BBC SO/Oramo - Elgar, 13 December 2024

Barbican Hall

Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius, op.38

Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)
David Butt Philip (tenor)
Roderick Williams (baritone)

BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Neil Ferris)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

This was to have been something entirely different: Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ, conducted by Andrew Davis. The death of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s former chief conductor led not only to a necessary change of conductor, in the guise of the orchestra’s current chief conductor, Sakari Oramo, but to a change of programme, Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, a work with which Davis was more strongly associated, taking the place of Berlioz’s oratorio, as a memorial. Having been a little nonplussed by the change, I soon realised that it made greater sense as a memorial, not least on account of the tangible commitment from a chorus and orchestra – a considerable Barbican audience too – to remembering their erstwhile colleague. I had a few reservations concerning the performance itself, none especially grievous; I hope it will not seem unduly curmudgeonly to share them, alongside the many estimable qualities to what I heard. For whatever reason, they did not seem to be shared by most members of a highly enthusiastic audience. 

The principal problem was arguably the hall itself and its constricted acoustic. For once, the Royal Albert Hall might not have been too poor a venue; large-scale choral works, many of which Davis conducted there at the Proms, tend to fare better than most. Brass in particular tended to blare, something it was difficult to ignore in the Prelude. I was a little surprised that Oramo, who must by now be used to the difficulties, did not do much about them: a pity, given the fine Elgar sound from the rest of the orchestra, strings in particular. Oramo certainly showed flexibility in his reading here, though some tempo choices and changes I found  puzzling. 

David Butt Philip’s entry, ably supported by Oramo and the orchestra, announced a surprisingly Italianate way with the music: more Puccini than Wagner or Strauss, let alone Brahms. Indeed, Oramo increasingly brought things I had either not heard or had forgotten, but which seemed very much to grow out of the score, a nice line in dance rhythms included. This was certainly, at least in the first part, an operatic reading: not necessarily how Davis would have done it, but then a tribute should not be an imitation. The struggle was dramatic, it seemed, rather than overtly theological, Oramo skilled at guiding crucial transitions. Many, I know, have problems with the work on the latter ground; it even had to be given with a revised text for early performances at the Three Choirs Festival. One could surely say the same, though, of its avowed model: Parsifal. Perhaps this was a way, conscious or otherwise, ecumenically to broaden its appeal. At any rate, if I sometimes felt a little loss on Newman’s side, there was an undeniable keen sense of joint endeavour, audience included, that appeared to offer ample, even quasi-religious compensation to many. Never showing the slightest sense of strain that occasionally accompanied Butt Philip’s often thrilling and full-throated approach, Roderick Williams proved a wise and faithful guide for the journey both underway and to come. The BBC Symphony Chorus, of which Davis remained President until his death, offered performances throughout of warmth, heft, and blend that worked with, rather than against, the difficult acoustic. 

The second part, quite rightly, took us to a very different place, ushered in by string playing of which any orchestra or conductor would be proud. Sarah Connolly’s Angel’s finely spun, infinitely compassionate performance was a jewel: rooted in Newman’s words, yet equally communicating beyond them through Elgar’s music. Choral and orchestral demons were a colourful, malevolent band, ‘angelicals’ in turn beautifully contrasted. Where sometimes – only sometimes – I had found the first part meandering, Oramo here seemed ever clearer in his mission to bind the work together, motivically, harmonically, and yes, theologically. In that, Wagner returned, as did Parsifal more specifically in the passage of approach to God. Brahms did too, above all the German Requiem, most keenly in the choruses. Moreover, I could not help but find something a little Liszt in an endeavour that, perhaps despite Newman, retained a little of the Faustian. Music once again proved a superior, or at least different, agent of synthesis to words.

And yet, it is not really a matter of either/or, but rather of combination, of that shared endeavour to which I referred above. ‘Farewell, but not for ever brother dear, Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow’: for some a necessity, for some doubtless an obscenity. Heard here from Connolly, at a darker time than many of us have known, it offered, however briefly, a semblance of consolation.

Die tote Stadt, English National Opera, 25 March 2023

Coliseum

Paul – Ralf Romei
Marietta, Voice of Marie – Allison Oakes
Brigitta – Sarah Connolly
Franz – Audun Iversen
Juliette – Rhian Lois
Lucienne – Clare Presland
Gastone – Innocent Masuku
Victorin – William Morgan
Count Albert – Hubert Francis
Marie – Lauren Bridle

Anniliese Miskimmon (director)
Miriam Buether (set designs)
Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)
James Farncombe (lighting)
Imogen Knight (movement, intimacy)

Members of the Finchley Children’s Music Group (chorus director: Grace Rossiter)

English National Opera Chorus (chorus director: Avishka Edirisinghe) 

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Kirill Karabits (conductor)

Images: Helen Murray
Brigitta (Sarah Connolly), Paul (Ralf Romei), Franz (Audun Iversen)

A few years ago, I should have said it was a problem with the work itself. Having seen Die tote Stadt for the first time, in a performance and a production that had both seemed very good, I had emerged finding it somewhat laboured and ridiculous: more than a curiosity, perhaps, yet not something whose appeal for others I could share. In the meantime, a concert performance of another Korngold opera, Das Wunder der Heliane, did little to change my mind. Then I decided to test my initial judgement by seeing Die tote Stadt again in Munich, when the Bavarian State Opera put on a new production, staged by Simon Stone, conducted by Kirill Petrenko, with Jonas Kaufmann and Marlis Petersen in the two central roles. And I was won over. So I know that it can work very well, or at least that it did for me once and there is no reason to think it could not do so again. Quite why this new production from ENO did not, I found hard to put my finger on, since there seemed to be much that was admirable and little or nothing that was not, reviving my doubts concerning the work itself.

The key, I think, may have lain in the production, which seems unfair, since there was nothing really to object to in what Anniliese Miskimmon and her team presented. But whereas I have often disliked Stone’s reductionist way with drama—his Medée for Salzburg and a recent Phaedra in London cases in point—in this case, it seemed to be just what the work, which can readily seem overblown to no particular end, needed. Without Stone’s stronger interpretative stance and strategy and however attractive Miriam Buether’s sets and Nicky Gillibrand’s costumes (with one unfortunate exception), drama lagged behind ambition. It was difficult not to feel that something smaller in scale, perhaps a one-act chamber opera, might have come close to hitting the spot, thus again returning one to the problem of the work ‘itself’. 

The dream world, in which Paul meets Marietta and works through his morbid attachment to his deceased wife, Marie, seemed confused—but not in an especially dream-like way. It seemed to imply that either Paul had actually entered a hospital or sanatorium, or he had been in one along; but no, it was only a dream. Marietta’s troupe invited unflattering comparisons with Ariadne auf Naxos. The 'dead' city of Bruges, or some substitute, did not get much of a look in – partly Korngold’s fault – and the strange religious procession came unfortunately close to the world of Carry On films, even for those of us who know the cited Robert le Diable. Certain other ‘religious’ details gestured in another, potentially more fruitful direction, though no more than Strauss does Korngold seem able to take religion seriously.

Juliette (Rhian Lois), Lucienne (Clare Presland), Count Albert (Hugh Francis), Marietta (Allison Oakes), Victorian (William Morgan), Innocent Masuku (Gastone), Franz

 

Singing, though, was mostly good, if sometimes hampered by a clunky English translation (‘based on’ Kelly Rourke) of a libretto that is in any case far from exemplary. Korngold and his dreadful father were no composite Hofmannsthal, to put it mildly. Though struggling with illness, Ralf Romei put on an impressive performance as Paul, only noticeably tiring some way through the third act—which is something that could happen to anyone. It is a cruel role, and Romei’s artistry proved something of a revelation. Allison Oakes was a nicely Wagnerian Marietta, with welcome echoes of Brünnhilde, though it was not always the most subtle of portrayals. Sarah Connolly left one wishing there was more to the role of Brigitta in a typically human, beautifully sung performance. Audun Iversen’s Franz was similarly first-class, offering fine attention to detail. Kirill Karabits knew exactly how to draw the best out of the ENO Orchestra, ensuring – rightly, I think – that the score sounded closer to Puccini than to any of Korngold’s Austro-German colleagues. But there were times when something sharper – and Puccini can be as sharp as anyone – seemed required, just as on stage. I imagine this might tighten over the run, but a greater dose of chamber-like intimacy might also be a good thing. 

I recognise also that much of the scepticism I voice concerning the opera others might with respect to Die Frau ohne Schatten, but there not only do we have Strauss and Hofmannsthal, even in mutual misunderstanding, at the very height of their powers; we also have a symbolism that attempts to elevate us to some sort of ‘higher’ ideas and even, more controversially, a message. Pronatalism is a deeply unfashionable message, one with which many of us would take issue, but drama is not there primarily for us to agree with it—and the message becomes more readily understandable in the face of the loss of life occasioned by the First World War. How to get on with one’s life in the face of more strictly personal loss is a perfectly reasonable subject for a drama; part, of what Die Meistersinger – another opera interested, albeit pre-Freud, in the interpretation of dreams – is about is how to cope with the sufferings of life and love in the actual, phenomenal world. Perhaps the problem is that the intermittent attempts at symbolism and, above all, the ‘it was only a dream’ idea are a convoluted and contrived way to get there. Even viewed psychoanalytically, it seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill; not, of course, that grief is nothing, but it seems less here than it might. The dream sequence comes across more as an idea for an opera than a dramatic necessity. That, at least, was what I emerged feeling, though I had felt more positively in Munich.

Paul, Brigitta, Chorus

Whatever my doubts, though, this was a justly ambitious, laudable project from ENO: a reasonably well-known twentieth-century opera, only staged twice previously in this country and never by this company, deserved its debut and clearly won new converts. Perhaps the fairest thing is to view the opera as a fragile flower, in need of great care and good fortune in cultivation; or, to turn it back on myself, to say that it may not ultimately be an opera for me.

Rusalka, Royal Opera, 27 February 2023

Royal Opera House

Rusalka – Asmik Grigorian
Prince – David Butt Philip
Vodník – Rafał Siwek
Ježibaba – Sarah Connolly
Duchess – Emma Bell
Kuchtík – Hongni Wu
Hajný – Ross Ramgobin
Wood Spirits – Vuvu Mpofu, Gabrielė Kupšytė, Anne Marie Stanley
Lovec – Josef Jeongmeen Ahn

Ann Yee and Natalie Abrahami (directors)
Chloe Lamford (set designs)
Annemarie Woods (costumes)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Ann Yee (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

Images: Camilla Greenwell

A strange evening: I very much enjoyed this new Rusalka, though found myself slightly haunted by the suspicion I did so more than I should have done. Musically magnificent yet theatrically inert: opera should intrinsically be more than that, yet I suppose we should be grateful that it can still partly satisfy, even when one crucial component misfires. 

The production is oddly listed as having been ‘created by Natalie Abrahami and Ann Yee’ but with ‘Ann Yee and Natalie Abrahami’ as directors. Equitable, perhaps, but does such re-listing really merit a line in the programme? (Does it really merit three lines in a review, one might also ask, I suppose.) I mention it only as a minor instance of something more irritating. Equity, sustainability, so much else: these are of course causes toward which we should all be working, a great deal faster and harder than we are now. They do not, however, in themselves make a production; they are certainly no substitute for one either. For here, whilst one could read an interesting programme note, promising much, by Jessica Duchen on ‘A Sustainable Rusalka for the Royal Opera House’, the results were actually neither sustainable – for that, ‘wed have to have started the control systems much earlier’ (Abrahami) – nor, contra what we read, saying anything much about sustainability or wider ecological issues. Instead, there was a strange boast, admittedly fulfilled, of having ‘worked with our creative team to create the illusion of water, using paint effects and lighting, and a set that can hold this without having to turn over actual water’. Fine, if hardly unprecedented. Is that not more often the case than not with water? How many productions will theatregoers already have seen that did just that?

Ultimately, the directors (or ‘creators’) feel the story is ‘not about nature’s conflict with humanity, but rather humanity’s need to connect and meld with nature’. It is a point of view: not one that makes a great deal of sense to me, either intrinsically or in the case of Rusalka, but worth a hearing or viewing. What, then, do we have? A sort of non-directed cartoon with words and music attached. Singers generally have to fend (creditably) for themselves. A mossy fairytale without irony or magic turns mildly trashy in the second act, presumably out of a desire to be ‘contemporary’. It looks as though a few items from Claire’s Accessories have been magnified on stage to frame the ‘party’. Inflatable toy animals are presumably intended to imply distance from Nature’s real animals, yet since no one seems to know what is going on, they just look silly. We return more or less to a slightly broken version of the setting for the first act. Alleged intentions go unrealised, as if our ‘creators’ have failed to appreciate that stating you will do, let alone explore, something is not the same as doing or exploring it. As a framework for the story, it works reasonably. Paule Constable’s lighting pretty much steals the visual show, saying so much more than Yee’s tedious, seemingly tone-deaf choreography.

And save, mercifully, for the musical performances: singers, orchestra, and conductor. My two other big house Rusalki over the past decade or so have been Paris in 2019, not so long before the end of the world, and Covent Garden’s first (!) staged performance in 2012. An excellent Komische Oper staging in Berlin was a slightly different animal, built as it was around a thriving company, as opposed to an ‘international’ cast; it offered by some way the most interesting, penetrating production (Barrie Kosky). Paris had Camilla Nylund, Klaus Florian Vogt, Karita Mattila, Thomas Johannes Mayer, and Michelle DeYoung, Covent Garden 2012 also had Camilla Nylund, working with Bryan Hymel, Petra Lang, Alan Held, and Agnes Zwierko. At this level, comparisons are often more a matter of taste than anything else, but I should unhesitatingly plump for David Butt Philip’s Prince from Covent Garden 2023 and consider its cast every inch the equal of its illustrious predecessors. 

One of my first thoughts was that surely we must be due a Lohengrin from Butt Philip soon; lo and behold, on later reading the programme biographies, one (Deutsche Oper Berlin) is forthcoming. Beautifully, unerringly musically phrased, his Prince conveyed a vulnerability and complexity of character considerably beyond either of the aforementioned performances. This was a considered character development, conveyed through words and music. Asmik Grigorian’s Rusalka likewise had it all: effortlessly scaling the vocal peaks, drawing in through hushed intimacy, and offering almost everything in between. Her stage presence likewise was second to none. Sarah Connolly’s Ježibaba and Emma Bell’s Duchess – I am not sure why the usual ‘Foreign Princess’ was not used here, but no matter – represented luxury casting. The former’s expressive range, controlled in technique yet with dramatic spontaneity (or the impression of such), could hardly have been bettered. The latter’s star quality shone through: both in itself and as something akin to metacommentary on the role. Rafał Siwek’s dark-toned Vodník was just the thing too, in voice and presence. Lively and warmly sympathetic performances from Hongni Wu (Kuchtík) and Ross Ramgobin (Hajný) were also highly worthy of note.

 Excellent conducting from Susanna Mälkki (Paris) and Yannick Nézet-Seguin (Covent Garden, 2012) notwithstanding, Semyon Bychkov was for me in a different league. His was world-class conducting, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House sounding the equal of its very starriest peers. One might expect operatic symphonism from Bychkov, but the extent to which the entire work sounded as if heard in a single, variegated breath nonetheless astonished. A symphony in three movements emerged, its first two acts strongly contrasted. The first was doubtless ‘objectively’ on the slow side, but emerged as an exquisitely conceived, quasi-Wagnerian tapestry in absolute commanded of our musical attention. The second entered more Italianate waters, enlivened by a welcome dash or two of Tchaikovsky, and the third effected due synthesis, culminating in a climax that can surely have never sounded closer to the pantheistic ecstasy of Janáček. Not, of course, that this was not first and foremost Dvořák, but it was a generous, cultivated and culturally broad performance that denied national, let alone nationalistic, clichés. 

Mention should also go to the language coaches, Lada Valesova and Lucie Spickova. I do not speak or understand Czech, save for odd words and phrases I have picked up. But I could have had a stab at transcribing some of it here, such were the clarity of diction and, insofar as I could tell, evident meaning with which words in their alchemic union with music were treated. All in all, then, a splendid evening—yet despite, rather than on account of, the inconsequential production.

BBC Proms (6) – Connolly/BBC SO/Brabbins: Payne, Berlioz, and Beethoven, 13 August 2021

Royal Albert Hall

Anthony Payne: Spring’s Shining Wake
Berlioz: Les Nuits d’été, op.7
Beethoven: Symphony no.6 in F major, ‘Pastoral’, op.68

Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

It was a lovely idea to open this concert, originally to be conducted by Andrew Davis, with a work by Anthony Payne, who died earlier this year. Spring’s Shining Wake is an interesting piece in conception, shadowing the course, as Payne put it, of Delius’s In a Summer Garden, without ever quoting from it. Opening with ‘an entirely personal and independent ground …, only very loosely related to the model, the work then proceeds to find equivalents in my vocabulary for every structural and textural move in the Delius.’ Such music—Delius and ‘other late-Romantic English composers’—had been very close to Payne in his youth; only then, in 1980-81, did he feel he had attained the detachment necessary to attempt such an experiment. For me, the soundworld seemed closer to Schoenberg than to Delius, though it could hardly be taken for either. In that respect, this might almost have been a tribute to the Five Orchestral Pieces, op.16: not only in harmony but in motivic writing too, albeit more strongly obbligato than Schoenberg’s opening, so-called ‘recitative’ movement. Dawn-like, moving into a fuller awakening in more Bergian climax, the work evoked fine playing from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, whether its string bedrock or wind soloists. Martyn Brabbins’s direction seemed spot on too: never intrusive, yet guiding Payne’s score clearly, revealing it as a tone poem of unusual yet, in some sense, strangely familiar qualities. A telephone call—alas, not the last of the concert—offered an intriguing touch of audience participation.

Sarah Connolly joined the orchestra for a moving performance of Berlioz’s song-cycle Les Nuits d’été. ‘Villanelle’, the first song, proved aptly welcoming and sharply etched, Brabbins and Connolly providing plenty of space for solo instruments to speak. The nervous energy generated was not exactly allayed but rather transmuted in ‘Le Spectre de la rose’, its long melodic lines finely shaped by soloist and orchestra alike. There was something ineffably uncanny and poignant to the memories and sentiments of nostalgia evoked, providing not only a crucial connection to the songs to come but also to Payne’s Spring’s Shining Wake. ‘Sur les lagunes’ was gravely beautiful, a deeply Romantic vision that prepared the way for the sadness of ‘Ah! Comme elle était belle et comme je l’aimais! Je n’aimerai jamais une femme autant qu’elle.’ Taken slowly yet never ponderously, ‘Absence’ showed again that a certain lightness is often necessary to plumb Berlioz’s depths. The moonlight of ‘Au cimetière’ might almost have been our destination, and so it momentarily felt, before the invigorating sense of departure, of adventure, in the closing ‘L’Île inconnue,’ its spirit quickened by both voice and orchestra, often in tandem. This was a performance full of light and shade, whether in timbre or something more metaphysical.

Fresh, lively, detailed, the opening of the Pastoral Symphony promised much, somewhat in the line of Berlioz. Subtle inflections that told without disruption likewise spoke of an ability to balance competing demands. If the first movement turned out to be quite a brisk stroll, less imbued with metaphysical meaning than many great performances of the past, Brabbins guided it with intelligence and a welcome lack of self-indulgence. The ‘Scene by the Brook’ flowed nicely, in not dissimilar vein, though here I came to feel more urgently the lack of a propelling ‘voice’, Beethoven’s vision edged more closely toward conventional tone-painting. Its successor movement, swifter and lighter than usual, continued in like-minded fashion, though the Trio dug in more. Rustic within symphonic bounds, its lack of silly ‘effects’ was welcome. The Storm was somewhat well-behaved; I could not help but wish that a little more had been at stake, while admiring the scrupulous balance struck between pictorial and symphonic. Beethoven’s transition to the finale, though, was admirably, respectfully handled. If that final movement itself glowed and proceeded with intelligence, I was ultimately left asking what it had all meant. This is not of course the Fifth Symphony, but it still needs—at least for me—something more.

Lulu, English National Opera, 9 November 2016

Coliseum



Lulu (Brenda Rae) and Dr Schön (James Morris)
Images: Catherine Ashmore

(sung in English)

Lulu – Brenda Rae

Countess Geschwitz – Sarah Connolly
Dresser, Schoolboy Waiter – Clare Presland
Painter, Second Client – Michael Colvin
Dr Schön, Jack the Ripper – James Morris
Alwa – Nicky Spence
Schigolch – Willard White
Animal Tamer, Athlete – David Soar
Prince, Manservant, Marquis – Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts
Theatre Director, Banker – Graeme Danby
Fifteen-year old girl – Sarah Labiner
Girl’s Mother – Rebecca de Pont Davies
Artist – Sarah Champion
Journalist – Geoffrey Dolton
Dr Goll, Police Commissioner, First Client – Rolf Higgins
Servant – Paul Sheehan
Solo performers – Joanna Dudley, Andrea Fabi 

William Kentridge (director)

Luc de Wit (associate director)
Sabine Theunissen (set designs)
Greta Goiris (costumes)
Urs Schönebaum (lighting)
Catherine Meyburgh, Kim Gunning (video)

 

ENO’s new Lulu proved another triumph for the company: just what ENO should be doing; just, indeed, what ENO is for. Will the cabal of management consultants and the Arts Council – or, as it insists on calling itself, sans article, ‘Arts Council England’ – listen? No, of course not. Their priorities, as they have shown time and time again, and with increasing vindictiveness, are quite different. Whoever met a neo-liberal artist or, indeed a neo-liberal art lover? (How I wish the translation had not left ‘Jungfrau’, or ‘Virgin’, tactfully in the German original…) One might, I suppose, quibble, whether ENO needed a new production; Richard Jones’s excellent staging might well have received another outing. (It should certainly have been staged more regularly than it was, but that, I suspect is more a comment on opera audiences than on artistic design.) But ENO did not mount this by itself; it performed us ‘citizens of the world’ a signal service by granting us the opportunity to see this much-discussed William Kentridge production, already seen in New York and Amsterdam. To say we should only have one, is akin to saying that because we have heard Daniel Barenboim play Beethoven, we have no need to hear Maurizio Pollini. It is the language of enemies of art, of accountancy; worse still, it is the language of those journalists determined never to miss an opportunity to find fault.  



Joanna Dudley, Lulu, and Schigolch (Willard White)

I shall admit to having been puzzled by some of the discussion I overheard. More than once I heard people complaining about there having been too much going on, even ‘sensory overload’. Have such people, I wonder, ever seen a Stefan Herheim production? More to the point, did they not think of how visual layering, the interaction between layers, between the visual and the aural, might actually be the point, a point very much in keeping with the work? What I saw was actually a relatively conventional, but highly theatrical telling of the story, enhanced, questioned, developed by an extension of its painterly imagery both in expressionistic drawings and film – an exhibition of Kentridge’s art may be seen presently at Whitechapel – and in the alluring yet sometimes ironic commentary, still very much in allusive ‘period’ style, by the silent artists, Joanna Dudley and Andrea Fabi. It was not remotely too much; indeed, like Berg’s score, it left me wanting more. This blackest of comedies gained in darkness – this was the night following the US election, something readily observable on almost every face in the house – and in sophistication of comedic response. I began to think of Berg’s musico-dramatic roots in Mozart and Wagner, in particular, and also of what he had in common with Strauss, another heir to that exalted pair, yet one far too little thought of has having much in common with the more overtly ‘progressive’, yet perhaps equally ‘nostalgic’, Berg.

 

Lulu and Geschwitz (Sarah Connolly)

Mark Wigglesworth’s conducting of the score, superlatively played by the ENO Orchestra was, of course, crucial in that respect. As Boulez, at work on the three-act premiere, once observed, ‘It is not so much the use of symmetry as the exploiting of multiple musical forms that is one of the most complex and attractive features’ of the music. Rather it in the confrontation between what Boulez broadly considered to be characteristic Mozartian number opera and the continuous – to which, I might add, increasingly symphonic – forms of Wagner that Lulu, in a different, or at least more complicated, less overt, way than Wozzeck will best find its performative voice. For Boulez, ‘The great advance from Wozzeck to Lulu lies in the fact that, although the scenes are still separated by interludes, there is now no “passage” between them.’ He found himself, unsurprisingly, especially attracted by the ‘fusion between continuity and formal separateness’. That, I think, was very much what we heard, and perhaps also what we saw, or at least what was suggested by what we saw, here. An especially fine woodwind section could not help but bring Mozart to mind: not just the Mozart of Così fan tutte but the composer of the wind serenades too. It was not for nothing that, in one of his final recordings, Boulez returned to Berg’s Chamber Concerto, coupling it with the Gran partita, KV 361. Melodies, harmonies, audibly generated before our ears by Berg’s endlessly fascinating compositional processes, and yet audibly as ‘free’ as they were ‘determined’, tantalised, instructed, informed, criticised, rather as the drawings, films, words, actions did before our eyes. This was no mere mirroring; it was mutual enhancement and elucidation, a new path through the Bergian labyrinth.



 

An excellent cast was necessary too, of course, and an excellent cast we had. Brenda Rae, who so greatly impressed me in the Bavarian State Opera’s Schweigsame Frau – now there is an interesting Strauss-Berg comparison to consider – shone at least as brightly as Lulu. The canvas on which we more or less uneasily project our fantasies of Lulu was no more empty than the changing visual decoration of the set, but, amidst, or perhaps beneath, the despatch of the coloratura and the seduction of the more conventional melodic line, there was a fine balance struck between nihilism and defiant character. Sarah Connolly’s Geschwitz certainly had the latter in spades; if I have seen and heard a stronger, more compassionate performance from her, I cannot recall it (which seems unlikely). If James Morris’s Dr Schön was at times a little stiff, there was certainly authority to be felt there, and his way with the words was especially admirable. Nicky Spence’s Alva struck another fine balance, in this case between the ardent and the cowardly; again, an admirable way with words and music projected ambiguity without easy, or perhaps any, answers. Willard White’s Schigolch was less caricatured, less repellent than one often experiences; such ambiguity was also decidedly a gain. There were no weak links, and a host of splendid character performances, artists such as Michael Colvin and Sarah Labiner particularly catching my ear. At least as impressive, though, was the ensemble work. In the Paris Scene, one might almost have thought this a crack new music ensemble, such was the clarity and confidence with which the lines were projected and with which they were interacted. It might almost have been a rehearsal for, or a response to, Strauss’s homage to his adored Così in Capriccio.

Bayreuth Festival (2) - Die Walküre, 21 August 2016

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

Siegmund – Christopher Ventris

Hunding – Georg Zeppenfeld
Wotan – John Lundgren
Sieglinde – Heidi Melton
Brünnhilde – Catherine Foster
Fricka – Sarah Connolly
Gerhilde – Caroline Wenborne
Ortlinde – Dara Hobbs
Waltraute – Stephanie Houtzeel
Schwetleite – Nadine Weissmann
Helmwige – Christiane Kohl
Siegrune – Mareike Morr
Grimgerde – Weibe Lehmkuhl
Rossweiße – Alexandra Petersamer
 

Frank Castorf (director)

Aleksandar Denić (set designs)
Adriana Braga Peretski (costumes)
Rainer Kasper (lighting)
Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull (video)
 

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Marek Janowski (conductor)

Again, one’s memory can readily play tricks, but I think I can say with a good degree of certainty that this Walküre, like its Rheingold predecessor, marked a considerable improvement upon the performance I saw two years ago. How much of that relates to revision of Frank Castorf’s staging and how much to individual (and indeed ensemble) performances onstage, I am not entirely sure. Perhaps that is as it should be, for a performance without a little mystery – if not necessarily the mystification that might be seen as the ‘bad nineteenth-century’ part of Wagner’s, still more Wagnerian, aesthetics – will generally be found lacking.

It certainly, I think, made a difference having Christopher Ventris as Siegmund. In 2014, although Johan Botha could certainly sing the role – not something to be taken for granted, naming no names – his inability to act was a problem one could not simply ignore. Now, with Ventris at least Botha’s vocal equal, albeit very different in tone, but also a committed stage actor, the first act and the end of the second looked up completely. There are many different ways to sing Siegmund, and Ventris’s, perhaps inevitably, comes closer to the sound we expect from a Parsifal; his is not a baritonal tenor.  Nor need it be; this beautifully, though never just beautifully sung, performance, equally attentive to words and music, was quite beyond reproach. I was tempted to ask why we seemingly never hear Ventris in Britain any more, but why should we? Germany surely has much more to offer him.

 

Heidi Melton, on much better form, or rather much more consistent form, than as Isolde recently at ENO, offered a heartfelt reading of Sieglinde. Occasional intonational wobbles counted for little or nothing when set against such palpable sincerity and range. Much the same might be said of Catherine Foster’s Brünnhilde. Foster has always struck me as a very likeable artist, not at all inappropriate for Wotan’s wayward girl. Occasional waywardness was much in keeping with her character; the tenderness of her farewell – suggesting perhaps that Brünnhilde understood a little more than usual the finality of her sentence – was touching and dramatically productive indeed. John Lundgren’s Wotan was dark of tone, commanding of presence, highly attentive – crucial in this of all roles – to the marriage of words and music. His shaping of Wotan’s second act monologue, his communication of its verbal and musical contours, their interaction with each other and with the orchestra, was excellent. A sense of chill, of reserve, seemed very much part of the interpretation, and varied according to circumstances.

 

Georg Zeppenfeld’s Hunding proved outstanding: dark, although not so dark as one often hears of tone, dark of intent, yet not without charm. The return of video in the second half of the first act gave him a great deal more to do than would generally the case; his acting offstage, both before and after drugging, offered an important additional standpoint upon the action below. Sarah Connolly’s return as Fricka lived up to its Rheingold promise. There was no doubting her fury and righteous indignation. An excellent band of Valkyries worked together extremely well. Not unlike the Rhinemaidens the night before, their ensemble and solo work was equally distinguished; they, again, had much more to do, given close camera attention, than usual. Such was not a problem; it was, instead, an opportunity.

 

Where I felt that opportunity was slightly missed was in Castorf’s conception itself. By the time we reached the third act, perhaps especially its first part, I could not help but wonder whether he had somewhat lost interest. It was a feeling much less strong than last time, but what earlier exerts considerable post-Brechtian force – the alienation of the world of Aleksandar Denić’s wondrous set designs and their tale of striking oil in Azerbaijan, 1942, from suspect, one presumes, ‘Romantic’ Lenz and Liebe – comes at some points to seem arbitrary again. Or at least it did to me; I may well have been missing the point. The first act in particular, as I said, benefited from Ventris’s Siegmund. Lengthy stretches of almost nothing happening at all onstage are, mercifully, no longer with us. What seemed to betoken contempt for the work, or stretches thereof, in 2014, no longer does. However, even at the end of the third act, when things pick up again dramatically, I wondered whether there was a little too much of Wotan and Brünnhilde not listening to each other, not even being in the same place. The case is at least arguable, though; maybe I need a more thoroughgoing purge of my Romanticism.

 

Earlier on, the tension and indeed interplay work better. The trip back seventy years or so in time from the present-day (Wifi is available at the Golden Motel) does not bother me. Wagner plays with time, in any case, as is witnessed by the confrontation of his dual, Genesis-like creation myths (those of Alberich in Rheingold and Wotan in Götterdämmerung), with the march of dramatic time, both as experienced by us and, we presume, by the characters. He does not play with it as Castorf does, but Castorf’s play has us think: always a good and necessary thing in Wagner, whatever his preposterous ‘protectors’ might claim. I wish, as I think I did before, that more still might have been done with such disjuncture, but there we are. More to the point, however, we come to think of Rheingold all the more in retrospect as distant pre-history. That world of gods and giants is not identical to that of the succeeding three dramas, although there is, of course, much complex interconnection and interaction. We have seen, to a certain extent, where things might lead.

 

However, we also come to see that we are on different historical, even ideological trajectory. ‘Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Texas anymore.’ It is not just location, though; it is the shift to the Eastern bloc, as once we called it. Russian and Azerbaijani scripts, Pravda, even hints at socialist realism: are we perhaps giving Marx and Wagner a try, taking them at, if not their own word, then a sceptical yet not despising deconstruction thereof? If the world of the Golden Motel is so bad, then show us what you can do? Is Wagner, then, being found wanting by Castorf? Up to a point, I think, for it is difficult, on some level, to avoid the conclusion that the ‘real’ action is that of the oil strikes rather than that of Siegmund and Sieglinde? Unreliable narration nevertheless continues to make its point, although less so – a pity, I think – than in Das Rheingold.

 

Where Castorf really scores, though, at least for me, is in the return of the gods to this world. Adopting local dress, customs, commercial practices, and indeed leading the latter, the gods do what we have always thought they did when they assumed human form. One might think as much here of Greek myth as Teutonic – as, of course, did Wagner. Do they, or does capital, reinstate Fate? Or is the opposition false? We are led to ask such questions, difficult to resolve, perhaps incapable of resolution. Wotan’s loss of his 'local' beard (seen first on film towards the end of the first act, as the god drinks his vodka) comes to seem akin to dropping of a mask. We behold him, as, unforgettably, Hunding does, in all his godlike terror. And we also recall, with Wagner, student of Feuerbach, that we have made him, as we have our other gods of capital, law, ‘love’, and so on.

 

Marek Janowski and the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra seemed to me on surer form than the previous evening (not that they were bad then). There were still some odd orchestral balances: the clarinet line again, albeit to a considerably lesser extent. Perhaps the issue was more acoustical than intentional. More generally, though, Janowski’s emphasis on the woodwind in particular was balanced by a greater willingness to let the strings play out. He was more flexible of tempo too, usually to excellent effect. If the results remain more conventionally of the ‘opera’ world than its ‘musico-dramatic’ sibling or rival, increased command of the melos, the ebb and flow, worked very much to the drama’s benefit. We cannot always hear Daniel Barenboim, and there is much to be said for the marriage of general competence to a desire to bring out overlooked aspects of a work.

Bayreuth Festival (1) - Das Rheingold, 20 August 2016

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

Wotan – Iain Paterson

Donner – Markus Eiche
Froh – Tansel Akzeyebek
Loge – Roberto Saccà
Fricka – Sarah Connolly
Freia – Caroline Wenborne
Erda – Nadine Weissmann
Alberich – Albert Dohmen
Mime – Andreas Conrad
Fasolt – Günther Groissböck
Fafner – Karl-Heinz Lehner
Woglinde – Alexandra Steiner
Wellgunde – Stephanie Houtzeel
Flosshilde – Wiebke Lehmkuhl

Frank Castorf (director)
Aleksandar Denić (set designs)
Adriana Braga Peretski (costumes)
Rainer Kasper (lighting)
Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull (video)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Marek Janowski (conductor)

And so, two years after my first viewing, I am returning to Frank Castorf’s Ring. I shall not re-read my first reviews until afterwards: not because I entertain some absurd fantasy about coming to the production anew, for my present experience will clearly be coloured by prior experience; yet, by the same token, I see no especial reason to have the former over-determined by the latter. One’s memory can play tricks, of course, and what I perceive as difference may or may not so; I may be misremembering, or indeed may simply not have noticed certain aspects before; I may also be viewing them in different contexts, the world – mostly to its disadvantage – having ‘moved on’ considerably since 2014. That, after all, is part of the message – at least part of the message I have taken – from the video work in this production. No one, perhaps, is so unreliable a narrator as the person convinced of the absolute truth of his or her recollections. Even if ‘correct’, that correctness is of limited use: few things are so pernicious as anti-historical elevation of the momentary to the permanent; one has only to think of the runes inscribed on Wotan’s spear, or, more generally, the bourgeois universalism of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Any Hegelian and/or Marxist – perhaps more to the point, any historian or philosopher of history – could tell you that. However, for anyone wishing to read my previous reviews, they may be found here: Rheingold, Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung.

Back, then, to the Golden Motel: the trashy Texan (Route 66) location for the action. On first glance, like much mass culture, it might seem to be all about sex. Like the first scene of Das Rheingold, one might say, for what Wagner called Alberich’s liebesgelüste (‘erotic urge’ he was at that time disdaining traditional capital letters for nouns). In both work and production, though, things are far more complicated than they might seem. How might we characterise that liebesgelüste? It may – as I have argued elsewhere – be understood partly, at least when considered from the standpoint of the history of ideas, as an important precedent for Nieztsche’s will to power. But Wagner is not Nietzsche – even if Nietzsche is far closer to Wagner than he ever, even earlier on, wishes to admit. For the question is social too: Alberich’s proto-Nietzschean ressentiment is born of his lowly place in Wotan’s society. That is the psychological – and, in some senses, socio-political – impulse for the challenge of capital to the established political order; or at least it was in Wagner’s time. The relationship between Valhalla and Nibelheim is not entirely different in the age of neo-liberalism, but nor is it the same.

The ressentiment is also æsthetic, of course: Wagner once remarked that he had every sympathy for Alberich’s turn against the Rhinemaidens. Hedonists reject and scorn the dwarf because he is ugly. Yet the relationship between the social and the æsthetic – and this is just one relationship amongst many in this complex world – also needs to be considered. (Rhine)gold is here crucial: as itself; as the oil that powers so much of what we see, petrol pumps in the forecourt; as the shiny stuff of hegemonic trash culture (think Donald Trump, on whom, more soon); as the agent of the motel’s ‘rainbow’ rebranding in the fourth act; even, perhaps, as something hallucinogenic, narcotic, when Donner’s mysterious ‘clearing’ of the air leaves the pleasure-seekers in the bar – something now, as the rainbow flag and tight-fitting costumes for all genders and orientations – in a state of trance-like animation. But the complexity of the web of power relations, not only between characters, but between forms of power, is really the thing.

Returning – or perhaps better, again trying to return – to the beginning, then, the hedonism of swimming pool, beach ball, sun loungers, of a supposed ‘golden age’ is lain bare, again both in work and production. It is a construction; it always was; it creates more gold for some, takes away that gold from others. Wagner makes it perfectly clear that the world into which Alberich intrudes is no idyll, no ‘natural’ state of affairs; so does Castorf. The Rhinemaidens, just like the gods and goddesses who come after them – in the hierarchy, do they come before or after? Intriguingly, it is the Rhinemaidens who take occupation of the gods’ room once they have vacated it to deal with the giants. Will they relive what has gone on between those crumpled sheets, or will they – hollow laugh! – put things right? There are, of course, many more options than that. It is, rightly, unclear, or at least complicated – are already social beings. They are clad, and they behave, in ways that many would consider attractive, others would consider exploitative and/or exploited, others ‘whorish’, and so on. They have agency, yes, but only up to a point – like the rest of us. ‘Men make their own history,’ as Marx, writing at the same time as Wagner, and under many similar influences, tells us, ‘but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.’ So too, of course, does the weight of those with greater power – and so too does the source of that power itself.

What might seem initially arbitrary, and did so (at least to me) more, although not entirely, two years ago, now speaks of complexity: when Wotan and Mime initially bring Alberich and Mime onto the scene in Nibelheim, we are asked to consider who is ensnaring whom, and, when we think we have an answer, that answer is immediately called into question. Welcome to (late) capitalism. Similarly, the Trump-like – how prescient! – depiction of Wotan, as we initially see him, a pleasure-seeking playboy who has, we might guess, inherited power, whilst claiming to have earned it, a vulgarian who yet exercises brute force, whilst allegedly (at least to Donner) renouncing it, two constructed ‘blondes’ – what a custom that is, to refer to women simply by hair-colour! – not only on his arm, but in his bed: that poses still more questions than it might ever answer.

The video work to which I referred adds another crucial dimension. Often we see in close-up what we would see on stage, were we closer. Sometimes we see what we could not otherwise see, that action taking place in a space not otherwise at the moment visible. Sometimes we suspect that what we are seeing is different; at certain points, we know that it is. And there are stills too; where did they come from? Did those events, those scenes ever happen at all? We learn a great deal – and truly acclaim the magnificent acting of the cast (and their detailed direction). We appreciate the complexity of the action. But we are also, like the characters in Hans Neuenfels’s Lohengrin, like the viewers of the ‘reality television’ that seems to be being made before our eyes, being directed. There are interests, powerful interests, at stake here. And just as Trump-Wotan does not make history as he pleases, however much he might insist otherwise, nor do we, as spectators-cum-participants. Patric Seibert’s Everyman offers us almost conventionally dramatic opportunity to empathise – but, as soon as we do, the situation is again rendered more complex. Post-dramatic theatre actually seems to encompass that which it has negated; but is the dialectic Hegelian or Adornian? Brecht, it seems, has more Aktualität, even in opera, than we might have given him credit for.

That detailed direction is really worth saying a little more about. (I am afraid there is much I shall have to miss out, for there is far too much to say.) Whether it is the Rhinemaidens taking occupation of and apparently driving the flashy car on stage, the heartrending – pretty much stage-direction-literal – covering of Freia with gold, the truly shocking, yet utterly to the point, penetration of Erda by Wotan in the shower cubicle as giants and gods settle their accounts, or, to take a very different example, the extraordinary acting by facial expression of Sarah Connolly’s Fricka (on camera): there is so much to see, to think about. It is more coherent than one might initially suspect, irrespective, I suspect, of intention; and when it is not, the incoherence now seems far more a matter of policy, of criticism, than it did last time (to me).

 

Few, if any, Rheingold productions have for me so convincingly, completely combined vocal and acting skills. In that, this is an utterly Wagnerian, or neo-Wagnerian essay. The Rheingold Wotan is always a tricky one, often rendered comprehensible, or more so, by what comes afterwards, yet needing nevertheless to make a strong impression of his own in the here and now. Iain Paterson would always have had a good many balls in the air; in this production, he had a good few more. They were kept in motion with great conviction; it will be very interesting to see how things turn out. Connolly’s Fricka, as previously mentioned, was a tour de force of vocal acting; her disquiet, yet her need at some point to reconcile herself with what was going on, whatever her distaste (her character’s distaste, that is) for the sub-Dallas antics around her, were powerful, provocative, partly on account of their lack of exaggeration.  Tansel Akzeyebek’s Froh was beautifully sung, equally well acted. Markus Eiche’s Donner came into his more conventional own with the storm; his portrayal of the crazed, clearly dangerous playboy earlier on, was – even if one were to dislike the directorial concept – equally impressive. Caroline Wenborne’s Freia elicited as much as sympathy as the post-Brechtian framework permitted; again, her marriage of singing and acting – on stage and on camera – was worthy of the highest praise. Roberto Saccà offered a sardonic Loge, careful with his words, yet free with them at the same time. Nadine Weissman’s deep-toned Erda – what an entrance, in that joyously vulgar white fur coat! – proved as much a vocal pleasure as her character’s greater role was a provocative dramatic development.

Albert Dohmen, as Alberich, grew in stature – quite rightly – as the performance progressed. The earth-shattering moment of his curse was strikingly well prepared: as much verbally as musically. Andreas Conrad did a great deal with the relatively few lines that Mime has: his evocation of old Nibelheim struck an excellent balance between genuine sentiment and alienated narration (reliable or otherwise). The giants’ journey, not the least striking part of the production, was marked as powerfully in vocal-dramatic terms by Karl-Heinz Lehner and Günther Groissböck as it was in their costume upgrade: local thugs to (relatively) expensive-suited Mafiosi. Both performances were sexually charged (which takes us back to that liebesgelüste starting-point), and highly differentiated, especially as time went on. One would certainly not have blamed Freia at all had she opted for Groissböck’s Fasolt, whether on grounds of physical allure or acuity of response to Wagner’s alchemic blend of words and music. Alexandra Steiner, Stephanie Houtzeel, and Wiebke Lehmkuhl offered both excellent blend and, where necessary, commendable differentiation of character as the Rhinemaidens; their acting skills were, again, outstanding.

In this, in some ways, perhaps the most radical of all Wagner’s scores, the orchestra has a very particular role, or roles. It offers exposition, commentary, wonder, dialectical development, emotional and conceptual depth: all that and much more. Marek Janowski’s conducting often seemed – at least by comparison with the multivalent drama elsewhere – to be a little too concerned to keep the score on a tight leash. It was fast-paced, which is fair enough, but there is more to be revealed when the work relaxes too. Some balances were also peculiar; the conductor appeared to have a bizarre fascination with the composer’s clarinet lines, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else. It was fascinating to hear the work almost as if from a clarinettist’s standpoint, but again a little odd, and one-sided. Perhaps it was an acoustical quirk. Against those reservations, of which I do not wish to make too much, Janowski clearly knew what he wanted and how to achieve it. His neo-Mendelssohnian persuasion has a degree of historical warrant, and there was no denying the ability of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra’s ability in that respect. In Wagner, however, at least for me, there is never one single answer; one looks forward as well as back. Certain intimations of Schoenberg (Pierrot, and not only on account of the clarinet!) were most welcome. More standpoints, reconciled by the slippery conception of the Wagnerian melos, might have been brought to our attention in certain other performances, but this had coherence of its own.

Prom 19 - LSO/Haitink: Mahler, 29 July 2016

Royal Albert Hall

Mahler – Symphony no.3

Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)

Tiffin Boys’ Choir (chorus master: James Day)
London Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)
London Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

Bernard Haitink has what is absolutely necessary, yet more often than not lacking, to conduct a Mahler symphony, indeed to conduct any symphony worthy of the name: the ability to hear it in a single span and to communicate in performance that ability. That is not, of course, in itself enough to ensure a successful, let alone a great, performance, but its absence will be fatal. He showed that again here, and how – with a London Symphony Orchestra on outstanding form. Haitink did not seem to offer a particular point of view on the work, but nor did he conduct with anonymity: something that could, on occasion, prove a problem in this music, during his later years, for Claudio Abbado – or at least a problem for me. Rather, one had a sense, even though one knew it to be unfounded, even nonsensical, that this was somehow the music ‘itself’ we were hearing.

Haitink opened the first movement briskly, but the opening phrase’s subsiding both told of possibilities ahead in this movement and beyond (the prefigurement of the fourth movement’s ‘O Mensch’ as clear, as telling, as I can recall). There was no doubt that this was a march: how could there be with the LSO drummers on such magnificent form? But there was far more to the LSO’s performance than military might: this was Mahler with great warmth and unanimity of attack. It was post-Wagnerian Mahler, with equal emphasis on the ‘post-’ and the ‘Wagner’. The huge orchestra notwithstanding, Mahler’s ability to conjure up a miraculous array of chamber ensembles – always, be it noted, directed by Haitink – never ceased to amaze. When those phantasmagorical flutes began their chorale-like passage – and, again, when it returned – Haitink held the tempo back slightly, hinting perhaps that summer marching in might not all be good; it might even be bad, although undoubtedly irresistible, as leader Carmine Lauri’s sinuous solo suggested. The gravity of the trombones seemed to reach back across the centuries, past Mozart’s Requiem, to ancient (relatively speaking) Habsburg equale.  Tempi shifted with infinite subtlety; this was no ‘look at me, the conductor’ Mahler, for Haitink wanted us to look at Mahler. Marching onward, the woodwind in particular seemed almost to threaten metamorphosis into the deathly marionettes of the Sixth Symphony; equally crucial, though, that metamorphosis never happened. For this was marching that could be enjoyed too, almost as if we were paying a decidedly non-Marschallin like visit to the Prater. But then, there came disintegration: it was not just, or even principally shattering; it was perhaps closer to Mendelssohnian exhaustion. Attempts at rejuvenation or resuscitation were thereby rendered all the more ambiguous. The loudest offstage percussion I can recall (up in the Gallery, I think) heralded the recapitulation: it was as before, yet utterly transformed. And how the differences in the material were now revealed – or, so it seemed, revealed themselves! The end, when it came, was not lingered over; whatever Haitink may be, he is no sentimentalist. There was, indeed, a touch of Haydn to it.

 

A graceful oboe solo (Oliver Stankiewicz) and gracious second violins’ response set the tone for the second movement. Except soon it became clear that it had not; it was not long before unease set in, from within the music, nothing appliqué. Indeed, there was as much unease in ‘beauty’, whatever that might be, as in dissonant corrosion thereof. Thematic profusion seemed almost to rival Mozart – and this music is perhaps still more difficult to hold together. (So many conductors, often praised to the rafters, fail here.) Haitink’s rubato was expertly judged: again there was nothing self-regarding to it, but rather it always made a musical point; so did his ritenuti. He revealed to us all manner of connections, intra- and extra-musical, whether intentionally or otherwise. Not the least of them was the sweetness, inviting yet not without malignance, of Alt-Wien, that malignance ever more present towards the close.

 

We heard, almost stepped into, a city dweller’s countryside in the third movement: its nightmares as well as its dreams. This was, it seemed, Mahler exploring the terrain of Hänsel und Gretel, only with more overt nastiness. Internal coherence was just as striking: at times, we seemed close to Webern’s Bach. Until, that is, we could not be more distant from it. Cross-rhythms were as disconcerting as those of Brahms, whatever the gulf that might otherwise separate the two composers (in both of whose music Haitink has long excelled). The trumpet’s presentiments of the posthorn solos have never registered so strikingly to me. And how wondrous that sounded, from afar, in Nicholas Betts’s flugelhorn rendition. Again, there was more than a hint of modernist Mendelssohn. Above all, though, it moved: with dignity, with nobility, rather than pleading for us, Bernstein-like, to shed tears.  Instrumental scurrying also had something of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to it: Mendelssohn and Shakespeare. With that ‘Nocturne’ in mind, it seemed especially fitting that the French horns as well as the posthorn should have us hold our collective breath once again. We flitted around a weird liminal zone, combining Webern and Mendelssohn; on reflection, is that not often what Mahler is? A hint of balletic Tchaikovsky was swiftly banished by parodic ‘triumph’. And then, everything, or so it seemed, was to be heard that had gone before: together and eternally separate, alienated.

 

Sarah Connolly brought equal sincerity and subtlety to her vocal part in ‘O Mensch!’ Indeed the different colourings of the first statement of those words and her repetition of them spoke volumes; likewise the ensuing ‘Gib acht!’ The orchestral backdrop, if one can call it that, sounded again close to Webern in its shifting colours. Haitink’s strength of symphonic purpose was, however, quite different in nature (which is not, of course, to imply that Webern has not strength of purpose!) I have heard more contralto-like performances, but there was no denying the excellence of Connolly’s blend of Wort and Ton, nor the strength of the emotional response provoked. Indeed, perhaps not coincidentally, given her recent performances of the role, there was something Brangäne-like to her warnings, the deepness of Nietzschean midnight already in danger of disruption.

 

The boys’ calls of ‘Bimm bamm’ – I have heard dull people decry this wondrous moment as ‘silly’, when nothing could stand further from the truth –came as a fifth-movement, quite heavenly wake-up call from such Tristan-esque reverie. Connolly, intriguingly, continued to warn; it was certainly not only Haitink who understood how the two movements are connected. The women’s chorus and the LSO stood somewhere in between: mediators, perhaps even sainted mediators.

 

Quiet, infinite warmth marked the hymnal intensity of the LSO strings at the opening of the finale. I thought of – and felt – Communion. ‘What God tells me’, indeed! There was an almost Nono-like imperative to listen, as the strings spoke to us not just corporately, not just sectionally (what viola playing!) but, so one fancied, from individual desks and individual positions at those desks too. Fragility and strength were partners as the movement gathered pace, as something or Something revealed itself or Itself. There was, moreover, a well-nigh Beethovenian benevolence of spirit, albeit more vulnerable, to be experienced, perhaps even a little neurosis aufgehoben. And how Haitink guided the unfolding of that long line of unendliche Melodie; how he and his players communicated that echt-Romantic Innigkeit, so close to Schumann and yet alienated from him as modernity must be! For there was a Lied-like simplicity to what we heard and felt. This is difficult music, but its difficulty is accessible to anyone with a heart – and a mind. Unlike, alas, the idiot who disrupted the silence-that-never-was by shouting ‘Yeahhhhhhhhh!’ How can people be quite so inconsiderate? Still, that was an irritation rather than a catastrophe; the performance, both then and in recollection, rose far, far above it.