Die dunkle Seite des Mondes, Hamburg State Opera, 18 May 2025

Images: Bernd Uhlig
Dr Kieron (Thomas Lehman), Creature of Light (Andrew Dickinson)

Dr Kieron – Thomas Lehman
Meister Astaroth – Bo Skovhus
Miriel – Siobhan Stagg
Creature of Light – Andrew Dickinson
Anima – Kangmin Justin Kim
The Bright Girl – Narea Son
Cornelius – Aaron Godfrey-Mayes
Dr Pulski – William Desbiens
Dr Raubenstock – Karl Huml
Dr Spinberg – Jürgen Sacher

Directors – Dead Centre (Ben Kidd and Bush Moukarzel)
Designs – Jeremy Herbert
Costumes – Janina Brinkmann
Lighting – James Farncombe
Video – Sophie Lux
Choreography – Sasha Milavic Davies
Dramaturgy – Angela Beuerle, Michael Sangkuhl

Live camera – Benjamin Hassmann  

Chorus of the Hamburg State Opera (director: Christian Günther)

Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra

Kent Nagano (conductor)

I really wanted to like this opera, Unsuk Chin’s second, following her widely and justly acclaimed Alice in Wonderland (2004-7). After all, I travelled from London to Hamburg expressly to attend its opening night. In some ways, I liked and admired it; or rather I liked and admired much of the music and stage performances, above all Thomas Leaman’s commanding account of the central role. It pains me to say that, nonetheless, as a dramatic and even theatrical experience what we saw and heard in Die dunkle Seite des Mondes (The Dark Side of the Moon) fell considerably short of the considerable hopes invested in it. My sense, moreover, was that mine was not, sadly, an eccentric reaction. 

A Faustian tale is no bad start; opera in particular and drama more broadly continue to flourish in development and variation of time-honoured subjects, to which something more timely will necessarily be brought. The (anti-hero), Dr Kieron, is a scientist, Dr Kieron, an unbearable, impossible colleague, who dismisses and needs the work of others, but who harbours the secret of his haunting by visions, which lead him to the realm of a ‘soul healer’, Meister Astaroth. Inspiration came originally from Chin’s interest in the relationship between the physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the psychologist Carl Friedrich Jung. 

Meister Astaroth (Bo Skovhus)

Chin’s score announces a darker soundworld, aptly enough, than that of her previous opera and indeed many other of her works, yet it is possessed, at least in its stronger sections, of many of the inventive qualities, especially rhythmic and timbral, that have justly lent her great esteem. There is exuberance and a true sense of potential in the orchestral lines, vividly brought to theatrical life, so far as I could discern, by the Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra under Kent Nagano, the house chorus a welcome addition in its several appearances. The beginnings of both acts, more than just the beginning in the first, offered the most compelling music and also, doubtless far from coincidentally, registered strongest in dramatic terms. Broadly, Kieron’s world convinces more than Astaroth’s, which may or may not be the point. Dramaturgically and theatrically, it seems conceived – in my case, it was certainly received – in a traditional way. A story is told on stage through words and music. There are no obvious metatheatrical questions posed; nor is there an evident desire to play with narrative, let alone a sense of the postdramatic. There is nothing wrong with that; many fine operas still take on such a form and probably always will. Traditional operatic virtues, then, probably need to register more strongly.   

The libretto, however, and more generally the plot come across as hopelessly contrived: not artificial in an arch or detached aesthetic sense, but mostly unfortunate. This, I am afraid, is also Chin’s work, written in collaboration with Kerstin Schüssler-Bach. It piles up words, fails to establish characters – most glaringly, in the case of the women, mere projections in a sense that surely extends beyond feminist critique – and often seems bizarrely unsuited to opera. I should actually go a step further and say that the problem was less its wordiness, although that certainly did not help, than that wordiness simply not having been very good. It would have come across unfortunately, had there been no music at all. Put another way, literariness needs to be good – very good – and if you are not a Hofmannsthal, remains better avoided. When something merely aspires to literariness, if indeed that is what is going on here. I honestly cannot imagine anyone caring about the characters—and it was not clear what else there was to care about. At times, an anti-war message seemed to surfacebut then it disappeared; or perhaps I had imagined it. It is surely not coincidental that the music’s invention registered most strongly when there were no words to get in the way. Then there is the length. On the face of it, it was refreshing to be presented with something that dared to be different, not to be confined to the consensus of how long an opera ‘need’ be. Like any artwork, it should probably be as long as it needs to be, but no longer. Offering something roughly the length of a Mozart-Da Ponte opera (done whole) shows ambition, if only it were realised. 

There was a good deal to suggest, however, that this had been developed as a whole, extending considerably beyond the composer’s work on her libretto. At its best, Dead Centre’s production seemed to ‘listen’ to the score and not only to the words. Without merely mirroring, movement, lighting, and much else seemed to spring from the same source, for instance in the set’s swaying to convey the drunkenness of the bar. If anything, though, it seemed too often to remain tied to the words and drama. If it would be too much to hope that a different staging might have redeemed them, something a little more interventionist might nonetheless have added something, perhaps fleshing out the characters rather than simply presenting them, such as they were. Even something that accentuated the c.1930 setting, present when one reflected yet not registering as something that mattered, might have contributed something. Live camera did, in a straightforward way, homing in on particular characters – for instance, during bar ‘crowd’ scenes – and register their facial reactions. 

Thomas Lehman’s assumption of the principal role, Dr Kieron, was thus in some ways all the more impressive: a fiercely intelligent act of apparent conviction, which created a character almost in spite of what he was presented with.  Bo Skovhus, as Meister Astaroth, similarly impressed with great stage presence throughout. Kieron’s former lover and morphine addict, Mirel, was woefully under-characterised in the work, but Siobhan Stagg did what she could, her coloratura duly sparkling—and suggestive of what might have been. Kangmin Justin Kim’s Anima was quite a star turn, splendidly feminine of tone and gesture, so much so that it was only when I checked the cast list I realised this had been a countertenor. Aaron Godfrey-Mayes made for a sympathetic Cornelius, assistant to Kieron. All seemed well sung; there was nothing evident for which to reproach the musicians, whether on stage or in the pit. 

A puzzling and, in many ways, frustrating evening, then, but one I was nonetheless pleased to have experienced. Not only because one learns from when things go wrong, though surely there is much to be learned here; but because I remain convinced there is something waiting to be released here. Where that leaves the opera, I am not sure. It is difficult to imagine the music, or rather some of it, retained and a new libretto fashioned. Perhaps there is some radical surgery that could be performed. Perhaps the best of it could be reworked into a shorter opera or another work entirely. Perhaps different performances and stagings would make a difference. Or perhaps I am entirely wrong: first night reports are notoriously littered with wrongheaded criticism. No one would be more delighted than I to find my criticisms misplaced, to owe the creators an apology, and to welcome a new work to the repertory. We shall see.

Musikfest Berlin (3) - Prohaska/Ensemble Modern/Benjamin - Chin, Ogonek, Filidei, Benjamin, and Ammann, 3 September 2023

Philharmonie

Unsuk Chin: SPIRA
Elizabeth Ogonek: Cloudline
Francesco Filidei: Cantico delle Creature (world premiere)

Benjamin: A Mind of Winter
Dieter Ammann: glut

Anna Prohaska (soprano)

Ensemble Modern

George Benjamin (conductor)

© Fabian Schellhorn / Berliner Festspiele

The second of George Benjamin’s Ensemble Modern concerts, again with Anna Prohaska, offered four pieces from the last decade, one a world premiere, together with an early work of Benjamin’s own. Unsuk Chin’s SPIRA (2019) was the first of three works from composers born within a couple of years of each other, the other two being Dieter Ammann and Benjamin himself. Having just noticed SPIRA is officially described as a concerto for orchestra, I am patting myself on the back just a little, though it should probably be the composer (and performers) I am acknowledging, for it came across in that vein, albeit, as one might expect, reinvented, different instruments seemingly presenting their own standpoint on the orchestra. Indeed, the idea of a standpoint or perspective seemed to me key both to work and performance. Whether the opening were a matter of the rest of the orchestra responding, via a series of shocks, to gradual opening out from tuned (bowed) percussion, or the two vibraphones, xylophone, and others responding to those shocks is perhaps in itself a matter of perspective—or a pointless question: ‘why either-or?’ Massed violin swarming perhaps inevitably brought Chin’s teacher Ligeti to mind, but there was no question that here were her own voice and her own world. Indeed, the piece seemed to convey an interest, doubtless born of Jakob Bernouill’s logarithmic spiral (whence the title), in defining limits and direction of that world. What were its edges, and where was it heading? A mystery remained at its heart, at least for this listener, and that was all to the good. 

Elizabeth Ogonek’s Cloudline was premiered at the 2021 Proms, but this was the first time I had heard it. (I think the same is true of all five works, Benjamin’s included.) It certainly shared a keen sense of fantasy and indeed virtuosity with Chin’s work, and opening slithering of pitch (quartertones, I think) offered another variety of swarming, not only from strings; otherwise, though, the work offered more contrast than complement. There was here something close to representation, at least at one level. ‘Liminal’ is a word I probably overuse at the moment, but it is difficult to avoid here, given the piece’s fascinating preoccupation with clouds, their edges (again) and the lack of definition to those edges. A contrast between definition and vagueness, or at least something more frayed, sounds Debussyan, but I never experienced this as anything other than itself, not least in a feeling of outright joy that is perhaps rarer in contemporary orchestral music (or our responses) than it might be. 

I felt less sure about Francesco Filidei’s Cantico delle Creature, or perhaps it is fairer to say it did not necessarily adhere to my expectations (and why should it?) There was no questioning, here or elsewhere, the excellence of the performances, to which now must be added Anna Prohaska’s committed advocacy. A setting of St Francis’s celebrated canticle joins illustrious company, not least that of Liszt, but Filidei certainly made his own way, responding, it seemed to me, to St Francis’s Umbrian dialect in a way so as to harness something old as well as something new, as revealed in Prohaska’s sometimes almost folklike delivery. Clear, bell-like, it was not trying to be anything it was not, far from it, but rather its terms of reference, moving from a wide-eyed naïveté to something more demonstrative, resonated both with words and orchestra. For this was another highly ‘atmospheric’ piece, a lengthy orchestral opening offering scene-setting pictorial and dramatic. When a vibrato-less cello (later in the piece, a viola too) entered, it suggested mediaeval intervention, a voice from a past not merely imagined. Sudden changes of metre and delivery, birdcall whistles, and more provided colour as well as formal staging posts. This was not necessarily a subtle work, but instead often highly gestural; in any case, subtlety was hardly called for. 

Benjamin’s The Snow Man, from 1981, after Wallace Stevens, proved an astonishingly accomplished piece from the word go, its orchestral sound world, icy yet full of life, immediately, as it were, ‘created’ and immanent. The composer’s use of the voice, and his soloist’s use of hers, were both unquestionably vocal and daringly instrumental: two sides, we realised, of the same coin. Wind echoes made that point still clearer. Somewhere between a scena and a tone poem, it was in reality only ever ‘itself’, over too soon, which is always a good sign. Word-setting always told, always added something; this was never merely ‘setting’ the text. It was always, moreover, a response to English words, in an emphatic sense. Prohaska’s animated, even possessed performance gave a sense that this too might have been written for. It was not, of course, but what greater compliment can be offered—in either direction? ‘For the listener, who listens in the snow, and, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.’ 

Ammann’s glut (2014-16) opened in immediate, indeed urgent fashion. Uniquely, among the pieces heard here, it employed full orchestra at the start, thus setting up very expectations and contrasts. Indeed, it proved remarkably relentless – not in a bad way –something of a riot, with swagger to match. Ammann seemed readier to include tonal voices, or more interested in doing so, though probably more from a spectralist standpoint than anything neoromantic (which was not suggested). Diversity of material and (again) standpoints, of texture and direction, contributed to a sense of a huge mass, not only of sound but of musicians, moving forward, slowly but surely, though one could perhaps perceive that only after the event. At the time, one enjoyed the ride, without necessary thought, less alone knowledge, as to where it might take one.

For International Women's Day

Philharmonia/Salonen - Biber, Beethoven, and Chin, 15 April 2018

Royal Festival Hall

Biber: Battalia à 10 in D major
Beethoven: Symphony no.2 in D major, op.36
Unsuk Chin: Le Chant des enfants des étoiles (European premiere)
 

Trinity Boys Choir (director: David Swinson)

Philharmonia Voices (director: Aidan Oliver)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

  

Excellent programming: worthy of Boulez, if hardly for the literal minded. (‘I think you’ll find [stroking chin] Beethoven didn’t know Unsuk Chin’s music, or Heinrich Biber’s. So … what are they doing together then? And … AND … why don’t you use period instruments? I rest my case!’) Any connections between the first and second halves were not necessarily explicit; this was not an overtly didactic programme (nothing wrong with that, of course). Nevertheless, I fancied I could hear certain pitches, certain turns of phrases, perhaps even certain rhythms, in both; and even if I could not, contrasts fascinated enough.

There was no doubting the avant-gardism of either of the first two composers. Biber’s Battalia opened in lively fashion, soon displaying the composer’s seventeenth-century extended techniques – ‘extended’, by the standards of many a twentieth-century composer too – with col legno playing and foot stamping in its opening ‘Sonata’. Members of the Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen offered a splendidly cultivated, non-puritanical sound. (Certain journalists, having learned of a thing called ‘performance practice’ do not like that. They need rules to help them deliver a ‘verdict’.) Then, to take us all by surprise, lest we latter-day Friends of Karajan were becoming too pleased with ourselves, an ‘older, more ‘fiddling’ sound catapulted us back through time to the bizarre, Ivesian quodlibet of ‘Die leideriche Gesellschaft von allerley Humor’, horribly hilarious in its ‘wrongness’. (Would we think so, though, if we had been told it were twenty-first-century music?) Virtuosic solo passages for Mars – Martian?! – a slow aria whose twists surprised as if they were Purcell’s, a battle in which the post-Montverdian stile concitato (and again Purcell) came to mind, and a touching final lament for ‘Verwundten Musquetirer’: these and much more were presented with a relished concision suggesting that Webern had better look to his laurels – that is, had the concert-going public ever permitted him to collect them in the first place.

 

I freely admit that I had not previously found Salonen’s Beethoven very much to my taste, nor, perhaps more to the point, to my understanding. This performance of the Second Symphony, also of course in D major, proved very different, making me keen to hear more. Where previously I had longed for a more modernistic approach such as I suspected might have been his, here it was: not for its own sake, but emerging from score and programming alike, almost as if a Michael Gielen for our times. The opening chord struck me with its rasping natural trumpets; otherwise, there was nothing – thank goodness – especially ‘period’ about this. Salonen even showed that it is perfectly possible to hear dialogue between first and second violins without placing them on opposite sides of each other. The first movement was lively in a different way from Biber, yet suggestive nevertheless of some sort of kinship. Most notable of all was the real sense of return at the onset of the recapitulation, of joy in a Haydnesque, even Handelian manner. The sheer character of the coda made me smile, as it stormed the heavens in a twenty-first century remodelling of ‘tradition’.

The second movement struck an excellent balance between neo-Mozartian flow and the ‘late’ Brahmsian future. Gorgeous, never narcissistic, richness to the inner parts proved an especial joys; as often with the Philharmonia, I could not help but notice the playing of the viola section in particular. Mystery and tension in the minor mode were palpable. This seemed very much a precursor to the ‘slow’ movement of the Eighth, even though I am not sure that it actually ‘is’. The scherzo was sprightly without tending towards brutality, as too often it can (say, in the worst of Karajan). Its musical roots were in Haydn, whilst the Trio peered forward, more ‘modern’ in material and formal instantiation. The finale proved more brazen even than in Gielen’s hands. Yet it still had plenty of time to display woodwind charm and colour. It had space and impetus – which brings us to the second half.

 

Chin’s Le Chant des Enfants des Etoiles, jointly commissioned by the LOTTE Group and the Philharmonia, had received its world premiere in 2016 from the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and Myun-Whung Chung, to whom it is dedicated. Written for children’s choir (here the outstanding Trinity Boys Choir), mixed choir (Philharmonia Voices, also on excellent form) and large orchestra, it reflects and even perhaps, whatever her intention or not, ‘expresses’ the composer’s longstanding interest in physical cosmology, setting related poems from writers ranging from Henry Vaughan (roughly contemporary with Biber, be it noted), through Blake, Octavio Paz, Shelley, to Edith Södergran, Fernando Pessoa, Juan Ramón Rimenez, Eeva-Liisa Manner, and others. The approach is not so literal-minded as to set them chronologically, but the work itself seemed both to reprise the exploratory historical path announced in the first half and to take it further, in dialogue with and yet not bound by those poems. Tension builds and eventually subsides, perhaps not unlike the life in each of us, every one a piece of stardust – or even of a star itself.

There was no doubting Chin’s grateful writing for voices, nor the intelligibility of most of the words. When one could not immediately discern them, it seemed that that was the point – or at least that intelligibility was not the priority. I was put in mind from time to time of Britten’s ability to write for a range of performers, not all of them professionals, not that, a prominent harp solo notwithstanding, the music sounded like his. Insofar as I could tell, the singers relished their task; such, at any rate, was the performative impression. I wondered whether the earliest sections trod water a little, but perhaps that was more a matter of my ears and mind taking time to adjust; having looked at the score since, I could not tell you why. At any rate, once the shimmering stardust really took flight – at least in my ears – it never looked back. An almost Messiaenesque ecstasy – not as pastiche, yet in spirit – was to be felt as well as heard. An organ cadenza seemed to usher in a world of experimental Gothic Romanticism: Prometheus unbound, or Unbound? Bells, a battery (Biber?) of percussion, gorgeous harmonies took us to climax, prior to a retreat, or perhaps better a twilight, the trebles intoning ‘M’illumino d’immenso’ in the final ‘Matin’. Was this work, was the programme as a whole, more than the sum of its parts? I am not entirely sure, and why should I be, after a single hearing? I tend, however, to think so. I should love to hear both again, if not to find out, then to further my thoughts on the subject. For art, like cosmology, is surely there to broaden our horizons, to stimulate us, not to provide an answer, nor to be ‘correct’.

 

Diener/Philharmonia/Kluttig and Dohnányi: Schöllhorn, Strauss, and Mozart, 24 November 2011

Royal Festival Hall

Johannes Schöllhorn – Anamorphoses: Contrapunctus IV, VI, IX, XI, and Canon per augmentationem in contrario motu

Strauss – Don Juan, op.20
Strauss – Four Last Songs
Mozart – Symphony no.25 in G minor, KV 183
Strauss – Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, op.28

Melanie Diener (soprano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Roland Kluttig and Christoph von Dohnányi (conductors)

‘Schöllhorn, Strauss, and Mozart’: not, alas, a firm of German lawyers, nor even the composers featured in a Philharmonia concert, but rather those appearing in two. The first in a new series of ‘Music of Today’ featured members of the Philharmonia, conducted by Roland Kluttig in five movements from Johannes Schöllhorn’s Bach-reworking, Anamorphoses; the second welcomed back sometime Principal Conductor, Christoph von Dohnányi, for Strauss and a little Mozart.

Schöllhorn’s music was selected by Music of Today’s new Artistic Director, Unsuk Chin, to open her series. (Ivan Fedele and Gérard Grisey are amongst the others who will be featured.) Anamorphoses refers to Schöllhorn’s inspiration in the mannerist technique of having the viewer see different aspects of a painting according to where he is standing: Holbein’s The Ambassadors would be an obvious example. Schöllhorn presents the Art of Fugue in a fashion that for him – and, I thought, for the listener – presents Bach’s music not only as coming from the cathedral, but also from the bazaar. The accordion is a nice touch in that respect, though its employment is far from limited to presentation of ‘street colour’; indeed, its music later forms a significant component of the still, or rather gradually beating, heart to the movements we heard. There is Stravinskian spikiness later on, but just as arresting is the Berio-like technique – I think more of Berio’s orchestration of a Purcell hornpipe and his variations on ‘Ein mädchen oder Weibchen’ than his Art of Fugue transcription – in which wisps of music become apparent, whilst having been ever-present, sometimes submerged. Sinfonia’s treatment of Mahler also sprang to mind, especially in Contrapunctus XI. Performances seemed keenly observed and committed. I should love to hear more – though preferably without the distracting company of the roving telephone-photographer, eventually, albeit far too late, asked to desist from his travels around the hall and even into the choir.



Don Juan opened the second concert and was the only disappointment: not that it was bad, but more a matter of seeming to have caught Dohnányi before he had really found his stride. The Philharmonia sounded tremendous from the opening upwards sweep, but its direction early on was somewhat brusque, four-square even, though the more tender moments were permitted to sing. Zsolt-Tihámer Visontay’s solos as leader were predictably fine. As partial compensation for the lack of narrative swagger, Dohnányi offered a great deal of revealing attention to detail, thematically as much as pictorially, not least in the generative emphasis accorded to the cello line. Ultimately, however, though I was often (relatively) impressed, I remained unmoved.

The Four Last Songs were another matter – as surely they must. (Imagine a performance that did not move; or rather, try to banish such thoughts or recollections.) Melanie Diener showed that she could float a line just as long as Strauss – or Dohnányi – required, without turning the vocal line into just another gorgeous strand of orchestration: the words meant something. When Hermann Hesse’s verse told of the soul unwatched in free flight (‘Und die Seele unbewacht/will in freien Flügen schweben’) that was just what we heard – and felt. Dohnányi’s leadership was resolutely unsentimental, but not without sentiment. ‘Frühling’ evoked springtime, thereby permitting transformation to take place. Through the subtle array of colours in the final stanza of ‘September’, autumnal phantasmagoria turned to weariness – not too much, just enough – in ‘Beim Schlafengehen’, Strauss’s music possessed of unassuming dignity. It moved as Don Juan never had, which is not only a matter of the works’ individual qualities. Likewise, the introduction to ‘Im Abendrot’ was perfectly judged, in a similar vein; I was especially grateful for the rich – not too much, just enough – viola line, and its heart-rending articulation. ‘Ist dies etwa der Tod?’ Maybe, or maybe not: life seemed as much affirmed as denied.

Mozart’s ‘Little’ G minor Symphony was a somewhat odd bedfellow, Strauss’s devotion to Mozart notwithstanding. Either more Mozart or more Mozartian Strauss, perhaps both, might have worked better; as it was, there was a slight sense of the palette-cleanser. That was a pity, since Dohnányi led an impressive performance, hamstrung only by a strangely prosaic slow movement, in which phrase merely followed phrase. The first movement, however, was mightily impressive: vehement, without exaggeration, stylishly accomplished throughout. Structure was clearly delineated, making me keen to hear the conductor in Haydn, especially Sturm und Drang Haydn. Interplay between antiphonally placed first and second violins enthralled; there was a true sense of divine drama through ‘purely’ musical means. The minuet was finely detailed, and taken at a sensible tempo, with no fashionable one-in-a-bar nonsense. (In that connection, how refreshing it also was to welcome a decently-sized orchestra, with ten first violins down to four double basses, though Mozart himself would have welcomed larger forces, a fact the ‘authenticke’ lobby simply ignores.) The trio emerged as wondrous Harmoniemusik, breathing the air of a Salzburg summer’s evening, whilst the finale, fast but not breathless, resumed the non-exhibitionistic vehemence of the opening.

Till Eulenspiegel benefited from the reinvigoration imparted, at least seemingly so, by Mozart; this was a much livelier, more flexible reading than that accorded Don Juan. In Dohnányi’s hands, Strauss’s score sounded full of incident, superbly articulated, the performance blessed with excellent grasp of structure, permitting narrative and character to emerge with proper coherence. It was elegant, witty, and dashing. The trickiness of Strauss’s post-Meistersinger counterpoint was navigated as if it were the easiest thing in the world, which it certainly is not. The Philharmonia’s brass sounded positively Wagnerian, albeit with an apt materialist edge. In this quite outstanding account, I was above all reminded with what surpassing virtuosity Strauss, the reviser of Berlioz’s treatise, composed for orchestra.

Prom 38: Gerhardt/BBC SSO/Volkov - Ravel, Unsuk Chin, and Stravinsky

Royal Albert Hall

Ravel – La Valse
Unsuk Chin – Cello Concerto (BBC commission, world premiere)
Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring

Alban Gerhardt (violoncello)
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov (conductor)

I have never heard the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra sound so good. Ilan Volkov clearly leaves the orchestra on a high; it will be interesting to follow its fortunes under the very different leadership of Donald Runnicles. (My first opportunity to do so will be at the end of this month in Edinburgh.) My first impressions – and these are only impressions of a southerner – had been mixed: from the Proms, I recall splendid Janáček but indifferent Mahler and Berlioz. Last year, however, I was privileged to attend a marvellous Prom, comprised of music by Jonathan Harvey, Messiaen, and Varèse. The present concert, including the world premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto, kept up the good work.

One thing that struck me about the opening performance of La Valse was how ‘French’ the BBC SSO sounded: not in the old French sense we know from historic recordings, since no one sounds like that anymore, but I could readily have taken the orchestra for, say, the Orchestre de Paris or the Orchestre National de France. Such was the vein in which Volkov approached La Valse, rather than taking the starting-point of a Viennese waltz turned sour. There was a sense of fantasy from the opening, exemplified by weird, slightly sinister woodwind. Rhythm was clearly defined but not inflexible. The gloss to the strings on heard surely paid testament to Volkov’s abilities as an orchestral trainer. Much of this performance was more kaleidoscopic, less overtly threatening than one often hears. I was put in mind of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice; but we all know where that leads, and so did Ravel here. Another kinship revealed more obviously than I can previously recall was with the ballet scores of Prokofiev; indeed, it was unusually clear that this was a ballet. It was a fine performance, though perhaps it tended a little too much to the orchestral showpiece; on the other hand, maybe that is just the Vienna-obsessive in me speaking – just for a change...

Alban Gerhardt was the outstanding soloist, performing from memory, in the premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto. What struck me immediately and throughout was how well written for the instrument the piece was; in Gerhardt’s words, ‘I believe she finds a way to balance colourful orchestral writing with the fragility of “just a cello”. We cellists don’t have the same projection as piano or violin, and ... Unsuk was taken great care in composing a wonderfully colourful yet transparent concerto.’ The first movement is entitled Aniri, which denotes a narrative passage – alternating with sung passages – in the Korean dramatic form, P’ansori, which would be performed by a singing actor and drummer. Thus the solo part takes the form of a recurring narrative, first announced in this opening movement. Growing from a single note, so prominently recurring that no one could fail to notice it on a first hearing, the soloists line moves away from and yet refers to it. The excellent BBC SSO provided a bedrock for the soloists’ deviation; later in the movement, these roles are somewhat reversed, putting me in mind of a sort of distorted arch form, developmental yet never quite breaking free. A highly dramatic percussion crash heralds the end of this, the longest of the movement, Gerhardt’s quivering, almost shell-shocked tone being all that remained in the closing bars. Unwanted applause followed: ‘something must be done...’.

There follows a brief, scherzo-like movement. Both soloist and orchestra – unturned percussion now very much to the fore – have plenty of opportunities, here well taken, to display their virtuosity, but never, it seemed, merely for its own sake. In a sense of contagion, solo figures are transferred to and developed by the orchestra, always restless, always febrile. The third movement is the still centre of the work. Here Gerhardt’s instrument could once again truly sing, in a vocalised part not entirely dissimilar from a Shostakovich lament. The solo part often lies very high, its tone contrasting with a Stravinskian chorale – think The Soldier’s Tale – on muted trumpets. With the fourth and final movement, the music builds to a warranted narrative climax. The cello sounds a little unsure of itself to begin with, ‘as if preparing,’ in the words of Habakuk Traber’s programme note,’ a thoughtful improvisation’. This is just how it sounded in Gerhardt’s hands. It was as if, but most definitely as if, he were slightly distracted: a difficult trick to bring off, as opposed to straightforwardly being distracted, which anyone could do. The orchestral part becomes steadily more violent, and this certainly registered in the BBC SSO’s performance. But the cello takes a different, ultimately more fruitful path, moving upwards in pitch towards the very limit of its range. It takes us back into the silence from which that initial pitch emerged: not quite Die Jakobsleiter, with its extraordinary soprano voice, but perhaps an analogy for the cello. When this fine performance concluded, I was instantly keen to hear the work again.

Volkov presented an interesting account of that towering masterpiece, The Rite of Spring. There is nowadays something of an imperative to present a new slant on the work; sometimes it can work, sometimes not, but worth trying to avert the danger of becoming merely an orchestral showpiece. Volkov’s conception seemed to be to bring the Rite closer to Stravinsky’s other Russian ballets than is often the case. Petrushka in particular was never far away, not least in the characterful playing of teeming wind. The colourful performance made a connection with La Valse. This Rite was bright and exuberant, less mysterious than some. I was impressed by the full sound of the BBC SSO’s strings, often an Achilles heel for British orchestras, but not here. Although much was bright, there were hieratic interludes, perhaps looking forward to the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, between the more dionysiac sections. The Procession of the Sage was properly dramatic, though not very mysterious: a very public procession, which, one might well argue, is very much what it is. Mother Russia was certainly present in the opening to the second part, and mystery was now conjured up by the muted trumpets (I thought of Chin’s chorale). But the general mood remained brightly colourful, sometimes evoking the Rimskian example of The Firebird. The music of the ancestors was equally full of orchestral colour, a pattern continued into the closing Sacrificial Dance. Rhythms, while far from vague, were perhaps not so blisteringly, exactly threatening as in a performance, say, by Boulez. This Rite seemed more of a conductor’s than a composer-conductor’s conception. For the seeds of what was to come, from Boulez to Birtwistle, one would have had to look elsewhere, but the concept was perfectly valid and was very well executed.