Dubois/Raës - Massenet, Fauré, Dubois, Godard, and Saint-Saëns, 28 October 2024

Wigmore Hall

Massenet: Elégie; Nuit d’Espagne; Sonnet
Fauré: Aubade, op.6 no.1; Chant d’automne, op.5 no.1; Dans les ruines d’une Abbaye, op.2 no.1; Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre; L’Absent, op.5 no.3; Tristesse d’Olympio
Théodore Dubois: Musiques sur l’eau
Benjamin Godard: Fleur d’exil, op.19 no.5
Camille Saint-Saëns: Mélodies persanes, op.26

Cyrille Dubois (tenor)

Tristan Raës (piano)

Tenor Cyrille Dubois and pianist Tristan Raës are to make Wigmore Hall history in a five-year series of the complete songs of Gabriel Fauré. Dubois will be the first artist to perform all of them at the hall; I presume, though do not know for certain, that Raës will be with him throughout. In this, the first concert which dovetailed neatly with 2024’s commemoration of the centenary of Fauré’s death, Dubois and Raës gave voice to ‘Young Fauré and his masters’, six of Fauré’s early songs heard with mélodies by Jules Massenet, Théodore Dubois, Benjamin Godard, and Camille Saint-Saëns. If there were a few, mostly by Dubois, I could happily live without hearing again, there were discoveries aplenty; it is hard and indeed would be foolish to begrudge outings for songs many of us will not have heard before, certainly in concert and quite likely at all. 

For me, the opening Massenet songs were quite a discovery. I have never been much of a fan, but that has been founded on the operas. These three songs from around 1870 offered a spur to reassessment. Whereas much of the operatic talk of Wagnerism has left me a little bemused, it was certainly present in the opening Elégie, from the harmonies of Raës’s striking piano introduction onwards. Their pairing, on Dubois’s entry, with Gallic elegance of vocal line made for a striking, even passionate mode of expression. ‘Nuit d’Espagne’ offered winning contrast and obstinate determination to prove the old saw, however fallacious, of the best ‘Spanish music’ having been written by Frenchmen. Affinity with Carmen was noteworthy; so too was the song’s composition having preceded that of Bizet’s opera. Enchantment of various kinds, eroticism without the Nietzschean decadence one might have expected, characterised Sonnet, which shared with its predecessor a frankly operatic climax chez Dubois. 

The Fauré songs initially inhabited stiller waters, yet already at the beginning of his œuvre, the closer one listened, the more varied the palette and the emotions, both within and between songs. Chant d’automne emerged as a splendidly Romantic response to Baudelaire, Dans les ruines d’une abbaye and, still more so, Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre (as early as 1862) acting in not dissimilar fashion to Hugo. The passionate climax of another Hugo setting, L’Absent, was finely judged by singer and pianist alike, whilst the turbulence of the last in the set (also Hugo), Tristesse d’Olympio grew ‘naturally’, art concealing art, from the preceding verse and music. Few will need reminding of the difficulties attendant to French word endings in song; no one would have guessed so from Dubois’s seemingly effortless command of idiom. 

The tenor’s namesake – no relation – Théodore Dubois close the first half. I cannot say I really ‘got’ his (considerably later: 1904-10) cycle, Musiques sur l’eau, the musical material coming across as rather characterless. Despite committed performances, (Cyrille) Dubois here suffered from a persistent catch in his throat. If it were to happen anywhere, it was probably better here, and he soon recovered, maintaining line and style. Raës’s performances were at least the equal of his partner’s. I was a little confused regarding one song, ‘Promenade à l’étang’, whose text differed from that printed in the programme; checking afterwards, it would certainly seem to have been included correctly, so perhaps the wrong text was inadvertently included. No matter. 

There was no doubting the sincerity of responses, nor to Benjamin Godard’s songs, which followed the interval. One would hardly call them adventurous, but they seemed more comfortable in their skin than Dubois’s, and were again given with a fine command of idiom and, where appropriate, as in Fleur d’exil, delectable vocal hush. The turbulence of Amour fatal, piano scalic passages and all, built to tumultuous climax, Je respire où tu palpates falling somewhere in between. I shall admit to wishing at one point that I might hear Dubois’s Don José or Samson instead, but full marks for his keenness to explore little-known corners of the repertoire. 

Finally, we heard Saint-Saëns’s outrageously Orientalist Mélodies persanes from 1870. Problematic nature aside, they offered a welcome change not only in mood but in compositional ambition and, for the most part, achievement. A vigorous yet subtle account of ‘La Brise’ showed the way for what was to come, patient attention to detail paying off handsomely in painting a larger picture. Ringing top notes (‘La Solitaire’) and Orientalist melismata (‘Sabre en main’) rested firmly on the foundations of rock-solid piano rhythm. A haunted visit ‘Au cimetière’ prepared us, in contrast as much as complement, for the étude-like piano blizzard of ‘Tournoiement’. 

By way of a calling-card for what is to come, the musicians gave Fauré’s op.1 no.1 as an encore. Le Papillon et La Fleur received a performance both buoyant and seductive. A smallish yet enthusiastic audience certainly appreciated the endeavour as a whole and seemed keen to hear more. Dubois and Raës merit following in this journey. Watch, or rather listen, out for the new year’s next instalment, devoted to the theme of Fauré and Nature.

‘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.

Salzburg Festival (3) – VPO/Barenboim: Saint-Saëns and Wagner, 22 August 2022

Grosses Festspielhaus

Saint-Saëns: Samson et Dalila, op.47: Act II
Wagner: Parsifal: Act II

Elina Garanča (soprano)

Brandon Jovanovich (tenor)

Michael Volle (baritone)

Members of the Young Singers Project

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Jörn Hinnerk Andresen)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

This was, alas, very much a concert of two halves, disturbingly so. For reasons that I hope will be obvious, I shall concentrate on what was best; there is neither critical nor broader human need to hammer home the shortcomings.

Programming was unusual, yet revealing: an excellent case of using a cast to think what might conceptually as well as musically be possible. Consider what these two acts, premiered within five years of one another, have in common or in meaningful contrast, and the answer is quite a lot. Samson et Dalila is not, I think, a theological work; formal affinities to oratorio notwithstanding, it treats with religion, as do many nineteenth-century operas, as an engine of drama and colour. Parsifal most certainly is a theological work; we should probably not get too hung up on whether to call it an opera at all, but its dissociation from common operatic practice is undeniable, even extreme. Both acts, however, deal with seduction of a quasi-consecrated hero with a religious (and political) mission, by an exotic temptress with whom, at least in part, it is difficult not to feel some degree of sympathy. Indeed, as John Snelson remarks in his programme note, hearing these two acts divorced from their predecessors (however much we may still bear them in mind) enables us to observe the action more ‘from the perspective of the women’, even arguably intensifying ‘the hypnotic force they exert as they propel the dramas to contrasting climaxes’. Saint-Saëns’s ambiguous musical debt to Wagner was certainly in evidence here too, perhaps unsurprisingly given the conductor was Daniel Barenboim.

What was surprising was that Saint-Saëns fared so much better overall than Wagner. The initial orchestral sound we heard from the Vienna Philharmonic was, to my ears, perfect in balance, colour, and harmonic grounding, its darkness seemingly transposed from Siegfried’s forest. It was inviting, intensely so, with promise—not least of danger. On entry, Elina Garanča could likewise hardly have been improved upon: flawless in delivery, dignified and rich of tone, her (Dalila’s) made mind up, her lines despatched with duly operatic grandeur, even hauteur. The orchestra spoke and commented upon the action, much as in Wagner, though rightly also with reference to a long French history of orchestral recitative dating back at least to Rameau. There was certainly more than a little Berlioz to be heard; I soon found myself wishing for a Troyens from these forces, whilst knowing in my heart of hearts that it was already too late. Barenboim’s ear for motivic unity extended over sections of the score, but also across the entire act, imparting a unity necessary yet sadly all too rare in this repertoire. Michael Volle made for a commanding High Priest of Dagon, his typical sensitivity to words and music married to extraordinary dynamic and colouristic range. Brandon Jovanovich, our Siegmund-on-Seine, was as ardent a Samson as one could have imagined, playing nonetheless on a fine ambiguity between hero unmediated and a character compelled (or choosing) to play that role. The climactic duet between Samson and Dalila was, quite simply, a privilege to see (such acting too!) and hear, all the while knowing Dalila ultimately was in control.

The Parsifal Prelude was more deliberate, at its best evincing the spirit of a Klemperer, certainly oozing Tristan-esque malevolence. I listened for as long as I could in that vein and, to be fair, there was much in the orchestral cauldron still to admire, at least in the first scene or two. The first, orchestral intimation of Klingsor’s magic garden, for instance, appeared before our ears’ eyes with all the freshness of continually renewed experience. Whether that were the VPO’s or Barenboim’s, however, soon became a moot point. Samson et Dalila certainly does not play itself; the talk I heard from some about the conductor’s disengagement at this stage was just that, talk. It was, sadly, shown all the more to be so by much of what we heard of Parsifal, in which a disaffected orchestra at times seemed more or less to have given up, kept together (just about) only by the extraordinary commitment of three outstanding soloists. One made what one could of it; at least I did. Concentrating on the poem, I heard all the more in this context just how much of Wagner’s language is steeped in Lutheran theology. So many of the words could have stepped straight out of Bach; in a sense, they had. The luminosity of the orchestral grail, here with a distinctly Viennese tinge, beguiled as ever. Ultimately, though, this was difficult to listen to, as well as to watch.

Barenboim does not need critics, even those who are long-term admirers, to tell him what to do. I hope, though, that those close to him will counsel caution, for his recovery is clearly far from complete. If, for now, that entails fewer, shorter concerts, then for his sake I hope he will consider that path.

 

Chamayou/LSO/Roth - Gossec, Saint-Saëns, and Beethoven, 11 November 2021

Barbican Hall

Gossec: Symphonie à 17 parties in F major, Rh 64
Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto no.2 in G minor, op.22
Beethoven: Symphony no.3 in E-flat major, op.55, ‘Eroica’

Bertrand Chamayou (piano)
London Symphony Orchestra
François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

 

François-Joseph Gossec lived a very long life during ‘interesting times’, born in 1734 in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) and dying in Paris in 1829, just short of the July Revolution. His Symphonie à 17 parties was written under Napoleon, in 1809, so makes for an interesting companion piece to Beethoven’s Sinfonia Eroica, composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grande Uomo, its initial dedication (to Bonaparte) famously scratched out in fury in response to the First Consul’s self-elevation to the rank of Emperor. If closer comparison is beside the point—whatever the virtues of Gossec’s piece, it would pale if heard after Beethoven—then this was an excellent opportunity to hear a little-known work, with fine advocacy from François-Xavier Roth and the LSO, Bertrand Chamayou contributing a blistering account of Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto in between. 

Gossec’s Symphony immediately catches the ear with its grandly rhetorical opening bars, prior to what comes across to our ears as fond looking (listening?) back to the eighteenth century, unquestionably from the standpoint of a composer for French orchestras. (Gossec had founded the Concert des Amateurs in 1769, offering for twelve years a serious rival to the celebrated Concert Spirituel.) And that was only the introduction. The first movement as a whole proved colourful and theatrical, testament to the composer’s interest in concert and dramatic work alike (sacred music too). If the movement’s close relied heavily on tonic and dominant harmony, that in itself is hardly a fault; one might—many do—say the same of Beethoven. The Larghetto second movement showed some rather more surprising harmonic shifts, allied to a keen ear for colour as heard earlier. Such music can all too readily be rushed, but not here; nor did it drag. The minor-mode Minuetto (I should have guessed ‘scherzo’) came as a considerable surprise, both in itself and for its counterpoint. Split violins, as well as considerable LSO heft (twelve first violins down to five double basses), truly told, as did unmistakeably Gallic use of bassoons. The trio’s Harmoniemusik was attractive enough, though perhaps it outstayed its (symphonic) welcome. The finale again had a strong sense of the opera house to it. Some phrases sounded superficially Mozartian in themselves, but the construction is very different. 

Chamayou ensured a properly arresting opening to the Saint-Saëns Concerto, as if extemporising on Romantic memories of Bach—which, in a way, is very much what the composer is doing. The LSO’s response was equally, differently rhetorical, the first movement’s course meeting somewhere in between, broadly Lisztian. What some say of Liszt, I might wonder of Saint-Saëns; this movement does sound to me a little like an introduction to an introduction. I am probably missing the point, though, and there was no denying the superior quality of Chamayou’s pianism: glistening, melting, virile, double octaves and all. Fantasia-like swirling mists prior to the close proved mysteriously alluring. A sparkling, sprightly, even sprite-ly second movement began in Mendelssohnian vein, before moving in quite different directions. The tarantella finale sounded ambiguous, perhaps ambivalent, certainly a whirlwind. One could only marvel at the pianist’s technique and musicianship, Roth ever the alert, discerning accompanist. As an encore, we were treated to the Adagio from Haydn’s late Piano Sonata in C major, Hob.XVI:50. Rapt in its intensity, it benefited from a similar sense of the improvisatory, founded in attention to detail and command of line. I should love to hear more Haydn from Chamayou. 

The opening of the Eroica came as quite a culture shock (to me, at least). I do not think I have ever heard it so fast: presumably taken at the ever-controversial metronome marking. Roth’s musicianship won me over, though. This was a very different Beethoven from that of Wagner, Furtwängler, Klemperer, Barenboim, or a host of others. Of course it was, Colin Davis included. (It was under him, I think, that I last heard the LSO play this symphony.) But comparison, or for that matter contrast, is not the point here. Roth, anything but dogmatic, had his own vision and it worked splendidly. Ultimately, I missed a degree of grandeur, but here, in Beethoven’s first movement, not only did notes fly off the page; they fairly danced. There was, moreover, a fine sense of exploration to the development and what is in effect a second development (recapitulation). 

The Funeral March was brisk, if less (to my ears) iconoclastically so. Obsequies grew in stature, as if grief were approaching us from a distance. There was, fittingly for the programme, a strong sense of French Revolutionary processional. It was, perhaps, more Berlioz’s Beethoven than Wagner’s—and none the worse for it. Excellent woodwind solos (Olivier Stankiewicz’s oboe here first among equals) contributed to the greater whole. Counterpoint lay at the movement’s very heart; if sometimes I had wondered quite what was at stake in the first movement, here there was little doubt. Busy energy, born of detail and line, characterised the scherzo, the trio’s celebrated horns sounding with vernal freshness all the more welcome in dark November. Taken attacca, the finale constantly surprised, rethought in many ways by Roth. No variation was taken for granted, that for strings alone taken by solo instruments with strikingly ‘period’ tone. But that was a means to an expressive end, not an end in itself, the entry of the LSO’s woodwind creating all the greater contrast and later string vibrato far from parsimonious. It was exciting and coherent: neither quite what many would have expected, nor in any sense perverse. It was quite something (even to a die-hard Furtwänglerian such as yours truly).

And it was salutary to be reminded by Roth from the podium that Beethoven, here conducted by a Frenchman and played by an (international) British orchestra, was the most European of composers. ‘Vive l’Europe!’ as he said, to great applause. London needs to hear that more than ever right now.

Samson et Dalila, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 27 November 2019

Images: Matthias Baus

Dalila – Elina Garanča

Samson – Brandon Jovanovich

High Priest of Dagon – Michael Volle

Abimelech – Kwangchul Youn

Old Hebrew – Wolfgang Schöne

First Philistine – Andrés Moreno Garcia

Second Philistine – Jaka Mihelač

Philistine Messenger – Javier Bernando

Samson Double (Dancer) – Nikos Fragkou

Dalila Double (Dancer) - Lisa Schramm

Damián Szifron (director)

Étienne Pluss (set designs)

Gesine Völlm (costumes)

Olaf Freese (lighting)

Tomasz Kajdański (choreography)

Romain Gilbert, Heide Stock (assistant directors)

Jana Beckmann (dramaturgy)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Hand on heart, I have never seen anything quite like this. From curtain rise to reveal a dog running across stage—accompanied by palpable audience bewilderment and highly audible laughter—to a bizarrely offensive final act seemingly co-directed by David McVicar and ‘Mad’ Melanie Phillips, film director Damián Szifron’s first foray into opera afforded the very definition of a car-crash. Much as one may have wished to avert one’s eyes, such was alas never an option. There was, to be fair, unwitting entertainment along the way. Yet seeing—and hearing—outstanding artists such as Elina Garanča, Brandon Jovanovich, and Michael Volle wading and occasionally, Dagon help us, dancing through the non-ironic polystyrene debris of a scenic cross between Cecil B De Mille, Franco Zeffirelli, mid-budget 70s science fiction, and the day’s n^th Spectator columnist endorsement of Boris Johnson, was ultimately the stuff of nightmares—or at least of end-of-term revues.

Let us start with the good, musical news. All three of those soloists were on fine musical form. I have never heard anything other than an excellent performance from Jovanovich; this was to be no exception. Tireless, committed to words and music, heroism and humanity, in equal measure, his Samson could hardly be bettered. That neither he nor Garanča could be visually recognised beneath their extraordinary costumes was doubtless no bad thing for either. Garanča brought all the virtues one might have expected to her Dalila: similar precision and professionalism, with a mezzo as rich as it was even of tone. Volle, to whom my heart especially went out when in a ‘religious’ bathrobe, proved vocally intelligent and inviting as ever. Save for unfortunate appearances from Kwangchul Youn and Wolfgang Schöne, the rest of the cast, chorus included also impressed. The latter’s slightly rocky start did not preclude performances of welcome heft and dramatic direction.

At least as impressive as the central trio were Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin. The promise held out by their all-Saint Saëns subscription concert a couple of weeks earlier was fulfilled in a performance suggesting, however great the illusion, this to be music they played almost as regularly as Wagner. (To be fair, Barenboim has a recording of the opera to his name, but even so.) As ever with Barenboim’s performances, it was founded upon harmony, making fine sense of Saint-Saëns’s medium- and longer-term tonal plans, yet without sacrifice to detail. Not for the first time, his handling of neo-Bachian elements had one long for him to conduct more of the real thing one day. If the opera’s conclusion remains strangely perfunctory and the preceding Bacchanale problematic in its orientalism, there is little that can be done about that. An array of gorgeous orchestral playing, transparent and weighty as required—not infrequently, both—offered more than ample compensation for shortcomings in the score. At least, it would have done, had it not been for the unfolding catastrophe on stage.

Dear reader, it is to the tale—or tail—initiated by that mysterious, never-to-be-seen live stage hound, lodged indelibly in the visual memory, that we must return. Poor Rover, we knew him all too little, yet he deserved our gratitude for running across the stage—not unlike the equally mysterious ENO nude lady of yore, presumably awarded a block booking—and thus briefly distracting us from Étienne Pluss’s still more risible ‘Biblical’ landscape. It matched, I suppose, Gesine Völlm’s ‘Biblical’ costumeswere one in the market for a Life of Brian sequel without the (intentional) jokes. And it provided a space—someone had to—for breathtakingly amateurish blocking and choreography. Such was leavened-or, according to that rarest of commodities here, taste, further depressed—by hapless acts such as having Samson appear on stage dragging, with mixed success, a slaughtered bull, from which he would extract a horn to gorge a few passing Philistines.

A ballet scene, in which Samson and Dalila doubles danced their inexplicable desires, Dalila at one point wandering offstage to emerge with child—cue, yes, much rubbing of her ovular miracle—was bewilderingly accompanied by a sun/moon that moved ever so fitfully in various directions. A technical hitch, perhaps? More likely trying to escape this cosmos from embarrassment. And so it went on, not so much as an idea, let alone a Konzept, in sight. Dalilla’s cave, seemingly located on a stage simplification of a set for a spin-off from Peter Davison-era Dr Who, offered a location for what, in this ‘aesthetic’, we should probably call ‘lovemaking’. That was certainly, in the pejorative sense, what it looked like; thank goodness it was cut short; one could sympathise with Philistine desire to arrest at least one of its participant.

Following a visit to Samson’s Gaza dungeon, its abattoir ‘look’ weirdly out of kilter with what we had seen previously, we moved to a Temple of Dagon in whose representation Szifron appeared to be trying to outdo Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s execrable Bayreuth Parsifal for Offensively Orientalist Staging of the Year (bonus points for implied Islamophobia). I say ‘appeared’ because I suspect much of it was not even intended and instead the product—as with so much that had preceded of it—of having enlisted a director without knowledge or experience of opera, or even a cursory interest in the genre. Toe-curlingly un-erotic orgies are in keeping with actually existing opera’s history on stage: not for nothing did Schoenberg touchingly prescribe the events around his Golden Calf as an explicitly ‘erotic’ orgy. However, youthful executioners’ bewilderment at ongoing proceedings, as witnessed by their vacantly staring at female breasts, came across as anything but knowing. Bloodsoaked assassins – Assassins with a capital ‘a’, I fear—did what ‘exotic’, ‘Eastern’ people would. Could not Barenboim have introduced Szifron to the work of Edward Said? All the while, Volle as High Priest wandered around quizzically in bath robe and staff topped with not un-crescent-like 'symbol'. If Jehovah were unwilling to draw such proceedings to a close, He would have been a crueller, more vengeful God than even Voltaire would have charged. As it was, the Great Director in the Sky took His time: understandable on musical grounds, yet otherwise…

Scott Brothers Duo - Rossini, Guilmant, Debussy, Franck, Saint-Saëns, Gounod, Scott, and Dukas, 26 November 2019

Apollo Saal, Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Rossini, arr. Jonathan Scott: Il barbiere di Siviglia: Overture

Debussy, arr. J Scott: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

Alexandre Guilmant: Scherzo in D minor, op.31

Franck: Prélude, Fugue et Variation, op.16

Saint-Saëns, arr. J Scott: Danse macabre

Saint-Saëns: Six Duos, op.8: ‘Fantasia e fuga’

Gounod, arr. J Scott: Méditation – Ave Maria

Tom Scott: Dances for harmonium and piano

Guilmant: Ariane, op.53: ‘Adagio’ and ‘Danse des songes’

Dukas, arr. J Scott: L’Apprenti sorcier

Jonathan Scott (harmonium)

Tom Scott (piano)

It is not every day one hears a recital for piano and harmonium duo; still less often, I suspect, might one hear such a recital in which novelty of combination and sonority takes second place to captivating quality of performance. Here with arrangements and no fewer than four pieces written originally for the combination were the Scott Brothers Duo, Tom on piano and Jonathan on harmonium, the latter a new Mustel instrument acquired by the Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

A Rossini overture will always prove, performance permitting, a sparkling way to open a concert. Performance here permitted—and it proved an excellent choice in accustoming our ears and, more generally, expectations. The introduction alternated between piano and harmonium playing in concert, sometimes doubled and sometimes complementary, and antiphonal writing, Jonathan Scott’s arrangement here as elsewhere skilful, catching, indeed beguiling. His registration choices proved imaginative without eccentricity and balance never proved a problem in the slightest. Rossini’s music put a smile on one’s face, as it should. Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune is a different kettle of fish, to put it mildly, but Scott’s arrangement proved just as adept. The opening flute solo swelled on his instrument, answered with piano arpeggios. Taken through various, often magical transformations, this was quite an ear-opener, again for the quality of the performances more than the novel instrumentation.

A piece for harmonium solo followed, Alexandre Guilmant’s post-Mendelssohnian Scherzo in D minor, op.31. As fleet as imaginable in performance, Mendelssohn soon took second place to something not unlike Rossini and, less surprisingly, the world of the nineteenth-century French organ. Music by Guilmant for piano and harmonium would appear during the second half. I cannot say that the ‘Adagio’ and ‘Danse des songes’ made me long to hear the rest of his ‘symphony-cantata’, Ariane, but it was pleasant enough for a while, if not without sentimentality. Still, one item to which I struggled to respond in a programme of this kind was pretty good going. Speaking of sentimentality, the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria preceding it was beautifully shaped, both as arrangement and performance; I am not sure I did not prefer it to the vocal ‘original’.

Returning to the first half, Franck’s Prélude, Fugue et Variation, op.18, was the real thing, written with the surest command of the unusual combination of instruments, and performed with flair and security. It had impetus; it grew; and ultimately, there was a fine sense of cyclical return. Perhaps the highpoint for me, though, was Saint-Saëns’s ‘Fantasia e Fuga’ from his Six Duos, op.6, which opened the second half. Opening piano cascades set against harmonium chordal progression? The more one truly listened, the less simple such generalisations were. How, moreover, could one fail to listen in so inviting a performance? Not all fugues are fun—it would be a peculiar, embarrassing description for those in late Beethoven—but this most certainly was. I should have loved to hear more from this collection; leaving an audience wanting more is, however, not an unsound tactic. The remaining piece written expressly for this combination of instruments was Tom Scott’s own Dances for Harmonium and Piano: unapologetically tonal and even, for want of a better word, ‘popular’ in style, a waltz, sarabande, and minimalist (!) gigue were written and performed with typical ease and panache.

Two tone poems completed the two halves: Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre and Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Both offered clarity and imagination in arrangement and performance. In the former, one probably heard more strongly than ever the composer’s debt to Liszt. There was a nice death rattle too. In the latter, equally full of rhythmic impetus, one perhaps listened more clearly to Dukas’s often extraordinary harmonies; I was reasonably sure that I heard things I had not noticed before. Not, of course, that registration failed to ring the colouristic changes. Along with winning introductions and commentary throughout—all in German—we were treated to two encores: a virtuosic account of Vittorio Monti’s Csárdás and an intimately expressive Fauré Après un rêve. A lovely evening, then, to which the Apollo Saal audience responded with great enthusiasm.

Batiashvili/Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim - Saint-Saëns, 12 November 2019

Philharmonie

Violin Concerto no.3 in B minor, op.61

Symphony no.3 in C minor, op.78, ‘Organ’

Lisa Batiashvili (violin)

Christian Schmitt (organ) 

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

In preparation for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s new production of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila, directed by Damián Szifron and conducted by Daniel Barenboim, of which more in due course, Berlin is hearing more of the composer’s œuvre than might generally be expected. I shall be reporting not only from the opera but also from a chamber concert at the Apollo Saal for piano and harmonium. In the meantime, here were two orchestral works, also conducted by Barenboim.

For the first—to my mind, the most successful—of the works, the Third Violin Concerto, Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin were joined by Lisa Batiashvili, whose performance proved to be nothing less than outstanding. A heightened sense of expectancy from orchestra—not least ominous timpani—and soloist alike had the first movement off to an excellent start, its promise fully repaid. Not only did Batiashvili offer as darkly focused a line as one could wish for, the way in which it was spun made one eager for more. The darkness of key—for various reasons, B minor is not so common for strings—registered from all concerned, brass as much as strings. There was plenty of Mendelssohnian light too, though, added to which I heard an intriguing sense, born perhaps of common Mendelssohnian roots, a common key, and the conductor’s identity, of affinity with Elgar.

The slow movement came very much as response: contrast, yes, but necessary rather than arbitrary. The violin’s lovely siciliano duetting with woodwind could hardly fail to delight with such all-round excellence of playing. Not that it was all sweetness and light: there were beautiful, meaningful shadows cast too, yet within appropriate bounds. Above all, it sang. There was, moreover, a fine sense of difference, of particularity, of key, both in work and performance. There may be no harmonic shocks here, but there were plenty of harmonic surprises, so long as one listened. Batiashvili’s closing harmonics proved both of this world—Saint-Saëns is not really a composer for transcendence—and yet suggestive, not unlike Berlioz in L’Enfance du Christ, of a childhood longing for something beyond.

A passionate violin cry managed to cut through even the noisiest of coughing and chatter to silence—eventually—the audience for the finale. Stylish and propulsive, this was a finale in more than name, Barenboim’s often unremarked excellence as an accompanist—how could it be otherwise, given his decades of experience at the piano?—as crucial as the soloist’s musicianship. All concerned seem to relish its post-Mendelssohnian loveliness. Was there also a hint of the operatic world, of kinship with Berlioz and even, as presentiment, Puccini, however coincidental? There was, wisely, no straining at non-existent depth, this fine performance emerging all the better for it, taking the concerto for what it is rather than for what someone else might prefer it to be.

Barenboim has a long history with the ‘Organ’ Symphony, having recorded it a good number of years ago in Chicago. Here he conducted it from memory—and it showed, given with all the care and first-hand acquaintance Barenboim would offer Beethoven or Schubert. Hand on heart, I cannot say it is a work that entirely convinces me, but it has plenty of interest; indeed, not unlike Liszt, to whom he clearly owes much here and to whose memory the work is dedicated, Saint-Saëns can be of considerable interest in his (relative) failures too. The performance, though—to a certain extent, listening too—is in many respects an opportunity to put the case for the defence. Barenboim and his orchestra certainly did that, from a perfectly judged opening string crescendo and diminuendo—expectancy once more—to the showmanship and resonance of the close. A rapt quality to the second section of the first movement—the second movement of four, if you prefer to consider its form more traditionally—once again brought Elgar, even Mahler, to mind; for what a string section this is! Barenboim often did little, but one could tell that the orchestra was doing what he required. By letting the music speak so ‘naturally’—whatever hard work that may mask—Barenboim and his players assented to the truth voiced in the composer’s memoir, École buissonnière: ‘Music is something beyond a source of sensuous pleasure and keenly-felt emotion ... He who does not derive absolute pleasure from a simple series of well-constructed chords, beautiful only in their arrangement, is not truly fond of music.’

Harmony, then, afforded its ‘own’ pleasure; yet when Barenboim actively conducted the music, taking it by the scruff of its neck, it might almost have been Wagner. For the second of Saint-Saëns’s prescribed two movements opened with all the urgency of a new dramatic act, the Presto part of that opening section reminding us, as so often with Barenboim and this orchestra, that clarity and litheness need entail no sacrifice to depth of tone. If you are trading one for the other, you should probably find another trade. The organ chords (Christian Schmitt) and piano arpeggios of the movement’s second section certainly had impact, although—and this has nothing to do with the quality of the performance—I could not help but reflect how Liszt would have been excoriated, had he written anything quite so vulgar. Counterpoint, at any rate, proved clear and directed, and the sound was quite magnificent.

Graham/RPO/Dutoit - Ravel, Berlioz, and Saint-Saëns, 14 May 2014

Royal Festival Hall

Ravel – Valses nobles et sentimentales

Berlioz – Les Nuits d’été, op.7

Saint-Saëns – Symphony no.3 in C minor, op.78

Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano)

Stephen Disley (organ)

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Charles Dutoit (conductor)

The orchestral version of Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales opened promisingly, the first waltz glossy, its surface properly shimmering, inviting and yet evading the question of what lay underneath. Properly responsive to Charles Dutoit’s direction, the Royal Philharmonic sounded on excellent form. This was not the probing, modernistic Ravel of Boulez but, on its own terms, it worked well. And if that first waltz was a little too driven, there was plenty of languor to its successor. Rubato was well judged, direction maintained. Phrasing was nicely pointed in the third, and there was much to admire throughout. It was a pity, then, that, on a few occasions, the strings were oddly tentative, a greater pity that Dutoit did little to rectify the problem. The Epilogue, however, was intriguingly crepuscular; fragments and memories were often menacing, at the very least ambiguous.

 

Susan Graham joined the orchestra for a spellbinding performance of Les Nuits d’été. Nervous energy from all concerned marked the opening and indeed the entirety of ‘Villanelle’. Berlioz’s individualty was celebrated, not masked, still less apologised for, melodic and harmonic twists relished, though not unduly exaggerated. Graham’s diction and sense of style, here and thereafter, were quite simply beyond reproach; Dutoit’s partnership showed him at his very best. The orchestral writing of ‘La Spectre de la rose’ – one simply cannot separate instrumentation from melody – looked forward, as it should, to Roméo et Juliette, even to Les Troyens. Graham’s sincerity of vocal delivery offered a fine example of art concealing art; it sounded as if this were an unmediated witness. ‘Léger parfum’, as heard from the harps, was properly beguiling indeed. Darkening of mood was immediately palpable in Sur les lagunes. Graham’s voice darkened and blended with a very different orchestral palate. At times, this might almost have been a contralto, not least when the voice sank for the night’s extending ‘comme un linceul’. Thereafter, there was Romantic defiance, the orchestra vividly ‘operatic’. A true sense of calling out, not just of recounting someone having done so, was to be heard with the opening – and subsequent – ‘Reviens, reviens, ma bien-aimée!’ of ‘Absence’. In its way, it emerged as a touching counterpart to the Marschallin’s melancholy concerning time’s passing. ‘Au Cimietière’ offered orchestral weirdness: positively in the subtlest of refractions from the Symphonie fantastique upon ‘rayon tremblant’, less so in the less than ideal balance to the close, the clarinet unduly prominent. But the latter was a minor blemish indeed, soon eclipsed by the experience of new horizons afforded by ‘L’Ile inconnue’.

 

Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony is a peculiar work: to my ears, a more or less irreconcilable mixture of styles and material. It is difficult to rid oneself of the suspicion that many respond more to the sound of the organ than to the music itself. And indeed, the writing for the King of Instruments is decidedly peculiar, still more so, given that the composer, an excellent organist, wrote plentiful music for it. The first movement, at any rate, had a welcome air of Mendelssohn to it, the RPO admirable in its precision. To English ears, there are perhaps in some turns of phrase, even harmonic shifts, presentiments of Elgar to be heard too. Motivic construction was clearly conveyed – though is perhaps this construction not a little too obvious? (If so, that is the composer’s fault, not the performers’.) The slow movement made its unhurried progress – again not entirely unlike Elgar – with great conviction. Dutoit offered a fine sense of line, and balance between organ and orchestra was well achieved. There was, again, more than a hint of Mendelssohn to the scherzo, impressively darkened second time around. The trio sounded unduly hurried, though I am not convinced that it displays particularly successful writing in any case. Be that as it may, the transition to the finale was convincingly shaped. Counterpoint was clear and well directed. There was splendid timpani playing at the end too. As for the rest of the movement, well: if you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you will like. I cannot for the life of me understand what those loud organ chords are supposed to achieve, but the Royal Festival Hall audience was clearly impressed, roaring its approval at the end.

Sir Neville Marriner’s 90th-Birthday Celebration Concert – Saint-Saëns, Mozart, and Elgar, 1 April 2014

Royal Festival Hall

Saint-Saëns – Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, op.28

Mozart – Piano Concerto no.20 in D minor, KV 466

Elgar – Enigma Variations, op.36

Joshua Bell (violin/director)

Murray Perahia (piano)

Academy of St Martin in the Fields

Sir Neville Marriner (conductor)

 

Image: Decca

 

 

Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (the ensemble’s initial hyphens dropped in 1988) have been performing together in public since 1959, though Marriner appeared as violinist on a good few recordings before then. Having founded the ensemble and guided it through a number of transformations – not least, its varying constitution as small ensemble, chamber orchestra, and symphony orchestra – Sir Neville, though no longer the Music Director, still plays an active part in the life of the ASMF as conductor. Often, sadly, that happens more often abroad than here in England; indeed, though I have often heard the orchestra, this was actually the first time I have heard the conductor ‘live’.  Two weeks shy of his ninetieth birthday, that was put right with a wonderful celebratory concert, including the present Music Director (only the second in the orchestra’s history), Joshua Bell, and Principal Guest Conductor, Murray Perahia.

 

Bell acted as soloist and director for his contribution, Saint-Saëns’s Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso. Perhaps surprisingly, it was here that the orchestra was at its smallest (strings: 7.6.4.3.2). It was a stylish performance, benefiting from razor-sharp unanimity and a keen sense of rhythm, without being driven too hard. There was plenty of light and shade, a credit both to the players’ responsiveness and to Bell’s enlightened direction. It was indeed a joy of sorts to hear such immaculate playing from all concerned. There is, of course, only so deep one can go in such a piece, but he ensured that it was not merely an opportunity for virtuoso display.

 

I had assumed that Perahia would be directing Mozart’s D minor Piano Concerto from the piano, so was delighted when Marriner came to the podium to conduct. The string section here was larger, though still on what one might call a chamber scale (10.8. 6.6.3). More important than mere size, however, was the transparency of sound, allied to commendable fullness where need be (more so, I fancied, than on the ASMF recordings with Alfred Brendel). Doubtless Marriner’s detractors would consider this a failing, but I was quite delighted to hear the first movement open as if it were the same orchestra that had played for Amadeus. (The beautifully-illustrated programme had an amusing advertisement for that ‘motion picture’, with pictures of Mozart and Marriner: ‘Only two people were qualified to conduct the score of Milos Forman’s “Amadeus”. One was unavailable.’) The standard of orchestral execution was outstanding: sweet of tone, beguiling indeed, but with not a little demonic fury too. Such things are relative: this was not the Mozart of, say, Barenboim or Furtwängler, but nor was it trying to be. It was, however, a splendid display of fine musicianship from all concerned. Tempi and phrasing went unnoticed in the best sense: this was an excellent example of art concealing art. Perahia perhaps proved a little darker, even on occasion heavier of hand, than one might have expected, but for the most part, his was a fine performance too. The cadenzas – I do not know whose they were: certainly not Beethoven’s – here and in the finale were imaginative and received fine advocacy. The slow movement was poised, rightly, between tragedy and consolation, making one feel both all the more, without a hint of exaggeration. It was beautifully shaped, without sounding ‘shaped’. Perahia offered a considerable degree of ornamentation. Clean lines and characterful woodwind (not least, Christopher Cowie’s oboe) added to an account that was far more than ‘pleasing’. Coughing, alas, extended until the end of Perahia’s opening solo to the finale. Nevertheless, it was expertly played: a very tricky moment indeed to bring off. Then the ASMF truly unleashed Mozart’s D minor daemon, whilst remaining clean, clear, and lithe: this was never going to be a performance of Furtwänglerian mysticism, but it convinced on its own terms. There was just the right degree of tension between minor and major, the coda proving a delightful release.

 

A larger orchestra again (strings 12.10.8.8.6) convened following the interval for Elgar’s Enigma Variations. I was struck immediately by the cultivated sound of the strings: not for its own sake, but at the service of the score and its subtleties. Fabled virtuosity and transparency were once again apparent, often evoking Mendelssohn, indeed as early as the Theme and certainly in the first variation. This was not ‘weighty’ Elgar, but nor was it ‘light’ in any trivial sense. And there was plenty of depth to the string tone where required, as for instance in the fourth variation, ‘WMB’. Tumultuous passages were taken at quite a lick, yet never sounded merely quick; there was bravado here, but musical bravado. ‘He who dares wins’: and he did. Moreover, there was plenty of what, in traditionally gendered terms, not inappropriate in Elgar’s case, we might call ‘feminine’ contrast. Crucially, there was never so much as a hint of sentimentality. ‘Nimrod’  was deeply felt, yes, but musicianship was all. ‘Dorabella’ brought lightly-worn Mendelssohn and Brahms to the fore, maybe even a hint of Strauss. ‘GRS’ perhaps Liszt – and not only in the use of the triangle. But the composer’s voice remained ever present, whoever his forebears may have been.

 

This was a distinguished performance, a fitting celebration of a distinguished career. Let us look forward, then, to a similar occasion in ten years’ time. And lest the thought seem absurd – maybe it is, maybe it is not – let us remember Elliott Carter, whom no one would have expected to continue composing into his second century.

 

Chen/Quentin - Mozart, Brahms, Ysaÿe, and Saint-Saëns, 16 July 2013

Wigmore Hall

Mozart – Violin Sonata in B-flat major, KV 454

Brahms – Violin Sonata no.3 in D minor, op.108
Ysaÿe – Violin Sonata in A minor, op.27 no.2
Saint-Saëns – Havanaise in E major, op.83
Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso in A minor, op.28

Ray Chen (violin)

Julien Quentin (piano)

 

 

The violinist Ray Chen has already released two CDs for Sony; here, he was joined by pianist Julien Quentin for his Wigmore Hall debut. In many respects, especially during the first half of the recital, it was Quentin who impressed more. Mozart’s great B-flat sonata, KV 454, opened the programme. There was appropriate spaciousness to the first movement’s introduction, though it seemed an odd decision not to repeat the exposition, both in terms of the lack of balance imparted to the movement in itself and in relation to the slow movement. Chen offered gleaming tone, even the occasional touch of portamento, but it was Quentin who seemed more under the kin of the music, not that he lacked anything in pearly tone. The slow movement flowed nicely, its aria sensibility finely conveyed. Chen at times needed to play less as a ‘soloist’ and more as a chamber musician, though later on, there was a far greater sense of interplay, especially during the most harmonically adventurous passages. The finale was taken a little too fast: more Allegro than Allegretto, its character turned forcibly more brilliant. Articulation was excellent, though, and there was a good sense of the rondo as formal principle.

 

The first movement of Brahms’s D minor sonata showed that this was not to be an ‘autumnal’ Brahms – perhaps not inappropriately, on one of the hottest days of the year. This was a Romantic reading, in music that seemed to suit Chen better, Quentin being equally at home. The pianist’s half-lit progressions made one want to hear him in some of Brahms’s solo piano music. Brahms’s extraordinary concision was powerfully conveyed, as if in a single breath, alongside a perhaps unusually passionate sensibility that linked this movement at least with the D minor Piano Concerto. For me, some of the violin part was over-Romanticised in the slow movement, vibrato laid on with a trowel, but I must admit that the ‘Hungarian’ and/or ‘gypsy’ sensibility imparted by Chen had its own validity. The essential ‘idea’, the movement as song, certainly emerged in performance. Playfulness – serious playfulness, mind – was apparent in the third movement, taken at a slower tempo, effectively so, than I had expected. That did not preclude passion, but it was Quentin’s lucid reading of the piano part that stole the musical show. The finale benefited from plenty of light and shade, through which the sheer complexity of Brahms’s musical thought shone through, especially with respect to the piano.

 

Ysaÿe’s A minor sonata, dedicated to Jacques Thibaud, received a fine performance from Chen, his clean tone, often less ‘Romantic’ than that employed for the Brahms, giving an impression of Bach in a sense the composer might well have recognised. The ‘Obsession’ – Ysaÿe’s subtitle – of the Dies irae chant was apparent throughout. Technically beyond reproach, this was also a performance imbued with a proper sense of form. It was probably the highlight of Chen’s evening. Saint-Saëns followed, with his Havanaise and the A minor Introduction and Rondo capriccioso. The former benefited from a strong, yet never overemphasised sense of rhythm, neither musician trying to turn it into something deeper than it is. Virtuosity aplenty clearly pleased fans in the audience. Quentin managed even in the second work to prove a wonderfully attentive ‘accompanist’. (Here the term is not entirely inappropriate.) It was a commendably fluid performance; there was much to enjoy in the Romantic sound of Chen’s violin. I could, however, happily have done without the repetitive cloying sentimentality of John Williams’s theme from Schindler’s List as an encore, likewise the vapid display of a piece - I forget which - by Sarasate.