BPO/Nézet-Séguin - CPE Bach and Brahms, 19 October 2017

Philharmonie

CPE Bach: Heilig, Wq 217

Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem, op.45

Hanna-Elisabeth Müller (soprano)

Wiebke Lehmkuhl (contralto)

Markus Werba (baritone)

Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Gijs Leenaars)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor)

A slightly – well, perhaps more than slightly – baffling programme this. One might have presumed that the short CPE Bach cantata (eight minutes according to the programme, but I did not check my watch), Heilig, were present as a curtain-raiser for Brahms’s German Requiem. Brahms, after all, thought highly of Emanuel Bach, editing some of his music. And perhaps it would also have offered another opportunity for one of the vocal soloists. But no, the vocal types are different, so we had Wiebke Lehmkuhl sing a short solo and disappear for the rest of the evening. Perhaps even odder, the two works required different platform arrangements, so we had an interval in between them. Might it not have made more sense to have heard a selection of earlier music – Schütz, perhaps, even JS Bach or Handel? – with a more overt connection to the specific Brahms we were about to hear?

 

Anyway, we did not. It was a welcome opportunity to hear this 1776 cantata, for solo contralto, double chorus, and double orchestra, its text drawn from Herder, Isaiah, and the Te Deum. I cannot say that I found anything, save for its forces, especially individual in the writing: far more conventional than, say, many of CPE Bach’s orchestral or piano works. It would be difficult to begrudge it its Berlin Philharmonic premiere, though, and I have no wish to do so. Orchestra and choir (Berlin Radio Choir) alike offered a glorious sound throughout, antiphonal (Handelian) contrasts registering – although perhaps not quite so strongly as they might have done. Lehmkuhl’s performance sounded beautifully sincere, verbally and musically. It is always enjoyable to hear a little trumpet-led rejoicing too, and so we did. Yannick Nézet-Séguin ensured, greatly to his credit, that there was nothing unduly hurried to the performance, encouraging and retaining a note of necessary grandeur. It was nevertheless soon over, though, and I at least was left wondering ‘why?’

 

There was certainly nothing ‘off-the-shelf’ to Nézet-Séguin’s German Requiem either, conducted from memory. If I cannot say that his conception of the work was particularly close to mine, that is no reason to disqualify it; indeed, it was every reason to try to engage with it on its own terms. As sound, it was difficult to fault the performances of choir and orchestral alike, and again I have no wish to do so. What a joy – although is joy really what we should feel here? – it was, for instance, to hear those lower strings at the opening of ‘Selig sind, die da Leid tragen’. The blend of orchestral sound, moreover, was irreproachable, whilst offering plenty of opportunity to hear individual instruments and sections: the three harps, in particular, stood out beautifully, even celestially. And there was real warmth, even consolation, to that opening chorus, although I have heard Brahms sound darker, much darker. I was not at all sure, however, why we heard quite so robust an emphasis on ‘Freuden’; it came out of nowhere and merely sounded mannered. The great second number, ‘Denn alles Fleisch’ was a little darker, as surely it must be, but with a strange touch of ‘glamour’ to it. It was certainly worlds away from Klemperer or Furtwängler. What the performance did have, in spades, was clarity. Nézet-Séguin shaped the movement well, preparing transitions, rendering them convincing, the winding down at the close was handled especially well. What I missed, I think, was a greater sense of ‘meaning’: not just theological or even verbal.

 

Markus Werba proved a relatively light-toned soloist, which seemed to fit with the general approach. In ‘Herr, lehre doch mich,’ however, I could not help but think that the orchestral sound was a bit too close to Strauss; there is no single way that Brahms sound, of course, but I am not sure, by the same token, that just anything goes either. It would be churlish, nevertheless, to deny the sonic pleasure of the build-up above the movement’s pedal-point. Following a duly lieblich ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen,’ Hanna-Elisabeth Müller got off to a shaky start in ‘Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit’. Brahms’s solo writing here is exposed, even treacherous, and so it sounded. She settled down before too long, though.

 

Nézet-Séguin took the opening of the following number, ‘Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt,’ very deliberately: not just pace, but choral enunciation too. It certainly focused attention on the words, whatever else I thought of it. However, the blazing, almost ‘operatic’ approach – more Strauss again, even Wagner, than Brahms, I thought – to the Last Trump seemed somewhat out of place. A cappella writing in the final ‘Selig sind die Toten’ reminded us that the choir was in itself just as impressive as the orchestra. It flowed nicely, and sounded consoling. Concerning what, however, did we need to be consoled?

Tharaud/LPO/Nézet-Séguin - Poulenc and Prokofiev, 23 October 2013

Royal Festival Hall

Poulenc – Piano Concerto

Prokofiev – Symphony no.7 in C-sharp minor, op.131
Poulenc – Stabat mater

Alexandre Tharaud (piano)

Kate Royal (soprano)

London Philharmonic Choir

Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor)

 

 

None of these works is over-exposed in the concert hall, though Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony perhaps comes closer to regular performance. It was only really in Poulenc’s Stabat mater, however, that the performance made a relatively strong case for the work in question.

 

Poulenc’s Piano Concerto is certainly a work that needs an excellent case to be made for it. Here it sounded disjointed and often somewhat lacklustre; indeed, there was an air, whether accurate or otherwise, of under-rehearsal to the performance that emerged. Whilst one could sense an attempt at ‘authentic’ orchestral sonority – whether one really wants that somewhat watery early-twentieth century string sound is another matter – the first movement lacked a sense of overall sweep and was also disfigured by too many orchestral fluffs. Balances were often peculiar too, for no apparent reason. Perhaps an understandable desire on Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s part to avoid sentimentalism had shaded too far into brusqueness. Alexandre Tharaud’s somewhat self-effacing account of the piano part imparted a fluency not always present elsewhere. Certain passages sounded comfortingly Ravel-like, though this is hardly a work to place in such exalted company. The slow movement was more settled: partly a matter of the material, but also of the performance itself. Tharaud offered some gorgeous piano tone to float above the orchestral cushion, but again the LPO’s performance was far from flawless. Quite what the musical connections are between the contrasting material here continues to elude me, but that is either my fault or the composer’s. The succession of melodies was cherished in the finale, probably the strongest section of the performance, and the ending proved splendidly deadpan.

 

Prokofiev’s symphony opened in gravely beautiful fashion, though I could not help but wonder whether Nézet-Séguin’s first-movement tempo was a little fast for Moderato. The LPO seemed more at ease, though there remained cases of tentative playing. An ‘heroic’ idiom familiar from the Fifth Symphony still registered, albeit, rightly so, in more ambivalent fashion, the disquiet of the toyshop equally apparent. Waltz rhythms proved nicely balletic in the scherzo. Unfortunately, the performance seemed rather to lose its way, continuity being lost. Nézet-Séguin made partial amends with a relatively frenzied orchestral climax; the problem remained, however, that it was not quite clear where it had come from. The slow movement, though, was handled in loving fashion, its songfulness imbued with a sense of drama that harked back to its origins in incidental music for Eugene Onegin. A ghost from the Fifth Symphony again haunted the finale, as did reminiscences of Prokofiev’s ballet writing, Nézet-Séguin opted for the original ending, returning us to the mood of the opening, albeit somewhat darkened. Even if the performance as a whole had not lived up to expectations, a properly unsettled mood was engendered at the close.

 

The London Philharmonic Choir did Poulenc’s Stabat mater proud. Indeed, one sensed that Nézet-Séguin’s roots in choral conducting generally lifted the level of performance. Though the choir brought out echoes of Fauré in the opening chorus, there was no mistaking the composer’s individual, if synthetic, voice. Stravinskian echoes (Œdipus Rex) resounded in the orchestra, yet the mood was overwhelmingly one of serenity. Nézet-Séguin highlighted the neo-Baroque dotted rhythms in ‘Fac ut portem’ to telling effect. Choral fury was heard in the ‘Cujus animam gementem,’ but some of the most touching moments were to be found in Poulenc’s a cappella writing, for instance in ‘O quam tristis’ and ‘Fac ut ardeat’. Some of the composer’s response to the text strikes me as peculiar, if not quite on the surreal level of Rossini’s; nevertheless, the performers responded in kind, even if that response necessarily jarred somewhat with the text. Kate Royal sang in an attractive-enough, generically ‘operatic’ fashion; alas, it was well-nigh impossible to discern all but the occasional word of what she sang. There was certainly an embarrassing contrast with the diction of the choir. It was a serious blemish, but ultimately there remained much to admire in the performance as a whole.

Rotterdam PO/Nézet-Séguin - Beethoven and Mahler, 12 December 2012

Goldener Saal, Musikverein, Vienna

Beethoven – Symphony no.2 in D major, op.36

Mahler – Symphony no.4

Kate Royal (soprano)

Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor)

 

 

12.12.12: some of us thought of it as International Dodecaphonic Day. Still, so far as I could ascertain, and despite my privileged position of working for a fortnight at the Arnold Schönberg Center, I could not discover any music by Schoenberg – or, for that matter, by either other member of the Viennese Holy Trinity – being performed in Vienna. Mahler, then, was as close as one might come, though alas he was not served especially well in this performance of his Fourth Symphony.

 

First, however, and rather to my surprise, came rather a good performance of Beethoven’s Second Symphony. Having visited Heiligenstadt on Saturday evening, it seemed quite fitting to hear a work written at the time of Beethoven’s celebrated Testament, even if the symphony bears little obvious sign of the torment the composer voiced in that heart-rending cry. In this performance, from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, both the introduction and the main body of the first movement were taken at a relatively swift pace, yet sounded proportionate to each other; as Wagner long ago pointed out, such proportions are far more important than absolute tempi. The transition between both sections convinced, not least on account of that clear relation between the two. Strings and woodwind proved nicely responsive to each other. And the music sounded with a sense of fun: a young man’s Beethoven, but none the worse for that. Bar an unfortunate horn fluff in the recapitulation, there was little one could reasonably fault here. The slow movement again flowed convincingly, with winning echoes of Haydn not only in the string dialogue but also in the darker hued passages. (Heiligenstadt? Perhaps?) Occasionally the strings would have benefited from less parsimony with respect to vibrato, but that was not a problem to be exaggerated. If one is going to push hard, it is probably better to do so in the scherzo than elsewhere; certainly Nézet-Séguin’s slight relaxation for the trio made its point. The hall at any rate took off some of the edge, and line was well maintained. Beethoven in Haydnesque mode was again a strong characteristic of the finale, articulated with style, the Rotterdam cellos especially gorgeous. A slightly slower tempo might have heightened the humour, but there was much to enjoy. This was not profound Beethoven after Klemperer or Furtwängler – today, Colin Davis or Barenboim – but that may well come; there was a lovely sheen to the performance and much of the music understanding was already in place. In the manner of those irritating Amazon comparisons, ‘If you like Karajan’s Beethoven, you would probably have liked this.’

 

After the swift tempi of the Beethoven, I was somewhat taken aback by the slow pace of the opening bars to the first movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. It settled down soon enough – or rather, I thought it had, for the abiding problem of this performance was Nézet-Séguin’s apparent unwillingness to convey a sense of an underlying pulse. Tempo fluctuations were extreme, especially in terms of slowing down, at one point almost grinding to a halt. The moment at which the solo violin entered came like a shot in the arm. If the performance livened up after that, however, the damage had been done, and the recapitulation suffered similarly, though to a lesser extent. One could enjoy the somewhat rambunctious woodwind, but Mahler does not need to be milked; nor does he take well to it. The second movement offered a not dissimilar experience. There is of course nothing wrong with tempo fluctuations – think of Mengelberg! – but one still needs a sense of basic pulse. The solo violin skirted dangerous close at times to the merely unpleasant; edge is good, but by definition, it should not be de trop, and scordatura should not be taken as an excuse for questionable intonation. Here and elsewhere, I missed a more characterful, deeply resonant string section.

 

The resultant lack of harmonic grounding was, however, successfully combated in the slow movement: much superior in every respect. (Odd, that, given that it is arguably the most difficult of the four movements to bring off.) There was a sense of scale, of proportion, here; line, whilst not always perfectly maintained, was much more in evidence. The performance showed that variation of tempo is perfectly possible, indeed often highly desirable, so long as a basic pulse has been established. Climaxes can then tell as they should – and they did. The orchestra and Nézet-Séguin were in lively form for the finale: sometimes too much so, the woodwind in particular proving shrill at times, but at least there was character to their performance. That was more than one could say for the lacklustre Kate Royal – even if one had been able to discern more than one word in five of what she sang. This was neither a child’s sense of heaven, nor something more knowing and sophisticated; it was simply inadequate. (Royal’s poor diction has been a characteristic of every performance of hers I have heard; whatever her strengths may be, they certainly do not lie in Lieder-singing.) However, there was a fine sense of orchestral culmination or arrival at the close, Mahler’s progressive tonality vindicated with love.

LPO/Nézet-Séguin - Haydn and Strauss, 24 November 2012

Royal Festival Hall

Haydn – Missa in Angustiis, ‘Nelson Mass’, Hob. XXII:11

Strauss – Ein Heldenleben, op.40

Sarah-Jane Brandon (soprano)

Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)
Robin Tritschler (tenor)
Luca Pisaroni (bass-baritone)

London Philharmonic Choir (chorus master: Neville Creed)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor)
 

Haydn’s settings of the Mass ought to be heard incessantly, in churches and in the concert hall. For reasons that elude me, they are not, even this, the so-called Nelson Mass, arguably the most celebrated of all, if only on account of his nickname. Indeed classical sacred music in general, Mozart’s included, with a very few obvious exceptions, is unaccountably neglected by most concert programmers. (When did you last hear Beethoven’s Mass in C major, op.86, any of Gluck’s sacred music, anything that was not a Mass setting from the Salzburg Mozart, or indeed any of the shorter liturgical works by Schubert?) Perhaps performers, audiences, bureaucrats alike still have the Whiggish canard that the Enlightenment was somehow concerned with secularisation seared into their incurious minds; if so, send them away with a copy of Ernst Cassirer’s venerable Philosophy of the Enlightenment in one hand and a good few scores or recordings in the other. In any case, let us hope that the London Philharmonic will programme more of this wonderful repertoire, especially if performed with such success as it was here, under Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

 

The ‘Kyrie’ plunged us immediately into a world of high liturgical, symphonic, well-nigh operatic, drama, the D minor tonality of Don Giovanni ringing in our ears. It was driven, but not too much; Nézet-Séguin knew where to yield too. The London Philharmonic Choir, here as elsewhere, shone, fullness of tone and precision in no sense antithetical. Sarah-Jane Brandon imparted the necessary note of wartime terror to the return of the ‘Kyrie’ material, form sharply delineated by Nézet-Séguin. A propulsive opening to the ‘Gloria’ shared that marriage of choral weight and transparency. It struck me, perhaps for the first time, how much Haydn’s writing for soprano against choir prefigures the ‘Hymn’ in The Creation, which lay, after all, just around the corner. The setting of the words ‘miserere nobis’ seemed to evoke Mozart – which of course in many senses it does, Haydn always keen to learn at the hands of the younger genius.

 

A particularly Haydnesque combination of Baroque sturdy figured bass, such as one always finds in his setting of the Creed (‘Tu es Petrus’) and Beethovenian symphonism characterised the opening section of the ‘Credo’. It was nicely shaded too, without fussiness. The cult of alte Musik furthered by Gottfried van Swieten, Viennese patron to Mozart and Haydn, as well as librettist (of sorts) for Haydn’s oratorios, was heard here for the inspirational influence it was: none of today’s mere antiquarianism (at best), but a vital force, informing performance and composition alike. Just listen to the words ‘et homo factus est’, Handel channelled via Haydn’s loving yet vigorous offices. The final section, like much of the rest of the faster material, was taken at a challenging tempo, or at least a tempo that would have proved challenging, had it not been for the excellence of orchestral and choral execution.

 

The ‘Sanctus’ was properly imploring, taken at a magnificently slow tempo, without the slightest hint of dragging. ‘Pleni sunt cœli...’ came as a thunderbolt of joy. A flowing contrast to both parts of that preceding movement was offered by a flowing ‘Benedicturs’. Militarism made its point, chillingly, yet commendably without the exaggeration one would most likely have endured from latter-day ‘authenticke’ freak-shows. Textures were clear and weighty (where necessary). Nézet-Séguin handled the ‘Agnus Dei’ with loving tenderness. Sarah Connolly offered excellent solo work at the opening, soon joined by her equally fine colleagues, Brandon, Robin Tritschler, and Luca Pisaroni. ‘Dona nobis pacem’ brought a wonderful, elating feeling of choral and orchestral release. Was anyone a more joyful contrapuntist – or homophonist! – than Haydn? As he is alleged to have said to a (slightly dubious) biographer, Giuseppe Carpani, ‘At the thought of God my heart leaps for joy, and I cannot help my music doing the same.’

 

Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben followed the interval. It is difficult to think of anything meaningful to connect the two works, so it was better approached simply as a contrast – which indeed it was. Nézet-Séguin and the LPO revelled in the opening kaleidoscope of colour, which sometimes, quite rightly, tended a little towards the phantasmagorically nauseous.  The LPO’s cellos shone particularly, horns (led by David Pyatt) here and elsewhere quite glorious. Strauss’s critics were properly carping; Pieter Schoeman’s violin solo offered a delectable ‘feminine’ contrast, clean but not clinical, sinuous but not cloying. It was an interesting reading taken as a whole: not overtly symphonic, yet by the same token certainly not without form. Rather, the latter seemed to emerge from the material, which is doubtless as it should be. (Not that there is just one way of that happening, of course.) Battle was instrumental in more than one sense, a battery of brass and percussion both impressing and amusing: Strauss the inveterate ironist. It was brutal, but in a toy soldiers’ sort of way. There were a few occasions when I thought Nézet-Séguin might have relaxed a little more, but that was certainly preferable to meandering, always a danger in this score. The difficulty of shooting’s one bolt too early – I am not even convinced that Karajan always showed himself innocent of that all-too-seductive mistake – was avoided completely: quite an achievement.

 

Rusalka, Royal Opera, 27 February 2012

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Nymphs and Rusalka (Camilla Nylund)
Images: Royal Opera/Clive Barda

Rusalka – Camilla Nylund
Foreign Princess – Petra Lang
Prince – Bryan Hymel
Ježibaba – Agnes Zwierko
Vodník – Alan Held
Huntsman – Daniel Grice
Gamekeeper – Gyula Orendt
Kitchen Boy – Ilse Eerens
Wood Nymphs – Anna Devin, Justina Gringyte, Madeleine Pierard
Mourek – Claire Talbot

Jossi Wieler, Sergio Morabito (directors)
Samantha Seymour (revival director)
Barbara Ehnes (set designs)
Anja Rabes (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)
Chris Kondek (video designs)
Altea Garrido (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Yannick Nézet-Seguin (conductor)


It is a truth universally acknowledged that an interesting opera production will be met with incomprehension and lazy, philistine hostility by vast swathes of the audience in many, perhaps most, of the world’s ‘major’ houses, a truth that renders one all the more grateful for the Royal Opera showing the courage to stage this new – to London – production of Rusalka. That is not to say that any production meeting with hostility qualifies as interesting; some, of course, are simply not very good, or worse. Yet, it seems that only the most vapid, unchallenging – and yes, I realise that the word ‘challenging’ is a red rag to self-appointed ‘traditionalist’ bulls – of productions will garner approval from the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie. The boorish behaviour of those who booed this Rusalka equates more or less precisely to the sort of antics they would condemn if they occurred on the street – the work of ‘hoodlums’, the ‘lower classes’, the ‘uneducated’, ‘rioters’, ‘immigrants’, et al. – yet somehow unwillingness or inability to think, the fascistic refusal to consider an alternative point of view, the threat of mob violence, becomes perfectly acceptable when one has paid the asking price for what they consider to be their rightful ‘entertainment’. They would no more bother to understand, to explore, to question, Rusalka were it depicted in the most ’traditional’ of fashions, of course, but they explode at the mere suggestion that a work and a performance might ask something of them. For, as John Stuart Mill famously noted, ‘Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.’ Wagner’s ‘emotionalisation of the intellect’ – ‘emotionalisation’, not abdication! – remains as foreign a country to them as it did to the Jockey Club thugs who prevented Tannhäuser from being performed in Paris; at least one might claim that the latter were having to deal with challenging ‘new music’, Zukunftsmuik, even. Here they were faced with an opera by Dvořák, first performed in 1901, in a staging that would barely raise an eyebrow in most German house or festivals. (The production, by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, hails initially from the Salzburg Festival.) It would be interesting to know how many of those booing had selfishly, uncomprehendingly disrupted a recent Marriage of Figaro in the same house by erupting into laughter at the very moment Count Almaviva sought forgiveness from the Countess. (There was also, bizarrely, to be heard at the opening of the third act a shouted call from a member of the audience for a ‘free’ Quebec.)

Rusalka, Prince (Bryan Hymel), and Foreign Princess (Petra Lang)

What, then, was it that incurred the wrath of the Tunbridge Wells beau monde? I can only assume that it was for the most part Barbara Ehnes’s sets, since the stage direction (presumably a good part of it from revival director, Samantha Seymour) was more often that not quite in harmony with the urgings and suggestions of Dvořák’s score. (The hostile rarely if ever listen to the music; at best, they follow the surtitles and bridle at deviations from what they imagine the stage directions might have been.) Even modern dress is mixed with a sense of the magical, the environment of Ježibaba the witch a case in point. There is even a cat, played both in giant form by Claire Talbot, and in real form, by – a cat, ‘Girlie’. What is real, and what is not? Collision between spirit and human worlds is compellingly brought to life, the devils and demons of a heathen past, including Slavonic river spirits (rusalki) come to tempt, to question, to lay bare the delusions of moralistic, bigoted modernity. Just as modern ‘love’ and marriage’ quickly boil down to money and power, so Vodník the water goblin finds his tawdry place of temptation whilst issuing his moralistic warnings. (Did the audience see itself reflected in the mirror? Perhaps, though I doubt that it even bothered to think that far.) Our ideas of Nature having been hopelessly compromised by what we have become, we ‘naturally’ see the world of rusalki from within the comforts of our hypocritical bordello. Who is exploiting whom, and who is ‘impure’? The souls of women who have committed suicide and of stillborn children – there are various accounts of who the rusalki actually are – or those who shun them in life and in death? Wieler and Morabito do not offer agitprop; rather they allow us to ask these questions of the work, and of ourselves. But equally importantly, they permit a sense of wonder to suffuse what remains very much a fairy tale, realism coexisting with, being corrected by, something older, more mysterious, more dangerous, and perhaps ultimately liberating. Chris Kondek’s video designs, not unlike the hydroelectric dam of Patrice Chéreau’s ‘Centenary’ Ring, both suggest Nature and through their necessary technological apparatus remind us of our distance from any supposed ‘Golden Age’, just as the opening scene will inevitably suggest to us Alberich, the Rhinemaidens, and the power of the erotic. (Wagner used the term liebesgelüste.)

Musical performances were equally strong, in many respects signalling a triumph for Covent Garden. First and foremost should be mentioned Yannick Nézet-Séguin, making his Royal Opera debut. The orchestra played for him as if for an old friend, offering a luscious, long-breathed Romanticism that made it sound a match – as, on its best days, it is – for any orchestra in the world. Magic was certainly to be heard: the sound of Dvořák’s harps again took me back to Das Rheingold – and to Bernard Haitink’s tenure at the house. Ominous fate was brought into being with similar conviction and communicative skill. Above all, Nézet-Séguin conveyed both a necessary sense of direction and a love for the score’s particular glories. If there are times when Dvořák might benefit from a little more, at least, of Janáček’s extraordinary dramatic concision, it would take a harder heart than mine to eschew the luxuriance on offer both in score and performance. Crucially, staging and performance interacted so that the contrast between worlds on stage intensified that in the pit, and vice versa.

Ježibaba (Agnes Zwierko)
and her cat, Mourek (Claire Talbot)

Camilla Nylund shone in the title role. At times, especially during the first act, one might have wondered whether her voice would prove to have the necessary heft, but it did, and Nylund proved herself an accomplished actress into the bargain. Bryan Hymel may not be the most exciting of singers; the voice is not especially variegated. However, he proved dependable, and often a great deal more, the final duet as moving as one could reasonably expect. Alan Held was everything a Vodník should be: baleful, threatening, sincere, and yet perhaps not quite. The Spirit of the Lake may well have his own agenda – and certainly did here. Agnes Zwierko played the witch Ježibaba with wit, menace, and a fine sense of hypocrisy that brought the closed environments of Janáček’s dramas to mind. The four Jette Parker Young Artists participating, nymphs Anna Devin, Madeleine Perard, and Justina Gringyte, and Huntsman Daniel Grice all acquitted themselves with glowing colours. Indeed, Grice’s solo, enveloped by miraculous Freischütz-like horns from the orchestra, movingly evoked a world of lost or never-existent woodland innocence. Last but not least, Petra Lang’s Foreign Princess emerged, like Wagner’s Ortrud, as in some respects the most truthful, as well as the most devious, character of all. Splendidly sung and acted, Lang’s was a performance truly to savour. But then, this was a performance as a whole that was far more than the sum of its parts, a triumphant return to form for Covent Garden with its first ever staging of the work.

Jansen/LPO/Nézet-Séguin - Prokofiev, 1 February 2012

Royal Festival Hall

Symphony no.1 in D major, op.25, ‘Classical’
Violin Concerto no.2 in G minor, op.63
Symphony no.5 in B-flat major, op.100

I have not been able to attend as many of the London Philharmonic’s Prokofiev concerts as I should have liked; indeed, I have only been to the first and the last. Whilst the former offered somewhat mixed results, the festival finale proved an unalloyed success. Returning to mainstream repertoire did not engender routine, quite the contrary: it enabled us rather to discriminate between ‘interesting’ Prokofiev, fully worthy of performance, and the composer at his best, which we heard this evening.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin showed in his performance of the Classical Symphony that he is a conductor fully capable of shedding new light on a work that in some hands can sound unduly familiar. A slower tempo than one usually hears in the first movement imparted a true sense of the neo-Classical to proceedings, whilst the gracious charm of a clucking second subject suggested Haydn of Beecham vintage (not inappropriate at all either to work or indeed orchestra). What a refreshing change from the mere showpiece into which this music can all too often degenerate. Notably, Prokofiev’s motor rhythm persisted throughout: this, we knew, was neo-Classicism. The second movement captured splendidly a stylised grace, not frigid, but somewhat akin to the ‘as if’ of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, albeit in miniature and with the nagging, intriguing question, which certainly never arises in Mahler’s case, as to whether there is in fact a heart beating behind the music. Silvery violin lines suggested there might be, as if premonitions of Cinderella; or were they too dealing with masks? The minuet brought a winning sense of toy-soldier swagger, again at a slower tempo than is often heard, and all the more interesting for it. There was, though, nothing slow about the finale; it fizzed carelessly – in the best sense – like a young sparkling wine. It needs excellent playing and received it: the flutes especially, but also the LPO string section as a whole.

Janine Jansen joined the orchestra for the second violin concerto. Having had a few unhappy experiences with this work in concert of late (the worst of which were two truly dreadful performances from Viktoria Mullova and Chloe Hanslip), it was a true joy to welcome a violinist who not only brought flawless technique but musical understanding to the piece. It opened darker than often, a little more deliberate in pace, though tempi would prove to be flexible. The violin line was beautifully spun, yet never narcissistically so. (Much as I enjoy Itzhak Perlman in this concerto, Jansen was more interesting, suggesting that more was at stake.) The most challenging passages in technical terms were handled without difficulty, but more to the point, they sounded angry rather than merely virtuosic. It was a fine collaboration, too, the orchestra often sounding very much as the shadow of the soloist. At times, it sounded ‘Russian’ – for instance, properly soulful cellos – and at times more internationally ‘modernist’, penetrating to the heart of a conflict that pervaded not only Prokofiev’s music but his character too. There was pent-up aggression rather than balletic charm to the final pizzicato chords. The slow movement brought a piquant contrast between the soaring intensity of Jansen’s solo line and spiky LPO woodwind. That shadow was also present again from vibrato-laden violins. And later, there was splendid fairy-tale grotesquerie, not over-done, from the cellos. Some might have wanted more primary colours in this movement; I heartily approved of its subtlety of tone. The finale bit, but it also danced, if haltingly – a little like Prokofiev himself, if the tales be true. (Well, actually a great deal better than the notoriously poor ballroom dancer: interesting for a great ballet composer!) Jansen combined pinpoint precision with truth of expression. There remained, rightly, a relative, sometimes melancholy hollowness to the some of the orchestral writing. Nézet-Séguin left us wondering whether that was in itself a deeper, expressive truth, or whether we were dealing with Straussian masks.

The Fifth Symphony received an equally fine performance, if anything finer still. Nézet-Séguin again showed that he was not hidebound by tradition, taking the opening Andante at a more flowing speed – and character – than, say, Karajan’s classic, stentorian account from the 1970s with the Berlin Philharmonic. Not that that precluded orchestral weight, even if a little distance from that of the BPO; yet whereas Karajan presented Prokofiev as closer to Shostakovich – at least if Shostakovich had been a considerably better composer – then here perhaps we heard Prokofiev echoing Mussorgsky and indeed even Ravel, whilst nevertheless remaining recognisably the same composer. There were also, here and elsewhere, hints and often more than hints of Eisenstein cinema: both ‘dramatic’ and, in its way, ‘modernist’. Moreover, Nézet-Séguin’s reading proceeded with a definite spring in its step. If Karajan was utterly, chillingly, single-minded, Nézet-Séguin tended more towards variegation. It is not the only way, but it was a fully coherent way to open quite the best live performance of this symphony I have heard. There was no moderation to the second movement either: a biting scherzo that yet retained an apt sleekness, still pointing back – if only just – to the Prokofiev of the Twenties, albeit with considerably greater seriousness of purpose. What was perhaps most impressive of all, a highly catchy sense of swing notwithstanding, was Nézet-Séguin’s unbroken sense of line: this, we were never able to forget, is a symphony. The third movement brought a sense of germination, almost blooming, in a frozen (tundra?) landscape. It may be a far simpler – and, more importantly, entirely different – beast from The Rite of Spring, but in that respect, there proved perhaps a surprising degree of commonality. Nézet-Séguin retained, moreover, a quite contrasting sense of epic cinema, a difficult balancing act to bring off. The climax brought the Soviet machine to its most glorious – and chilling. We heard, in the opening of the final movement, Prokofiev’s ultimately unsuccessful striving towards Beethoven, and there was poignancy in that striving. A sardonic response was called for, and received, similarly a proper sense of melodic grace. And still, at times, the Prokofiev of Le Pas d’acier revealed himself, fleetingly. Let us not be seduced into simplistic Cold War narratives – from either/any side. Frankly, someone who does not hear any shred of ‘socialist realism’ undercut by the late turn to mechanistic solo instruments cannot be listening. We heard it and were chilled by it: not in a Mahlerian way, which would be absurd for Prokofiev – but in whatever elusive fashion it may be that forms the foundation for his essential voice.

Salzburg Festival (3) - Don Giovanni, 15 August 2010

Haus für Mozart

(Images: Salzburg Festival/Monika Rittershaus)

Don Giovanni – Christopher Maltman
Commendatore – Dimitry Ivaschchenko
Donna Anna – Aleksandra Kursak
Don Ottavio – Joel Prieto
Donna Elvira – Dorothea Röschmann
Leporello – Erwin Schrott
Zerlina – Anna Prohaska
Masetto – Adam Plachetka

Claus Guth (director)
Christian Schmidt (designs)
Olaf Winter (lighting)
Ronny Dietrich (dramaturgy)
Ramses Sigl (choreography)

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Thomas Lang)
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Members of the Angelika Prokopp Summer Academy of the Vienna Philharmonic (stage music)
Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor)

I have been fortunate enough to see a good few Mozart opera performances in Salzburg, including the wonderful Karl-Ernst and Ursula Hermann Così fan tutte three times. This, however, was my first Don Giovanni at the Festival. Though I have seen the opera, this ‘opera of operas’, on many occasions, it has always been brought home to me how extraordinary difficult it is to produce. From the mindlessly traditional (Harold Prince), through the merely mindless (Peter Mussbach and Francesca Zambello), to the flawed yet powerful visions of Calixto Bieito and Graham Vick, I have never felt that a production has ‘nailed’ the work; indeed, in many ways, I find Herbert Graf’s old Felsenreitschule production on DVD under Furtwängler preferable to watch, if dated in a way that the incandescent conducting could never be. Musical performances have varied enormously too, of course, a great regret being that Daniel Barenboim’s superlative conducting in Berlin did not have a better production than Mussbach’s, but that is another matter.

How does Claus Guth fit into this continuum, then? He is certainly more interesting than the brain-dead Zambello and Prince, but there are problems with his vision too. The premise, as revealed in a brief programme discussion, is that ‘Mozart tried to deal with all of our lives in the three hours he had for this opera. But what if he managed to compress everything that moves and occupies us into this framework? We must die. What do we do with our lifetime? Do we conform and subordinate ourselves, do we break out, do we try to fit in or break loose, cut our ties?’ What this seems to boil down to on stage is a bit more like a reality television programme: how does someone with three hours left to live decide to spend those three hours? By taking drugs and trying to have sex with a good few women in a forest, with the help of his slightly subordinate friend. I say ‘slightly subordinate’, since it is not at all clear what the relationship between the protagonists might be. Like so many directors, Guth ignores the social distinctions within Mozart’s work (and they are certainly within Mozart’s as well as Da Ponte’s contribution), and does not really provide an adequate substitute. The setting itself is good: the Salzburg Mönchsberg meets Hampstead Heath. (There is certainly more than a hint of the cruising ground here, though the action is strictly heterosexual: a missed opportunity?) It is absorbing enough in a modern filmic sort of way, but not a patch upon Guth’s brilliant rethinking of Le nozze di Figaro. Indeed, the circle through which we initially view the action – predictably beginning during the Overture – suggests a cinematic peep-hole. A car drives on to stage with Donna Anna and Don Ottavio: no harm done, but no evident gain accrued either. And I simply could not work out who the Commendatore was supposed to be at the end. A ghost seemed rather at odds with the setting; had he just come back to life? No one seemed to know, or to care.

I have seen worse then, but I have seen better, if not yet best. The musical performances tended to be of a higher calibre. It helps, of course, to have the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit; such was certainly the case here. The Viennese might be able to play this music like angels in their sleep, but the level of variegation brought out by Yannick Nézet-Séguin was noteworthy: that does not happen by itself, likewise the revelation and shaping of woodwind detail. Tempi were sensibly chosen: musical rather than ideological. Nézet-Séguin is of the modern alla breve school when it comes to the opening of the Overture and the Stone Guest Scene, but the music sounded thrillingly urgent rather than rushed, as so often it does when taken in this way. Extremely notable was Felice Venanzoni’s fortepiano continuo playing. Many would doubtless decry the high level of imagination, but it was extremely well thought out, and sounded genuinely improvisatory. References were made within the work, and there were some strange post-modern flights of harmonic fantasy. I found it fascinating, like an added commentary, though I should not necessarily always wish to hear it done this way. Robert Nagy’s cello playing was of equal distinction, more prominent, more musically imaginative than I can ever recall hearing before.

Christopher Maltman made a fine Don Giovanni. Though he clearly did not mind the chance to shed his shirt early on, there was much more to his portrayal than that. There was power certainly, but it was the tender moments that longest lingered in the mind. Erwin Schrott’s Leporello was predictably charismatic, though oddly, I thought the mindless vacuity of Zambello’s production (when he took that role, rather than Giovanni) permitted him greater freedom to play to his strengths than this. Schrott’s voice was in fine fettle, however, his onstage physicality and musicality never in doubt. Aleksandra Kursak’s Donna Anna has an edge to her voice, which some may find more troubling than others, but she threw herself into the character, once she surmounted early intonational difficulties. Dorothea Röschmann’s Elvira steered a sure course between hysteria and dignity. Joel Prieto was a fine substitute for the expected Joseph Kaiser (out for the entire run, alas). This was beautiful singing indeed, elegant too: aristocratic, or it might have been, had the production permitted of social hierarchy. Anna Prohaska’s Zerlina was equally impressive: convincingly girlish on stage, albeit with a kinky side to her innocence, but with a sexy, fully feminine bloom when it came to her vocal production.

There is, however, one final matter: the version of the score. I am relatively relaxed about this. Prague always seems to me preferable, in terms of the arias used, but here we had the familiar conflation, barring the duet between Leporello and Zerlina. I was quite unprepared, however, for the absence of the final scene. Yes, I know that Mahler did it, and I had a brief Romantic phase during my teens when I thought it would be a good idea too. The feeling of incompletion, however, is jarring, and Guth seems quite to have misunderstood the nature of the finale. In its Brechtian alienation it makes the work far more interesting; without it, we veer dangerously close to melodrama, especially odd given the general tone of the production. Guth claims that Mozart was ‘bowing to convention’, yet throughout the work Mozart has destroyed any such concept; the finale is still more radical in this context, inevitably to us suggesting Stravinsky and beyond. In any case, the music, surely, is begging for completion. Has Guth never heard the D minor Piano Concerto? It is interesting, then, to hear this venerable ‘version’, but it confirms the discrediting of the tradition.