, moreover, very much an ensemble rather than orchestral sound. Nevertheless, there was no denying that sultry heat, nor the sublimated frenzy.

Éclat/Multiples offered as much contrast as complement, though the two necessarily involve one another-pli selon pli, as it were. The initial éclat to Éclat could be missed by none; all the more remarkable, was its subsequent dissolution in proliferation (resonance included). Here was responsorial Boulez already, in timbre – piano and various instruments and combinations – and much else. Webern’s example was readily apparent, probably more so than in the preceding piece. There were all manner of wonderful moments: combination of mandolin, harp, and piano lingered long in the mind. It was ultimately, though in their connection, their progress, and the magical surprises of diversion, if only in retrospect, that the substance of the musical journey was truly instantiated. Once fully within the labyrinth, even part of its fabric, one could only be mesmerised, albeit actively so.

 Certain sounds at the opening of Déserts – percussion especially, but wind too – seemed familiar yet also unfamiliar from what had gone before. Hieratic, primaeval, yet urban, here was the uncompromising voice of Varèse. Noise, sound, or music? Why choose? Partly, the work suggests that we ought, or at least might, or does it? At this distance, it seemed to suggest awe in the face of what was yet historically to come, but also foreboding. One found patterns, progression, even ‘meaning’ or the illusion thereof, both in the tape music and in its relationship to other material: an endless and endlessly fascinating task. Grand yet fragile, abstract yet evocative, it cast quite a spell as sounds ricocheted around the Haus für Mozart.

Aimard - Ravel, 27 March 2025

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Jeux d’eau and Valses nobles et sentimentales (excerpts)
Le Tombeau de Couperin: ‘Prélude’, ‘Forlane’, ‘Toccata’
Miroirs: ‘Noctuelles’, ‘Alborada del gracioso’, ‘La Vallée des cloches’
Gaspard de la nuit

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Mathieu Amalric (speaker)

Presented more as show than recital, it was nevertheless the musical elements of this Queen Elizabeth Hall celebration of Ravel that shone through. The conceit did no harm; for one thing, it was a welcome opportunity to see Mathieu Amalric on a London stage. He took the part of a friend of Pierre-Laurent Aimard, calling to collect him to travel to a recital Aimard would be giving. Whilst Aimard did some last-minute practice – or rather played around with other music by Ravel – Amalric read from material with which his friend had helped inform him and also filmed him. The script could have done with more work, to be honest, but it did not get in the way; the warmth of their collaboration was evident. 

And so, when the lights went down, the music began. Aimard’s selection of sheet music from the floor – we have all been there – and (very superior) busking through a few bars of Jeux d’eau, followed by excerpts from Valses nobles et sentimentales offered a winning amuse gueule, though naturally one wished to hear more, whilst retaining a sense of eavesdropping on practice. Then the doorbell rang: enter Amalric. He suggested that Aimard play the ‘Epilogue’, which served to cast a nostalgic shadow even over music we had not heard, lilt and voicing delectable. 

Other readings followed, interspersed with music: Ravel writing to his mother in 1916 with a wounded reproach that he had not heard from her, another letter from the same year on ‘active duty’ opposing ‘patriotic’ efforts to prohibit performances of enemy music, such as that of Schoenberg and Bartók. The three movements from Le Tombeau de Couperin certainly gained something from enhanced awareness of their wartime context, as did the three from Miroirs from a 1905 letter to Maurice Delage, its talk of ‘smelting castles’ and the ‘wonderful symphony’ of their sounds nice preparation for the beauty in precision of ‘Noctuelles’ as composition and performance. Talk from another source of the cliché of Ravel’s Spain as more real than the real thing could momentarily be believed, in the Lisztian virtuosity of ‘Alborado del gracioso’, not least its exultant close. The more mysterious, even mystical realm of ‘La Vallée des cloches’ gave a sense of French music to come, Messiaen, even Boulez, heard at a different aural temperature, which paved the way for Gaspard de la nuit. 

This was the concert ‘proper’, a performance that reminded me, among other things, how infrequently we hear this masterpiece. Why? Perhaps pianists still shy away from its demands, or only have it in their repertoire for a while. One can hardly blame them. At any rate, it was a treat from beginning to end chez Aimard. The unmistakeable shimmering of ‘Ondine’ registered with a freshness that, just maybe, had some roots in the novelty of presentation as well as in the excellent pianism and musicianship. Aimard’s wondrous spinning of a musical line, unfailingly eloquent, revelled in the Bösendorfer and its sound world. The terrifying yet somehow seductive insistence of ‘Le Gibet’ was heard at proper ‘temperature’ too, as if the myriad repeated notes throughout the evening had been leading here. ‘Scarbo’, his laughter and shadows, could be seen as well as heard, a still more fitting culmination with roots in all that had gone before. Had I not seen Aimard’s two hands with my own eyes, I might have sworn he had four.

Degout/LSO/Hannigan - Roussel, Ravel, Britten, and Haydn, 13 March 2025

Barbican Hall

Images: Mark Allan

Roussel: Le Festin de l’araignée (symphonic fragments)
Ravel, arr. Anthony Girard: Histoires naturelles
Britten: Les Illuminations
Haydn: Symphony no.104, ‘London’

Stéphane Degout (baritone)
London Symphony Orchestra
Barbara Hannigan (soprano/conductor)

Barbara Hannigan is unquestionably a star in today’s musical firmament. Anyone who has heard (and seen) her Ligeti Mysteries of the Macabre, live or recorded, would neither doubt nor forget that. I have been an admirer, even a devotee since I first heard her, singing songs by Berg and Webern with the Scharoun Ensemble and none other than Pierre Boulez in 2008. Her more recent, yet by now established, forays into conducting, often in combination with song, have never failed to interest and to excite. And she clearly has a deep fondness for Haydn, regularly conducting symphonies from across his œuvre. What, then, is not to like, especially in combination with the LSO and another outstanding artist, Stéphane Degout? 

Very little, in fact, though I found myself somewhat disappointed by the Haydn symphony this time around, it seeming not yet really to have settled. Proceedings nonetheless got off to a fine start with the suite, once popular yet now somewhat out of fashion, from Roussel’s 1913 Diaghilev ballet Le Festin de l’araignée. The parade of animal victims for the spider in his web had a keen narrative thrust, full of character, and vividly but far from only pictorial. Hannigan and the LSO above all imparted a sense of how it ‘moved’, even without dancers. It may not have the magic of, say, Ravel and Debussy, but it charmed, without overstaying its welcome. However different it may be in most respects from more celebrated Ballet russes commissions, there was kinship to be sensed, both in work and performance. It was far-sighted, moreover, of Roussel wittily to write a part for mobile telephone to coincide with nightfall on the lonely garden. Who would have imagined? To quote Edward Bhesania’s programme note on the music itself, ‘Nothing has changed and yet everything has changed.’ 

A piece Ravel did not orchestrate will probably always be too tempting for composers to resist, even if others have had a shot before them. I wish I could say Anthony Girard’s orchestration of Histoire naturelles offered revelations, but it sounded more workaday than that. It was skilful enough and could hardly fail when it came closer to what Ravel himself might have done, but the somewhat heavy string writing (doubtless a sense of mock-gravity to depict the peacock, but was it quite the right sense?) at the opening of the first song, ‘Le Paon’) gave a distinctly odd impression, especially given Degout’s seemingly effortless way with words and music alike. Indeed, his performance offered a masterclass in French song, all the supposed difficulties (they are real enough) with the language melting away. Again, I could hear Girard’s intent in the percussive clatter of ‘Le Grillon’, but it did not seem quite right. I was more persuaded by the closing guinea-fowl song, whose orchestration seemed genuinely to have one see, even to feel, with her. So too of course did Degout’s vividly communicative vocalism: not a million miles from the theatre, yet subtly distinct. 

Hannigan both sang and conducted for Britten’s Les Illuminations, the Rimbaud text making it seem more at home with its predecessors than otherwise it might have done. Lucy Walker’s point, in her programme note, that ‘perhaps sheltered by the non-English language here, Britten seems to be letting his hair down and channelling some of Rimbaud’s … spirit,’ seemed to me very well captured by the performance, Hannigan clearly inspired rather than inhibited by the exigencies of her dual role. The LSO, never less than very good, seemed a few notches more incisive here, doubtless partly as a result. From the opening bars, richness of string sound seemed to take us to a different level. Hannigan as soloist proved just as communicative as Degout, as were other, instrumental soloists, first among equals leader Benjamin Gilmore in ‘Phrase et Antique’. Rhythms were tight or swung, as required. A well-nigh operatic ‘Marine’ proved key to necessary transformation of mood. ‘Being Beauteous’ captured its particular qualities, not least the sense of a young heart racing. Throughout, Britten and his interpreters permitted Rimbaud to speak: not unmediated, for that would be a nonsense, but heightened, or at least a little transformed. ‘Assez connu. Les arrêts de la vie. Ô Rumeurs et Visions! Départ dans l’affection et le bruit neufs!’ Indeed. 

The first movement of Haydn’s final London Symphony, no.104, augured well. It had grandeur in its introduction, nowadays too often missed, as if Hannigan recalled Boulez’s extraordinary recording with the Vienna Philharmonic. (Perhaps she did.) It had no tedious mannerisms and was very well balanced, inner string parts sounding as if in a quartet. Tempo – not only speed, but mood – was similarly well judged. A dignified account of the slow movement offered generally good command of line and detail, held nicely in balance, though there were a couple of occasions in which tempo seemed to slip rather than to be knowingly modified. The minuet, taken fast, had a fine swagger. Alas, an excessive, almost endless holding back at the beginning of the trio and in several cognate passages made a mess of that (at least for me). The finale seemed to me just too fast, lacking in that grandeur that older conductors, not only Boulez, brought to the work. Playing, though, was excellent, and Haydn’s invention could still be relished.

Gay/RSB/Jurowski - Telemann, Boismortier, Ravel, Ibert, and Strauss, 12 October 2023

Konzerthaus

Telemann: Bourlesque de Quixotte, TWW 55:G10
Boismortier: Don Quichotte chez la duchesse, op.97: ballet music
Ravel: Don Quichotte à Dulcinée
Ibert: Quatre chansons de Don Quichotte
Strauss: Don Quixote, op.35

Paul Gay (bass-baritone)

Alejandro Regueira Caumel (viola)

Konstanze von Gutzeit (cello)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Vladimir Jurowksi (conductor)

Images: Robert Niemeyer

‘Wie klingt “Don Quijote”?’ was the question posed by (and in) the programme to this splendid tour through musical depictions of Cervantes’s would-be knight-errant. To answer the question, we discovered that Don Quixote sounds in various ways, yet always colourfully and, aptly enough, endearingly too. Vladimir Jurowski’s gift for programming, so strong a feature of his time as Music Director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, has not deserted him in Berlin. The Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra/Rundfunksinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB) is clearly thriving under his leadership, here in music ranging from Telemann to Ravel. 

Telemann’s turned twice as a composer to Cervantes’s novel, in 1761 writing a one-act opera on an episode from it: Don Quijote auf der Hochzeit des Camacho. (The young Mendelssohn would also turn to this same episode.) This ‘burlesque’ orchestral suite from 1739 takes in different episodes over the course of its seven movements and proved in performance both splendidly enjoyable and vividly theatrical. Its opening French overture might indeed have been the curtain-raiser to an opera of its own, here driven in fine balance between rhythm and harmony. We heard – and may have felt we saw – horses hooves in our hero’s celebrated tilting at windmills, Sancho Panza’s bruising and his donkey’s gallop, dragging and then absurdly accelerating, and much more, the final movement a well-earned sprint to the finish. Well-chosen percussion effects from triangle to tambourine added to the pictorial jollity. 

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier write his ‘comédie lyrique’ Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse on an episode in which Telemann found courtly repose and perhaps a greater emotional depth than elsewhere in his suite. Here we heard only some of the orchestral (ballet) music: the overture, a sequence of march, two tambourins, and second march, and a chaconne. (An old BBC broadcast with splendid cast may be found here for the eighty minutes or so of the entire work.)  Another arresting overture, this time actually written for the theatre, had us all but see the curtain and its rise. Notes and drama, even in this purely instrumental music, fairly flew off the players’ pages. Jurowski and the orchestra, moreover, conveyed the composer’s voice, close in some ways to Rameau yet quite different in others, with great élan, the conductor himself leading from tambourine in the first march. Oboes, bassoons, and harpsichord offered a fine Gallic contrast in the second tambourin. The chaconne proved piquant and full of surprises, from its opening gong stroke onwards. Through its twists and turns of mood and material, Jurowski never forgot this was a single dance; nor did we. 

Bass-baritone Paul Gay joined the orchestra for two sets of songs intended for Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s film starring Feodor Chaliapin. Ravel’s short song-cycle, his final completed work, was written too late for inclusion, but Jacques Ibert’s four songs were sung both in the film and in a recording made by Chaliapin and Ibert. Neither composer sets Cervantes: Ravel opted for contemporary texts by Paul Morand, whereas Ibert’s selection mixed old and new with Pierre de Ronsard and Alexander Arnoux. Both composers, even with small orchestra, Ibert’s (saxophone included) somewhat larger than Ravel, could offer a more varied instrumental palette; yet one could readily fancy one heard something of a ‘French’ ear for colour continued from their eighteenth-century predecessor. Gay presented resolutely unsentimental, communicative performances, relishing the melismata in third of Ravel’s three songs, the ‘Chanson à boire’, in which the composer’s ‘Spanish’ voice comes to the fore one last time, as much as the keen narrative of Ibert’s ‘Chanson à Dulcinée’ and the undeniably filmic qualities of the farewell, ‘Chanson de la mort de Don Quichotte’. 

And so we came to Strauss’s tone-poem, the excellent Alejandro Regueira Caumel and Konstanze von Gutzeit stepping forward as ‘soloists’, yet acting collegially as much as highlighted leaders of their sections. The RSB’s versatility, on show throughout, was certainly evident here, immediately sounding, for want of a better word, Straussian. Jurowski’s way with the score was fascinating, more modernistic, even strangely Stravinskian, than I can recall having heard. Generally brisk and admirably clear, I could not help but feel there was loss as well as gain, but we shall always have Karajan, Kempe, and others to return to when we wish. His trademark formalism certainly paid off in delineation of the work’s variation form and sharp individual characterisation of each episode. In any case, as the mood darkened, the orchestra’s colours, especially from the RSB brass, spoke increasingly for themselves. Quite a storm was whipped up, not only via the wind-machine. In the later duet of two bassoons it was, strangely, Stravinsky who once again came to mind. Woodwind in general were pleasingly rumbunctious. If this were ultimately a somewhat distanced performance, Caumel and Gutzeit notwithstanding, like the rest of the programme, it had me think—and, in a number of ways, reconsider.

Musikfest Berlin (2) - Varèse, Haddad, Ravel, Bach-Benjamin, and Schoenberg, 2 September 2023

Kammermusiksaal, Philharmonie

Varèse: Octandre
Saed Haddad: Mirage, Mémoire, Mystère, for string quartet
Ravel: Trois Poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé
Bach, arr. Benjamin: Canon & Fugue
Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony no.1, op.9

Anna Prohaska (soprano)
Ensemble Modern
George Benjamin (conductor)

Image: © Fabian Schellhorn / Berliner Festspiele

The first of two Musikfest Berlin Proms from Anna Prohaska, Ensemble Modern, and George Benjamin offered music on a small ensemble scale that proved anything but ‘small’ in terms of ambition and intensity, nor of course achievement. A hallmark of all we heard was concentration, for this was highly concentrated, often richly textured music, which also called for – and seemed to receive – a high level of concentration from the audience in Berlin’s Kammermusiksaal, the smaller of the two halls in its Philharmonie.

 

In Varèse’s Octandre, Christian Hommel’s oboe initially appeared to be searching—but searching for what? Ultimately for something piercing, impervious, something that gave the impression of always having been there, however recently discovered. Stravinskian echoes, above all of the Rite, yet also of Symphonies of Wind Instruments, did battle, though they were so familiar, so integrated, they were barely ghosts, more guests. Delphine Roche’s piccolo solo, when it came, suggested something more playful, yet ensemble response was implacable as ever, akin to seeing or rather hearing the same object from another standpoint, both of angle and distance. Yet there was difference in what we heard, for instance the duet between double bass and bassoon, spreading to the ensemble as a whole. Brass rightly took no prisoners. Varèse, not unlike Stravinsky himself, remained. 

Saed Haddad, a Benjamin pupil, was represented by his Mirage, Mémoire, Mystère (2011-12), for string quartet, described as being for violin and string trio. That interests me, since I did not really make that distinction when listening. Perhaps I will next time, for I hope there will be a next time. A richly turbulent opening put me in mind right away of Schoenberg’s developing variation. Indeed, there were a few striking coincidences of pitch and harmony, though I suspect that is more that I was listening with Schoenberg in mind than intent or reference. Certainly, there was an emotional intensity to this single-movement work I can imagine that composer admiring. Its development, or transformation, was rhythmic too, through a kaleidoscope of related moods that, in retrospect, seemed to convey the broad overall progression of the title.

Prohaska joined the Ensemble, and Benjamin returned, for Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, the work in which he most clearly approaches Schoenberg (Pierrot, though not only Pierrot), without ever sounding, nor indeed writing, ‘like’ him: not even in the extraordinary opening string harmonics of ‘Soupir’, here perfectly realised in performance. Ravel, at its most characteristic, seems perhaps more the destination than the starting-point, both instrumentally and vocally, yet a floated languor heard and felt, too precise for Debussy, and indeed quite unlike him in other ways too, could only ever have been Ravel’s. It was as if a Japanese engraving, with apologies for the orientalism, had come to life. ‘Placet futile’ proved, doubtless with similar danger on my part, a garden of delights, at times more animated, more heated even, though cooling beautifully too. Prohaska proved a vividly communicative soloists, really using the French words to shape and colour her line. ‘Surgi de la coupe et du bond’ presented flight and descent, movement and stasis, all art of a journey that chilled in timbre and harmony, yet also invited, whilst holding us at an almost sacral distance. ‘A rien expirer annonçant/Une rose dans les ténèbres.’ Some mysteries are both for us and not.

Benjamin’s 2007 Canon & Fugue arranges the ‘Canon alla Ottava’ and ‘Contrapunctus VII’ from Bach’s Art of Fugue for an unusual ensemble: flute (silent in the first movement), two horns, and string quartet (which can be expanded to smallish string orchestra). This is unquestionably modernist Bach, not necessarily in the line of, though surely with kinship to that of Schoenberg, Webern, Berio, and others. That sense of concentration was again apparent, indeed alive, in both movements, the sustaining power of horns (and other particular qualities) employed to excellent effect in the former. The Fugue was less frenetic and furious, though no less concentrated, early use of stopped horns and string pizzicato not only arresting but also seemingly aiding that transformation of tempo. There were many timbral delights and surprises, not least the way a combination of horn, violin, and viola sounded uncannily like an organ, yet this was always a way of hearing Bach.

So too, albeit at a greater distance, is much of Schoenberg. It was fitting, then, to end with his First Chamber Symphony, although this was the performance about which I had a few doubts. A little more than fifteen years ago, I heard Pierre Boulez conduct this same work in the same hall, with the Scharoun Ensemble of players drawn from the Berlin Philharmonic. That struck me as an ideal performance, but perhaps I was simply more used to the underlying assumptions and aesthetic. Benjamin, I think, took the opening, once past the short introduction, not only faster but at a speed at least to rival the earlier Boulez, of Domaine musical vintage. One expects a bias towards wind in this version (as opposed to Schoenberg’s two arrangements for full orchestra, where strings will tend to dominate) yet, to begin with, that balance seemed somewhat exaggerated, even harsh. The performance settled, yet Benjamin’s approach had the merit of reminding us just what difficult music this can, and arguably should, be. Perhaps we have allowed Schoenberg to mellow a little too much, in post-Siegfried-Idyll-manner. When the music slowed, moreover, it really slowed. The scherzo section was urgent, yet in character, that is not merely fast; character seemed to grow out of Schoenberg’s instrumentation and use of those instruments, almost as much as his harmony. This was Schoenberg on a coiled spring, which could nonetheless relax in the ‘slow movement’. Moreover, the internal and external role played by fourths was certainly to be heard, as if this were a matter of casing and inner mechanism. It was another performance of concentrated riches, then, even if not always the riches I had expected.

‘Après un rêve’ – Despax: Poulenc, Fauré, Ravel, and Saint-Saëns, 1 July 2023

Wigmore Hall

Poulenc: Les Soirées de Nazelles
Fauré, arr. Despax: Après un rêve, op.7 no.1
Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit
Saint-Saëns-Liszt, arr. Horowitz: Danse macabre, S 555

Emmanuel Despax (piano)

By way of a CD launch, Emmanuel Despax gave a wonderful Saturday lunchtime programme, as deeply committed as it was unfailingly stylish, of French music at the Wigmore Hall. First came Poulenc’s Les Soirées de Nazelles, the composer’s 1930s ‘portraits’ or, as he a little confusingly also called them, ‘variations’, initially improvised for friends assembled by his countryside piano, introduced by a ‘Préambule’ and cadenza. That ‘preamble’, essentially a prelude, opened in Prokofiev-like manner, soon melting slightly to reveal a softer, yet never merely soft, Poulenc centre, all despatched with characteristic élan. Momentum sprang from Despax’s repeated notes – ‘Extrêmement animé et décidé’ – though he always maintained the impression of allowing due time and space; it was never hurried. The darker cadenza, albeit illuminated by shafts of musical light, gave a fine sense of extemporisation. Then came that parade of characteristic ‘variations’, the first delightfully dry, its successor, a full-bodied ‘La cœur sur la main’ turning to the heart. The composer’s indications for each were respected to the letter and, more important, in their spirit, exquisitely voiced, as if fruits of marriage between music of the French clavecinistes and Romantic preludes or character pieces. Scampering certainty and momentary doubt of ‘Le contentement de soi’; mock pomposity of ‘La suite dans les idées’: time in sinuous near-suspension, or at least elongation, in ‘Le goût du malheur’: by way of such delights, we turned to a second cadenza whose open fanfare seemed at first to suggest the Organ Concerto, again more an occasion for metrical, fantasia-like freedom than overt display, and a lightly summative ‘Final’ with a closing touch of something more darkly enigmatic. 

Despax’s own transcription of Fauré’s ‘Après un rêve’, which gave its name to the recital as a whole, sang beautifully in two piano registers, with a proper sense of the original and its words, yet without being unduly limited by them. As ‘itself’, the piano wove its magic around, a little in the line of Liszt. A Lisztian spirit of the transcendental variety is and was present also in Gaspard de la nuit, ‘Ondine’ beginning to shimmer in Fauré’s shadows—or rather, its waters did. A fine balance between the pictorial and something beyond, allure and (rightful) distrust, coolness and heat, is Ravel’s own, but here it was Despax’s too, all painted with the most atmospheric precision. The measured, inexorable tread of ‘Le gibet’ evoked the subjectivity of solitude in the midday sun. Then the flickering malevolence of ‘Scarbo’ burst forth, punctured yet never vanquished by pregnant silences. Virtuosity here is a sine qua non, yet was only the starting point for musical performance. 

Liszt’s transcription of Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre, further embellished in 1942 by Vladimir Horowitz, emerged in context in duly diabolical fashion, and very much in nineteenth-century voice. Insistent and fantastic, and both as vivid and as virtuosic as Gaspard, it spoke with a freedom that suggested paraphrase yet was not: ideal for such repertoire. Debussy's ‘Clair de lune’ made for a magical encore postlude. This will clearly be a recording to savour.

Prom 9: Finch/BBC NOW/Matiakh - Ravel, Beamish, and Rimsky-Korsakov, 21 July 2022

Royal Albert Hall

Ravel: Shéhérazade – ouverture de féerie
Sally Beamish: Hive (world premiere)
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade

Catrin Finch (harp)

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Ariane Matiakh (conductor)

Copyright: BBC/Chris Christodoulou 

Two responses to the Persian legend of Scheherazade, the first clearly influenced by the second, sandwiched a new work (seemingly intended to be danced, though not here) for harp and orchestra in this, the first of my visits to this year’s BBC Proms. Ravel’s early overture Shéhérazade—not his song-cycle of the same name—was heard first in an excellent performance from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Ariane Matiakh. Steven Hudson’s warmly inviting oboe solo, free yet directed, swiftly joined by other fine woodwind soloists, imparted a fitting air of fantasy, of unfolding, Ravel’s motivic working—whatever prejudices one might hear concerning ‘national’ styles—crucial to the piece’s success and that of its performance too. Without ventriloquising the sound of a French orchestra, the BBC NOW assumed its spirit. If Matiakh could not quite conceal all the corners, a strong case was made. And if a certain sectional quality inherent to the piece endured, it was nicely sectional, as it were, suggesting both variety and a narrative path. This was a well-shaped reading, whose hothouse passages were relished, albeit integrated within a greater whole. Intervention from an audience member’s mobile telephone over several bars was less welcome, though just as apparent. 

Sally Beamish’s Hive, a BBC co-commission with the World Harp Congress, was at first a pandemic casualty, due for its premiere in the dread year of 2020. Its belated first performance was received enthusiastically, taking us through the four seasons of a beehive. ‘Winter: Inside the Hive’ opened promisingly: a non-hackneyed yet evocative impression of the season, here (to quote the composer) depicting ‘a close mass of bees, all shivering their flight muscles to keep their body temperature constant’. There was cold, yes, as there was shivering; but there was also a muscular strength, married to and in some cases expressed through orchestral colour. If the language were relatively ‘traditional’, it was definitely ‘traditional plus’, no mere resting on laurels (or honeycombs). Rhythmic drive increased as the movement progressed, interspersed with or, perhaps better, punctuated by passages of wonder. 

Spring brought well-nigh onomatopoeic birdsong, renewed energy, and dance, a bee’s ‘waggle dance’ included. Lightly scored—this is music for harp and orchestra, after all—there was nonetheless variety within that lightness, Catrin Finch’s harp playing surely definitive here (and elsewhere). One could readily visualise the drama throughout. Summer I found somewhat filmic, though it began in darker fashion. Again, the music’s representative character was evident as rival potential queens fought for their title and drones subsequently seized their moment. Autumn, for me at least, proved the most intriguing, both concluding and offering an uncertain future. With character and events of its own, its fade into the unknown had one stop, pause, think, and question whether this necessary cycle would continue forever. 

Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite Scheherazade had the second half to itself. I rather liked Matiakh’s unassuming performance, determined to give the work something of that ‘symphonic’ stature rather than simply wallowing, but the Royal Albert Hall’s notorious acoustic proved less than ideal, swallowing up much sound before ever it could reach us. A severe opening, immediately balanced by post-Mendelssohnian woodwind and then the Scheherazade violin solo itself (leader Lesley Hatfield sweet and sinuous throughout) seemed a little flattened by the wall of sound that followed in the first movement. Others proved more variegated—or perhaps it was my ears that adapted to the acoustic. At any rate, all four movements flowed well, the first boasting lovely duetting between violin and various woodwind soloists. They too shone in ‘The Tale of the Kalendar Prince’, winningly pictorial, even swashbuckling, but never only that, always musical. 

One could take ‘The Young Prince and Princess’ as an object lesson in orientalism, but this sympathetic performance brought one as close to ‘true’ sentiment as Rimsky comes here. It was spun gorgeously, yet languor was never excessive. Its metrical transformations, Liszt never far away, charmed. Like the fourth movement of Beamish’s Hive, the finale here sounded from the outset as a last chapter. Indeed, a keen sense of narrative was a hallmark of Matiakh’s performance throughout, revisiting and rehearing past material included. ‘Symphonic’? Yes, if you will, though perhaps ‘cyclical’ would be better. Ultimately, who cares? It was enjoyable and, at times, delectable.

Bavouzet/Shishkin: Debussy, Liszt, Bartók, and Ravel, 13 January 2022

Wigmore Hall

Debussy, arr. Ravel and Kocsis: Nocturnes
Liszt: Concerto pathétique, S 258
Bartók, arr. Kocsis: Two Pictures, op.10
Ravel: La Valse

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Dmitry Shishkin (pianos).

A difficult choice, this: Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Dmitry Shishkin in a fascinating programme of two-piano music at the Wigmore Hall, or Lise Davidsen and Leif Ove Andsnes in Grieg, Strauss, and Wagner at the Barbican. It is difficult to imagine those attending the latter having been disappointed; at any rate, having tossed a coin in favour of the former, I was not. 

First, we heard Debussy’s Nocturnes. I honestly would never have guessed the opening of ‘Nuages’ had not been written for two pianos, rather than transcribed by Ravel, had I not known: testament, surely, both to arrangement and performance. (I am not sure we need worry in this context about differences of meaning between ‘transcription’ and ‘arrangement’.) We heard a wonderful freedom within metre. Darkness of ambiguity seemed, if anything, enhanced by the sound of two Yamahas rather than orchestra. Dynamics, tempo, balance, shaping: all convinced and had one think they could not have been improved on. ‘Fêtes’ sounded more different from the original, more ‘transcribed’, but that was surely the nature of the material, rendered into piano monochrome. It was a sharp, lively performance, occasionally percussive, having me think at times of Bartók. ‘Sirènes’, which Ravel also transcribed but which he admitted to having found especially difficult, was here given in a transcription by Zoltán Kocsis. I did not realise this until afterwards, but I admit to having first found the arrangement sound closest to Ravel himself (so much for my ears!) and thereafter the most enigmatic of all, which is doubtless as it should have been. In performance, there was languor enough, though it always sounded directed. 

The genesis of what we heard from Debussy, Ravel, and Kocsis was not entirely straightforward. Essentially, Ravel transcribed ‘Sirènes’ first, to accompany the first two movements, as already transcribed by Raoul Bardac. Then, eight years later, Ravel added his own versions of ‘Nuages’ and ‘Fêtes’, whilst Kocsis’s ‘Sirènes’ dates from seven decades later. However, Liszt’s Concerto pathétique is arguably more complicated (not atypical, for a composer who tended to move on quickly, creating multiple versions, rather than chiselling away at a single work). At any rate, having passed through two solo piano workings of this material, the latter far closer to the two piano version than the first, Liszt rightly settled on two pianos as offering the superior medium for the concerto contrasts of this material. Such was clear from the grand, even grandiloquent, virtuosic opening dialogue; but it was also readily apparent in melting towards more tender sounds. The sheer weight of sound impressed at times, though even then it was never monolithic. Bavouzet and Shishkin imparted a strong sense that Liszt’s music might readily have been orchestrated, but also kept one happy that it had not. It sang too, as only Liszt can. If the roulades sometimes stand on the edge of absurdity when heard for two pianos, they were despatched with conviction, glitter, and crucially, heart. Sometimes, it was difficult to credit that there were only two pianists at work. From a pianistic standpoint, this was little short of stupendous, Liszt’s rhetoric harnessed and sublimated. 

Bartók himself arranged his Two Pictures, op.10, for solo piano. Kocsis extended the idea to two pianos. It was quite a revelation to hear: imaginative and faithful, above all pianistic. ‘In Full Flower’, the first picture, sounded, just as much as in orchestral guise, as though it were well on the way to Bluebeard’s Castle, in a performance of sad nobility. Both muscular and tender, often both, it did Bartók and Kocsis proud. ‘Village Dance’ was thrillingly responsive—and responsorial. This performance captured to a tee so many facets, melodic, harmonic, metrical, and more, of Bartók’s style and meaning. Lisztian and other inheritances were refracted, remoulded, even bent to new ends. ‘New wine demands new bottles,’ as Liszt once put it.

La Valse rumbles in a different yet no less ‘authentic’ way in its two-piano version. It was fascinating to hear that opening in the aural light of Bartók. Bavouzet and Shishkin conveyed with relish Ravel’s inflections of Viennese lilt, not necessarily as one would expect with an orchestra, but on their pianos’ own terms. Perhaps there was greater extremity here; there were certainly different sounds and implications. And what a feast, again, of pianism. As an encore, we heard Ravel’s early Sites auriculaires in two short movements. A slinky ‘Habanera’ prefaced a barnstorming ‘Entre cloches,’ its spatial qualities splendidly realised.

Cooper - Schubert, Ravel, and Liszt, 28 November 2021

Wigmore Hall

Schubert: Piano Sonata no.16 in A minor, D 845
Ravel: Sonatine
Liszt: Années de pèlerinage: Troisieme année, S 163: ‘Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este’
Ravel: Jeux d’eaux; Valses nobles et sentimentales
Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody no.13 in A minor, S 244

Imogen Cooper (piano)

A concert of two halves, this. Imogen Cooper’s severely insistent account of Schubert’s A minor Sonata, D 845, contrasted strongly with more colourful, yielding Ravel and Liszt. That, you might say, would be as expected, and you would have a point. I nevertheless longed for a little more in the way of chiaroscuro in Cooper’s Schubert, whilst acknowledging this may have been as much a matter of taste as anything else. Rhythm and, perhaps to a lesser extent, motivic working were to the fore in an angry first movement, whose uneasily wandering development section intrigued and did anything but console. There was greater ambiguity to the Andante con moto theme and variations, which again wandered in alienated, darkly Romantic fashion. An estranged lilt hilted at something else, but it was only a hint. Mercurial insistence in the scherzo led to still bleaker unease in its trio, whose ultimate note seemed to be of exhaustion. One would hardly expect the closing rondo to comfort. It certainly did not, though there were a few more ambiguous passages again. Ultimately, however, this was a bleak conclusion to a bleak reading. 

There was no question of playing Ravel as if it were Schubert (however understood). The Sonatine benefited from lighter touch and mood, and greater flexibility. There seemed to me, right from the start, to be greater awareness or at least communication of harmonic rhythm, and Gallic charm too, however clichéd the phrase. All three movements, albeit with different contours, character, and pulse, glistened from within. A liquid—aptly enough—account of Jeux d’eaux had backbone too, in a performance that was clearly deeply considered, whilst remaining quite free of pedantry. Valses nobles et sentimentales showed greater kinship, through its waltz rhythms, with Schubert. This was unashamedly big-boned Ravel, but none the worse for it; until it yielded, that is. For the second waltz proved more languorous and flexible; the delectable pain of the third was well-judged; and so on, through magical rubato and keen awareness of what had passes, musically and perhaps extra-musically too. There was a ghostly suavity to the ‘Epilogue’. 

After the Sonatine, we heard the first of two pieces by Liszt: ‘Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este’. Its muscular virtuosity also offered glistening results, very much here in the heat of the midday sun. It was forthright, yes, but it sang, in a performance of fine musical integrity. The A minor Hungarian Rhapsody is, well, rhapsodic—and sounded as such. Fervent Lisztian I may be, but I should quite happily never hear the Hungarian Rhapsodies again. They have their fans, though, and in her closing number, Cooper did not shy away from giving a grandly rhetorical performance, imbued with a rubato that evoked both temporal robbery and another, diabolical form of bargaining.

L'Heure espagnole and Gianni Schicchi, Royal Academy of Music, 25 November 2021

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Concepcíon – Bernadette Johns
Ramiro – Will Pate
Don Iñigo Gomez – Michael Ronan
Torquemada – Ryan Vaughan Davies
Gonzalve – Liam Bonthrone

Gianni Schicchi – Patrick Keefe
Lauretta – Kathleen Nic Dhiarmada
Rinuccio – Ryan Vaughan Davies
Gherardo – Samuel Kibble
Simone – Wonsick Oh
Betto – Daniel Vening
Marco – Will Pate
Nella – Sophie Sparrow
La Ciesca – Luiza Willert
Zita – Bernadette Johns
Spinelloccio, Notary – Michael Ronan
Gherardina – Clara Orif
Pinellino – Johannes Moore
Guccio – Charles Cunliffe
Buoso Donati – Tom O’Kelly

Stephen Barlow (director)
Yannis Thavoris (designs)
Jake Wiltshire (lighting)

Royal Academy Sinfonia
Alice Farnham (conductor)

Images: Craig Fuller

 

How wonderful at last to return to opera at the Royal Academy of Music. (I caught an excellent concert of chamber music by Bartók and Eötvös from musicians coached by Tamara Stefanovich earlier this term.) Many of London’s best opera performances come from our conservatoires, young, enthusiastic musicians aided to act as a company, with none of the grind of repertoire routine, the ‘star system’, or worst of all, agent-determined casting that can blight bigger stages. The smaller size of theatres helps too. To see characters’ faces, especially in a fast-moving, highly reactive ensemble piece such as Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, is worth a great deal.

 

It is a work that tends to bring out the best in its performers—and certainly did here. Stephen Barlow directed a staging set roughly halfway between the time of composition and the present day. I do not think I have ever seen a production set in 1299, and cannot say I have any particular desire to do so. An abiding idea of Florence will always loom large, though, and so it did here: in this case, tinged with music. Composer Buoso Donati’s grand piano helped fill the stage, a drunken Betto (Daniel Vening) occasionally hammering out a tune on it. Monuments to past greatness, or at least renown, included a Maggio Musicale poster for one of Donati’s operas. A large instrument case inherited from the set for L’Heure espagnole, provided a place to hide the body where necessary. But the crucial action lay, as it were, in the interaction, clearly well planned and rehearsed both by Barlow and conductor Alice Farnham. Yannis Thavoris’s costumes contributed to the framework for delineation of character: Bernadette Johns’s Zita every inch the wheelchair-ridden (malingering?) battleaxe with airs, Will Pate’s Marco and Luiza Willert’s La Ciesca a uniformed policeman and ambitious, voluptuous wife, and so on. Patrick Keefe’s Schicchi necessarily took centre-stage once present, and figuratively once announced. His was a fine, detailed performance, as were those of his daughter Lauretta (Kathleen Nic Dhiarmada, with a lovely, snapshot-like ‘O mio babbino caro’) and her eager lover Rinuccio (Ryan Vaughan Davies). But there is little point in merely repeating the cast list. All contributed to the greater whole, as did incisive orchestral playing and conducting. Puccini’s score glistened as it should and must; the opera’s wit duly scintillated.

 


Ravel’s L’Heure espagnole had taken place in a musical instrument repair shop El Tempo, time more overtly met music in the guise of instrument cases with time signatures and tempo markings: ‘4/4’, ‘Assez vite’, and so on. The largest functioned as clock cases to be hiked up- and downstairs by Ramiro. Again set, costumes, and lighting (Jake Wilshire) made a considerable contribution to the overall mise-en-scène. What I missed somewhat, even at the time, though still more so in retrospect, was a sense of musical urgency and utmost precision, the latter surely a sine qua non for all Ravel performance. Farnham was supportive to her singers—and that, of course, may well have been to the point—but there were times when tempi dragged a little. The small orchestra (strings 4.4.3.2.2) seemed less at home in Ravel too, sonorities and balances somewhat variable. That cavil notwithstanding, Johns offered a lively, seductive Concepión, Pate properly under her spell, growing in (the character’s) masculine confidence. So too were the other male singers, Vaughan Davies a nicely fussy Torquemada, Liam Bonthrone and Michael Ronan properly preening suitors in their different ways. Much to enjoy, then, in both cases.

Bevan/ASMF/Wigglesworth - Wigglesworth, Mozart, and Ravel, 6 August 2021

St Martin-in-the-Fields

Ryan Wigglesworth: Piano Concerto: ‘Notturno’

Mozart: Piano Concerto no.12 in A major, KV 414/385p
Ravel: Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé
Mozart: Concert Aria: ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te … Non temer, amato bene’, KV 505

Sophie Bevan (soprano)
Ryan Wigglesworth (piano/conductor)

Academy of St Martin in the Fields

The ASMF’s concerts at the church in which it was born and from which it takes its name were rare musical beacons during the few occasions last autumn when performance and attendance at performance were possible. The two concerts I was able to attend—maximum audience of thirty, for reasons best known to whichever eminent statesman was then making such decisions—meant a great deal to me. Here stood another in that line, albeit in slightly brighter times. Ryan Wigglesworth joined the Academy as both pianist as conductor, with Sophie Bevan the soprano soloist for the last two items. 

First, though, we heard some of Wigglesworth’s own music, the ‘Notturno’ from his Piano Concerto. According to the composer, this movement, in which chamber orchestra is reduced to strings and harp, ‘is a kind of fantasia on a Polish folk song I first heard sung, movingly, around a late-night campfire’. That I only learned after the event, but heard, following a (relatively) long string introduction, a piano solo, clear and directed (combining well in retrospect with music by Mozart and Ravel), sometimes in dialogue with harp, which seemed to set up material for subsequent variation and development. There was, I felt, a sense of lament, or at least of bitter-sweet lyricism. Henze with an English accent was one thought that came to mind, though perhaps that said more about me than anyone or anything else. I should certainly be intrigued to hear the rest of the work.

Without a break, the players moved into the first of Mozart’s two A major Piano Concertos, no.12. Wigglesworth’s direction may have been on the brisk side by historical standards, but not really by those of our own time. Most important, it yielded. The ASMF offered, as is its wont, cultivated and variegated playing. There was to be heard from all fine, seemingly instinctive senses of line and fun, inextricably interlinked. The opera house was rightly an inspiration but form, quite rightly, was communicated as of the concert hall. This is a concerto readily underestimated, but it was not here. If, in the slow movement, I occasionally missed the cushion of a larger number of strings, I should stress ‘occasionally’. For there was no gainsaying the excellence of playing, nor this movement’s role as the emotional heart of the work. Songful yet ever-developing, it was sometimes blighted by a mysterious high-pitched electronic sound from somewhere in the building (I presume), yet was never obliterated. The finale was keenly responsive and endlessly surprising: the spirit of Haydn, perhaps, yet unquestionably directed by Mozart, whose cadenzas were employed with great imagination by Wigglesworth.

I think that may have been the first time I had heard the Mozart concerto in the flesh: testament to just how narrow the benighted ‘repertoire’ has become, even in the case of its most widely acknowledged geniuses (if we may still use the word). It was also the first time I had had opportunity to hear Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, save on record. Why do we not hear them constantly? Who knows? This, at any rate, was a performance to savour. Thinned down to a delectable chamber ensemble, the Academy offered opening string quartet harmonics that, whilst perfectly in keeping with Ravel’s style and language seemed to peer across to Schoenberg and perhaps even forward to Ligeti. Etched like waves, they prepared the way for the vocal line to sail. In the second part of this first song, ‘Soupir’, a French vision of Vienna emerged from the string quartet. And what harmonies there were to be heard, not least from voice against, or rather with, piano. ‘Placet futile’ sounded a little more operatic, even before the vocal entry. Inviting, sensuous, and knowing in its mock-innocence, such qualities were both added to and questioned by Bevan in a garden of distinctly sunnier delights than Pierrot lunaire, whose ghost unavoidably hovers here. The instrumental introduction to ‘Surgi de la croupe et du bond’ seemed to long for something beyond: temporally or geographically, maybe even both. The ‘Asie’ of Shéhérazade? It unfolded, pli selon pli.

Finally, Mozart’s ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te … Non temer, amato bene’, KV 505. The opening recitative was well handled by all, the following aria slightly static at first but increasingly dramatic as it progressed, so perhaps that was a deliberate strategy. It benefited from fuller-throttled operatic treatment than anything heard previously, not only from Bevan on superlative form, but from the Academy and Wigglesworth. Here, if only in concert, was a true successor to Idomeneo from the seria-deprived (though never quite, as is sometimes claimed, seria-starved) Vienna of Joseph II. It made for a resounding, resplendent culmination to a wonderful concert.

Hill Quartet - Haydn and Ravel, 15 September 2020

The Bandstand, Battersea Park

Haydn: String Quartet in E-flat major, op.64 no.6, Hob. III:64
Ravel: String Quartet in F major

Bridget O’Donnell, David Lopez (violins)

Julia Doukakis (viola)

Ben Michaels (cello)

The last in a series of four Bandstand Chamber Festival concerts, in which the Hill Quartet played works by Haydn and Ravel, made for a delightful Indian summer’s evening. Strings are not the easiest instruments to play outdoors. The Battersea Park Bandstand offered shade and shelter, however, any intonational shifts swiftly addressed.


Haydn’s op.64 no.6 Quartet opened with expectancy and poise: a fine balance typical of the Hill Quartet’s reading of the first movement as a whole. Contrapuntal learning, lightly worn yet deeply felt, proved key to the onset of the development. Unexpected tonal paths, relished yet never exaggerated, led us to the twin reassurance and further development of the recapitulation. Rapt without preciosity, the Andante flowed with equally fine judgement, its stormy central section holding the attention vis-à-vis a passing aeroplane. Haydn’s Minuet was taking swiftly, yet was never unyielding, accents and phrases the key to its progress. Its Ländler trio rightly relaxed, first slightly tipsy; second time around, more than slightly. The players clearly loved Haydn’s play with harmonics; how could they not? A Haydn finale in all its glory concluded the performance, performing the role one might expect, yet never in expected fashion. Most important, throughout its exhilaration, it smiled, even laughed.


Ravel’s Quartet made for quite a contrast. Its first movement offered poise of a different, complementary kind, An increasingly strong sense of disconcerting undercurrents spilled over, setting the scene for a reading both dramatic and variegated. If broader contours were in good hands, so was attention to detail. Ravel imbues a cello pizzicato or the emergence of the viola as soloist with great poignancy; such poignancy, however, requires and received fine projection in performance. Rhythm and harmony proved each other’s agents in the scherzo: a game of mutual incitement that flipped over into melancholy and then perhaps something sadder still. Combination of the two tendencies was not the least of the Hill Quartet’s achievements. Similar yet different relationships between material marked the slow movement, ultimately and rightly drawn on a grander emotional canvas. A whirlwind opening to the finale brought hints of later Ravel vortices. Especially impressive was the communication of tendencies unifying both this movement and the work as a whole. Time, then, to look forward already to next year’s festival.

Argerich/Staatskapelle Berlin/Mehta - Ravel and Stravinsky, 23 February 2020

Philharmonie

Ravel: La Valse

Ravel: Piano Concerto in G major

Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

Martha Argerich (piano)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Zubin Mehta (conductor)

Martha Argerich notwithstanding, this was, I am afraid, a disappointing concert: in the vein of Zubin Mehta’s Berlin Philharmonic Bruckner Eighth in the autumn, only more so. Perhaps that was because what can to a certain extent pass muster in Bruckner, at best letting the music flow without interference, leads to scrappiness and other lack of necessary control in Ravel.

At any rate, near collapse at two moments in the first movement of the G major Piano Concerto can hardly be accounted a positive; likewise bizarre orchestral balances, seemingly resulting less from an eccentric hearing of Ravel than from an inability to hear him at all. It was difficult to escape the view that the concerto and especially this movement would have been better off without a conductor. Once the fabled tigress of the keyboard took the lead, there was much to enjoy in terms of pellucidity, drive, and clarity, not least of the rhythmic variety. Her opening solo in the slow movement was everything one could wish for: line, voicing, nobility, a refusal to mistake sentiment for sentimentality. Beating time, Mehta did a reasonable job for the most part, despite a couple of audibly difficult corners to turn. The Staatskapelle Berlin’s woodwind nevertheless sounded gorgeous. Argerich’s pianism proved in equal measure muscular and variegated, spot on throughout the finale. When she was not playing and occasionally even when she was, Mehta’s tendency was to let the orchestra fall behind.

La Valse, preceding the concerto, had perhaps fared better, so long as one were not looking for revelation. Growling double basses – eight of them – at the opening augured well, but soon the performance had fallen strangely rigid. When Mehta intervened a little more, it helped; that is, until he drove the score too hard. Again there were wonderful woodwind solos, often allied to string playing of sheen and depth: recognisably this great orchestra. Overall form, however, remained elusive in a performance that seemed simply to move from phrase to phrase, sometimes even bar to bar. The sign-off was, by any accounts, bizarrely plodding.

To my surprise, The Rite of Spring probably came off best, albeit in strictly relative terms. So long as one were not expecting Pierre Boulez or Esa-Pekka Salonen, there would have been enough to make sense of the piece. Its opening in particular verily teemed with signs of rebirth, capturing fascinating instrumental combinations and balances and relationships between freedom and metrical precision prophetic for later-twentieth-century modernism. For most of the first part, there was nothing eccentric about Mehta’s tempi, nor did he lose momentum. Indeed, tension increased, notwithstanding a few strange decisions concerning balance. Stravinsky’s rite became more involving, seemingly of its own ‘volition’ or at least material: that is surely the trick here, at least to mainstream Rite interpretation. There was something properly horrifying to the apparent automation of the Procession of the Sage, although its immediate aftermath fell oddly flat. The final dance of the first part, however, perked up. Alas, the second part was somehow rather on the dull side. There was nothing really to complain about, save for an overtly sectional approach. It was neither involving nor intriguingly ‘objective’, just ultimately rather nondescript and lacking in cumulative power. I have never felt less thrilled at the close.

Zukerman/Staatskapelle Berlin/Shani - Elgar and Mussorgsky, 13 January 2020

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Elgar: Violin Concerto in B minor, op.61

Mussorgsky-Ravel: Pictures at an Exhibition

Pinchas Zukerman (violin)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Lahav Shani (conductor)

Strange though this may sound to the uninitiated, Daniel Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin now stands second to none in contemporary Elgar performance. Barenboim’s long association with the composer has latterly seen an Indian summer, much of which I have been privileged to hear. This evening, in the fourth of the orchestra’s seasonal subscription concerts and the third to include music by Elgar (!), it was time to hear from Barenboim’s similarly long-term associate, Pinchas Zukerman, and a more recent associate, Lahav Shani, with whom the orchestra already seems to be on good terms.

The opening tutti certainly suggested a similar affinity on Shani’s part for the composer: passionate, urgent, and flexible as required, as idiomatic as it was ‘objectively’ convincing. The Staatskapelle, moreover, played as if it were playing for Barenboim himself. Tender, noble, rich, and dark: one could not reasonably have asked for more. This was a Romantic rather than a modernist Elgar, but there is nothing wrong with that. There would have been little virtue in attempting to present a performance someone else, let alone Barenboim, would have given. Zukerman’s entry suggested something similar, his golden, even glamorous tone recognisable of old. There was something, moreover, intriguing, not just here in the first movement but throughout, to the Brahmsian confrontation of soloist and orchestra we heard: these interpreters again very much their own men. Sadly, the charms of what increasingly sounded more like aggression on Zukerman’s part began to pale. Not only was he sometimes out of sync with the orchestra in his passagework – however craftily Shani covered up for him – but the unyielding, squarer quality of his playing was less than suggestive of much in the way of musical sensitivity. At its best, the glamour was irresistible, but was it Elgar? The slow movement fared better, roots in German Romanticism clear and meaningful. It was taken very slowly, but was none the worse for that. Shani, however, was still doing most of the real work. The finale was probably better forgotten. By turns unduly deliberate and running away with itself, it never settled down and threatened to seem interminable. There were wonderful moments, but the golden thread proved sadly elusive. A pity.

I felt no such reservations or difficulties concerning the second half: Pictures at an Exhibition in Ravel’s orchestration. Insofar as I had any at all, they related as ever to Ravel’s enterprise itself; even on that count, I had fewer than usual. Shani, seemingly liberated, conducted without a score, leading a performance full of incident but also possessed of long-term coherence. The opening Promenade had a similar urgency to the opening of the Elgar, yet rightly opened the door to music of very different qualities. ‘Gnomus’ boasted depth of string tone and agility in equal measure, colour, and above all mystery. There was not a little of that to ‘Il vechhio castello’ too, Gallic suavity – also heard later, in ‘Limoges: Le marché’ – balanced by occasional hints at an intriguing post-Mozartian sensibility. ‘Bydlo’, however, was more Russian, Ravel’s crescendo and diminuendo notwithstanding. (Surely he had to do something along such lines anyway. Mussorgsky’s strategy could hardly have worked as it did with orchestra.) Its shadow darkened the following Promenade and seemed also to inspire the portrait of ‘Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle’. Antisemitic? Undoubtedly, yet we lose something if we sit too sternly in judgement. Wagnerian brass turned Russian as we toured the catacombs. The spirit of Boris Godunov appeared not for the first time in the unease and sheer malevelonce of ‘Cum mortuis in lingua mortua’. Baba Yaga’s arrival took one’s breath away, Shani’s insistence on motor rhythms strongly suggestive of Prokofiev. Perhaps perversely, I missed the piano most for ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’, though there was no doubting the excellence of the playing, nor Shani’s command. Ravel’s cunning hints at Boris-like orchestration made their point in any case.