LSO/Hannigan - Khayam, Haydn, Vivier, Debussy, Sibelius, and Bartók, 20 March 2025

Barbican Hall

Golfam Khayam: Je ne suis pas une fable à conter (UK premiere)

Haydn: Symphony no.39 in G minor

Claude Vivier: Orion

Debussy: Syrinx

Sibelius: Luonnotar

Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin: Suite

Gareth Davies (flute)
London Symphony Orchestra
Barbara Hannigan (soprano/conductor)

The second of Barbara Hannigan’s two March LSO concerts opened with a UK premiere: Golfam Khayam’s Je ne suis pas une fable à conter, which Hannigan commissioned and has already performed with the Iceland Symphony, Radio France Philharmonic, and Gothenburg Symphony orchestras. Khayam being unable to travel to after hearing hearing her speak on Iranian music, receiving a reply and offer a collaboration within two hours of sending her message. They settled on a poem by Ahmed Shamlou. There are, it seems, elements of improvisation, though without knowing the work it is impossible to know how much. Opening with cellos and double basses, joined by other, deep-pile LSO strings, the piece effects, especially after voice and flute entry, an ‘east-west’ encounter in vocal and instrumental arabesques, and in combination of tonal and modal (at least to my ears) writing. It seemed to suggest eventual passage from mourning to light, or perhaps better, to glimpse it almost Janáček-like, at the end of our current tunnel. Not that it sounded in any way like Janáček, but perhaps there something in that sensibility was held in common. Perhaps it was no coincidence that here the words turned from French to Farsi. 

Haydn’s Symphony no.39 received a fine reading, Hannigan revelling in its quirks and surprises—considerably more so, it seemed to me, than her slightly disappointing way with the so-called ‘London’ Symphony no.104 last week (an altogether more Classical concern). From the off, she and the LSO relished its Sturm und Drang energy, silence as much part of its activity as sound in the first movement. It developed and returned, almost in a flash, yet certainly not without our knowing that it had. Here and in the ensuing Andante, there was nothing generic to form and process, deeply rooted as they were in Haydn’s particularities. And what a joy it was to hear the LSO in such music, unburdened by ‘period’ affectation. In her programme note, Kate Hopkins described the minuet as stately. It might have done with being a little statelier here, or at least sterner. Still, in its more flowing though not rushed way, it ‘spoke’ clearly, just as its delectable trio sang. The finale, full of incident, might in some ways sound ‘theatrical’ but proved, quite rightly, above all symphonic. 

Claude Vivier’s Orion followed, essentially a theme and five variations. Throughout, it was characterised by a strong sense of liminality, doubtless born, as Tim Rutherford-Johnson’s helpful note pointed out, of Vivier’s preceding opera on death and the afterlife, Kopernikus, and its foretelling; ‘You will hear the music of Orion and the mystical seven sages.’ Distinct echoes of various music – the Stravinsky of the early ballets, Messiaen, Grisey (or was that the Wagner of the Rheingold Prelude) – sounded both too close not to be intentional, yet also too fully integrated to be the point. Above all, it seemed to refer only to itself and, in the two percussionist cries of ‘hé-o’ to the mystery of human subjectivity set against something implacably cosmic. 

The second half opened with a solo from above (at least in the Stalls), Gareth Davies in a beautifully free yet coherent performance of Debussy’s flute Syrinx. Hannigan again led for Sibelius’s Luonnotar. But of course she can sing Finnish whilst conducting… It made for a fascinating combination, the Sibelius possessed of a keen narrative thrust born of words and music alike, all the drama of the ballad rooted in febrile LSO strings. It emerged as a kindred spirit to Mahler’s Das klagende Lied, albeit in (relative) miniature. 

Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite rounded off an eclectic programme. For me, it is one of those cases in which I always regret the loss of material. Habits of early encounters with Boulez doubtless die hard. Nonetheless, on its own terms, there was much to ‘enjoy’, if that be the right word. Hannigan and the LSO seemed more focused on the harder edged elements to the score: a steely frame that seemed to invite comparisons with more or less contemporary Prokofiev (Le Pas d’acier and even the later Fiery Angel). Occasionally ear-splitting in the Barbican’s awkward acoustic, it danced its way to a final, ever wilder climax.

BBC Proms (5) - Ferschtman/BBC PO/Storgårds: Byström, Sibelius, and Schumann, 10 August 2021

Royal Albert Hall

Britta Byström: Parallel Universes (world premiere)
Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor, op.47
Schumann: Symphony no.3 in E-flat major, ‘Rhenish’, op.97

Liza Ferschtman (violin)

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

John Storgårds (conductor)

Fine performances here from the BBC Philharmonic and John Storgårds, from violinist Liza Ferchtman too. If my enthusiasm was considerably stronger for the second half (rather less than half) of the concert than the first, that was on account of repertoire rather than performance.

Britta Byström’s Parallel Universes was another of this year’s Proms commissions. Where Augusta Read Thomas, two nights previously, had presented a ballet of proteins, reflecting in contemporary terms on the hall’s Albertine heritage of arts and sciences, Byström’s inspiration came from the cosmologist Max Tegmark’s conception of parallel universies, ‘in which we might encounter exact copies of ourselves’. Its four sections, or ‘levels’, corresponded to Tegmark’s four levels of ‘multiverses’. Her account in the programme of the techniques employed to transfer this conception into music whetted the appetite, yet I could not help but feel, at least on a first hearing, that the result was of generic, ‘soft modernist’ Proms commission music. At the first level, high-lying strings—one encounters them at the opening of many such a piece—did a little swarming. At the second, there was greater harmonic change and, to be fair, some genuinely beguiling sounds at what we might call its centre. And so it continued, over twelve minutes or so. There was nothing to frighten anyone away; it was skilfully put together, colourful within bounds, and yet…

On to Sibelius. Replacing Jennifer Pike, Liza Ferschtman gave a commanding performance of the Violin Concerto, ably supported by Storgårds and the BBC PO. Ferschtman’s opening silken tone developed into something richer and darker as required. Storgårds, visibly and audibly, knew just when to have the orchestra dig in to produce something extra, when to scale back, and much more. The first movement in particular benefited from a good sense of harmonic rhythm. It was on the grand scale, leading to a thrilling coda, though I confess to a lack of understanding on why the composer takes so long to get there as he does. Rapt intensity, not least from Ferschtman’s violin and the horns, characterised much of the slow movement, full orchestra responding in ardent fashion. There was no question of Ferschtman’s Romantic conception of the work and it was probably all the better for it. Razor-sharp in the finale, against a colourful and powerfully directed orchestra, Ferschtman clearly knew where she was going and how to get there. There were times, though, when I had to take her word for it.

Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony received a fresh performance, full of life and extremely well balanced. (Pay no heed to fashion victims who tell you Schumann’s orchestra must be small; it must be balanced.) Storgårds’s first movement was typical of the whole: flexible, directed, and with a keen ear for detail, structure in time becoming form. Beethovenian (motivic) and Mendelssohnian (textures, inner parts) tendencies were present, but Schumann’s sum was rightly very much more than any number of parts. The second and third movements flowed nicely in their own allied yet different ways. A strong sense of line guided unobtrusively in these legs of what it was tempting to consider as Schumann’s Rhine Journey. ‘Characteristic’ characteristics, if you will forgive the term, were present, not least wonderfully Mendelssohn-like longing in the third. One’s first encounter with Cologne Cathedral will surely always be special. Given that I had waited so long, seeing it only in early 2020, just prior to Götterdämmerung, there was something especially moving about the fourth movement’s musical re-encounter. It is not the Cathedral itself, of course, but music, and that proved luminous, well-paced, comprehending, and quietly, even not so quietly, magnificent. Thereafter, the final offered necessary release, shifting the immediacy of its predecessor to a powerful, moving memory. The vernal freshness of the first movement returned, if indeed it had ever truly gone away, but lightly transformed in the light of experience.

First Night of the Proms – Hyde/BBC SO/Stasevska: Vaughan Williams, Poulenc, MacMillan, and Sibelius, 30 July 2021

Royal Albert Hall

Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music
Poulenc: Organ Concerto in G minor
James MacMillan: When Soft Voices Die (world premiere)
Sibelius: Symphony no.2 in D major, op.43


Elizabeth Llewellyn (soprano)

Jess Dandy (contralto)

Allan Clayton (tenor)

Michael Mofidian (bass-baritone)

BBC Singers (chorus-master: Martin Fitzpatrick)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Dalia Stasevska (conductor)

Cards on the table. Poulenc aside, I have not previously been a great fan of the music of any of the composers featured in this year’s First Night of the Proms. It does one good, though, to test one’s preferences and prejudices; in any case, this was a moment of return for which I wanted, even needed, to be present, almost irrespective of repertoire. Last year saw a few Proms at the end of the season, albeit with no audience. I was not in London for the summer of 2019, so it was not far off three years since I had lest ventured to the Royal Albert Hall. This was a lovely concert for which to return.


And what piece could be more apt as an opener than Vaughan Williams’s Shakespearean hymn to music? (Whatever my ambivalence toward some of Vaughan Williams’s output, I have loved this piece since first hearing it as a schoolboy.) Its London pedigree—premiered here in 1938 by Sir Henry Wood, for whose diamond jubilee as a conductor it was composed—made the Serenade to Music all the more apt. This was a performance imbued with delight from its opening chords, Vaughan Williams’s orchestration and later vocal writing resounding perfectly through the hall’s challenging acoustic. Dalia Stasevska’s direction, untroubled by drab English tradition, drew from the BBC Symphony Orchestra sonorities and languor it was difficult not to think of as in the line of Ravel, with whom the composer had studied three decades earlier. Stasevska’s shaping of contours and climaxes was spot on, permitting words and above all music to speak and sing for themselves. Especially memorable (for me) were duetting arabesques between Elizabeth Llewellyn and leader Igor Yuzefovich; the deep summons of ‘affections dark as Erebus’ by Michael Mofidian; Jess Dandy’s contralto call, ‘Music! Hark!’; and the final choral echo of Llewellyn’s ‘sweet harmony’, bathed in sweet orchestral warmth. There were no weak links, though, in a magical performance.


Also written in 1938 was Poulenc’s Organ Concerto, here given an excellent performance by Daniel Hyde, the BBC SO and Stasevska. The splendour of its opening is quite different in nature, of course, yet offered another fine Albert Hall moment. Registration was always well chosen for score and instrument alike. Hyde rightly played his part straight, as did strings whose imploring sweetness seemed to prefigure Poulenc’s later sacred music and even the Dialogues des Carmélites. Wagnerian harmonies were soon put to decidedly anti-Wagnerian use, posing questions rather than answers, Poulenc’s mock-Bachian gestures relishing the fairground of barely suppressed desire. For there was serious questing at the heart of this performance, whatever the masks Poulenc cunningly employed, wit and poignancy two sides of the same coin.


Co-commissioned by the BBC and Help Musicians, When Soft Voices Die, ames MacMillan’s setting of two poems by Shelley, emerged as a workable companion piece for the Vaughan Williams Serenade, using as it does four soloists and orchestra (no chorus). Performances were as committed and variegated as elsewhere, Llewellyn recalling the virtues of her Puccini roles. As for the piece itself, there was craftsmanship in MacMillan’s setting and no denying his taste in verse. Nevertheless, conservatism aside—Vaughan Williams and Poulenc seemed almost avant-garde by comparison—the overall sense was of anonymous proficiency.

Finally Sibelius, with whose symphonies I have long struggled. I shall not bore you with that now, other than to say this was the first performance both to convince and move me. Perhaps it was simply the right time for this music to come knocking on the door, but surely it was more than that: testament to another fine performance, flexible yet directed. by the BBC SO and Stasevska. It was striking that, even to a long-term sceptic, the opening of the first movement seemed to speak as if an old friend. Balletic lightness of touch recalled Tchaikovsky and, beyond him, perhaps more surprisingly, the orchestral writing of Mendelssohn. Not that that precluded the ardent and majestic where required, quite the contrary. Soon I could only wonder what my problem with this music had been. Pizzicato cellos and double basses in the second movement both picked up from the first and contrasted with it. Mendelssohn again came to mind as a processional forerunner, this time the Italian Symphony, though of course the music developed very much in its own, again not un-Tchaikovskian way. At any rate, rhetoric in performance seemed designed to be understood in terms of such inheritance. I am not sure I quite appreciated the movement’s lengths, but that is doubtless my problem; after all, some others still feel that way about Schubert. A third movement full of nervous energy, woodwind in its trio a necessary contrast in many ways, prepared the way for a finale that combined strong senses both of expectation and culmination. We were nearly there, that is, but there was some way yet to go. Stasevska imparted a wondrous sense of inevitability and ultimately triumph to this final leg of the journey. I may not quite be a Sibelius (or Vaughan Williams) convert yet, but greater curiosity has certainly been piqued. Just please do not ask me to sit through The Lark Ascending…

ASMF/Wigglesworth - Sibelius, Nielsen, Wagner, and Mozart, 5 December 2020

St Martin-in-the-Fields

Sibelius: Belshazzar’s Feast: ‘Nocturne’
Nielsen, arr. Hans Abrahamsen: Three Piano Pieces, op.59, recomposed for ten instruments
Wagner: Siegfried-Idyll
Mozart: Symphony no.34 in C major, KV 338

Academy of St Martin in the Fields

Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor)

‘Awakening’, aptly enough, was the theme of this post-lockdown concert from the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in the church where, for this orchestra, it all began. I only noticed that after the event and confess to having been thinking in different, if far from opposed, terms, related to the theatre. Music means many things at different times, to different people—and surely all the more so in times such as these. At any rate, a sign of musical light in London at the close of the first week of Advent was welcome indeed, not least given the typical accomplishment of the Academy’s playing, this time under Ryan Wigglesworth.


As a heretic who has always preferred Sibelius’s smaller pieces to his symphonies—perhaps one day they will ‘click’ with me—I was delighted to hear the ‘Nocturne’ from his incidental music to Belshazzar’s Feast in a spacious performance well judged for the church acoustic. One heard from the outset coolness and warmth in the Academy’s sound, both in timbre and harmony. Such balance was typical of the performance as a whole, Tchaikovskian inheritance apparent, yet neither overwhelming nor overwhelmed by Sibelian distinctiveness of voice. Scalar orientalism may have charmed, yet sounded rightly incidental (in the other sense). Here was a Nordic heart beating through out.


Hans Abrahamsen’s ‘recomposition’ of Carl Nielsen’s Three Piano Pieces had no intrinsic connection with the stage, yet sounded here very much as if it had. The first piece set the scene for quite a journey within only a few minutes. Quirky, colourful, yet with enough disorientation to retain a welcome enigmatic quality, it proved neither one thing (Nielsen) nor the other (Abrahamsen), albeit in a positive, alchemic sense: if not quite the magic of theatre, then certainly of performance, the latter here one of sensitivity and verve. The second proved similar yet different, a second act in miniature. Here a sense of kinship with Maskarade seemed stronger, but likewise tendencies in another, re-composer’s direction. Likewise, still more, in the third: whether that were a matter of work, performance, or my listening, I am not entirely sure. And does it matter? Some wind sounds, perhaps inevitably for such an ensemble, echoed Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony; by the same token, some emphatically did not. Music guards its mysteries.


Wagner’s Siegfried-Idyll is music with a complex relationship to the stage: it precedes the composition of the section of Siegfried from which it seems to ‘come’, written for a domestic stage—and a domestically staged event. To accord it its full title: ‘Tribschen Idyll with Fidi-Birdsong and Orange Sunrise as Symphonic Birthday Greeting Offered to his Cosima by her Richard, 1870.’ This lullaby of peace, joy, and world-inheritance, to employ the conventional leitmotif references from the opera yet ‘awakens’. It certainly did here, in a reading brisk and unsentimental which, at start, sounded a little as if Wigglesworth were trying to force Wagner’s melos into pre-conceived moulds. In truth, the opening is very difficult indeed to bring off; it takes the most experienced of Wagnerians, whether a Furtwängler or a Boulez, to do so with the ease it seems to demand. There was no denying, though, the excellence of the ASMF’s instrumental playing, nor later on of Wigglesworth’s shaping of Wagner’s climaxes, always more economical than one expects and all the more telling for that. There was, moreover, an almost Straussian after-glow to the final minutes; it would always have been welcome, but was all the more so set against the cold frigidity of the pandemical world outside.


Finally came Mozart: ever poised between concert hall, theatre, and indeed church. His Symphony no.34 opened with festal swagger that did not preclude relaxation. If anything, I felt Wigglesworth offered too much of the latter later in the first-movement exposition, somewhat losing momentum. It remained a joy, however, simply to hear this music once again. There was throughout a keenness to the woodwind that spoke, or better sang, of the opera house, leading to a coda to lift the darkest of spirits. Sometimes—often, with Mozart—C major can prove just the tonic. The Academy’s small forces reinforced the slow movement’s lineage in Salzburg serenades. Wweetness of string tone was especially welcome given the perversities we often suffer nowadays in this music. Polish and fire marked the finale: a Catherine wheel in the Salzburg night sky I missed so much this summer. There was, thank goodness, no fussiness to Wigglesworth’s direction, nor to the playing. And what playing it was!

Salzburg Festival (3) – Mutter/WEDO/Barenboim: Previn, Sibelius, and Beethoven, 16 August 2019

Grosses Festspielhaus

André Previn: Violin Concerto, ‘Anne-Sophie’: third movement, ‘(from a train in Germany)’

Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor, op.47

Beethoven: Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Image: Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli

For the third and final of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’s Salzburg appearances this year, the players and Daniel Barenboim were joined by Anne-Sophie Mutter, for one-and-a-third violin concertos. The third-fraction was the final movement of André Previn’s work, written for Mutter and named after her, the movement in question a set of variations on the song, ‘Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär’. She is clearly fond of the work, although it is difficult to imagine we shall hear much of it from anyone else; at any rate, performance of a single movement afforded a touching tribute, without outstaying its welcome. Korngold, Prokofiev, Walton, even occasionally Berg haunted its pages: rather as one might have expected. It is not so much reactionary music, as simply what it is, never pretending to be anything else. Mutter here, as later, was on outstanding form, her tone centred, and focused, the music knowingly playing to her strengths, supported not only by a gorgeous orchestral sound, but by players and a conductor who knew where things were heading and how to get there. The soloist’s final sustained note, fading into nothing, made for a loving farewell to a mentor, sometime husband, and collaborator.

Sibelius, I am afraid, is a composer whose music I have never really been able to get on with. My loss, doubtless. I put the symphonies to one side some time ago, deciding that there was little point in persistently trying and getting nowhere: better to wait until they came knocking at the door again. Although I have found many of the shorter pieces, whether songs or orchestral works, attractive, I have likewise avoided the Violin Concerto for some time, initially nonplussed by it. If I cannot imagine it ever being my favourite work in the genre – though who knows? – I am delighted to report the extent to which I was won over, my reservations confounded and quite forgotten. Sometimes it pays to wait not just for the right time, but for the right performers. For me, at least, Mutter, the Divan Orchestra, and Barenboim proved very much that. Mutter’s tone for the opening was different: less glamorous, with tighter vibrato, her line nevertheless built swiftly and surely with evident passion and belief. It was a long line, yet variegated. Barenboim attended to harmonic rhythm with all the understanding one would expect. This first movement emerged as not un-Wagnerian at times: not just the sound, but, in Barenboim’s hands, dramatic timing too. The depth and vigour of the Divan strings did no harm whatsoever either. Mutter’s cadenza was as nourishing as it was thrilling, the vehemence of the movement’s close quite stirring from all concerned. There was more than a little Wagner to the slow movement’s opening clarinet and oboe duo, Mutter responding with a rich, yet never thick, solo of her own. It was unashamedly ‘Romantic’, yet with an awareness that the term meant something quite different from what it might have done twenty-five or fifty years earlier. The movement spoke ‘for itself’, not unduly or even noticeable moulded, Barenboim attentive in the best way. Virtuosity at the service of the score characterised the finale. I doubt one would hear its opening solo played with greater clarity or understanding today, the orchestra responding in (darker) kind. And so on and so forth, our musicians excellent guides. This prior sceptic found himself entirely won over.

With Beethoven we were firmly on Barenboim’s home territory – and his orchestra’s. The Seventh Symphony’s first movement introduction can rarely, if ever, have sounded replete with potentiality, with hope. (How we need that right now!) Haydn radicalised: is that not what Beethoven is, in many ways? From the outset, harmony was the symphony’s guiding force. (Why, apparently, do so many conductors fail to realise or at least to communicate this? As if Beethoven had no harmonic understanding…!) Every new phrase, every new section of a sequence, was developmental, generative, the transition to the exposition proper almost responsorial. Barenboim’s great friend and colleague, Pierre Boulez, would surely have nodded smiling assent. And the moment of arrival was, paradoxically, or better, dialectically, both decisive and almost imperceptible. Above all, though, there was meaning; this was music that mattered: I had shed a couple of tears before the advent of the second group. All the virtues of the introduction were carried forward, developed, transformed, Barenboim’s leading of his musicians an object lesson in symphonic form. Not only did we face the tonal universe in an almost Newtonian sense; we explored it, as humans do, as humans all will. To have those musicians playing as if their lives depending on it, a strong, decisive, generative bass line (ten cellos, eight double basses) reminded us what Beethoven can be, should be, must be, yet sadly, tragically, in these diminished times of ours, so rarely is. What struck me once the movement, coda and all, was over was how it had passed in the twinkling of an eye: as concise, so it seemed, as its opposite number in the Fifth Symphony.

Taken attacca, the nobility of the second movement, voiced with surpassing musical excellence and understanding, pursued the humanistic tale. A requiem for our hopes? No, although perhaps a moment to consider, to reconsider, to begin to achieve them. This, once again, was awe-inspiring Beethoven, such as only Barenboim can summon up today. Harmony and counterpoint alike offered an absolutely necessary coming together: political in every sense. This is our music; let us never forget that. Fresh, determined, the scherzo never hinted at outstaying its welcome, as it can in lesser performances, its trio offering new, yet related vistas and hopes. Mahler would have understood the marriage, the interdependence, of physical and metaphysical. And how this music, so often grimly driven, danced with delight! Much the same might be said of the finale, albeit with very different material and, ultimately, purpose. It was a whirlwind in the best sense: all-enveloping, directed, yet embracing us. ‘Seid umschlungen, Millionen…’ Content and form, style and idea were indissoluble: dialectically sparring and, yes, mutually embracing. The apotheosis, then, of human, necessary revolution.

Salzburg Festival (4) - Kajtazi/Camerata Salzburg/Prior - Nørgard, Mozart, Sibelius, and Prokofiev, 7 August 2016

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Per Nørgard – Dream Play

Mozart – Vado, ma dove? oh Dei!, KV 583
Sibelius – Suite: Pelleas and Melisande, op.46
Prokofiev – Symphony no.1 in D major, op.25, ‘Classical’

Elbenita Kajtazi (soprano)

Camerata Salzburg

Alexander Prior (conductor)

This was a curiously assembled programme, but since it was one of four concerts to be conducted by Nestlé and Salzburg Young Conductor prize winners, there may have been any number of practical reasons for that. Alexander Prior certainly knew what he was doing and how to get what he wanted from the Camerata Salzburg.

 

Per Nørgard’s Dream Symphony, not a work with which I was previously familiar, opened the programme. The opening was surefooted and colourful, the Salzburg woodwind especially fruity. Strings offered an added touch of overt late Romanticism, despite the work having been written in 1975, and a good few ‘wrong’ notes to spice up the harmony. There was great clarity to the performance, allied to a strong sense of forward momentum (at least where the piece permitted). The gorgeous acoustic of the Mozarteum’s Grosser Saal helped, and so did excellent playing, but Prior deserves a good deal of credit; he was clearly enjoying himself too.

 

Mozart’s insertion aria, Vado, ma dove? oh Dei!, benefited equally from warm, crisp orchestral playing (thankfully not a hint of the dread Roger Norrington’s tenure). Elbenita Kajtazi’s singing and the performance in general were operatic in a good sense: one could well imagine the piece doing – very well – what it was designed to do, lifting the work of a lesser composer (Martín y Soler). Kajtazi’s stylish, often thrilling performance left one longing for more. I certainly hope to hear more from her.

 

Sibelius’s smaller works have often proved more attractive to me than his (dreary) symphonies. Not really on this occasion, I am afraid, although again the performances were excellent. It was a long time since I had heard his incidental music for Pelleas and Melisande; he comes a long, long way behind Debussy and Schoenberg, Fauré too. The audience generally seemed enthralled, though, and there was no doubting Prior’s commitment. The opening number was rich of tone, yet stark, clearly suggestive of the dark castle. The English horn soloist shone in his various solos, and there was a gloriously full orchestral sound to be heard from what, after all, is a chamber orchestra. The penultimate movement definitely had a ‘pastoral’ quality to it, prior to a duly grave conclusion.

 

I was a little puzzled by Prior’s rather deliberate direction of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, especially during the first movement, which dragged somewhat, at least to my ears. (I am not one generally to dislike slower tempi.) The Larghetto emerged better, sounding graceful, yet always retaining a sense of the longer line. I rather liked the held-back quality to the Gavotta too, which prepared a still greater contrast with the fleet virtuosity of the finale. There was no doubting here the aural glimpses (!) of the ballet composer to come.

Stemme/Barenboim - Brahms, Wagner, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, Sibelius, 8 November 2015

Großer Saal, Musikverein

Brahms – Liebestreu, op.3 no.1

Botschaft, op.47 no.1
Meine Liebe ist grün, op.63 no.5
Auf dem Kirchhofe, op.105 no.4
Von ewiger Liebe, op.43 no.1

Wagner – Wesendonck-Lieder

Nadia Boulanger – Les Lilas sont en folie
Soir d’hiver
Was will die einsame Träne

Lili Boulanger – Attente
Au pied de mon lit
Si tout ceci n’est qu’un pauvre rêve

Sibelius – Törnet, op.88 no.6
I systrar, I bröder, I äsklande par, op.86 no.6
Den första kyssen, op.37 no.1
Soluppgång, op.37 no.3
Var det en dröm, op.37 no.4
Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings mote, op.37 no.5

Nina Stemme (soprano)

Daniel Barenboim (piano)

This is one of those occasions when I am essentially entering a personal diary entry rather than a review. The reason is simple enough, and is intended as no disrespect to the artists, quite the contrary: I was not well, and devoted far too much of my attention to stifling a cough to be able to write properly on the performances. It was, as one might have expected, a splendid concert. Stemme was her wonderful self: a little steely, though a good way short of Nilsson, less impeccable with her diction than I might have expected, but more than compensating by the meaning she imparted with the marriage of words and text. We heard more than a little Brünnhilde: not only in the Wesendonck-Lieder, but also on occasion in Brahms. Barenboim was at his best as a collaborative artist: responsive, in no sense domineering, but very much an equal partner. How he must know and feel the kinship with Tristan! I found the Nadia Boulanger songs pleasant, if somewhat generic: a nice reminder of Barenboim’s association with her. Lili Boulanger’s songs, on the other hand, announced the ‘real thing’ from the outset, and the performances sounded all the more committed; there was no doubting the compositional voice, post-Debussyan, to be sure, and with connections one might draw, but never to be reduced to them. (I must hear these songs again, soon!) I am no fan of Sibelius’s symphonies, but am always happy enough to hear his songs, and there was certainly much to be gained in hearing them from Stemme. She sang, I think, another as her first encore; I do not know which. The second, more surprising, was Weill’s ‘My ship has sails’ from Lady in the Dark. More later in the week, when I hope to be recovered! (Alas, a Wien Modern concert tonight had to fall by the wayside this evening.)

Prom 44: Braunstein/Soltani/WEDO/Barenboim - Schoenberg, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, 18 August 2015

Royal Albert Hall

Schoenberg – Chamber Symphony no.1, op.9

Beethoven – Concerto for violin, cello, and piano, in C major, op.56

Tchaikovsky – Symphony no.4 in F minor, op.36

Guy Braunstein (violin)

Kian Soltani (cello)

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra,

Daniel Barenboim (piano/conductor)

This was an intriguing opportunity. I heard two of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’s three Salzburg concerts last week, stupidly missing the third for a miserable Fidelio. Here, at the Proms, a work from each of those concerts was given. I was thus able to hear two performances of the works by Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, and to hear the Schoenberg First Chamber Symphony from that regrettably missed concert. The acoustic of the Grosses Festspielhaus was, unsurprisingly, a clear winner over that of the Royal Albert Hall. However, as so often, my ears adjusted, so that the experiences were not so different as one might have expected. Performances? Swings and roundabouts. In many ways, very similar, but I think London had the edge in Beethoven, Salzburg in Tchaikovsky.

First, however, was the Schoenberg. I was astonished at the balance between the instruments, difficult to attain at the best of times. At no point were the strings overwhelmed. Barenboim’s combination of flexibility of tempo and sure harmonic understanding made for a very fine performance indeed; so did the richness of sound from these extraordinary musicians. The ‘character’ of themes and their working was as sharp as in Haydn, the cut and thrust of their development well-nigh Beethovenian, in a way I cannot recall previously having heard. That was certainly not at the expense of an array of colours, which seemed to look forward to Schoenberg’s own op.16 Five Orchestral Pieces. The Adagio section brought suspense but also clarity in motivic derivation and development. Colours, again, both took us back to so many of the Austro-German predecessors of whom Schoenberg was so inordinately proud, and forward too. The recapitulation did what it should: recapitulated, yes, but also further developed. Not for nothing is Barenboim renowned for both Schoenberg and Beethoven.

When it came to Beethoven’s own Triple Concerto, the hairs on the back of my neck stood for the first orchestral tutti. Both the deep, rich sonority of the orchestra and the sheer purpose of Barenboim’s conducting ensured that. The sweetness of Guy Braunstein’s tone and the aristocratic, almost Fournier-like character of Kian Soltani’s cello playing proved perfect foils for each other. I was less entirely convinced about Barenboim’s piano; as in Salzburg, there was something a little odd about its tone. But I am over-emphasising small matters; this was a performance of conviction with true fire from all participants. Moreover, Barenboim’s subtle yet teasing rubato for his first entry underlined who was in charge. As in the Schoenberg performance, formal dynamism was communicated and experienced. The closing bars of that first movement were infectious in their sense of fun: like an operatic finale. The slow movement unfolded in a single, unbroken line, with all the dignity of a great symphonic slow movement. How it sang too! And how all three soloists sounded as if they were a regular trio; perhaps they will be. It seemed over in the twinkling of a greatly blessed eye. As in Salzburg, Soltani expertly handled the transition to the finale. He is undoubtedly the real thing; we should expect to hear much more from him. The movement made its progress with Mozartian wit and Beethovenian idealism. Its ‘Hungarian’ lilt edged us at times closer to Brahms. Perfectly poised then, both musically and musico-historically.

Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony opened urgently – perhaps quicker than in Salzburg. Flexibility was again soon manifest, the hush of what we might think of as a second opening as impressive as the great build-up that ensued. Extremes of tempo seemed more pronounced than they had in Salzburg; indeed, there were just a few occasions when I wondered whether Barenboim had gone too far. There was much else, however, for which to be grateful, not least the incorporation of a balletic spirit into his reading. There is no harm, indeed considerable virtue, in having the ominous tread fuse with the spirit of the dance. A little more single-mindedness might have been welcome, but that is to nit-pick. Certainly, the orchestra sounded, insofar as the Albert Hall would permit, as magnificent as ever. For the depth of tone we heard from the strings in the slow movement was breathtaking. Song was an abiding presence, but we experienced too the (apparent, illusory?) pomp of an Imperial Ball, looking forward perhaps to The Queen of Spades. Stark modernity then vied with Romantic ‘consolation’. There were contrasts, then, aplenty, all impressively integrated. ‘Pizzicato games’ was my first thought in the scherzo, perhaps recalling, somewhat unexpectedly, the funeral games of its Eroica counterpart. A piquant trio seemed more insistent, more overtly ‘Russian’ than it had the previous week. That was quite a flourish with which the finale opened. Detail was not lost but rather enhanced by the rhetoric. Barenboim captured and communicated the tricky balance between apparently shifting mood and underlying, implacable Fate. Here, the electricity was at least as intense as it had been in Salzburg.

We were treated to no fewer than three encores. I did not mention the two we heard in Salzburg, since I did not want to spoil the surprise, if they were repeated, for anyone who might have read my review and attended the Prom. The first two were indeed the same: a Sibelius Valse triste of finely traced, rubato-laden progress, and a stunningly virtuosic Ruslan and Ludmila Overture. Following a typically diverting speech, in which Barenboim revealed that the following day marked the 65^th anniversary of his first public concert and lavished praise upon his orchestra, we heard an Argentinian tango. I am afraid I do not know by whom, but it sounded splendidly idiomatic to my ears.

Proms Saturday Matinee no.2 – Hardenberger/Lapland CO/Storgårds: C.P.E. Bach, Birtwistle, Honegger, Davies, and Sibelius, 9 August 2014

Cadogan Hall

C.P.E. Bach – Symphony in B minor, Wq 182 no.5

Birtwistle – Endless Parade

Honegger – Pastorale d’été

Davies – Sinfonia

Sibelius - Rakastava

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)

Lapland Chamber Orchestra

John Storgårds (conductor)

 

A principal theme of this year’s Proms has been the greater-than-ever variety of ensembles from across the world, many of them making their debuts here, whether at Cadogan Hall or a short walk away at the Royal Albert Hall. This Saturday Matinee offered the Proms debut of the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, the most northerly orchestra in the European Union, conducted by its Artistic Director, John Storgårds, with trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger joining for Birtwistle’s Endless Parade.

 

To hear an orchestral work – or indeed any work – by C.P.E. Bach is a rare treat. Unfortunately, the performance of his ‘Hamburg’ Symphony in B minor, Wq 182 no.5 (a Proms first), was not the most ingratiating; indeed, the first movement proved downright abrasive, and not only on account of some dodgy intonation. The strangeness of Emanuel Bach’s orchestral tessitura registered, as did the disjunctures – a canny programming presentiment of Birtwistle? – but there is more to the composer than that. A slightly fuller tone was permitted to the small orchestra (4.4.3.2.1, expanded for the following works) in the slow movement, and the finale was frenetic in a good sense. Still, it is sad to reflect that, on the few occasions when modern orchestras feel able to perform this music, they nevertheless so often feel constrained to ape ‘period’ mannerisms. If you have modern strings, make use of them!

 

Birtwistle’s Endless Parade offered what the composer, in a brief conversation with Clemency Burton-Hill, called a ‘piece of permanent discontinuity’, after Cubism, and more particularly after Picasso. The orchestra now sounded more at home, doubtless helped by the virtuosity and musical understanding of Hardenberger. Indeed, it would be little exaggeration to speak of ‘supreme command’ in his case. The piece was played as chamber music writ large, material tossed between soloist and various orchestral instruments. In its syncopation, it even approached ‘swing’, though jazz enthusiasts would probably beg to differ. It is, of course, a typically perspectival work, but I was struck – as was my companion, new to Birtwistle’s music – at the continuity that yet dialectically emerged from discontinuity. As Birtwistle commented, Beethoven is a true master in such matters, working, however, with the disadvantage (!) of tonality. Birtwistle’s language, technique, and for much of his career, eschewal of goal-orientation might seem to make him and Beethoven odd bed-fellows, but the comparison is well worth reflecting upon. As ever, of course, there was a keen sense not only of drama and landscape, but of drama through landscape, and of landscape through drama.

 

Another great English musical knight, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, was represented by his early (1962) Sinfonia, one of the works he wrote after – in one sense or another – Monteverdi’s Vespers, which, in a performance under Walter Goehr, had so inspired him and many others. (What a pity no recording seems to exist of any of Goehr’s performances! If anyone knows differently, I should be delighted to hear.) Davies admitted that he had not heard the piece since having conducted it during the 1980s with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and that he would take a red pencil to it now. I was interested to hear it, but should not necessarily rush to do so again. The opening clarinet solo was properly ‘recitando’, the first movement being marked ‘Lento recitando’, and that movement as a whole was full of expectant energy. None of the piece, though, seemed especially characteristic. The slow onward tread of the last of the four short movements came across very well in performance.

 

I could not bring myself to become excited about the other two pieces on the programme. Honegger’s Pastorale d’été ideally needs a greater cushion of strings than was available here. However, the essence of the music was well conveyed, greatly helped by steadiness in the rocking movement upon which it rests. Woodwind playing especially impressed – as indeed it had in Birtwistle. Sibelius’s Rakastava, the third of the pieces receiving its first Proms performance (Sinfonia having been the second) received an idiomatic, committed performance, if with smaller forces than it would doubtless often receive. (In this hall, it did not seem to matter.) Despite the characterful muted playing in the second movement, and especially fine solo cello playing throughout from Lauri Angervo, it remained for me a largely bland work. The encore, a Romance by Nils-Eric Fougstedt, was pleasant enough in a generic film-music sort of way.

Wigmore Hall opening concert 2010-11: 'Wigmore Memories' - Mattila/Katz, 10 September 2010

Berg – Seven Early Songs

Brahms – Vergebliches Ständchen, op.84 no.8
Der Gang zum Liebchen, op.48 no.1
Meine Liebe ist grün, op.63 no.5
Von ewiger Liebe, op.43 no.1

Sibelius – Illalle, op.17 no.6
Demanten på marssnön, op.36 no.6
Våren flyktar hastigt, op.13 no.4
Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings mote, op.37 no.5

Strauss – Der Stern, op.69 no.1
Wiegenlied, op.41 no.1
Allerseelen, op.10 no.8
Frühlingsfeier, op.56 no.5


Karita Mattila (soprano)
Martin Katz (piano)


The Wigmore Hall opened its 110th anniversary season in style with a recital from Karita Mattila and Martin Katz. A group of Anniversary Patrons has followed up support for Haydn Bicentenary celebrations in 2008-9 and last season’s Strauss Lieder series with funding for a number of concerts featuring artists returning to the hall after some time: a most welcome initiative, both in theory and now in practice.

Mattila, we were informed, was suffering from a cold but remained determined to sing. There were a few signs of her ailment during the opening couple of songs, but it can often take a little while for a musician to settle down in any case. Katz, moreover, made up for any initial (relative) shortcomings, ensuring that mists floated as they should in Nacht, the first of Berg’s Seven Early Songs, and revelling in that song’s extraordinary Debussyan whole-tone harmony. By the time we had reached the third, Die Nachtigall, Mattila sounded firmly in her stride. A mobile telephone intervention – and this from a relatively well-behaved audience – failed to prevent her from bringing fulsome tone to her climaxes, the piano too as full-bodied as a good claret. Liebesode was for me an especial highlight, the luxurious refulgence of Mattila’s tone compensating handsomely for occasional intonational slips, and Katz’s part properly orchestral without losing the specific post-Brahmsian quality of Berg’s piano writing. The final line of Sommertage, speaking of image upon image filling the heart, proved an apt summation of what had gone before.

The two Brahms folksongs were full of life, Vergebliches Ständchen vividly and cheekily characterised by Mattila, whilst keyboard sadness, subtly enhanced by judicious rubato, marked the Bohemian Der Gang zum Liebchen. I find it difficult to enthuse about the Felix Schumann setting, Meine Liebe ist grün, but doubtless the composer’s godson would have been delighted by it; Katz certainly seemed to relish Brahms in torrential piano-writing mode. Thereafter, both musicians revelled in the echt-Romanticism of the ballad, Von ewiger Lieber, in a reading that highlighted both the debt to Schubert and the grander, late Romantic means with which Brahms repaid his predecessor.

Mattila has an obvious native advantage when it comes to a Sibelius group, but that should not necessarily be taken for granted. She ensured, however, from the outset that a different compositional voice was to be heard, Illalle notably paying homage to Grieg. Its advertised successor, Vänskapens blomma, appeared to be replaced by another song; unfortunately, I am not well-informed enough about Sibelius or Scandinavian languages to be able to say any more. Våren flyktar hastigt brought with it a definite sense of the (European) East as well as the North. Mattila’s communicative skills brought understanding even to those of us for whom the languages themselves remain remote. There were more purely musical pleasures too, not least the grand climax she reached in the closing tale of lovers’ trysting, Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings mote. Sibelius is not a composer to whom I have ever readily responded, but I enjoyed the rare opportunity to hear some of his songs in recital.

Strauss is for me another matter entirely. Mattila and Katz were in their element here too. The Achim von Arnim setting, Der Stern, was perhaps a little too glamorous in performance for its straightforward means, but the ensuing Wiegenlied sounded just as it should: a very superior cradle song, nicely scaled down, but without limiting its horizons. Katz imparted proper dignity to the introduction to Allerseelen, continued and intensified by Mattila upon her entry. Finally, that extraordinary Dionysian Heine setting, Frühlingsfeier, whilst taxing the pianist to his limits, provided a veritable operatic scena with which to depart. Mattila’s cries of ‘Adonis! Adonis!’ at the conclusion to each of the three stanzas were truly blood-curdling, the overall conception Wagnerian in miniature. I said ‘finally’, but, despite her indisposition, Mattila returned on stage and announced that, unwise though this would be, reaching her fiftieth birthday had encouraged her to throw wisdom to the wind, so she would sing an encore after all. An evidently heartfelt Zueignung proved just the ticket.

A post-script: I am not convinced that ‘collaborator,’ Katz’s preferred alternative to ‘accompanist’, will catch on. The programme note entry, ‘One of the world’s busiest collaborators, Martin Katz…,’ and Katz’s book title, The Complete Collaborator, read somewhat unfortunately.

Edinburgh International Festival (1): Ivo Pogorelich piano recital - Chopin, Liszt, Sibelius, and Ravel, 29 August 2009

Usher Hall

Chopin – Nocturne in E major, Op.62 no.2
Chopin – Piano sonata no.3 in B minor, Op.58
Liszt – Mephisto Waltz no.1
Sibelius – Valse triste, op.44
Ravel – Gaspard de la nuit

This was the strangest piano recital I have ever attended. Prefacing a transcendental account of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit were some of the most astonishingly perverse performances of other works I can recall. Perhaps the least odd element was the pianist’s incongruous dress: black tie and tails. Of course, Ivo Pogorelich has always been a controversial musician. Fame was thrust upon him by elimination after the third round from the 1980 Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Martha Argerich was so outraged that she resigned from the jury. Thereafter, performances and recordings elicited wildly divergent appraisals. Some thought Argerich’s hailing of a ‘genius’ not at all far from the mark. At least two recordings would readily find a place in my pianistic pantheon: one of Scarlatti sonatas, the other of Prokofiev’s Sixth Sonata and Gaspard de la nuit. Others were shocked by the liberties they heard. I am certainly no purist and should always welcome with open arms explorative risk-taking over dreary conformism, but I was nevertheless entirely unprepared for what was to follow.

Speaking of competition-winners – or otherwise – few composers have suffered at their hands so much as Chopin. The number of bland, technically perfect performances inflicted upon this poet of the keyboard can scarcely be guessed. Pogorelich was having none of that, instead presenting a deliberate, nay trudging, E major Nocturne, with great emphasis – to put it mildly – placed upon the melodic line. Think of an organist thumping out a fugue subject on a trumpet stop and you might approach the idea. There was greater movement, for there could hardly have been less – or so I thought – as the music became more contrapuntally involved: fair enough. There was also a wholesale transformation from deliberation to an improvisatory quality that suggested bar lines had magically melted away. This was distinctly odd but in a way refreshing. But then, we returned back to earth with a reprise of the opening style. The music pretty much ground to a halt. I suppose it made one consider the score anew, but even so…

The opening to the Allegro maestoso of the same composer’s third sonata was certainly maestoso, though decidedly grim. Hints of passion could be heard – briefly – in the build up to the second subject, but were soon banished. That theme was sung, but sung in a decidedly aggressive fashion, as if Pogorelich were determined to rid the music of any hint of degenerate Bellinian inspiration. Perhaps he was. There was a general feeling throughout of great listlessness. The scherzo brought mercurial virtuosity but its trio was distended almost beyond belief. (The first but not last intervention of a mobile telephone intensified the agony, whilst the bronchially-challenged made their presence felt unusually keenly throughout.) A strangely severe introduction to the Largo sounded as though it had come from the weird world of late Liszt. It led us into a rhythmically implacable, utterly unsmiling, positively – or negatively – glacial account of a movement drawn out to mammoth proportions. I am all for a Largo sounding as a Largo, but even so… The finale was rather more fitting: restless, but that works better here. Not only did one hear often breathtaking virtuosity; there was a certain musical sense to a strormy, vehement performance. It was too late though.

Concluding the first part was Liszt’s first Mephisto Waltz. Weirdness is less out of place here but Pogorelich nevertheless exceeded the bounds of the imaginable. This extraordinary rendition was so disjointed that it appeared to lose musical sense entirely; it resembled a peculiar laboratory experiment rather than a performance. Hammered out, it utterly lacked charm: this was neither Liszt nor Faust the seducer. The contrasting forest-music material was once again glacial in the extreme, though a certain sadness occasionally seeped through. Mephistopheles did not insinuate; he straightforwardly brutalised. One gin-and-tonic was certainly not enough for this browbeaten reviewer during the ensuing interval.

Sibelius’s Valse triste seemed an odd programming choice, but the performance proved far odder still. It was almost unbelievably slow – and I am not sure why I appended ‘almost’. This is a sad waltz, I know, and one does not expect Richard, let alone Johann, Strauss, but even so… There was considerable variation in the basic pulse, sometimes providing relief, sometimes in the opposing direction. The intensity of the climax was quite staggering, yet seemed bizarrely misplaced. However, there was something chillingly pure to the voicing of the final chords, which made one wonder, despite the barrage of coughing, about what might have been.

Finally, Gaspard de la nuit. With the very opening of Ondine, everything suddenly sounded right – and righted. Shimmering right-hand figuration provided a perfect foil to the left-hand song below and above. One could hear every note – almost all of them correct – without any sacrifice to the poetic effect. This certainly sounded more Lisztian than the Liszt piece had, both harmonically and in the well-judged application of virtuoso technique to musico-poetic ends. In Le gibet, a glacial, obstinate persistency, of an infintely more atmospheric quality than earlier on, could at last truly come into its own. Terror was in the air, though so was the noise from another electronic device. Lisztian pyrotechnics were even more to the fore in Scarbo, which received a truly diabolical reading. This sprite was dartingly elusive and unmistakeably malignant. Pogorelich’s performance was a tour de force but a musical one, fantastic in more than one sense. What happened thereafter I cannot tell, since I quickly fled the hall, lest a perverse encore tarnish the memory of what I had just heard.