Park Lane Young Artists Spring Series, 19 and 21 April 2016

St John’s, Smith Square

Giles Swayne – Chansons dévotes and poissonneuses

Kurtág – Twelve Microludes, op.13
Blair Soler – Imaginings – Six pieces for string quartet
Josephine Stephenson – Tanka
Freya Waley-Cohen – Oyster
Kate Honey – Predator Fish
Stevie Wishart – Eurostar: A Journey in sound between cities (world premiere)
Brett Dean – String Quartet no.1, ‘Eclipse’

Aike String Quartet (Soh-Yon Kim, Emily Harper (violins), Benjamin Harrison (viola), Karen French (cello))

The Hermes Experiment (Héloïse Werner (soprano), Oliver Pashley (clarinet), Anne Denholm (harp), Marianne Schofield (double bass))

 

Robin Holloway – Killing Time

Joel Rust – Trio Trio Trio, for string trio (world premiere)
Holloway – String Trio
Othmar Schoeck – Wanderlieder, op.12
Lord Berners – Three English Songs
Morgan Hayes – Dictionary of London
Schoenberg – String Trio, op.45

Nardus Williams (soprano)

Peter Foggitt (piano)

Eblana String Trio (Jonathan Martindale (violin), Lucy Nolan (viola), Peggy Nolan (cello))

 

St John’s, Smith Square played host last week to no fewer than ten concerts in the Park Lane Group Young Artists Series. Each evening from Monday to Friday offered a short 6 p.m. concert, usually combined with an ‘in conversation’ event with a featured composer, followed by a 7.30 concert, in which that composer’s music would be programmed with that of other composers. I was only able to attend two 7.30 concerts, but was delighted to hear a wide range of music, from which only one work, Schoenberg’s String Trio, was familiar to me.

Tuesday’s concert began with a wonderful surprise: Giles Swayne’s witty Chansons dévotes and poissonneuses, a setting of verse by Georges Fourest. In French – although, somewhat oddly, we were only given English translations in the programme booklet – the songs also sounded very ‘French’ in style. In this performance by The Hermes Experiment, soprano, Héloïse Werner really used the words performatively: not just their meaning but their sound. Use of a clarinet (ravishingly played by Oliver Pashley) perhaps inevitably brought to mind Pierrot lunaire, but the vocal line had nothing to do with Schoenberg, or Sprechstimme. Indeed, there was something almost Ravelian to the vocal tapestry woven. This was tonal music that in no way sounded re-heated, ‘neo-tonal’. Following ‘The music-loving fish’, ‘The old saint’, at its opening, offered in its subtle archaism a splendid evocation of la vieille France; I loved the duetting of clarinet and double bass. Werner was not at all afraid to sound ugly when the text, literally, called for it: ‘Il est trop laid,’ if I remember correctly. The mock sadness of the final ‘Sardines in oil’ had us wondering, almost surreally, what was ‘real’ and what was not. A fine work I should be delighted to heart again, then, in equally fine performances.

Kurtág and Blair Soler followed, with works for string quartet (the Alke String Quartet). The opening cello note of Kurtág’s Microludes almost suggested Verklärte Nacht, but no, this was a very different path to be taken. Kurtág – and his performers, made us listen. Webern-like weighing of notes, in performance and work alike, gave us no other option. Integrity and importance of gesture were to the fore; harmonic turns always surprised and yet were always rendered meaningful. There was a harder-edged sound to Soler’s 2012 Imaginings. Bartók’s example loomed large, but not overwhelmingly: and is there a better example to follow? Intensity was the hallmark again of work and performance, whose furious manner proved compelling.

After the interval, there followed a series of short pieces – all, as it happens, by female composers, although nothing was made of that, and there was no reason why anything should. Josephine Stephenson’s 2016 Tanka (‘short poem’ in Japanese, apparently) proved a well-crafted scena. Freya Waley-Cohen’s Oyster made me think – perhaps irrelevantly – of Katie Mitchell’s Ophelias Zimmer, which ‘frees’ Ophelia from Hamlet. That ‘alchemy’ referred to in Octavia Bright’s text seemed musically to occur at just the same time. (I am afraid I cannot remember quite how, but there was certainly a welcome sense of the transformative.) Kate Honey’s Predator Fish was perhaps most striking to me for its moments of languor. Stevie Wishart’s Eurostar was far more experimental, apparently involving a considerable degree of improvisation. Werner was called upon to imitate the train as well as sing: all carried off with a splendid sense of performance art.

 

For the final work, we returned to the Alke Quartet. I cannot say I responded particularly fondly to Brett Dean’s First Quartet, but the fault may well have been mine. A slow, soft opening certainly captured attention. Sections were well demarcated. Otherwise, there seemed to be gestures which, by contrast with Kurtág, did not lead anywhere in particular. Forgettable, at least for me, I am afraid.

 

A movement from Robin Holloway’s Killing Time, for solo soprano, opened the second concert. (At least it seemed to be a single movement, for another text was provided in the booklet, but went unsung.) Nardus Williams proved a compelling performer in Holloway’s Auden setting, ‘As I walked out one evening’. Increasing yet never outrageous deviations from an initially folk-like setting intrigued, with telling, yet sparing, melismata particularly captivating in performance.   

Joel Rust’s Trio Trio Trio, commissioned by the Park Lane Group with funds from the RVW Trust, received its world premiere. I had a keen sense of figures sparking off each other, if that makes any sense. (I am not sure that it does!) Material sounded highly contrasted, especially rhythmically. Moments of melancholy reminded me of an older English tradition, going back to Purcell and beyond. Holloway’s own String Trio received a performance of especial richness from the excellent players of the Eblana String Trio. Early on, I was put somewhat in mind of the Prokofiev of the Second Violin Concerto: more a matter of certain intervals than anything structural, but perhaps that was just my own private concern. There was much overlapping, whether in respect of solos or duos; passages in which all three players were heard together were not exactly few and far between, but nor were they a given. An ecstatic, not entirely un-Schoenbergian climax grabbed my attention.

 

Two songs by Othmar Schoeck followed the interval: the second and then the first of his op.12 Wanderlieder. The former sounded strikingly post-Schubertian, in a highly likeable performance from Williams and pianist, Peter Foggitt. Schumann seemed more of a guiding presence in the latter, perhaps Brahms too. ‘English with French affinities’ was how I thought of the songs by Lord Berners: entertaining and never overstaying their welcome. Morgan Hayes’s Dictionary of London received a vividly theatrical performance, befitting a piece which, to me, seemed at least equally vivid in its theatricality. Its witty shifting of musical moods left me wanting more: always, I hope, a good sign.

Finally, we heard that towering masterpiece of the chamber repertory, Schoenberg’s String Trio. (Why, o why, do we not hear it more often?) Febrile, intense, this was a fine performance indeed. Every note seemed to matter just as much as it would have done in Webern. One makes connections, of course, with composers such as Brahms and Mozart, and indeed with earlier Schoenberg, but there was no doubting here the new wine for new bottles (to borrow from Liszt). The players’ instrumental singing of Schoenberg’s lines, flexible yet ever goal-directed, would have drawn in the most sceptical of listeners; twelve-note Schoenberg would have been revealed to be just as worthy of their attention as any of the composer’s ‘freely atonal’ works. There was no doubting in performance either the work’s beauty or its formal dynamism.  Developing variation was the thing – and how it unfolded here!

 

Von Otter/LSO/Tilson Thomas - Debussy and Weill, 2 February 2012

Barbican Hall

Debussy – Dance sacrée et danse profane
Weill – Die sieben Todsünden
Debussy, orch. Robin Holloway – En blanc et noir
Debussy – La mer

Anne Sofie von Otter (mezzo-soprano)
Bryn Lewis (harp)
Synergy Vocals (Paul Badley, Gerard O’Beirne (tenors), Michael Dore, Paul Charrier (basses))
London Symphony Orchestra
Michael Tilson Thomas (conductor)


I failed to discern any rationale behind programming the Brecht-Weill ballet chanté with various works by Debussy, one orchestrated by Robin Holloway. The performances certainly extended beyond typical concert length, not helped by a ten-minute delay in beginning, and more to the point, the programme rather felt as if there were one too many piece. How, then, fared what for many was presumably the main attraction, Anne Sofie von Otter in The Seven Deadly Sins? Patchily, I am afraid. There were several problems, but most of all von Otter herself, whose performance seemed quite misconceived. From the opening of the Prologue, her reading lacked edge, seeming far too well-mannered. There is not a single way to perform this repertoire, and not everyone is Lotte Lenya – indeed, of course, no one else is – but, despite the microphone, von Otter sounded either ill at ease or merely pleasant (as in the second of the sins, ‘Stolz’). The performance seemed more an example of that most dubious of enterprises, ‘classical crossover’, than social critique. Oddly, on the occasional instances when she ditched her microphone, vocal production sounded more idiomatic. As for the would-be cool foot-tapping in ‘Zorn’, let us not dwell upon it. The gentlemen of Synergy Vocals were on far better form, though I am not sure that the nature of the amplification helped them. Theirs at least added an edge quite lacking elsewhere, rendering the Family’s hypocritical bourgeois morality all the more repellent. Perhaps surprisingly, Michael Tilson Thomas’s conducting of the London Symphony Orchestra was also rather tame, at least for a good two-thirds of the work. ‘Faulheit’ at least brought something of a wind band sonority, but for much of the performance, the pleasantness of Anna – whether I or II – had apparently proved contagious. In ‘Habsucht’ and ‘Neid’ there was at last some splendid orchestral playing, the LSO properly given its head, the results redolent of Mahagonny, even if Weill is here perhaps a little too obviously imitating his former self. The encore, ‘Speak low’ was preferable in every respect: everyone seemed more relaxed, and there was a far surer grasp of idiom.

At the beginning of the concert, Danse sacrée et profane had mysteriously replaced the advertised Last Pieces, Debussy as orchestrated by Oliver Knussen. LSO principal, Bryn Lewis, gave a good account of the harp part, though Tilson Thomas alternated between the deliberate and the subdued, especially in the first dance. The second showed its kinship to Ravel, but was perhaps overly moulded by the conductor. Holloway’s 2002 orchestration of En blanc et noir, by contrast, proved a revelation. The opening movement brings a glittering edge, at first not especially Debussyan – though it does not seem that Holloway is trying to be so – but perhaps more school of scintillating Dukas. As time went on, flashes and more than flashes, of Debussyan orchestral sonority manifest themselves: informing, but not controlling. This is certainly no attempt at pastiche. The second movement is, unsurprisingly, darker in hue, though not without metallic, militaristic glitter. A poignant trumpet solo lingers in the memory. Likewise the vivid realisation of the confrontation between Ein’ feste Burg and the Marseillaise: almost Ivesian, but better orchestrated. In the final movement, I fancied that I heard, albeit briefly, creepy shades of Bartók, supplanted by Ravel – and that is praise indeed for any orchestration.

La mer, which concluded the programme, opened promisingly, with a fine sense of ‘emerging’, all sections of the LSO on excellent form. ‘De l’aube à midi sur la mer’ flowed well, apparently on the swift side, but not to its detriment. However, by the time we reached the brass fanfares – included, doubtless to the chagrin of some, though I have no problem with them – doubts had begun to set in. So much was a little, and sometimes more than a little, too brash, and I do not think it was just a matter of the Barbican acoustic. Similarly, the glitter of ‘Jeux de vagues’, at first stimulating, soon seemed a little de trop. La mer was veering dangerously close to mere orchestral showpiece, as would be confirmed by the final movement, in which the conductor had it approximate to a decent film score. Direction was present, throughout, to be sure: there was no meandering. And there were some ravishing woodwind solos. But Debussy is so much more interesting, so much less straightforward, than he sounded here. Let us hope that Tilson Thomas does not resolve to tackle Pelléas.

Prom 74: BBC PO/Noseda - Schubert, Schumann, Holloway, and Mozart, 9 September 2010

Royal Albert Hall

Schubert – Symphony no.8 in B minor, ‘Unfinished’, D 759
Schumann – Introduction and Allegro appassionato, in G major, op.92
Robin Holloway – RELIQUARY: Scenes from the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, enclosing an instrumentation of Schumann’s ‘Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart’ (BBC commission: world premiere)
Mozart – Symphony no.40 in G minor, KV 550

Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)
Finghin Collins (piano)
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Gianandrea Noseda (conductor)


This was not, thank goodness, the Last Night of the Proms, a jamboree better left to readers of the Daily Mail, but my last night of the 2010 BBC Proms. The principal attractions a priori were the Schumann Introduction and Allegro appassionato, a rarity in performance, and Robin Holloway’s new RELIQUARY: Scenes from the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, enclosing an instrumentation of Schumann’s ‘Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart’. In practice too? By and large, for the performances of the two symphonic masterpieces on either side, whilst benefiting from fine orchestral playing, were marred by insensitive conducting from Gianandrea Noseda.

I did not necessarily expect Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony to sound so shattering as upon the last occasion I had heard it in concert, in a truly great performance from Bernard Haitink and the London Symphony Orchestra. However, I was nevertheless disappointed when an intriguingly nervy opening gave way to the merely abrupt, with stabbing accents that would have been out of place in Beethoven, let alone Schubert. Worse still, the music was never permitted to breathe. Toscanini-followers – perhaps a few still exist somewhere – might have enjoyed this, I suppose, but no one who has responded to Furtwängler. There were occasional oases of mystery in the development section, when Noseda was not hurrying – or better, harrying – the music along, but this remained a bandmaster’s reading. The swift ‘slow’ movement was similar: not only could one hear every bar-line, every beat; one could predict where those following would fall too, and a good deal hence. Beautiful playing, judged in itself, above all from the BBC Philharmonic’s woodwind section, was hidebound by such regimentation.

The Schumann piece emerged similarly, though mitigating circumstances of rarity and some impressive piano playing lessened the disappointment. The ‘Introduction’ actually sounded relatively relaxed, chamber-like, if still too obviously directed. One only had to recall Claudio Abbado’s conducting of the Berlin Philharmonic for Murray Perahia’s recording to realise how this fell short. Yet, if Finghin Collins is not Perahia, his pearly tone proved not wholly dissimilar. He managed to conjure up moments of true Schumannesque delicacy and fantasy, before being corralled by the bandmaster at his side. Occasional moments of orchestral intimacy again suggested what might have been, but they seemed snatched by the players rather than part of Noseda’s strategy. Ultimately, and despite real promise from Collins, this wonderful piece sounded both rushed and laboured – and insubstantial.

After the interval, it was, then, a great pleasure to turn to the premiere of Holloway’s orchestration and encasing of and commentary on Schumann’s Songs of Mary Stuart. In a new work – well, new and old, in this case – one is less likely to be distracted by interpretation and more likely to focus upon the work itself, whatever that might mean. Moreover, this premiere proved a splendid follow up to the Nash Ensemble’s Proms matinee performance of Holloway’s Fantasy-Pieces (on the Heine ‘Liederkreis’ of Schumann). I was intrigued by the Prologue, Holloway’s own. Marked ‘Brief, lamenting, calming,’ the orchestration sounds relatively ‘German’, but the harmony surprisingly Gallic, recalling Poulenc at his more solemn. The Abschied von Frankreich is characterised by ever-present harp, and occasional hints of Webern-like instrumentation, Wagner becoming more present in Holloway’s re-imagining of the epilogue, highlighting its Tristan-esque tendencies. Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes is more radical, with an orchestral ‘halo’, including iridescent celesta and woodwind, shining, in different tempo and tonality, above the song itself. Violins evoke a refractory dreamlike world somewhere between Rosenkavalier and early Schoenberg. The gravity of the concluding vocal ‘Amen’, here perfectly delivered by Dorothea Röschmann, draws attention back to the sombreness that has essentially characterised the contrasting vocal setting itself. An entr’acte of sarabande and bourrée, evocative of Mary’s happier days in France, prepares the way for her imploring, yet reproachful song to her cousin, An die Königin Elisabeth. Wagner again sprang to mind, and this time it was more Schumann’s doing than Holloway’s. These songs have been so undervalued!

Woodwind solos in the ensuing entr’acte provide Wagnerian presentiments of material that will follow, but also assist the sense of moving downwards, a perky enclosed miniature scherzino notwithstanding, to the sombre business of saying farewell to the world. Sadly, this most Mahlerian (almost inevitably so) of the songs, Abschied von der Welt, was disrupted by a barrage of coughing excessive even by the standards of this year’s Proms. A Romantic cello solo lies at the heart of the next entr’acte, harp and other strings prominent, woodwind responding thereto. The drum’s intervention hints ominously at Mary’s fate. The final song, Gebet (‘Prayer’) brings resignation, but also more play with the ‘past’. The vocal line, ‘Ersehne ich Dich,’ is echoed movingly by plangent viola, apparently joining cause with the viols of another age. And the arch-Romantic horn provides the solo that echoes, hopelessly, Mary beseeching her God to rescue her. Holloway’s ‘Epilogue’ provides a neat encapsulation of the conflict and synergy between centuries, the sarabande reprised, likewise material from the Prologue. As a whole, the song cycle appeared transformed, more akin to an operatic scena, and yet restrained, fastidious enough to mark the difference. Röschmann’s performance seemed beyond reproach, equally responsive to words and music, her vocal line modulated yet never strained.

Finally, Mozart’s Symphony no.40. This performance, again not unimpressive in purely orchestral terms, started off better than the Schubert, preferable to the appallingly mannered reading I endured from Sir Simon Rattle last year. The first movement was swift, on the light side, but nevertheless possessed grace. It was hardly Karl Böhm, and would have benefited from a more open response to Mozart’s astonishing proto-Romanticism – or, as ETA Hoffmann had it, simply Romanticism, and he should have known – but Mozart was not entirely misrepresented either. The slow movement flowed, more quickly than one used to hear, but it is an Andante. Noseda’s was a highly vocal conception, more Figaro-like than knocking at the Beethovenian door: a valid standpoint, even if somewhere in between might have revealed more. Repeats, though, made it a bit of a long haul. The third movement, however, took a turn for the worst. Noseda took it far too fast, almost waltz-like, albeit without the slightest hint of relaxation. It turned out rather choppy, each phrase here and in the inconsequential-sounding trio – how does one make Mozart sound inconsequential? – being merely followed by another, with no sense of overall line. The finale was fast – fair enough – but fatiguingly hard-driven. Tragedy is so much more interesting than this.

Proms Saturday Matinee 4: Spence/Nash Ensemble/Gardner - Holloway and Schumann, 28 August 2010

Cadogan Hall

Robin Holloway – Fantasy-Pieces (on the Heine ‘Liederkreis’ of Schumann), op.16, incorporating:
Schumann – Liederkreis, op.24

Schumann – Piano Quartet in E-flat major, op.47


Toby Spence (tenor)
Ian Brown (piano)
Nash Ensemble
Edward Gardner (conductor)


Following on from the previous week’s Saturday matinee, which traced connections between Renaissance music and twentieth- and twenty-first-century composers, this Cadogan Hall Prom looked at Robin Holloway and Robert Schumann. Holloway’s music has long concerned itself with that of his predecessors, Schumann having proved an especially absorbing preoccupation. A new work, Reliquary: Scenes from the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, enclosing an instrumentation of Schumann’s ‘Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart’ will be premiered at Prom 74, on 9 September. These op.16 Fantasy Pieces (1971), written to surround Schumann’s op.24 Heine Liederkreis, followed in the wake of his Scenes from Schumann (1970, revised 1986); indeed, Holloway’s commission arose from a performance in which Graham Jones heard those scenes and requested something similar to commemorate his silver wedding anniversary.

Of the five pieces, the first, a brief ‘Praeludium’, is heard before the Schumann cycle; the latter four are heard after. Holloway described the first movement’s chords as ‘scene-setting’, which might be understood not just in terms of the two works, but in terms of Holloway’s and his work’s historical position too: this music sounding somewhere between Schumann and that most gloriously and productively unrepentant of kleptomaniacs, Stravinsky. The warmth of the Nash Ensemble’s performance, ably directed by Edward Gardner, evoked Schumann, its clarity also hinting at twentieth-century conceptions. There followed a performance of the Schumann cycle itself, from Toby Spence and Ian Brown. Brown’s account of the piano part was impressive indeed, whether in the dignity imparted to Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen, the audible heart-throbbing – remember when this signified something a little more profound than Hollywood? – of Lieb Liebchen, leg’s Händchen, or the straightforward yet never matter-of-fact integrity with which his music enabled Heine’s poetry to shine in the marvellous final Mit Myrthen und Rosen, the one song Holloway does not use in his subsequent explorations, preferring instead to leave it as a ‘sacred farewell’. (Perhaps this might also be on account of its already recapitulatory status?) Spence’s reading could not be faulted in its sincerity: he often reminded me of a Meistersinger David. But if not far off what we want here, is it quite what is required? One can leave aside odd verbal slips, though Spence’s excellent diction rendered them crystal-clear; these things happen. However, he could hector a little too much, Es treibt mich hin perhaps being presented a little too literally. There were times, moreover, when his tone sounded forced: not unfitting, perhaps, in the madness ravaging the mind of Schöne Wiege meiner Leiden, but there are other, more suggestive possibilities. That said, the Romantic innocence of Ich wandelte unter den Bäumen, was powerfully, beautifully evoked: a highlight of the performance.

Brown’s piano provided immediate continuity with the remaining Holloway pieces: it was initially as if, in the second (the ‘Praeludium’ already having been performed), ‘Half Asleep’, the other instruments engaged in refracting commentary whilst Schumann continued to be heard from his own instrument. But soon commentary and combination of themes acquire their own life. The third piece, ‘Adagio’, heightens awareness of the continuing, indeed developing, instability of our own responses to ‘works’ we know well. Here sonorities put me in mind, especially when the clarinet began to sing, of Berio’s orchestration of the Brahms second clarinet sonata, though Holloway’s piece was written a good number of years beforehand. Here the piano’s grand Romantic chords – referring perhaps to the Piano Concerto or other concertante works? – initiated ensemble responses. Perhaps it was my imagination, or simply an unintended correspondence, but was there a brief evocation of Der Rosenkavalier? Certainly throughout the work there were references to other Schumann cycles: Dichterliebe, and more overtly, Frauenliebe und –leben. The fourth-movement scherzo’s taxing instrumental lines were despatched not only with ease but with contrapuntal and harmonic meaning by the players of the Nash Ensemble. Tossed between each other, yet with heightening cumulative effect, further impetus was afforded by Stravinskian syncopations. (The Symphony in Three Movements sprang to my mind at least.) A phantasmagorical trio provides splendidly ambiguous contrast: neo-Romantic in the best sense. Finally and immediately, there followed the finale, ‘Roses-thorns and flowers’, in which the songs of Mahler at times seem almost as present in tone as Schumann undoubtedly is in the material. The piano’s prominence, both in work and performance, heightened the properly Schumannesque sense of fantasy – which is, after all, contained in the title, and for me suggested Busoni at times, not least in the harmonies generated by superimposition. Excellent horn playing provided unavoidable allusion to the vernal freshness of so much German Romanticism.

It was subsequently good to hear again, after quite some time, the op.47 piano quartet (violin: Benjamin Nabarro, viola: Lawrence Power, cello: Paul Watkins, piano: Ian Brown). What a joyous work this is, and so it sounded in the Nash Ensemble’s performance. From the opening of the first movement, one sensed just the right sort of personal happiness being voiced: Schumann at his best is always intimate – as Holloway recognises. Poised just between Beethoven and Brahms, this account was always forward-moving, yet never rushed. Rich tone was put at the service of the music, without the slightest suspicion of narcissism. Sometimes the piano lines ran away a little from Brown at the beginning of the scherzo, which was unquestionably ‘Molto vivace’, but the musical sense was always there, thanks to exemplary string playing. The Andante cantabile was just that, suffused with a longing (the German Sehnsucht seems more apt) that looks towards Brahms, yet remains more unbuttoned. Intimacy again proved key to the performance, no playing to the gallery here, Schumann’s music therefore emerging as deeply, sincerely felt in performance as on paper. The finale burst on to the scene with palpable joy, its contrapuntal outpouring soon outdone by profusion of melody. Harmonic and rhythmic motion were so well judged that they did not register in themselves; one simply imagined that the players were channelling Schumann directly. A splendid performance!