R.I.P. Raymond Leppard (1927-2019)

‘The light of my life,’ Janet Baker once described him. Raymond Leppard's recordings certainly lit up mine – and continue to do so. From his legendary Monteverdi and Cavalli, which still knock spots off much of the allegedly ‘authenticke’ competition, to the twentieth century, Leppard’s music-making was above all characterised an unmistakeable zest for and belief in his art, quite without affectation or concomitant regard for fashion. I only heard him twice in the flesh: once as a schoolboy, in Sheffield, with the Hallé; and once, with his beloved English Chamber Orchestra, in London, in Handel’s Acis and Galatea, with Dame Janet, no less, as narrator (the only time, alas, I heard her, and then only speaking). His sense of joy and humanity,  remained undimmed, not least in a Hallé Enigma Variations to rank with the best. We shall not hear his like again – but we shall continue to listen to his wonderful performances. Let us take a few minutes, as soon as practicable, to do so in his honour.

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (5) - L’Erismena, 15 July 2017

Images: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2017 © Pascal Victor / artcompress

Théâtre du Jeu de Paume

Erismena – Francesca Aspromonte

Idraspe – Carlo Vistoli

Aldimira – Susanna Hurrell

Orimeneo – Jakub Józef Orliński

Erimante – Alexander Miminoshvili

Flerida – Lea Desandre

Argippo – Andrea Bonsignore

Alcesta – Stuart Jackson

Clerio Moro – Tai Oney

Diarte – Jonathan Abernethy

Jean Bellorini (director, lighting, set designs)

Véronique Chazal (set designs)

Macha Makeïeff (costumes)

Cappella Mediterranea

Leonardo García Alarcón (conductor)

Whose first thought when Cavalli is mentioned is anything other than Raymond Leppard? Certainly not mine. Whilst many, indeed pretty much all, such associations will be simplifications of varying degrees of grossness, and some bizarrely, often chauvinistically, incorrect – Bernstein and Mahler, for instance – Leppard’s role in the rediscovery and revival of Cavalli’s operas can hardly be gainsaid. What I should have given to hear one of his imaginative, luscious realisations in the flesh. Much has changed in the meantime, of course: save for the very occasional actual ‘reorchestration’, it has long been a capital offence to perform seventeenth-century music on modern instruments. I suppose we should be grateful that the fatwas of ‘authenticity’ have extended less frequently towards staging, although the vaguely ‘stylish’ mishmash that often results tends at best to be a mixed blessing.

What we saw and heard here was much in that line, and proved enjoyable enough in its way, although I could not help but wish that something more daring had been attempted. The theatre itself, the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume, is a delight. However modernist one’s view of other matters may be, the growth of opera houses into outsize monsters should surely be deplored by all. Presumably someone will object that it is an eighteenth-century theatre; in which case, kindly get thee to seventeenth-century Venice and leave the rest of us in peace. Leonardo García Alarcón and his small, yet far from shy, Capella Mediterranea played in the accustomed ‘we’re Mediterranean and thus “sensual”’ style, or alternatively, ‘sex please, we’re not Christopher Hogwood’ – which is certainly preferable to, well, Christopher Hogwood and other puritans. It is, though, all a bit predictable after a while, not nearly so ‘interesting’ or indeed ‘sensual’ as it thinks it is – or, indeed, as audiences in thrall to ‘authenticity’ have been trained to believe it is. Have a ‘colourful’ continuo group, turn as much as you can into dance music, accompany that with a good deal of silly dancing on stage, hint at largely spurious parallels to other traditions, be they folk, jazz, anything other than the dread ‘symphonic’, and you are ‘counter-culturally’ away.

It is a business, of course, and it has succeeded greatly in those terms, not least by its ruthless suppression of the ‘competition’. And unlike those frankly unlistenable-to Northern European puritan forerunners – the Leonhardts, Goebels, Hogwoods, et al. – it is in many respects welcoming. Perhaps it is too much so, or at least too complacent in its remarkably non-reflective conception of history. (Nikolaus Harnoncourt was an exception in that latter respect; his greatest problem was a peculiar inability to phrase.) There is more, though, to ‘Mediterranean’ culture, and indeed there is more to Cavalli, than that. Moreover, violin intonation was sometimes little short of excruciating, although no one else seemed to mind.

Whatever one’s thoughts on the orchestra and conducting (how ‘inauthentic’!) though, the singing was excellent. A young cast, with acting abilities largely to match, held the drama, such as it is, in its hands and projected it with the vocal excellence that has long been the trump card of so much of the ‘early music’ movement. If I were compelled to single out one soloist, I should unhesitatingly opt for the bright, clear, and yes, sensual countertenor of Jakub Józef Orliński; it was a great pity he did not have more to sing. But this was a true company achievement. Orliński’s countertenor companions, Carlo Vistoli and Tai Oney also greatly impressed, each voice and character ‘naturally’ differentiated from the others. So too did Susanna Hurrell’s Aldimira and Stuart Jackson’s properly outrageous nurse-in-drag, Alcesto. There is a good deal of ensemble writing here, yet I cannot recall a single case of problematical balance.

Jean Bellorini’s staging falls into the aforementioned stylish-‘modern’ category. No particular point of view or framing seems apparent. Clothes are ‘modern’ and a good deal of attention is productively paid to movement and interaction. Again, though, I could not help but think that something a little more than having light bulbs  disintegrate at critical moments might have been done with the opera. For it is, frankly, difficult to care too much about the characters and their fate; this is neither Monteverdi nor top-drawer Cavalli. There is probably too much silliness; Leppard, anything but humourless, nevertheless remarked upon an all too easy tendency towards disguise and cross-dressing for the sake of it in a good number of Cavalli works. Indeed, Leppard was actually highly selective concerning those he selected for editing and performance. We, however live, for better or worse, in an age of completism. Not that that problem arose here; this is an opera eminently worth performing. Perhaps, though, at some stage, it might be done in a realisation and staging a little more interested in stretching our eyes, ears, and minds.

Wishing C.P.E. Bach a very happy 300th birthday...

In case you thought that the music of the most original, most misunderstood, and, above all, the greatest of Bach's sons need sound charmlessly emaciated and absurdly hard-driven, listen to this from 1967. Rarely has Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's sounded with greater enlightenment - and Enlightenment. The concerto emerges as both good fun and a substantial work to be reckoned with: just the right balance for the forces, here deployed to excellent effect. Raymond Leppard conducts the English Chamber Orchestra. The four harpsichordists are the sorely underrated - at least today - George Malcolm, Simon Preston, Geoffrey Parsons, and Valda Aveling. For more on music at the court of Frederick the Great, please click here.





Here below are a few recommended recordings of CPE Bach's music, vocal, instrumental, and orchestral. There is more to explore, but I hope that these will offer a taste:

Gluck's Orfeo from Glyndebourne: Dame Janet bids 'Addio, addio'

After Nigel Lowery's dreadful assault upon Gluck, I felt the need of something more wholesome. Of course the staging would be unlikely to be carried out in quite the same way now; I am sure that Peter Hall would do it differently, were he to return to the work. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but fashions change more quickly in this respect than perhaps any other. It is certainly a hundred times preferable to Lowery's puerile effort. The glories of the audio recording (heartily recommended, with links below) originating from this production were always Dame Janet Baker's astonishingly intense, truly heartfelt farewell to the stage and the London Philharmonic's playing under Raymond Leppard; so they are here, though there is little cause for complaint here, and the chorus, trained by Jane Glover, acquits itself beautifully. 'Purists' will doubtless moan about the composite version of the work, let alone the aria ending the first act, a guilty pleasure if ever there were one; even my own favourite Gluck conductor, Riccardo Muti, disdains anything but 'pure' Vienna. The rest of us can sit back and enjoy...

More from Baker, Leppard, and the ECO...

This time, Ottavia's lament, 'Disprezzata regina,' from the greatest of all seventeenth-century operas, Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea. A fine paradox this: Monteverdi's music is so intimately tied to the words, yet, such are the integrity and intensity of the performance that one should most likely glean their meaning without even a smattering of Italian.

Janet Baker and Raymond Leppard in Gluck's 'Le perfide Renaud me fuit'

As a pendant to the recent review of Acis and Galatea, here are Dame Janet Baker and Raymond Leppard, again with the English Chamber Orchestra, in the supremely moving 'Le perfide Renaud me fuit', from Armide. Is any of our great musical dramatists, with the possible exception of Schoenberg, more scandalously neglected than Gluck?



For the excellent full collection of Gluck arias from these artists, click on the link below.



For a review of Armide in Berlin, directed by Calixto Bieito, and which might not quite have been Dame Janet's cup of tea, click here. (In relation to which, what tantalising news it is that Bieito will direct Carmen for ENO! Although almost anything would be preferable to another Met co-production...)

Acis and Galatea, ECO/Leppard, 15 November 2011

Cadogan Hall

Acis – Ed Lyon
Galatea – Ruby Hughes
Polyphemus – João Fernandes
Damon – Richard Edgar-Wilson

Dame Janet Baker (narrator)
Choir of the 21st Century
English Chamber Orchestra
Raymond Leppard (conductor).

There was something charmingly of another age – an apparently gentler age, which, like the pastoral idyll itself, may not ever have existed – to this performance of Acis and Galatea. It was not only a matter of hearing Handel once again from Raymond Leppard and the English Chamber Orchestra, welcome though it was to hear the composer’s music not only on modern instruments, but in a performance that did not treat those instruments as if they must discard all their advantages over predecessors – or, more likely, modern copies – and ape their whining tones, their lack of warmth and tuning, in short their gross technical and musical disadvantages. After all, an age in which Baroque music was not a matter of abrasiveness, of ‘effects without cause’, of hysterical promotion of hair-shirted exhibitionism, did once exist: we have a host of recordings from Leppard and the ECO to show it.

Dame Janet Baker was of course present on a good few of those. Her presence on this occasion as narrator, her delivery, and Leppard’s narration itself fitted into a form of presentation redolent of what some of us might imagine the wireless Home Service once to have been. I am not sure that the experiment is likely to be widely repeated, nor that it should be, consisting as it did in descriptions of the action to come, a little explication of situation, and some gentle humour that might have sounded strained when Abigail’s Party was but a twinkle in Mike Leigh’s eye. A wryer framing might better have suited our age’s world-weary cynicism, and we could have done with fewer recurrent mentions of the plains. (The temptation to include a ‘Rain in Spain’ reference certainly ought to have been resisted.) Nevertheless, it would take a heart considerably harder than mine not to be more than a little charmed – and grateful, if for the first and perhaps last, time, to hear Dame Janet back in the concert hall. Her well-spoken Yorkshire tones remained just as one recalled, similarly her graceful demeanour; I for one was delighted to savour them and should have been equally delighted by the opportunity to have heard a bedtime story in such vein.

I had no qualms whatsoever concerning the performance from Leppard and the ECO, a delight from beginning to end. The Sinfonia was lively and well articulated, breathing air that was as theatrical as it was pastoral; and so it continued. If Leppard’s interventionism in the music of composers such as Monteverdi and Cavalli grew more controversial as his career progressed, it might be thought still more so in Handel. (‘Authenticke’ conductors such as René Jacobs take almighty liberties, but that, apparently, is another matter.) Not unreasonably, Leppard took his cue from Handel’s later practice in post-Cannons performances, for instance at the Haymarket, and added a few parts here and there, not only violas and sometimes other, additional string lines, but even – and this, I admit, came as something of a jolt – a glockenspiel for the chorus, itself the beneficiary of a spot of (re-)composition, ‘Happy, happy! Happy we!’ If the truth be told, the effect was a little de trop, closer to Papageno than to the rejoicing Israelites of Saul; moreover, I could not help but think that the number would have been better left as a duet, which we heard, prior to the entry of the chorus. There are far more grievous sins, though, than the occasional gilding of a lily.

Other decisions were less interventionist, as stylish as the instrumental performances themselves. The poignant delicacy of Galatea’s ‘As when the dove laments her love,’ was as much a matter of dialogue, between oboe and marvellously fruity bassoon, conducted against a chamber organ backdrop, as it was of Ruby Hughes’s limpid and at times radiant vocal delivery. I very much liked the balance between ‘English’, Purcellian directness and the warbling of the sopranino recorder in ‘Hush, ye pretty warbling quire!’ A melting oboe solo in the penultimate aria and chorus, ‘Must I my Acis still bemoan’ proved another highlight. Continuo playing – organ and harpsichord were employed, though not, as once might have been the case, played by Leppard himself – was both reliable and imaginative throughout.

Hughes’s contribution I generally found winning, though there were times when her diction might have been stronger. Richard Edgar-Wilson’s brief appearance as Damon – a part that might without great loss be cut – also suffered a little in that respect, though his coloratura was excellent. There were no such problems, however, from the other male soloists, Ed Lyon as the lovestruck Acis and João Fernandes as the giant, Polyphemus. ‘Love in her eyes sits playing’ was an especially touching example of Lyon’s artistry, which showed that, even in ‘concert performance’ – there was throughout a degree of acting, tending somewhat towards the ‘semi-staged – he knew how to act as well as how to sing a Baroque da capo aria. So much was captured in a gesture, a glance, as well of course as in the shaping of words and phrase, that one needed no more: a Handelian tableau vivant, as Leppard outlined in the programme. The da capo return in beautifully hushed tone, love not only playing but already threatening ‘delicious death’, was truly a moment to savour. On a micro-level, the judgement shown in a revealing crescendo on the second syllable of ‘alarm’ in ‘Love sounds th’alarm’ betokened both musical and dramatic sensitivity. Fernandes’s facial expressions exhibited a degree of the gentle grotesque: amusing, touching even, without becoming merely silly. His theatrical experience showed equally, like Lyon’s, in his way with words; the lightly accented English seemed delightfully apt in context. This again is a singer of whom I should like to hear – and to see – more. In the trio, ‘The flocks shall leave the mountains,’ Hughes, Lyon, and Fernandes all helped to show that Handel is perfectly capable of expressing action as well as mood through music – making it all the sadder that opera seria would rarely offer him that opportunity. The Choir of the 21st Century contributed in lively fashion, though the solos in the opening chorus were a little weak. That was soon forgotten, however, and the sense of playful resolution in ‘Galatea, dry thy tears,’ was theirs as well as Leppard’s. More please!

Living Monteverdi: Janet Baker and Raymond Leppard; Thomas Allen and Hans Werner Henze

Ottavia's lament from L'incoronazione di Poppea, the greatest (surviving) opera of the seventeenth century, indeed probably the greatest before Mozart:




And here, on stage at Glyndebourne, in a role Dame Janet was surely born to play, Penelope, from Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria:




The entire performance may be seen on DVD.

How distant those days seem - and how I wish I could have known them at first hand - when Monteverdi's music was performed as music, as part of a living, dramatic tradition, rather than as a dry archaeological exercise or a mere freak show. (Nikolaus Harnoncourt was a different matter entirely, but he is probably as unfashionable today as Leppard.)  Perhaps our only hope, and it is a slim one, is for composers again to re-imagine Monteverdi's music. Here is the Prologue from Henze's tremendous realisation. Has Monteverdi's music ever sounded so utterly of the Mediterranean? Sir Thomas Allen, Ulysses in this 1985 Salzburg Festival production, discussed it with me in a 2009 interview (for which, click here). Jeffrey Tate conducts the ORF Symphony Orchestra, and what a splendid supporting cast we have too:






In March, we shall see what ENO makes of Ulisse...

ECO/Leppard - Messiah, 15 December 2010

Cadogan Hall

Mary Bevan (soprano)
Sarah-Jane Lewis (contralto)
Joshua Ellicott (tenor)
George Mosley (bass)

Rodolfus Choir (chorus master: Ralph Allwood)
English Chamber Orchestra
Raymond Leppard (conductor)


The ghost of Christmas past? What a joy to hear Raymond Leppard conducting Handel very much in the Advent present. Times have changed, of course, and a musician who once stood at the very heart of Baroque performance, in this country and across the world, has long been considered at best politically incorrect by the merely fashionable. Where a contemporary such as Charles Mackerras embraced much of the period-performance wave, the treasure trove of Leppard’s musicianship from Monteverdi onwards has endured a frankly disgraceful press from many who should know better, rather more so indeed than that of Neville Marriner, another contemporary resistant to the dubious calls of ‘authenticity’. One eminent conductor recalled not so long ago his determination to bring period instruments to Glyndebourne for Mozart, and this at a time when the festival, he claimed, was still performing Monteverdi’s music as if it were Brahms. Anyone listening to the fine DVD of L’incoronazione di Poppea from 1984 could never seriously have thought, let alone said, such a thing, but sadly the days when Monteverdi, or indeed Handel, could be approached as music rather than as pseudo-archaeology are long past.

Many of Leppard’s greatest triumphs have been with the English Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble with which he has worked for more than fifty years – that is, when it was still the Goldsbrough Orchestra. It was doubly welcome then to have the ECO/Leppard partnership reunited for this performance of the Messiah. This was an accomplished performance, perhaps not the most exciting will ever hear, but with a splendidly collegiate sense. Indeed, with the young voices of the Rodolfus Choir, all ‘veterans’ aged between sixteen and twenty-five from the Eton Choral Courses, there was more than a hint of a superior Oxbridge performance, albeit far better rehearsed than would generally be the case with undergraduate musicians. For there could be no gainsaying the skill of the choral singing, well prepared by Ralph Allwood. There were occasions when, even in the relatively small surroundings of the Cadogan Hall, I might have preferred larger forces –strings were scaled 6-5-3-3-1 – but intimacy reaped its own rewards. Sir Thomas Beecham is a wicked treat, which perhaps spoils us for everything that comes after, but it would clearly be as wrong to elevate Beecham’s Messiah over all others as puritanically to denigrate it. And the occasional thin moment aside, the cultivation of the ECO strings proved a joy. Not that there was anything sentimentally ‘Romantic’ about the performance, far from it, as the harsh passion music of ‘He gave his back to the smiters’ reminded us; but passion had another side too, as Leppard soon demonstrated in the aptly deliberate tempo adopted for the tenor recitative, ‘Thy rebuke hath broken His heart,’ plangently delivered by Joshua Ellicott. Moreover, the siciliano lilt to the ‘Pastoral Symphony’ both pleased and, in its tenderness, intimated sadness foretold.

The emphasis lay upon letting Handel’s music speak for itself, rather than imposing ‘effects’, as currently favoured by a number of fashionable ‘specialists’, although Leppard’s own edition nevertheless threw up a number of surprises, for instance the duet version for mezzo and soprano of ‘He shall feed his flock,’ the use of solo voices as well as chorus in ‘But thanks be to God,’ and the inclusion of the tenor recitative, ‘Their sound is gone out into all lands’. There is, thank God, no ‘correct’ text of the Messiah; it is always interesting to observe which choices a conductor and/or editor might make. Ornamentation was employed throughout, at times quite ornately, yet without exhibitionism. A particularly good example would be ‘O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion,’ when, aside from imaginative use of solo violin (leader, Stephanie Gonley), the reprise presented complemenornamentation from both soloists, Gonley and mezzo-soprano, Sarah-Jane Lewis.

Vocal soloists proved somewhat variable. Lewis had her moments but sometimes sounded a little soft of focus; I had the impression that this was a voice that will undergo considerable further development. Bass George Mosley, on the other hand, sometimes sounded dry, as if his voice had lost its bloom. In ‘The trumpet shall sound,’ the ‘B’ section sadly proved as startling a drop of inspiration as ever, but it was not helped by considerable drying of tone and intonational problems. That said, Mosley and the other musicians proved movingly sincere in the reprise of the initial material. Ellicott on occasion had a certain gravelly tone to his voice, but it soon disappeared; perhaps he was a little under the weather. At any rate, ‘Thou shalt break them,’ emerged in virile fashion, demonstrating that one does not have to be an heroic tenor in the mould of Jon Vickers (Beecham’s tenor) to impress here. Soprano Mary Bevan was the most consistently impressive of the soloists, beautiful of tone and long of breath. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ was a true highlight of the performance. Diction was excellent from all.

We stood for the ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus, which doubtless helped to send shivers down the spine. But even in a relatively restrained performance such as this, Handel’s genius would doubtless have accomplished that, likewise in the final ‘Amen’ chorus. Leppard did not at all play the showman, but his understated musicianship ensured that the extraordinary message embodied both in Handel’s score and in Charles Jennens’s selection from Scripture provoked wonder and thought. As we prepare to celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation, that is just as it should be.