Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (2) - Don Giovanni, 8 July 2025

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Images: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2025 © Monika Rittershaus

Don Giovanni – Andrè Schuen
Leporello – Krzysztof Bączyk
Donna Anna – Golda Schultz
Donna Elvira – Magdalena Kožená
Don Ottavio – Amitai Pati
Commendatore – Clive Bayley
Zerlina – Madison Nonoa
Masetto – Paweł Horodyski

Director – Robert Icke
Set designs – Hildegard Bechtler
Costumes – Annemarie Woods
Lighting – James Farncombe
Choreography – Ann Yee
Video – Tal Yarden
Sound – Mathis Nitschke
Dramaturgy – Klaus Bertisch

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir (choirmaster: Aarne Talvik)

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

If I remember correctly, that splendidly grumpy old man Johannes Brahms averred that he would much rather stay at home and read the score than suffer yet another Don Giovanni disappointment in the opera house. Often, one sympathises—and more generally with Mozart, especially nowadays. It is, notoriously, a director’s graveyard; it has for a while also seemed to be a conductor’s graveyard too. In both cases, the Commendatore regularly calls time on all manner of easy perversities that too often masquerade in place of understanding, hard work, and genuine imagination and invention. I was nonetheless keen to see this new Aix production, the festival’s eighth and my first there. That was above all to see what Robert Icke, an almost universally admired figure of British spoken theatre – this season alone, I saw Oedipus and Manhunt (which Icke wrote as well as directed) – might accomplish in his first foray into opera. 

Having entered the theatre and quickly skimmed a page or two of the programme, I felt my heart sink when I read some of Simon Rattle’s words in the programme, regardless of the good sense many others made. ‘The “Mozart” [!] I grew up with as a child – the style of interpretation I once admired – has, for most of us, become unlistenable. We’ve all evolved without realising it.’ Perhaps, then, this would be a classic instance of one element working and one distracting, with the stage performances themselves as yet undetermined. For once, alas, my inner Brahms proved wrong. There was much to admire and to consider on all fronts. Not only was this to be a serious piece of theatre; it was, certain, despite inevitable reservations, to be the best Mozart and indeed to my taste probably the best performance of music before Wagner I had heard from Rattle. This, I think, was testament not only to his thoughtful, keen-eared approach, dismissal of Furtwängler, Böhm, Klemperer, Giulini, Davis, et al. (and their admirers) notwithstanding, but also to willingness to learn from his still relatively new orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, and to theirs from him. 

Interviewed in 2015, Icke declared his responsibility ‘always’ to be ‘to the impulse of the original play, to clear away the accumulated dust of its performance history. So much of great drama was profoundly troubling when it was first done. They rioted at Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, for goodness’ sake. Audiences shouldn’t be allowed to feel nothing.’ A ‘period’ approach similar to Rattle’s (at least in theory, if not in practice)? Hardly, as anyone familiar with his work would attest. That is, in part, the problem: such notions mean such different things to people in different contexts that misunderstanding – doubtless including mine concerning Rattle’s words – is rife. Enough, anyway, of this preamble. It may have been better to plunge straight into the action as Mozart does, if arguably to withdraw a little thereafter. I wanted, though, to try to give an impression or at least a self-assessment of my own accumulated dust, if only to help explain my own admiration – some anticipated, some less so – for what I saw and heard. 

Icke opens with the Commendatore, in a sense master of ceremonies, initiating his own private performance—on record, like so many of us, one might even say in neo-Brahmsian fashion. The sounds of an old, crackly performance will be heard again for Giovanni’s Tafelmusik as we approach the denouement and the Commendatore’s return. (In reality, he has never been away, conceptually or physically, as stage appearances make clear.) For there is here a strong relationship, probably identity, between the two. Does Giovanni’s murder of his nemesis thereby suggest the master of his own fate is indeed his own nemesis? Is the action that unfolds, whether from the standpoint of an old man sipping wine to a gramophone record of his youth or from hospital bed and a fatally wounded young man, drip-attached, staggering with increasing difficulty across the stage (n the second act), the Commendatore/Giovanni narrating his own story? How reliable a narrator might he be? And how reliable might live and recorded video images be? The work, even? These are not necessarily questions to be answered definitively, though nor are they trivially raised then neglected. This is – at least was for me – a call to active participation from the spectator and listener. That may be why some evidently did not care for it. 

The concept takes its leave, I think, from Leporello’s line, ‘Chi è morto, voi, o il vecchio?’ To ask his master who is dead, him or the old man, is generally taken not only to be (theatre of the) absurd – clearly it is – but as merely silly. (Thank goodness this was not a Don Giovanni played ‘for laughs’, a dramaturgical misunderstanding of the highest or rather the lowest order. The ever-irksome Glyndebourne guffaw was at least avoided.) If we lose the intrinsic master-servant dialectic, highly eroticised by Giovanni’s clothes- and partner-swapping libertinism, we gain an intriguing consideration of what relationship there might be between Giovanni and the Commendatore and what their secret(s) might be. Occasional sharing of lines between characters, not only them, speaks and sings of other connections, born of theatrical experience – they work to the extent one might not even notice – and possibility. It is a standpoint; no one would claim it to be the only standpoint, but it is a fruitful one. 

For we rarely ask who the Commendatore is. We arguably do not even ask who Giovanni is, though we think we do. His kinetic energy deludes, seduces us—as well as those onstage. There are neither masquerade nor masqueraders here, which is surely part of the point. Instead, the old man – or is it the young man – has summoned characters from the medical staff. Donna Elvira, the young man’s fellow inhabitant of the chameleon-realm between seria and buffo, di mezzo caraterre, is notably precisely who she says she is, her words generally disregarded: his wife. In the final reckoning, she returns to his bedside. Perhaps he is not dead after all, then: not in a banal, realistic way so much, but rather to reckon with the circularity of an abuse that is born of and returns to the family, a little girl who sees it all the counterpart, perhaps more than that, to Donna Anna. As survivors do – are we all, ‘in a very real sense’, survivors? – she teaches other women, onstage and on film. She should not have to, of course, but what choice does she and do they have? 

The idea of standing between life and death – in limbo perhaps or hell, even heaven – can be considered and expressed in many ways. Giovanni’s initial, disconcerting beatific gaze suggests one way, perhaps not taken—or is it? At any rate, the idea is one arguably explored in the work or at least one it might encourage us to explore. Claus Guth’s Salzburg production was admired by many, though it struck me as in many ways problematical—not least since it took the cowardly, decidedly non-Giovanni path of omitting the scena ultima. When I think about it again, though, it certainly occupied itself with this notion. Here, the heartbeat that punctuates the action – filmic yet theatrical, auditory yet visual – brings it home arrestingly, in more than once. 

Use of surtitles to convey concept rather than the text is by now a common dramaturgical device. Here, I admit I felt unease: was too much being skated over? Might not the conflict have been better brought out into the open? Did the ‘new’ words for the scena ultima threaten ironically to turn what we saw into too much of a conventional morality play? Perhaps that was the point; if so, it seemed a pity, also a little too much ‘leading’ for what we ought to have been able to grasp without. At least, though, I was led to ask the question, and it may have been my misunderstanding or simply a case of my preference/preconception not according with a valid alternative. 

Rattle’s musical dramaturgy surprised me: not only from what he had said, but from what I had been told. A friend who had attended an earlier performance informed me of swift tempi. Once past a shockingly fast alla breve, even by current standards, what I heard was anything but. Who knows? Maybe I too am an ‘authenticist’ without having known it. The point was not of course speed or even tempi as such, but rather a variegated approach, giving each number its due whilst attempting to situate it within a greater whole. I did not find everything entirely convincing; when does one ever? More often than not I did, though. I also found a welcome collaborative approach not only to the production but to the cast, without ever falling into the messy trap of having them all do their own thing. This work needs a musical as well as a stage director—and it received one: one, moreover, who was as alert as any I have heard, perhaps even more so, to the array of timbral possibilities, some historically derived, some less so. The Munich wind in particular must have thanked their lucky stars. 

The whole orchestra was on outstanding form, truly able to ‘speak’ dramatically: a quality Rattle associates with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and which I do with Mozart’s position between Gluck and Mozart. Again, maybe we are not so far apart after all; maybe we are ready at long last to put such ‘debates’ behind us. There were times when tension sagged a little, Rattle perhaps savouring, even loving, the score more than is ideal, however understandable. As ever, the familiar conflation of Prague and Vienna versions did not help. (For once, given aspects of the production, inclusion of the Leporello-Zerlina duet might have been an advantage.) But none of my reservations was grievous and I learned much from what I heard too. 

Andrè Schuen proved an outstanding Giovanni: properly adaptive to every situation, his very core shifting as necessary; suave and strong; yet troubled and tortured. Clive Bayley’s Commendatore, unusually and necessarily more acted than sung, imparted equal conviction in the concept. If (the mature) Donna Anna seemed somewhat sidelined by that concept, Golda Schultz’s vocal palette and sparkle left nothing to be desired. Krzysztof Bączyk was likewise faced with a production in which Leporello seemed less central than otherwise, but his performance remained estimable, a proper foil to his master’s (in either incarnation). Magdalena Kožená fully captured the world of a different Elvira, words and music harnessed with insight. Madison Nono and Paweł Horodyski presented a spirited, finely sung Zerlina and Masetto with an apt taste for light sadomasochism that was not confined to them. Amitai Pati seemed at times a little out of sorts vocally as Don Ottavio, but everyone is entitled to a (relative) off-night, especially in such cruelly exposed music. All the cast, small chorus included, contributed to the realisation of the greater whole: Icke’s, Rattle’s, and the broad intersection of the two.

The Excursions of Mr Brouček, LSO/Rattle, 6 May 2025

Barbican Hall

Mr Brouček – Peter Hoare
Mazal/Blankytný – Aleš Briscein
Málinka/Etherea/Kunka – Lucy Crowe
Sacristan/Svatopluk/Lunobor/Domšík – Gyula Orendt
Würfl/Čaraskvouci/Councillor – Lukáš Zeman
Čišničeck/Child prodigy/Student – Doubravka Novotná
Kedruta – Hanna Hipp
Básník/Oblačný/Vacek- Arttu Kataja
Artist/Dohuslav/Vojta – Stephan Rügamer
Skladatel/Harfoboj/Miroslav – Linard Vrielink

Tenebrae (chorus director: Nigel Short)
London Symphony Orchestra
Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

Simon Rattle’s survey of the Janáček operas has proved a tale of two cities: Berlin (first the Philharmonic and latterly the Staatsoper) and London (the LSO). The latter has been mostly in concert, although it shared Peter Sellars’s concert staging with the Berlin Philharmonic. Now, on the back of Robert Carsen’s Berlin staging, originally seen at the Janáček Festival Brno, the LSO’s series reaches The Excursions of Mr Brouček to the Moon and to the 15th Century. 

Of those I have attended, this unquestionably marked the highpoint: one of those performances it is difficult immediately to imagine being bettered. At the heart of that was the magnificent playing of the LSO. Janáček had not previously played a large part in its repertoire, though I remember an interesting, also highly criticised Glagolitic Mass from Colin Davis. It hardly could, one might say, for a symphony rather than an opera orchestra, which incidentally reminds us of a long-term consequence of Davis and Clive Gillinson’s tenures, nurtured by their successors: regular performances of opera in concert, supplemented by occasional appearances in festival pits. Intimacy of acquaintance with Janáček’s writing, its melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, and timbral qualities, inextricably bound to the Czech language, told—as, I think, it did with Rattle, who has long championed this music and who no longer has anything to prove. Precision, heft, the way the orchestra ‘spoke’: this and so much more made for an ideal partnership, rendered all the more impressive by a uniformly impressive cast and chorus (the ever versatile Tenebrae choir, trained and sometimes conducted here by Nigel Short). 

From the opening of the first part, dance rhythms and orchestral colours, xylophone immediately recalled from Jenůfa, created a dramatic stage before our ears, so much so that it is difficult to imagine anyone truly regretting the lack of staging. Time of day, temperature (literal and metaphorical), place, and much more were palpable, indeed unavoidable. As dawn approached at the end of the first part, one felt it emotionally, overwhelmingly so, as well as temporally. For a tenderness embedded in the composer’s deep humanity was always apparent, in a reading that saw no reason to exaggerate the bizarre, zany elements, as perhaps did David Pountney in a memorable 2022 staging for Grange Park Opera. There is room for all, but this went deeper, also underscoring the extraordinary, innovative brilliance of the composer as a contemporary of Strauss, Schoenberg, and yes, Puccini. There was absurdity, yes, but in that absurdity lay deepest sincerity, and the second part, darker and more soulful from the off, proved more moving still. Soundworlds related yet distinct offered both contrast and connection between the opera’s two parts. 

Peter Hoare, who had also sung the title at Grange Park, proved if anything a still more captivating Mr Brouček, alive to his provincial, bourgeois absurdity, not without affection, yet quite without what would have been deadly sentimentality. Like his fellow cast, this was a portrayal that sprang from the page, deeply rooted in words, music, and their alchemy, without being bound by them. Lucy Crowe gave as fine a performance as I have ever heard from her, alternating various roles as Málinka, Etherea, and Kunka, bringing something special to each of them, refulgent of tone, yet acerbic where called for, and hinting without didacticism at what might unite them. Much the same might be said in principle of all those taking on multiple roles, world-class casting offered by the likes of Gyula Orendt, Linard Vrielink, and Aleš Briscein. Truth be told, there was not a weak link in the cast; more to the point, the drama lay in connection, collaboration, and of course conflict. We were fortunate, I think, to see and hear a cast that had mostly performed together onstage in Berlin. 

Dare we hope, then, for all of Janáček’s operas to feature in subsequent instalments? However tempting, we should probably retain perspective and simply enjoy them one at a time. Sometimes I worry that, in ever-straitening times, opera with full forces, be it staged or unstaged, might come to seem an ‘unaffordable’ luxury. Smaller versions, cleverly adapted, whether will slightly reduced orchestrations or full-scale reductions, can form a crucial part of our operatic ecology, but that must never be at the expense of the ‘real thing’. One can hardly hope for a better reminder of such ‘reality’ than the magical surreality of these Excursions.

Musikfest Berlin (3) - Lynch/BRSO/Rattle: Hindemith, Zemlinsky, and Mahler, 3 September 2024

Philharmonie

Hindemith: Rag Time (wohltemperiert)
Zemlinsky: Symphonische Gesänge, op.20
Mahler: Symphony no.6 in A minor

Lester Lynch (baritone)

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

Image copyright: Berliner Festspiele / Astrid Ackermann

In a concert of two unequal halves, the first, shorter part proved the better bet. Incisive accounts of Hindemith’s Rag Time and Zemlinsky’s Symphonische Gesänge sat unfortunately with a performance of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony that suggested Simon Rattle’s lengthy post-Birmingham spell, amply demonstrated in Berlin and London, of pulling music, Mahler’s included, around to no discernible end has some way to go in Munich too. One aspect of interest was of course simply to hear Rattle with his new orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony. There was some excellent playing to be heard. To my ears, though – it was not only the hall, since I have heard Rattle and the LSO sparkle at the Philharmonie – the Mahler sound proved strikingly similar to that from the Berlin Philharmonic during its last, somewhat truculent days with the conductor. This new partnership, enthusiastically acclaimed by many in the audience – as seems to be the case for any old Mahler performance, good, bad, or indifferent – seemed as yet a work-in-progress. 

Hindemith’s Bach-inspired Ragtime made its point without overstaying its welcome. As with much music of the 1920s, the ghost (even when alive) of Busoni hovered over harmony and orchestration. Hard-edged and not a little outrageous, it made for an apt prelude to Zemlinsky’s 1929 settings of texts from the collection Afrika singt. Lester Lynch made for an eloquent, sincere, often moving soloist, sympathetically accompanied by Rattle, in a work that, musically, seemed to take up where the composer’s Lyric Symphony left off, albeit sparer and darker. The first song’s opening woodwind lines, excellently performed by BRSO principals, were a case in point. The deep sadness of one of several Langston Hughes settings (in translation) set the tone for much to come in music whose invention proved thoroughly equal to the task, Zemlinsky’s brass writing (and the BRSO’s playing) in ‘Erkenntnis’ striking indeed. When dark, it was a multicoloured darkness, as in ‘Totes braunes Mädel’; when contrast came, as in the scherzo-like ‘Übler Bursche’ and the defiant menace of ‘Afrikanischer Tanz’, it registered as meet and right. The final ‘Arabeske’ offered Twenties’ Neue Sachlichkeit with a heart, solidarity with a fine intellect, crystallised in performances that exulted without naïveté. 

It was a brisk funeral march that opened the Mahler: nothing wrong with that, although in this symphony, few have matched and surely none will surpass the incendiary results of Pierre Boulez’s more measured opening, both on record and in concert. With Boulez, as with few others, the whole of Mahler’s tragedy is implicit, even inevitable in the first bars. With Rattle, there was certainly much, though the general ‘tone’ seemed odd: a ‘midsummer night’s Mahler’ perhaps. Rattle’s way with the chorale that connects the first and second subjects was truly a thing of wonder, turning mysteriously inward. The aftermath of the second, ‘Alma’ theme, lost all momentum, slowing to the point of exhaustion, although picking up for much of the development. Moreover, the hard-edged, Weill-like sonorities that had characterised performances before the interval, seemed increasingly out of place here. There was something else missing, though. Once I realised what it was, its fatal precedent the work as a whole could not be escaped: an unwillingness to let harmony in general and harmonic rhythm in particular ground, inform, and incite the music’s progress. What we heard was a series of unconnected passages, some more nightmarish than others, in a somewhat loud and overbearing stream of consciousness. This is a symphony and Mahler’s most Classically conceived symphony at that; lose that and you lose much of its point. 

There was an irony, then, to Rattle’s insistence on placing the ‘Andante’ second: a common pseudo-literalism nowadays, one that rarely if ever convinces. It benefited from excellent solo playing, horn and violin in particular. Quite a head of steam was whipped up at the close, arguably excessively so. What it all might mean, regardless of whether that can or should be put into words, eluded me. Despite its placing third, the scherzo fared better, at least to begin with. Its opening had a stronger sense of rhythm, harmonic rhythm included, and the orchestral playing displayed a broader range of colour. Alas, Rattle’s inclination to pull material around soon got the better of him; the deliberate became merely mannered. 

The finale had its moments, but it needs more than moments. It needs to be heard as a single, unbroken span, or will ultimately be little more than a waste of time. A nightmarish opening augured well, but Rattle failed to establish a fundamental pulse. Listlessness may have been the idea, but general ‘mood’ was no substitute for what was lacking. That might work, or fail to work less badly, for two or three minutes, but for thirty? The movement’s form and structure were simply not there; nor were those of the symphony as a whole. People visibly thrilled to the two hammer-blows and, to be fair, the first for a while seemed literally to have knocked the music into shape, but why was it there? In any case, the old listlessness soon reasserted itself and the second went for less. A pity.

LSO/Rattle - Jolas and Messiaen, 15 June 2023

Barbican Hall

Betsy Jolas: Ces belles années
Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie

Faustine de Monès (soprano)

Peter Donohoe (piano)

Cynthia Millar (ondes Martenot)

London Symphony Orchestra

Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

Simon Rattle’s tenure as Music Director of the LSO has been cruelly cut short by English nationalism. The United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, together with Theresa May’s spiteful quashing of a new concert hall project on the grounds that it had been supported by her political enemy George Osborne, ultimately proved too much. And who can blame him, with a family in Berlin? There is only so much fighting one can do. If a great city such as Munich made me an offer, I should be off like a shot. Not that London in general or the LSO in particular has seen the last of Sir Simon; he will return as Conductor Emeritus, not least to continue the Janáček opera series whose Katya Kabanova this January was so resounding a success. The world is grim right now; Britain is grim right now. Perhaps, though, we should not entirely despair. Even in straits as dire as these, the LSO and many of our cultural and intellectual institutions continue to punch far above the weight our miserable, philistine rulers accord them. And a concert such as this, Rattle’s last at the Barbican as Music Director, can still prove the equal, even the envy, of the musical world.  

The first part – one can hardly say ‘half’ when it must have come to about a sixth the length of the rest – was a new work by Betsy Jolas: Ces belles années. Given its first performance the night before, so not strictly a premiere, it proved typical of the composer, arguably typical of the musical and broader culture in which she is rooted, in both proving eminently ‘approachable’ and yet reticent in yielding its secrets. The opening, untuned percussion ceding, or perhaps transforming/being transformed into, the sounds of an orchestra neither small nor large, sounded ominous, harmony either playing a surprisingly ‘traditional’ role or pretending to do so. Whether that were play or something more ‘late’ and reconciliatory remained, at least for me, in the balance. It is difficult, of course, not to think of the work of a composer well into her nineties as ‘late’, just as one did with Elliott Carter at that stage and beyond. (With Carter, one found oneself resorting to ‘late late…’ and eventually simply to ‘most recent’.) But here there did seem, however, obliquely, to be a sense of looking back on a life or lives well lived, perhaps as much a tribute, intentional or otherwise, to Rattle as anything else. There was unease in the petering out of rejoicing: sung words and lines, delivered with laser-like, charismatic artistry by soprano Faustine de Monès, and also orchestral applause and foot-tapping.

Were the soprano’s words, ‘for the occasion and without pretension’, quite so straightforward, even anti-literary, as they might seem? ‘Oh, la joie de ces beaux jours. Célébrons sans cesse ces beaux jours, toutes ces belles années, venez, venez, amenez vos amis. Et toi le tout petit dans ton berceau tu viendras aussi. Et vous là-bas qui passez, venez aussi. Chantons tous ensemble, chantons la joie.’ Perhaps, or was there at least a hint of despair or resignation in having reached this stage, whoever the subject may be, only to fall back on them. Who knows? That may be more a question for the listener than the performer. Not everyone, after all, immediately resorts to Beckett or Mahler. The finely crafted precision of Jolas’s writing is difficult not to stereotype as ‘Gallic’. In a way, why should one try, so long as it does not save one the effort – and rewards – of actually listening. If I found less of an infectious sense of play than I often have with Jolas’s music, maybe I shall just have to try harder—and/or listen differently. I should certainly welcome the opportunity. 

No such doubts here concerning Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, though many have had them over the years, not least Pierre Boulez, first among equals in Messiaen’s galaxy of great pupils. Boulez celebratedly or notoriously performed only the three ‘Turangalîla movements’ out of the complete ten, in a 1973 Proms performance of what he once derided as ‘brothel music’. Some brothel! Whilst in many ways a conductor in Boulez’s own line – Rattle’s exploratory programming and collegiality surely bear Boulez’s stamp – Rattle, not so far as I am aware a composer, has broader and also younger sympathies. Indeed, as Boulez once pointed out, prior to conducting an Olga Neuwirth premiere, whilst it might once have made sense for him to declare Schoenberg dead, that was hardly a pressing concern for Neuwirth and her generation.

 

There were hints, in a good way, of a Boulezian way in Rattle’s performance here. Further laser clarity, ironically helped by the difficult, dry Barbican acoustic which, miraculously, did not overwhelm, was certainly one of them. One could hear every note, every line, every balance—or at least fancied one could. (There is Klingsor-Ravelian magic to Boulez too, after all.) And there were at times signs of a Boulezian ‘modern classicism’, to borrow from Arnold Whittall, which one does not necessarily expect from Rattle. The final movement, indeed, sounded and functioned far more like a traditional symphonic finale than I can recall, earlier performances by Rattle included. Indeed, the work’s unfolding, pli selon pli if you like, was not only remarkably patient and inevitable; it made perfect sense of form and structure in a way I have not always found from Rattle in Austro-German repertoire.

The warmth, though, even in the Barbican was entirely Rattle’s own—well, his, Messiaen’s, and the superlative performers’. Temperature could cool, as in those three ‘Turangalîla’ movements, but the base line was higher, could rise, and did. (Not that Boulez could not be warm too, but in a different way.) The sheer big-heartedness of Messiaen’s vision, as well as its paradoxically earthy mysticism, reaching for the stars and yet penetrating – certainly penetrating – deeper, did not merely came across; it grabbed one by the throat and anything else that took its fancy. Peter Donohoe’s pianism would have been spellbinding in itself, cadenzas scintillating and plumbing depths that brought affinities to Russian composers such as Mussorgsky to vivid light. As part of this orgiastic rite and riot it was all the more so. Likewise Cynthia Millar’s ondes Martenot: so much more than a strange ‘effect’, akin to a continuo gone rogue, whose duetting and ensembles with all manner of other instruments was quite something aurally to behold. Much the same could be said of Elizabeth Burley on celesta and Zeynep Özsuca on keyed glockenspiel. Melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, and a sheer joy in creation to rival Bach or Haydn were both determined and radically free. There were no soloists here; rather all took their place in a zany cosmology both developmental and static, for no and for eternity, of Messiaenic love.

Both LSO concerts were filmed for future broadcast on Marquee TV and Mezzo; this, the last of the two, was recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Idomeneo, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 30 March 2023

Idomeneo – Andrew Staples
Idamante – Magdalena Kožená
Ilia – Anna Prohaska
Elettra – Olga Peretyatko
Arbace – Linard Vrielink
High Priest of Neptune – Florian Hoffmann
Oracle – Jan Martiník
Cretans, Trojans – Marie Sofie Jacob, Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein, Johan Krogius, Friedrich Hamel

David McVicar (director)
Caroline Staunton, Colm Seery (assistant directors)
Vicki Mortimer (set designs)
Gabrielle Dalton (costumes)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Colm Seery (choreography)
Benjamin Wäntig, Elisabeth Kühne (dramaturgy)

Movement Group

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Bernd Uhlig

David McVicar’s disdain for theatre that might lie more on the critical-ideological side is well known and well documented. This fawning newspaper interview is doubtless not his fault; the journalist clearly knows nothing about opera and seems more interested in admiring and detailing his physique: ‘I'm distracted by the arms. They are bursting out of a tight T-shirt full of artful rips. They're the kind of arms that have you thinking of Glasgow shipyards, or perhaps gay nightclubs. They're not the kind of arms that have you thinking of arias.’ Much to unpack there, in the unlikely event one is particularly interested in reasons for the interviewer’s ‘distraction’. We nonetheless proceed to read the interviewee roundly disparage German theatre: ‘“There'll be combat physiques,” he says, “and balaclava helmets, and machine guns, and there'll be neon strip-lighting, and everything will be antiseptic and everyone will over-react madly and the audience will sit there, taking it all incredibly seriously, and I'll be sitting there stuffing my fist in my mouth, because I'm trying so hard not to laugh.”’ It is perhaps not surprising then, that Germany has not proved a typical base for the director’s career, and it did come as a surprise to see him listed to stage Idomeneo for the Berlin State Opera back in 2020, just before the world ground to a halt. That never happened, of course, though rehearsals took place. McVicar’s Berlin Idomeneo has finally seen the light of day three years later, in a house that has seen its fair share of changes in the meantime, not least the retirement of its long-term music director, Daniel Barenboim.

Barenboim, always surprisingly selective in the Mozart opera he conducted – the Da Ponte operas, and long ago, never to be repeated, The Magic Flute – was not due to conduct. A very different kind of Mozartian from Barenboim, Simon Rattle, was—and did three years later. It is probably the Mozart opera with which Rattle is most strongly associated, having conducted at least two staged productions previously (at Glyndebourne) as well as giving it in concert. The length of his association with the work shows; one can see as well as hear that he knows it intimately. Sometimes that can be a danger with Rattle in classical and romantic repertoire; he can seem eager to impose ideas on music, disregarding its line as if for the sake of doing something new. Whilst there was a degree of moulding the score, certainly in ways one would never have heard from Karl Böhm or Colin Davis, they were not disruptive and, crucially, always bore a rationale. I may not always have liked the post-Harnoncourt rhetoric, but Rattle’s job – theatre’s job – is not necessarily to provide me with what I like. I tried to approach it on its own terms, and found a generous way with the music, especially convincing in the transitions, of which here there are many, between recitative, arioso, and arias, ensembles, and choruses. Rattle’s experience, highly unusual for a conductor of his standing, in music of the French Baroque stood him in excellent stead here; this was worlds away from the metronomic stiffness of many English, ‘period’-inclined conductors. There were times, I admit, when a stronger sense of direction, less lingering, would not have gone amiss; the third act, even shorn of its ballet music, sounded somewhat sprawling. Yet Rattle’s concern for detail, surely admirable in itself, never extended to losing the word for the trees.

It was fascinating, moreover, to hear the Staatskapelle Berlin respond to a way with Mozart so different from Barenboim’s. If the strings sometimes sounded as if they might have appreciated being let loose more – and not only concerning vibrato – they were nonetheless willing, perhaps even happy, to follow different thinking, as they will need to in the post-Barenboim era (whether listeners such as yours truly like it or not). The timpanist seemed delighted by the opportunity to use hard sticks, underlining and punctuating the action with great flair. If I cannot say I cared for the rasping sound demanded from the trumpets, the orchestra’s woodwind sounded simply ravishing, Rattle’s keen, somewhat ‘French’ ear for colour liberating them as soloists (and ensemble players with the cast). For all the difference between Barenboim and Rattle, that is certainly a characteristic they hold in common—and one to which no one is likely to object. Colourless Mozart would be a peculiar goal indeed.

   

Singing was generally excellent. Magdalena Kožená also has a long history with this work, not least with Rattle. She seemed very much in her element here as Idamante, as stylish as she was characterful and committed. Her chemistry with Anna Prohaska’s Ilia was notable, that chemistry as musical as it was gestural, their lines entwining (with or without woodwind) as if twin coloured strands in a fine tapestry. Prohaska’s performance offered a near-perfect balance between words, musical line, and stage presence. A few strange vowels notwithstanding – and goodness knows what much ‘Western’ singing of Russian roles must sound like to native ears -- Olga Peretyatko’s Elettra fizzed with musico-dramatic commitment, only hamstrung by McVicar’s production (to which, of course, I must shortly return). In possession of both his arias, Linard Vrielink’s Arbace had ample room to impress and to rise above the generic assumptions that often underlie this role; this opportunity he took wholeheartedly, sharing with most of the cast a keen understanding of the dramatic role of coloratura. Andrew Staples, a Rattle favourite, did not always seem ideally suited to the title role. One need not go full-Pavarotti, to feel something a little more Italianate is ideal here. However, so long as one could take a more English sound – Peter Pears sang the role for Britten – one was rewarded by a detailed and conscientious performance.

What, then, of McVicar’s production? It has a few important, related ideas going for it, namely that of the end of Idomeneo’s rule – ‘regime change’ if you will, in line with Martin Kušej’s largely misunderstood production for Covent Garden – and that of love, in this case between Idamante and Ilia, conquering all. Both have eminent warrant in the work, indeed are arguably embedded within it. It is the classical dilemma of AMOR versus ROMA. The sinister role played by Arbace as chief ideologue is worth noting; indeed character and role are surely rendered sinister with an interventionism McVicar has decried elsewhere. At the close, Idamante and Ilia seem unaware of anything but each other, enabling Arbace to dispose, for reasons presumably of religion and state, of the former king as surplus to requirements. By the time Idamante realises, it is too late. Life, and Crete, must go on.

I just wish there had been more of this—or of something, almost anything. Elsewhere, McVicar seems so reluctant to ‘say’ anything, that it makes for a strangely inert dramatic experience. Dancers, as so often in his staging, do their thing, yet to what end is at best unclear. Portrayal of the sea monster on stage is, admittedly, a tricky thing at best; some may have been more convinced by graceful waving around of hands than I was. Nods to Japanese Noh, often concerning Elettra and her attendants, might have led somewhere, yet seem strangely unconnected with a highly ‘traditional’ everything else.  Indeed, they come uncomfortably close to suggesting all-purpose orientalism. There are no combat physiques, machine guns, neon strip-lighting, and the rest, but there is not much of anything else either. For a new production, bar its strong finish, it seems a curiously wasted opportunity that often borders on the tedious. Musical performances more consistently had one think about as well as enjoy them.‘

Katya Kabanova, LSO/Rattle, 11 January 2023

Barbican Hall

Katěrina Kabanova – Amanda Majeski
Marfa Ignatěvna Kabanova (Kabanicha) – Katarina Dalayman
Varvara – Magdalena Kožená
Boris Grigorjevič – Simon O’Neill
Váňa Kudrjáš – Ladislav Elgr
Tichon Ivanyč Kabanov – Andrew Staples
Savël Prokofjevič Dikoj – Pavlo Hunka
Kuligin – Lukáš Zeman
Glaša, Fekluša – Claire Barnett-Jones

London Symphony Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)
London Symphony Orchestra
Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

Perhaps the most perfectly proportioned of Janáček’s operas, certainly one of the most emotionally and dramaturgically correct—which, in Janáček’s case, is saying quite something—Katya Kabanova has not wanted for recent performances in Britain. That is no cause for complaint, quite the contrary. That Janáček’s operas are still not at the heart of every major opera house’s repertory says nothing about the operas and, alas, a great deal about our houses and some of their audiences. Concert performances are less common: these are very much works for the stage. This current project from the London Symphony Orchestra and Simon Rattle to present a number of his operas in concert—I assume it is not all, though should be delighted if it were—is most welcome, not only for introducing new audiences to these fine operas, not only for affording the LSO (and Rattle) the chance to perform them, but also for giving us the opportunity to hear their orchestral writing in all its detail and power, such as might in part be lost when played in the pit.

Rattle certainly seemed to have conceived his reading with this in mind. It is doubtless fruitless to speculate, but I suspect some of the more extreme passages, whether with respect to dynamic contrast or tempo (at the slower end), would have been less so in the theatre. The LSO and an excellentcast responded in kind. Indeed, the glowing, dare I say Central European, tone of the opening bars promised—a promise finely delivered—a performance in which the orchestra was at least as much changed by its encounter with the score as vice versa. Doubtless, Rattle’s work with the Czech Philharmonic contributed to what we heard, but this was a Rattle rethinking at its best, nothing taken for granted, the fury of the later orchestral response again taking one by surprise, yet firmly in the spirit of composer and work. Where later I might have expected the full orchestra to sound a little cramped by the Barbican acoustic, that was not at all to be the case; in the absence of a new London concert hall, killed by Theresa May alongside so many of our hopes, conductor and orchestra have found new ways of living with it.

 

Climaxes were built and tended, singers included too—no one more so than Amanda Majeski in the title role. Her vocal line and all too clearly Katya’s hopes soared, preparing for a fall, when in the first act she sang to Varvara of her childhood imagination of angels flying heavenwards, continuing prophetically of the sin that threatened her. Likewise in the next act, when she resolved to see Boris and thus fully to set her tragedy in motion. A lack of stage business made such passages more conversational: perhaps neither for good nor ill, but rather just how it was. All the while, Rattle and the orchestra brought out telling detail without having it overwhelm greater line, musical and narrative. What intrigued me—I am not sure I can put my finger on why—was that this Katya seemed less saintly, more intent on pursuing her own happiness, more relatable perhaps, if less of a quasi-religious example. Given her fate, why after all should she present an example?

 

Much could be read from Majeski’s face too; as it could from that of Andrew Staples as her husband Tichon. He felt shame, as did his voice, yet still he did what his mother said. Katarina Dalayman’s Kabanicha was no mere caricature; if hardly sympathetic, perhaps she embodied a more comprehensible than usual desire for order in a community she saw threatened, rightly or wrongly, with breakdown. Her relationship with Pavlo Hunka’s sharply characterised Dikoj was likewise less caricatured than would often be the case, perhaps not merely a case of jaw-dropping hypocrisy. Simon O’Neill’s Boris was intelligently conceived, often ardent. There was likewise plenty of intelligence, and a wonderful animating spark, to Magdalena Kožená’s Varvara. She seemed veritably to brin Ladislav Elgr’s Kudrjáš to life, his second-act song delivered with verve and no little charm, Rattle splendidly highlighting the pizzicato accompaniment to help bring it to life. Claire Barnett-Jones and Lukáš Zeman both impressed in their smaller roles, making much of them in collaboration with their fellow artists. I look forward to hearing more from the latter, a new voice to me.

 

And yet, this was above all an orchestral drama. The poignancy of the brief, all-too-brief, Puccini-plus afterglow to the second act, eliciting a sadness quite different from anything one might hear in Puccini, offered another splendid, affecting example. Likewise, tellingly, the sheer strangeness of the early storm music of the third, especially from the LSO woodwind. If there were times, slightly to my surprise, when I found myself missing the completion of action that would have been achieved by a staged production—Janáček leaves much to that crucial pillar of operatic experience, knowing not only what to write but also what not to write—this was a compelling evening. If some listeners might have felt Rattle’s more spacious tempi went to far at times, for me they worked well in context. There seemed little doubt they had the assent of orchestra and cast alike.

Kožená/Staples/COE/Rattle - Strauss and Mahler, 3 June 2022

Philharmonie, Cologne

Strauss: Metamorphosen
Mahler, arr. Glen Cortese: Das Lied von der Erde

Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano)

Andrew Staples (tenor)

Chamber Orchestra of Europe

Simon Rattle (conductor)

No sooner than gaining Simon Rattle, London is about to lose him again, one of many ‘Brexit dividends’ that continue to lighten our lives. As is so often the case, Britain’s loss is Germany’s gain, Rattle exchanging the London Symphony Orchestra for Munich’s Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. In the meantime, Cologne’s Philharmonie is offering a ‘Sir Simon Rattle Portrait’, involving both the LSO and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Here, I heard Rattle conduct the latter in Strauss’s Metamorphosen and Glen Cortese’s reduction of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde for smaller orchestra.

The COE’s sound for the Strauss, cultivated and variegated, spoke very much of a collection of soloists come together in collaboration with a conductor, influencing one another. Rattle gave a detailed, yet unfussy account, taking time where necessary, letting the music breathe, but also pushing on later in tandem with Strauss’s generative motivic writing. I was put in mind of a comment Rattle made when recording Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder of this being the largest of string quartets. And Metamorphosen here sounded, more in the flexible line of Furtwängler than, say, Karajan or Klemperer, as if a companion piece to Verklärte Nacht, albeit with its sinking back into darkness perhaps having something in common with Strauss’s own Alpine Symphony (if you can imagine a chamber version of that). That was not final, of course, for spirits rose proudly once more, Rattle doing justice to the emotional and formal complexities of the work. Whilst sometimes I missed the stronger bass and thus harmonic drive one would hear from the conductors cited above, this had much to recommend it, not as a final word, but an important current one. For if this is not a piece that deals in ambiguities, what is?

Das Lied von der Erde made for an interesting comparison with a performance (for full orchestra) I heard last month from the LPO and Edward Gardner, with the same soloists, Magdalena Kožená and Andrew Staples. Rattle conducted from memory, as he had Metamorphosen. Whereas much of his recent Mahler has seemed wilful to me, I had the impression the challenge of this new version gave him enough of a challenge to curb more arbitrary flights of fancy (though some will have disagreed, particularly in the fifth and sixth movements). At any rate, neither Cortese’s work nor Rattle’s response offered little that is radical. I had been expecting something akin to an Erwin Stein Mahler Fourth, whereas here we had a large chamber orchestra (strings 10.8.6.4.3, mostly pairs of wind instruments, etc.) playing a slightly reduced score. Both singers seemed more greatly at ease, I thought, though whether that were a matter of score, conductor, or both I can hardly say. Staples in his numbers was readily able to sing on top of the orchestra rather than within, though there were a few cases, doubtless interpretative choices, of slight hectoring. The orchestra, though—and one felt this from the very start—retained its sense of being a group of soloists; that is the COE way (which so attracted Claudio Abbado, among others). Never did one quite hear the full, Mahlerian orchestral sound, whether in wind or bass, though that may in part have been Rattle’s preference. Instrumental solos, for instance Clara Andrada (flute) and Kai Frömbgen (oboe) were outstanding. 

In ‘Der Einsame im Herbst’, the second movement, Kožená, confiding and intimate, though not without moments of grander scale, collaborated both with her instrumental partners and with Rattle to trace a sese of circular despair, of lack of progress, as the third stanza returned us to its opening material. There was as great an orchestral swell as we heard at the close of this movement, paving the way for detailed, chamber contrast in the third and fourth, Staples notably more lyrical than he had been in London. Rattle and Kožená conjured up a nightmarish central section in ‘Von der Schönheit,’ the former’s interventionism more pronounced in ‘Der Trunkene im Frühling’, its third stanza heard as if in a daze. But then, the text does say: ‘Mir ist als wie im Traum’. 

‘Der Abschied’ lacked nothing in darkness as it opened. Rattle was again keener to mould, though not unduly. He arguably brought the music closer to Schoenberg than often one hears: individual lines threatened to go their own way, yet never quite did. Kožená’s singing was richly expressive and adaptive. Whereas Gardner had, until part way through this movement, seemed largely content to act as accompanist, Rattle’s more prominent ‘voice’ helped ensure a sense of turn around rather than flicking of a switch: ‘Die Schönheit dieses Abends au genießen.’ The lengthy, at times Wagnerian, orchestral interlude conveyed a sense that, while turning back might be inevitable, it would not be done without a fight. There was some splendid dragging of orchestral feet here, leading to a chamber Totentanz. As its marionettes prepared the wat for a desolate ‘Er stieg vom Pferd…,’ Kožená sounded—indeed, looked—changed forever. Her radiant final stanza, magical celesta and all, made the point near-definitively.

LSO/Rattle - Weill, 28 April 2022

Barbican Hall

Kleine Dreigroschenmusik
Vom Tod im Wald, op.23
Street Scene: ‘Lonely House’
Four Whitman Songs: ‘Beat! Beat! Drums!’ and ‘Dirge for Two Veterans’
Die Sieben Todsünden

Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano)

Andrew Staples, Alessandro Fisher (tenors)

Ross Ramgobin (baritone)

Florian Boesch (bass-baritone)

London Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

The opening of Kurt Weill’s Kleine Dreigroschenmusik struck a properly anti-Romantic note, the Overture clearly growing out of 1920s’ Neue Sachlichkeit, the ‘Anstatt-dass Song’ likewise wearing its post-Busoni-and-Hindemith constructivism wisely on its sleeve, a hard edge supplied by banjo and piano. In between, the ‘Ballad of Mackie Messer’ showed something a little more yielding, rapport between saxophone and piano especially noteworthy. At times, it perhaps felt a little too conducted, but there is a difficult balance to strike here. An intimate, inward account of ‘Polly’s Lied’ and a surprisingly fast—if only in context—‘Kanonen-Song’ worked well in tandem. Simon Rattle tied things up nicely in the Finale, whose temporary ghostliness trod a thin yet necessary line between alienation and something that might just have been pathos. In the excellent hands of the LSO brass, its Chorale proved properly inscrutable. 

We remained with wind band for the little ballad-like cantata, Vom Told im Wald, for which Rattle, his players, and Florian Boesch gave a compelling, sepulchral performance which, like the rest of the programme, never exaggerated, without quite straying into the world of understatement. Those who like Weill to go to extremes may have been disappointed, but there was much to be said for an approach, especially in the concert hall, that underlined his more ‘purely’ musical qualities, as well as the more traditional side to his acuity of verbal response. Weill’s flirtation with less tonal realms contrasted strongly with ‘Lonely House’ from Street Scene (Andrew Staples), its ‘American’ style well captured, now with the luxury of a full complement of LSO strings, idiomatic without cloying. Two of the Four Walt Whitman Songs, more interesting to me, were shared between Ross Ramgobin and Staples. The vivid quality of Ramgobin’s ‘Beat! Beat! Drums!’ had us see as well as hear the bugles and drums. ‘Dirge for Four Veterans’ proved nicely ambiguous in its military response. 

For the ballet-chanté, The Seven Deadly Sins, Rattle conducted the LSO without a score. Strikingly dressed and coiffured in ‘Weimar’ style, Magdalena Kožená navigated the demands of song and speech alike with typical excellence, her German outstanding in clarity as well as idiom. Rattle kept the action moving, though it never sounded remotely hard-driven. This is clearly a score he knows, understands, and loves; the LSO and his cast responded in kind. That tightrope between alienation and something more sympathetic was once more intelligently trod. Well shaped and paced, it almost sounded over before it had begun. A fine conspectus of Weill, then, though it was perhaps a pity not to hear any of his early concert music: to my ears, generally showing the composer at his finest.

 

LSO/Rattle - Anderson, Mahler, Rott, Webern, and Dvořák, 9 January 2022

Barbican Hall

Julian Anderson: Suite from Exiles
Mahler: ‘Blumine’ movement for Symphony no.1 in D major
Hans Rott: Symphony in E major: Scherzo
Webern: Six Orchestral Pieces, op.6
Dvořák: Symphony no.7 in D minor, op.70

Siobhan Stagg (soprano)
London Symphony Chorus (chorus director: Simon Halsey)
London Symphony Orchestra
Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

Two or three weeks ago, it did not seem especially likely this concert would happen. It did—and very well it went too. To hear as large an orchestra as that fielded by the LSO here under Simon Rattle remains unusual during our current troubles. We now perhaps ascribe greater worth to every artistic and social occasion, all too well aware of general precarity. I certainly relished the sheer richness of orchestral sound, the unquestionable commitment from all on stage and (London Symphony Chorus) up in the balcony, and something close to a full house for an appreciative audience.

It seems that Julian Anderson’s Exiles has, one way or another, been a victim of the dread virus. Two of its five movements were given by the LSO and Rattle in September; here they were joined by ‘La République des Lettres’ for soprano and a cappella chorus, then impossible to perform. When the final two will come is unclear, yet on the basis of this ‘Suite’ and its reception, they will be eagerly awaited by many. The new movement—to the world, that is; all were new to me—pays tribute to the American diplomat Varian Fry who assisted many under threat from Nazism into exile. Here, several of them are named, from Bohislav Martinů via Darius and Madeleine Milhaud and Betsy Jolas to the Hungarian animal photographer Ylla (Camilla Koffler). That was the work of half the chorus, initially syllabic, though not in a ‘difficult’, Nono- or Lachenmann-like way. The other sang from Psalm 46: ‘God is our hope and strength: a very present help in trouble…’. Dialogue between soprano Siobhan Stagg and choir added to the responsorial sense. If the writing were largely homophonic, there was a splendid, again psalm-like freedom to its metre, Rattle finely shaping an heroic performance from all.

First we had heard ‘le 3 mai’, Anderson’s setting of an e-mail from the Moroccan-French composer Ahmed Essyad to other composers from 3 May 2020, telling of his coronavirus isolation and nonetheless greeting them: ‘internal’ exile. The soprano I head first, followed by orchestral sounds that to me evoked a sense of electronic communication—latterly both bane and saviour of our lives. Anderson’s orchestration here and later proved typically ‘French’ in sonority, bells perhaps evoking an inheritance from Messiaen as well as Debussy and Ravel. The darker turn taken upon ‘Je vous embrasse tous,’ leading to climax at the end of the same line of the text, ‘sans covid’, repeated, would doubtless have moved irrespective of the words set; however, we heard it with them, and could hardly fail to think ‘if only’. The sign off ‘Ahmed’ returned us to the exile of electronic communication. 

‘Tsyion’, heard last, sets for chorus words from Psalm 137, the Jews in Babylonian exile, by those famous waters, and from Horatiu Rădalescu on that archetypal exile Ulysses, whilst the soprano sang other words above, from Rădalescu on ‘Exile’ itself. Stagg’s exultant melismata again provoked memories of Messiaen, but Anderson’s music throughout offered a compelling harmonic language and, more broadly, combination of that with melody, rhythm, and timbre never to be reduced to mere ‘influence’ or parallels. Solo horn at one point seemed to encapsulate the wistfulness of exile; there was more to it than that, though. Anderson’s fantastical imagination suggested to me opportunity and, at the close, through a mass of solo violins, a secularised chorus of birds. There is hope out there, as Essyad realised in contemplating a mountain he could not yet visit.

Next up was the discarded ‘Blumine’ movement from Mahler’s First Symphony. There could be no doubting the composer via sentiment or language, nor the specific identity of the Mahler of that symphony, though in many ways it sounded, quite rightly, earlier still: late Romantic rather than modernist, even ‘late early Romantic, Mendelssohn as well as Wagner apparent, Mahler taking his leave from the world of Das klagende Lied. Rattle had Mahler’s song sung with simplicity, never audibly moulded as has seemed the case with much of his more recent Mahler. There was darkness, but only moments of darkness in a fine, unexaggerated performance. And what it was to hear both the excellent solo trumpet and a full LSO at the movement’s climax. This was truly affecting music-making, all the way to a magical final harp chord.

 

The scherzo from the E major symphony of Mahler’s friend Hans Rott received here an outstanding, spacious, altogether generous performance, whetting the appetite for what one must hope will one day be a performance of the whole work. One need not be starry-eyed about it, as some are, to recognise its music, anticipations of Mahler and all (any ass can see that…) as intrinsically worthy of listening. The LSO’s sound hovered, like Rott’s music, somewhere between Bruckner and Mahler, with a little Berlioz at times too, not least in its trippiness. A sort of deranged jollity with disquieting echoes fascinates; and if sureness of direction is not altogether Rott’s thing, his music’s sheer originality offered something quite compelling both as work and performance. 

With Webern’s op.6 Orchestral Pieces we are in different territory: one of the supreme masterpieces of twentieth-century orchestral music. Rattle and the LSO offered them as the repertoire pieces they demand to be: without apology and through intimate knowledge and understanding. Free choice might not lead one naturally to the 1928 revision, but its smaller forces doubtless enabled the work to be performed at all. Heard after that first half of Anderson, Mahler, and Rott, the first movement’s lyricism emerged all the lovelier and more longing. Rattle ensured here and throughout a balance that invited comparison with conductors such as Abbado and Boulez. In this narrative, crucially, every note counted for a multitude in so much other music. The second movement’s response sounded as inevitable as I can recall, in a vision less haunted than propelled by anger, fear, violence, and yes, wonder. Longing was intensified in the third piece, here sounding intriguingly close to Berg. The German Sehnsucht came to mind. Ominous tread and progress through the funeral march fourth encapsulated a Mahlerian world in itself. Music lay between the notes as well as in them, in a requiem of defiant hope whose roaring climax duly shattered. Heard in aftershock, the fifth seemed to say, stealing from the future of Webern’s teacher Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto, that life must go on. It witnessed yet sparkled. And what expressive depth we heard in the closing ‘Langsam’ movement, each chord speaking as if it were a page or two at least of Mahler.

 

It is doubtless too easy to speak of performing Dvořák via Webern, but it was difficult, at least at times, not to hear it that way. An aural lens of motivic concision and well-nigh Schubertian melodic profusion did no harm at all to its opening ‘Allegro maestoso’. I was fascinated to hear the LSO strings sound more ‘old German’, akin to Daniel Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin, than I ever heard the Berlin Philharmonic under Rattle. It worked, in any case, as the LSO really dug into Dvořák’s score. A purposeful yet flexible account of this first movement was far from deaf to the beauties and meaning of detail, yet integrated them rather than having them stand out. Here, again, music lay between as well as in the notes. The slow movement was taken slowly, surely more than the ‘poco’ of the composer’s ‘Adagio’ marking; a somewhat Tchaikovskian performance nevertheless worked well on its own terms. Rattle loved it doubtless, but not, I think, too much. There were rhetorical underlinings, yet they worked to shape a musical drama. The scherzo flowed via, rather than despite, its engineered tensions, metrical and more. Its trio was, I felt, moulded a little too much. Likewise the finale: impassioned, yes, but not always clear where it was going. That said, Rattle’s conception of something akin to an enigmatic tone poem in its own right had much to be said for it. His remains a questing musical imagination, as seen in programming and heard in performance.