Così fan tutte, Opera Holland Park, 8 June 2012

Holland Park

Fiordiligi – Elizabeth Llewellyn

Dorabella – Julia Riley

Ferrando – Andrew Staples

Guglielmo – Dawid Kimberg

Despina – Joana Sears

Alfonso – Nicholas Garrett

Harry Fehr (director)
Alex Eales (designs)
Colin Grenfell (lighting)

Opera Holland Park Chorus
City of London Sinfonia

Thomas Kemp (conductor)

Are my expectations too high when it comes to Mozart’s operas in general, and to Così fan tutte in general? Probably. Should they be? Certainly. For the problem remains, as I have doubtless said far too many times before, Mozart’s music, and not just his operas, requires but one thing: perfection. It is the most unsparing music of all, with nowhere, but nowhere, to hide. Every note must be considered and sounded both in itself and in connection to every other. Place a wrong or even slightly excessive accent upon a single note and the fault will be glaringly magnified; misjudge a tempo, which is not to say that there is only one ‘correct’ tempo, and the entire apple-cart will be upset. However, conduct Così fan tutte like Sir Colin Davis – or rather, as Sir Colin Davis – and it is an experience that will remain with an audience for the rest of its life, opening doors one had never expected to be there in the first place.

Yes, the comparison is odious, but Thomas Kemp is no Colin Davis. I have heard worse, most obviously from the aggressively ‘authenticke’ brigade; Kemp did not seem actively to be trying to make Mozart’s music sound unpleasant. Nevertheless, on this evidence, he is not a conductor who could claim any particular or even general sympathy with Mozart. The opening bars of the Overture were taken far too fast; thereafter, far too many numbers never hit upon the just tempo. (It is worth repeating at this point that I do not for a moment think there is one ‘correct’ tempo; the trick is to make whatever is chosen sound right, to perform with conviction, sympathy, understanding, and of course, a sense of connection to a greater whole.) ‘Smanie implacibilie’ was breathless in quite the wrong way. Other sections of the score dragged, not so much because they were slow – I doubt that anything was as ravishingly, heart-stoppingly lingering as Davis would so often nowadays present it – but because the tempo seemed arbitrary, applied from without, with little connection to anything else, above all with little or no sense of harmonic motion.

The City of London Sinfonia played decently, though the strings could tend somewhat towards the anonymous. (At least they lacked the acerbic nature of a ‘period’ orchestra.) For the most part, as so often in Mozart, it was the woodwind section that most delighted; there was some fine work indeed here from a number of principals. The kettledrums, however, were often bizarrely prominent, not helped by the employment of hard sticks. Karl Böhm would have rolled in his grave.

Had they been supported by a more sympathetic conductor, the cast of young singers would doubtless have appeared in a stronger light. As it was, there was nothing really to which one could object, but there remained a sense that things might have been better. (Perhaps that will dissipate during the run; first nights are rarely the best time to catch singers in particular.)  Elizabeth Llewellyn, whom I admired greatly last year at Holland Park as the Countess, delivered what was probably the strongest performance overall, as Fiordiligi. The beauty of her tone-production could not be gainsaid, though her diction was sometimes, for instance in ‘Per pietà’, occluded. Julia Riley’s Dorabella sometimes lacked focus, though when that was achieved, showed considerable promise. Hers was a forthright portrayal, doubtless in part so as to achieve greater contrast with Fiordiligi, but was it sometimes excessively so? There second act duet between the two veered dangerously close to crudity on Dorabella’s part. Andrew Staples’s tone is very much of the ‘English tenor’ variety. I was not always convinced that this served Ferrando so well, but it is a very difficult role to get right; in other cases, often one ends up thinking the music sounds too close to Puccini. ‘Un’ aura amoroso’ was beautifully sung, though there were times elsewhere when greater presence might have been achieved. Dawid Kimberg’s Guglielmo was blustering, swaggering even, able to call upon considerable vocal reserves. Joana Seara offered a lively Despina, though her tuning sometimes went a little awry. Nicholas Garrett, 2010’s Don Giovanni, presented an intelligent portrayal of Don Alfonso.

What of the production? It was, for the most part, difficult to say anything much about it at all. I do not doubt that it would have pleased self-proclaimed ‘traditionalists’, since the costumes were all impeccably, almost aggressively, ‘period’ – if hardly Neapolitan. Of course, Così  is in no sense whatsoever ‘about’ eighteenth-century Naples, but the logic of the literalist position is that it must be. It was difficult to detect in Harry Fehr's production any idea of what Così might be about, any attempt to probe beneath its painfully beautiful surfaces, or even to celebrate the pain upon the surface. We had a ‘period’ set, ‘period’ costumes, and that was really just about it. There was a nod to directorial cliché in placing an audience on stage, supposedly ‘reacting’ to the events witnessed, but have we not seen that sort of thing far too many times before? Such framing can be interesting, even refreshing: I think, for instance, of Nicholas Hytner’s production of Handel’s Serse for ENO. However, if the intention were to highlight the artificiality of the drama – the artificiality is absolutely necessary to permit Mozart’s agonising psychological explorations – then it failed to come across; it appeared instead rather more as an attempt to generate stage ‘business’ in the absence of any other ideas. That is, until, part way through the second act, Fehr suddenly decided to add a few more, which jarred hopelessly given the uninvolving nature of what we had seen hitherto. Ferrando was laughed at by members of the ‘audience’: it might have been movingly cruel, yet here simply came across as an intrusion upon the music. Fiordiligi took off her dress, put on a soldier’s uniform – a very odd, quasi-literalist interpretation of her attempt to persuade herself to find her (erstwhile) lover – and then had that taken off by Ferrando. (No need to worry: there was plenty beneath the dress and the uniform.) Such ‘action’ merely came across as a realisation, too late in the day, that nothing much had happened. This is, of course, an extremely difficult opera to direct, yet Fehr barely seemed to have tried.

In celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee: Clein/Philharmonia/Gardner, 5 June 2012

Royal Festival Hall

Walton – Crown Imperial

Elgar – Cello Concerto in E minor, op.85

Holst – The Planets

Natalie Clein (cello)

Philharmonia Voices

Philharmonia Orchestra

Edward Gardner (conductor)

I arrived at this concert in somewhat curmudgeonly mood. Why, if a concert celebrating the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee must be restricted to English music, need the choice be so chronologically restricted? Would it not be more interesting to include some Byrd or Purcell? What of living composers, Birtwistle being perhaps the most obvious choice, or indeed the Master of the Queen’s Music, or, perish the thought, someone a little younger? Was it not a bit depressing that the audience in the Royal Festival Hall was so lacking in younger faces, and might they not have been attracted by a more varied programme? Was it not still more concerning that I failed to spot a single face in the audience that was not white? Those are all real questions, deserving of real answers, of course, and I could add a pedantic query as to why it was thought appropriate to wear evening tails at 3 o’clock in the afternoon; it was nevertheless heartening to appreciate, as the concert went on, that it was not quite so Establishment-focused as prejudices might have suggested.

There was little, I admit, to have suggested that in the opening number, Walton’s Crown Imperial march, which received an oddly charmless reading from Edward Gardner. It was vigorous, rhythmically alert, superlatively played by the Philharmonia, but mercilessly hard-driven, machine-like even. (A republican protest? Somehow I think that would be to clutch at straws.) It was almost as if Gardner were above all determined to show that he was not Sir Adrian Boult, who conducted the first performance and the 1937 coronation performance, when it was employed to mark the arrival of Queen Mary. Just a hint of a musical smile would have been nice, but this was more Wehrmacht than Westminster Abbey. It was good, though, to hear here and elsewhere the Royal Festival Hall organ being put to good use, on this occasion by Richard Pearce.

With Elgar’s Cello Concerto we found ourselves in very different territory. The first movement proved somewhat problematical. Natalie Clein was keenly attuned to its dark, pained lyricism, but Gardner displayed an alarming tendency to fussy micromanagement, almost as if parodying Sir Simon Rattle, when the apparently ‘natural’ wisdom of a fellow knight such as Sir Colin Davis would have been more welcome. The Philharmonia, however, remained on excellent form, even if the performance were often made to sound more lethargic than spacious. Clein brought a greater nervous intensity than one often hears to her reading, but there is nothing wrong with that; indeed, it helped counsel against easy simplifications and generalisations concerning the composer. Nevertheless, she sounded as though she needed a conductor who would rein in certain tendencies towards the distended. The scherzo fared much better all around, the performance sounding reinvigorated without being unduly driven. A fine balance was struck between lightness and propulsion. The ‘Adagio’ seemed to have benefited from that dose of elixir; it was impassioned without mannerism. Perhaps it was less relaxed than ‘tradition’ would dictate, but there is far more under the surface here than most ‘traditionalists’ would ever notice, let alone admit. Elgar’s troubled soul sang relatively freely here, in what emerged as a post-Great War song without words. The finale bore the weight of what had hone before but again largely without the mannerisms of the first movement. The anger of constraint – social and æsthetic? – sounded, but then it always had: think of Gerontius. Twin torments of a soul and a nation whose day in the sun was already nearing its end sounded movingly. I wished from time to time that Gardner would adopt something of Clein’s freer approach – there were phrases that were still over-regimented – but the Philharmonia continued to provide sterling service. There could be no doubt here that there has been no greater English composer of concertos than Elgar.

Reservations over aspects of Gardner’s approach evaporated when it came to The Planets. The brutalism that characterised Crown Imperial was far more apposite to ‘Mars’, whose ominous, chilling tread was served by strings as savage as brass and percussion. (A protest? Perhaps not intentionally, but a note of dissent could not help but make itself heard for those with ears to hear.) ‘Venus’ was properly Debussyan in colour, though there were times, believe it or not, when odd balances favoured harps unduly over flutes. A finely taken solo from leader Andrew Haveron and warm, ardent Romanticism at the movement’s heart contributed to a splendid performance. ‘Mercury’ was, well, dashingly mercurial. Occasionally I wondered whether it might tip into the rushed or garbled, but that danger was just about averted. The briskness of ‘Jupiter’ proved an intelligent way of avoiding misplaced piety; instead, we experienced a lively, alert celebration of sorts, with a welcome sense of carnival. I liked it very much. It was depressing to see so many in the audience so clearly ‘settle down’ for ‘the big tune’, despite Gardner’s highly creditable refusal to milk it, opting instead for touching Elgarian nobility. (Still, a reminder of how England has changed would greet the conservative tendency as soon as it emerged from the hall into Lambeth and Southwark.) Sadly, and not for the first time, some elected to applaud at the movement’s close. ‘Saturn’ exhibited the right measure of mystery and dignity. Tread here was processional, almost liturgical, quite opposed to the militarism of ‘Mars’. Rejoicing, bells-and-all, when it came, remained equivocal, with a welcome hint of Mussorgsky. Near-daemonic possession was the hallmark of ‘Uranus’, its kinship to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice especially apparent. And finally, the strangeness of the opening woodwind solos to ‘Neptune’ was rendered abundantly clear, reminding us that we were not so very far from The Rite of Spring. There was something intriguingly beguiling and not just international but alien to this conclusion. Off-stage voices contributed, of course, but so did orchestral colour and balance. A considerably more questioning affair, then, than I had initially envisaged.

Tristan und Isolde, Welsh National Opera, 2 June 2012

Millennium Centre, Cardiff

Tristan – Ben Heppner

King Marke – Matthew Best

Isolde – Ann Petersen

Kurwenal – Phillip Joll

Melot – Simon Thorpe

Brangäne – Susan Bickley

Shepherd – Simon Crosby Buttle

Yannis Kokkos (director, designs)

Peter Watson (revival director)

Chorus of Welsh National Opera

Orchestra of Welsh National Opera

Lothar Koenigs (conductor)

Wagner famously declared to Mathilde Wesendonk that only mediocre performances of Tristan could save him, the power of the work being such that it would otherwise be banned. ‘Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive people mad, – I cannot imagine it otherwise.’ Alas, he – and we – must endure the opposite problem; when, at least in the theatre, do we ever have the chance to find out. It is difficult enough to find an orchestra with the requisite body of sound, let alone a conductor with the skill to communicate the melos of Wagner’s miraculous, treacherous score. Daniel Barenboim comes close, but the only conductors I have heard live truly to fulfil that heroic task have been Bernard Haitink and Semyon Bychkov. As ever, one longs for Furtwängler. I am delighted to report that Lothar Koenigs did a more than reasonable job, a distinct improvement upon his Proms Meistersinger. Moreover, the orchestra sounded far better here than it had done in the vast expanses of the Royal Albert Hall. I should be dishonest if I said there were no occasions on which the lack of a greater body of strings did not register, even on occasion painfully so, but far more often, I was taken aback at the degree of success with which the strings punched above their weight. The WNO woodwind section often excelled itself, clearly delighting in some interesting highlighting of lines often overlooked. (Barenboim often does something similar, in a nod to his experience with the orchestral sonorities of French music.)

To return to Koenigs, there was little here that seemed arbitrary, and if Wagner’s vast architectonic forms did not always register as they do in the finest hands, sections thereof possessed conviction, shape, and direction. Particularly impressive were the more menacing sections, for instance the violence one hears upon the arrival of Marke and Melot at Kareol, and Kurwenal’s response. Sadly, much of the good work was undone by the near-criminal cuts imposed upon the score. If I remember correctly, that in Act Two was not the so-called ‘traditional’ excision, but it was no less disorienting, the very heart of Wagner’s drama, verbal as well as musical, treated with disdain. (And yes, I am well aware that, conductors I revere, Haitink included, have acted similarly, though not always so.) The cut in Tristan’s monologue was worse still; indeed, its shock was so disorienting that I could not tell you precisely what was done; tonally, as well as verbally, it made no sense whatsoever. Doubtless the cuts were made for vocal rather than interpretative reasons, but they are no more excusable for that, which brings me to my next point.  

For, if conductors almost always fall short, their part almost seems the easiest to fulfil. What of the cast, and especially what of Tristan? I have never heard a singer up to its demands, at least not in the theatre. We all know what happened to Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld – or rather, we all tend to know the legend. At any rate, the days of a Windgassen, let alone a Suthaus, let alone a Melchior, seem to be gone forever. That said, some Tristans fare better than others. I had been heartened by reports from the first night, suggesting that Ben Heppner’s voice had rallied. (His 2009 appearance at Covent Garden was not a happy experience.) For the first act, the least challenging for the part, that just about seemed to be the case. One might even have made a claim for ruggedness as part of the character. And, to be fair, there were moments during the agonies of the third act monologue in which Heppner’s struggles – not just in terms of his vocal difficulties – proved moving, if perhaps more appropriate to Peter Grimes than to Tristan. Heppner really does not do erotic. I defy anyone, however, not to have found painful in the worst sense the swathes of the score in which there were not so much intonational problems as an inability to sing, apparently even to hear, the correct notes at all. There were certainly plenty of occasions when he was more than a tone out of kilter with the score. Moreover, the bareness in many registers of the voice, even when in tune, now sadly seems quite beyond repair.

That said, if one inevitably harks back to Nilsson, Flagstad, et al., Ann Petersen’s Isolde was more than creditable. There is neither the Lieder-singer’s detail that Nina Stemme brings to the role, nor the searing intensity of the unforgettable Waltraud Meier, but this young pretender is far from negligible. She sang intelligently, and for the most part with good command of line, though her tuning, especially during the second act duet, was not always so good as it might have been. Susan Bickley’s Brangäne was again an intelligent portrayal, alert to musical and verbal requirements, though oddly, the interjections from her second-act watch proved rather on the tremulous side. Phillip Joll’s Kurwenal was at best gruff, more often, I am afraid to say, merely crude. I almost always find myself saying that King Markes rarely disappoint; yet, if it would be exaggerated to say that Matthew Best’s assumption disappointed, his lament often lacked focus.

If, somehow, one had succeeded with respect to conductor, orchestra, and soloists, whatever, then, would one need to do successfully to stage the work? It needs staging; of that I have no doubt. And yet, it seems to need so little. Abstraction has in my experience always worked best, though one should not be prescriptive about it. Herbert Wernicke’s properly Schopenhauerian understanding impressed at Covent Garden under Haitink, only to be replaced by some typical reductionism from the dread Christof Loy. (At best, one can simply express relief that Loy’s effort was not quite so appalling as his Salzburg Frau ohne Schatten.) There are doubtless some who will applaud Yannis Kokkos’s apparent lack of any idea concerning the work, beyond presenting a diagonal onstage. It is only, however, if one compares this production to the likes of Loy’s that one could feel anything approaching relief. By all means do very little, but do not fetishise the stage directions, the realm of the day in those most nocturnal, metaphysical of dramas. I could not care less whether one sees a ship or not during the first act, though there is no harm in doing so. However, when, at the end, one is faced with sailors upon the masts, to no apparent purpose, one at best thinks the stance more appropriate to townsfolk rioting in Nuremberg, and in reality cannot help to be irritated by the naïveté of it all. Likewise the appearance of soldiers with Marke and Melot; they might have contributed something dramatically, I suppose, but on this occasion they certainly did not. There was no threat, merely distraction. The production has doubtless served its purpose after a fashion, but should surely now be replaced, though, given the potential horrors of a replacement, one can well understand the trepidation that might be felt in going ahead.

La Bohème, Welsh National Opera, 1 June 2012

Millennium Centre, Cardiff

Mimi – Anita Hartig

Musetta – Kate Valentine

Rodolfo – Alex Vicens

Marcello – David Kempster

Schaunard – Gary Griffiths

Colline – David Soar

Annabel Arden (director)

Stephen Brimson Lewis (designs)

Tim Mitchell (lighting)

Nina Dunn (projections)

Philippe Giraudeau (choreography)

Chorus of the Welsh National Opera

Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera

Carlo Rizzi (conductor)

Puccini, I think it is fair to say, will never be my favourite composer, but I have always admired his craftsmanship, and find much of interest in his harmony and his orchestration. Even if I dislike the obvious emotional manipulation, I used to feel not entirely dissimilarly with respect to Strauss, and long ago shed most, if not all, my qualms about that. I remain irked by the obviousness of some of the writing, the lack at times of anything much beneath the surface, and that seems to me a particular problem with some, though not all, of La Bohème. Nevertheless, there is not a single work I have heard by Puccini that I have not found more interesting than anything by Verdi, let alone Donizetti.

When it came to the Welsh National Opera’s staging, I confess that I had failed to do my homework beforehand. Upon seeing Annabel Arden’s offering, I therefore initially assumed it to be a venerable old production, very much on its last legs and was astonished to discover that this was in fact the first night of a new production. It was allegedly updated to Paris just before the outbreak of the Great War, but frankly, I doubt that anyone would have noticed had it not been pointed out. Apparently, the different hats – I am not making this up – gave away the slight updating. Quite what the point was eluded me, especially if one required an advanced diploma in millinery studies to appreciate it. For really, this resembled on stage the most overtly ‘traditional’ production one could imagine. The size of the garret was frankly ludicrous: surely any director and designer would wish to go beyond Zeffirelli; it is not, after all, difficult to advance beyond the utterly mindless. And when one appears not to have the resources to put anything in the space, one ends up with Zeffirelli-lite.

More seriously, it was difficult to discern even the slightest glimmer of an idea in Arden’s approach. WNO might as well have stuck with what it had before. O for the directorial ingenuity integrity of a Peter Konwitschny to make itself felt in such repertoire… (Stefan Herheim has mounted a highly-regarded Bohème in Oslo.) It would have the added benefit of annoying, probably even scandalising, all those people who attend ‘the opera’ for all the wrong reasons. Doubtless they were appeased on this occasion. I suspect, however, that they would have been as mystified as I was as to why, in an otherwise hyper-‘traditional’ production, a man dressed as a monkey appeared at the Café Momus. As for the projections between scenes, they at best resembled a computer screen saver: a waste of time, effort, and doubtless money.

 Carlo Rizzi, a former Music Director, conducted ably enough, but this was not a memorable orchestral account. A considerable amount of first two acts sounded a little on the ‘light’ side, more akin to a certain school of Mendelssohn performance. That was doubtless partly a matter of the orchestra, which at times simply did not have the necessary reserves of string sound on which to fall back, though on other occasions, it acquitted itself rather well, the woodwind in particular. However, it was difficult not to long for the Vienna Philharmonic, and/or for Karajan. Rizzi’s pacing was fine for the most part, although the fourth act dragged, even if that is partly a matter of the score.

The ladies for the most part fared better than the gentlemen. (I am afraid I cannot offer a full cast list, since I did not buy a programme and WNO’s website only identifies the principals.) Anita Hartig was for the most part a touching Mimi. She certainly has a beautiful voice, though her tuning sometimes went a little awry. Kate Valentine’s Musetta was perhaps the most captivating portrayal, a slight edge, especially during the second act, differentiating her nicely from Mimi. Indeed, the lilt, expertly judged, to Valentine’s rendition of ‘Quando me’n vo’ imparted character and sheer enjoyment in equal measure. Increased warmth of tone during the fourth act was apt and telling. Alex Vicens’s Rodolfo was not bad, though at times it veered dangerously close to a not very successful, indeed considerably underpowered, parody of Pavarotti, the sobs irritating beyond measure. If Puccini’s music is to be taken seriously, then that sort of bad tradition really ought to be stamped upon. David Kempster’s Marcello was sung well enough, but it was difficult to overlook his relative maturity, appearing more like a kindly great-uncle than a young artist.

The principal disappointment, however, remained Arden’s staging, a missed opportunity indeed. I remain hopeful that my next Bohème, in Salzburg this summer, will offer more, or at least some, food for thought. Perhaps it will persuade me that there is more dramatic continuity than I have been able to discern so far; at any rate, it will have the Vienna Philharmonic, Daniele Gatti, Anna Netrebko, and a director whose words at least give the impression of having considered what relevance this dangerously sentimental opera might yet retain.

Book Review: Charles Rosen, Freedom and the Arts

(This review originally appeared here, Charles Rosen's latest volume of collected essays being named Book of the Week in Times Higher Education.)

 I regularly recommend Charles Rosen's various writings to undergraduates reading music and have often done so to history undergraduates too. They certainly seem to appreciate him, even to the extent that an essay I recently marked furnished a fabricated Rosen citation to confirm a startling thesis of Mozart having time-travelled to crib some of his sacred arias from operas by Donizetti. Books such as The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Sonata Forms and Rosen's pregnant, slim volume on Schoenberg are staples not just of reading lists but, perhaps more importantly, of encounters by that elusive species, the educated general reader, with the fruits of musicology.

Rosen's breadth of interest and sympathy is one factor; another is that he is a writer who can write. This collection of essays, most but not all originating in The New York Review of Books, underlines and furthers appreciation of those and other virtues. Moreover, one is reminded that Rosen is more than a musicologist. Not only is he a pianist, having recorded works from Bach to Boulez, but he also surveys with enthusiastic erudition a number of literary topics.

One might expect a musicologist to be interested in writers with close relationships to music, such as Stephane Mallarme, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and even W. H. Auden, but Rosen's literary interests venture further. Thus we encounter Michel de Montaigne, Jean de La Fontaine, Bettina von Arnim and Robert Burton, whose The Anatomy of Melancholy is a reminder of a time, and not just that of its writing, for 48 editions were published during the 19th century, when "reading a lengthy, serious, and technical book was considered an agreeable and even entertaining way of passing the time". Rosen reminds us that Samuel Taylor Coleridge commented specifically upon its value as entertainment.

Bookishness, in the best sense, rears its head, Rosen evidently admiring Burton's ambition "to present everything that had ever been thought or written about melancholy". This short essay ranges from Horace and Seneca, via theologians Thomas Adams and Richard Hooker, to Alfred de Musset and Geoffrey Hill, finally pointing us to Jean Starobinski and his account of the theoretical foundations of psychosomatic medicine. It whets rather than sates the appetite as, not so incidentally, does a discussion of a new Pleiade volume devoted to the Marquis de Sade's Justine: "Lack of literary talent is largely irrelevant. I think it would be out of place to demand a stylistically engaging description of the joys of raping a small child or of pulling out all the teeth of a beautiful woman...Sade's work proposes urgently...the delight of naked cruelty independent of any aesthetic cover or charm."

However, it is with music, not merely "as music" but as one of the arts, that Rosen's concerns most often lie. The distinction between text and performance lies at the heart of many essays. This may be historical, in terms of changing images of Mozart, an old-fashioned 1920s editor worrying that an article by Hermann Abert darkened the composer's image, making him sound closer to Michelangelo than to Raphael. All the better, we Post-Expressionists might say; at any rate, a picture, or in this case an artist, is often worth a thousand analytical words. Or it may be a distinction more performative in emphasis, Rosen citing Richard Strauss' telling admonition to Arturo Toscanini: "My music has bad notes and good notes, and when I conduct it one hears only the good notes, but when you conduct it, I hear all the notes." That is a relationship between the book title's "freedom and the arts" worth pondering.

We may enjoy good-humoured puncturing of many of the more absurd claims of the "historically informed performance" school. I could not help but smile knowingly at the likening of revival of interest in opera seria to "that new conservative movement that hopes to revive French nineteenth-century academic painting", the former revival attributed to a "strange alliance of two comic figures, the antiquarian" more interested in "ancient instruments and obsolete styles of performance" than in music, and the "opera buff...more interested in sopranos". There is a good deal more to it than that and, as ever, Rosen gravely underestimates Mozart's almost Neo-Classical La Clemenza di Tito, yet he provokes in the best sense. Even when comparisons, intentionally defying simplistic historical categorisation, verge upon the tenuous - "Rousseau's subordination of everything in music...to the simplest form of melody was an interesting early version of dogmatic reaction to modernist complexity displayed by recent proponents of minimalism" - they stubbornly lodge themselves in the memory. What might we do on a rainy day with Rousseau and minimalism?

It is, moreover, surely exaggerated to claim that no one ever writes for posterity, even in the strong sense Rosen outlines. Liszt, for instance, did just that, not only in declaring his intention to "hurl a lance into the boundless realms of the future" - one might conceivably, if misguidedly, argue here for hyperbole and/or ideological avant-gardism - but in actively discouraging his pupils from performing his late, sometimes well-nigh atonal, piano works, lest their careers be harmed. Past readers of Rosen will recall that he does not much care for "interesting" but "minor" late Liszt, preferring the earlier works for their expansion of the frontiers of piano technique. It is no failing, however, if one ends up arguing with an essayist; Rosen's learning and generosity are signalled by the generally friendly nature of such argument.

Rosen's extended 2006 review of Richard Taruskin's The Oxford History of Western Music stands among others as a necessary, indeed model, supplement to Taruskin's monumental, pugnacious, highly polemical six volumes. He expounds and criticises Taruskin's purpose, not so that one would recoil from reading him, but so that one feels compelled to do so. Moreover, Rosen hits the nail squarely on the head when he writes, "Taruskin writes much better about music he likes than about music to which he is indifferent", let alone, one might add, that to which he is hostile. Indeed, "you cannot make sense of music without advocacy, and not to make sense of it is to condemn". One may, of course, wish to condemn; one may even have good reason to do so. "Taruskin's claim neither to advocate nor to denigrate the music he discusses" remains, however, "a hollow one". Part of his project, rightly or wrongly, is to de-centre, indeed actively to undermine European and above all Germanic tradition, whether by discerning (some might say obsessively) alleged anti-Semitism, by presenting an avowedly American "outsider" - neo-conservative? - perspective on 20th-century music, or by replacing Schoenberg with Shostakovich as an object of veneration. Rosen, not at all hostile to Beethoven, Schoenberg and European culture in general, gently furthers the innocent reader's awareness concerning Taruskin's ideological premises.

There are a few oddities in Harvard University Press' production values, none more glaring than "Richard Burton" for the aforementioned Robert. The musicologist Arnold Whittall loses his final "l"; we encounter "Karl-Heinz" rather than "Karlheinz" Stockhausen. Sir Harrison Birtwistle, as so often, becomes "Birtwhistle"; England's greatest composer since Purcell is surely the most frequently misspelled of all. If, however, I must resort to such pedantry to voice the obligatory cavil, the reader may rest assured of recommendation. If you know Rosen's work, you will doubtless require no urging; if not, then this is a good place to start. Thereafter, and whatever your feelings, if any, concerning the composer in question, you may proceed surely to Rosen's advocacy in Arnold Schoenberg.

Caligula, English National Opera, 25 May 2012

The Coliseum 

Caligula – Peter Coleman-Wright
Caesonia – Yvonne Howard
Helicon – Christopher Ainslie
Cherea – Pavlo Hunka
Scipio – Carolyn Dobbin
Mucius – Brian Galliford
Mereia, Lepidus – Eddie Wade
Livia – Julia Sporsén
Four Poets – Greg Winter, Philip Daggett, Gary Coward, and Geraint Hylton

Benedict Andrews (director)

Ralph Myers (set designs)

Alice Babidge (costume designs)

Jon Clark (lighting)

Dennis Sayers (choreography)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Francine Merry)

Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor)

Images: Johan Persson

Whatever qualifications I might go on to voice – not, I admit a promising start to a review – I am in no doubt that ENO deserves applause for its commitment to staging contemporary, or at least recent, Continental European opera. The idea that any house, even one styling itself ‘English National’, should restrict its repertoire on a basis anything other than quality, should be anathema to anyone who cares about the art form, and it is heartening to note that the present management agrees. For a German house to stage both Wolfgang Rihm’s Jakob Lenz and Detlev Glanert’s Caligula in the same season would be noteworthy; for an English company, it is cause for rejoicing. It was good, moreover, to see both present and past music directors, Edward Gardner and Sir Mark Elder, in the audience.

And yet… If only I could feel greater enthusiasm for the work itself. I suspect that Amanda Holden’s translation does not help, its flatness often evoking the language of the cereal packet as opposed to French existentialism. (The source is the play by Albert Camus.) There are a couple of amusing incidental moments, such as the line ‘crap nail varnish’ – presumably an operatic first – and, more tellingly, the line ‘We’re all in this together.’ Non-British readers may need enlightening, if that be the word, that the phrase is associated with the Chancellor of Exchequer, George Osborne, as a fig-leaf of social solidarity in the face of Government policies involving massive redistribution of wealth towards the rich, in the name of ‘austerity’.

But even putting language aside, and even if one can take an existentialist as opposed to a more seriously political take upon dictatorship - it seems fundamentally to be about bad or troubled personality, brought on by bereavement, with social and economic structures languishing unexplored – Glanert’s score is not up to much. There is a certain skill with respect to orchestration, but the harmony signals little more than threadbare neo-Romanticism, apparently without irony. If one might plot a scale running from knowingly allusive through derivative to, well, what my myriad of lawyer-friends would doubtless counsel me against writing, I doubt that one would put very much of the score on the allusive side of derivative. The most compelling music was that which sounded as if it had been lifted almost wholesale from Wozzeck. There was some catchy enough dance music after the interval, but Henze did that sort of thing far more powerfully in The Bassarids. (Now there is a work we need to see on a London stage!) Britten and Wagner – a reference seemed to be made to Tristan, though I could not for the life of me understand why – were other ‘closely related’ composers; it does not seem worth the effort to trace such relationships further. Perhaps worst, the opera goes on far too long, seemingly in need of a good editor. It sounds more like a piece presented at a first workshop session than a finished article.

Helicon (Christopher Ainslie)

All of which is a pity, given that the performers and production team approached it with evident enthusiasm and skill. Perhaps the drama might have been stronger had Caligula been awarded a more prepossessing voice than that of Peter Coleman-Wright – a Matthias Goerne, for instance – but Coleman-Wright acted well, and seemed to relish his drag turn after the interval. Christopher Ainslie was perhaps the star of the show, his counter-tenor Helicon, Caligula’s slave, making one keen to hear him in Britten and other florid roles, ancient and modern. He also, not unreasonably, seemed to enjoy the opportunity to look good in a toga. Carolyn Dobbin presented an undoubtedly sincere Scipio, who might genuinely have moved, had the work permitted. The rest of the cast all impressed, both musically and in terms of acting. So did Ryan Wigglesworth’s incisive, indeed passionate, conducting, the ENO Orchestra once again on excellent form. I wish I could have shared the performers’ belief, though I am glad for their sake that they possessed it.

I have seen better work from Benedict Andrews, not least his unforgettable Return of Ulysses for ENO last season, but there of course he was dealing with a towering masterpiece, and there is certainly much to applaud in his stadium-based staging. The socio-political dimension missing from the work itself has greater prominence here. Caligula’s madness may indeed start off partly a game of capitalism, its tawdry wares of entertainment gathering a momentum of their own. Livia’s Rebekah Brooks hair-do raised a smile on my part, though that may have been coincidence rather than intent. The emptiness of fascism, the emergency strategy of monopoly capitalism as some of us are still old-fashioned enough to believe, shone through in a more meaningful way than a merely empty score. Some members of the audience clearly relished the return of the once statutory ENO nude – I recall her running onstage like a streaker in the middle of the Wolf’s Glen Scene from Der Freischütz and running back off again – since applause for her seemed more vociferous than for many who had actually sung.

London Sinfonietta/Atherton - 'In Portrait: Harrison Birtwistle', 24 May 2012

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Cortege

Five Distances

Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum

In Broken Images, after Gabrieli (British premiere)

London Sinfonietta

David Atherton (conductor)

From his remarks in conversation with Tom Service, it would seem that Sir Harrison Birtwistle was given free rein, presumably within reason, to select the pieces to be performed in this 'In Portrait' concert. He elected to programme two pieces requiring a conductor in the second half, but two without in the first. Indeed, he had recalled, when composing Ritual Fragment, in memory of Michael Vyner, the London Sinfonietta's artistic director, that he had thought conductors overrated, and had therefore set out to write a piece that would not require one. That 1989 work formed the basis for the 2007 Cortege, the first piece performed this evening. (It is also dedicated to Vyner's memory.) Ritual is fundamental to so much of Birtwistle's music, but it is perhaps especially overt here. One has the sense of an offering, in which all but four of the fourteen players come to the front as soloists, sometimes overlapping, to make their own, personal remembrance or tribute, 'like giving flowers'. The opening trumpet solo put me in mind of the opening of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, and not just, at least I think not, because I had, but a week ago, heard Alistair Mackie, also principal trumpet for the Philharmonia, open that work with equal commitment. Thoughts of Mahler's Fifth recurred to me throughout: maybe just coincidence, but no less real a personal experience for that. Written whilst Birtwistle was at work on Gawain, and thus immersed in the Ring, the presence of bass trumpet brought, as the composer himself remarked, Götterdämmerung to mind. Perhaps inevitably in such a context, bass drum thwacks also suggested Mahler's Tenth Symphony, though here the structural function, if perhaps not entirely dissimilar, is by the same token not the same. The drum strokes provide solo cues, anchoring the piece together, 'decorated upbeat' and downbeat assuming something of the conductor's role. As ever in Birtwistle's work, different perspectives are very much part of the concept. And as so often, there is a sense, a raw, violent sense, of the antique. Loss, melancholy, defiant tribute came together in a deeply moving work and performance. Moreover, the final flute solo (Michael Cox) provided a true sense of summation, not just in itself, but on account of the flautist's walk around the semicircle, to invite, as it were, his soloist colleagues to remember, briefly, their remembrances.

Five Distances, for five instruments (1992) was next up. Birtwistle recalled having played a good number of French wind quintets when young, but it is difficult to find much common ground between boutique neo-Classicism and this spatial reimagining of the ensemble. Placed as far apart as they could be - well, almost - around the stage of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the players, or perhaps rather their music, celebrate and dramatise difference rather than similarity. After all, as Birtwistle pointed out, the only truly related instruments in the ensemble are oboe and bassoon, and even in that case, the difference in register is striking. Michael Thompson's resplendent horn performed a role similar in a sense to the previous piece's bass drum, setting the tempo and setting up the vertical music, whereas the horizontal music is different whenever it is played. The score's thorny beauties were expertly conveyed, the effect at times perhaps not entirely unlike a harsh Northern landscape.

After the interval, we were treated to a fine performance, under David Atherton's direction, of the 1977 work, Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum. Just as illuminating, both in general terms and with more specific reference to this work, was what Birtwistle had to say beforehand. Strikingly, he announced, 'I consider myself to be a sort of 1910 modernist. ... Cubism is my thing.' Citing Picasso – ‘everything he did was radical’ – and Braque, he noted that more theory came out of Cubism than necessarily went into it at the time. Nevertheless, this ‘Perpetual Song of a Mechanical Arcadia’ was, he thought, a work quite without concessions, without compromise, and indeed it sets out in almost textbook fashion so many typical Birtwistle techniques or concepts: verse forms and refrains, clockwork determinism – I thought more than once of the more recent Harrison’s Clocks, for piano solo – layering of material, in which one has an independent layer of dynamics, another of registers, and so on: all of these and indeed a good few others are present and correct. So very correct, in a work in which Birtwistle, at work on his incidental music for Tony Harrison’s National Theatre translation of the Oresteia, wished to evoke the effect of a Roman title inscription, foursquare, without punctuation, upon the wall. Reading at the time Paul Klee’s pedagogical works, especially interested in Klee’s understanding of the nature of material, he was inspired also by Klee’s concept of the ‘dividual’ – as opposed to the ‘individual’ – in which, like a frieze or wallpaper, a part could be taken away and yet the thing itself would remain. And so, one could imagine the larger frieze Birtwistle had created, from which part had randomly – perhaps – been cut. From the independent layers, tightly controlled, random things could still arise; another preoccupation at the time was random number theory. And the riveting drama of the fermatas was unmistakeably Birtwistle’s, again both in work and in performance.

Finally came the United Kingdom premiere of the 2011 work, In Broken Images, first performed by the London Sinfonietta at the MiTo Settembre Musica Festival. Its title derives from a Robert Graves poem; it was intriguing to hear Birtwistle speak in this reference of how he no longer needs to create a greater whole from which to cut; he can now, in his own words, ‘fake it’. The four sections of the orchestra, strings, woodwind, brass, and percussion are seated separately in blocks, clearly a reference to Gabrieli’s polychoral writing. Moreover, in another sign of tribute, it is with brass that the work opens, Stravinskian fanfares coming to mind as another reference point. Once again, a mechanistic quality of layering was brought powerfully to the fore in another, unmistakeably hieratic composition. I wondered a little, despite the undoubted accomplishment, whether there was slightly a sense of retreading old ground, but this was but a first hearing, and I should not be remotely surprised to discern new paths upon further listening.

 

Volodos - Schubert, Brahms, and Liszt, 22 May 2012

Royal Festival Hall

Schubert – Sonata in A minor, D 784

Brahms – Three Intermezzi, op.117

Liszt – Sonata in B minor, S 178

Arcadi Volodos (piano)

Though I have long been aware of his reputation, this was the first time, whether on disc or in the concert hall, that I had heard Arcadi Volodos. I suspect that it will turn out also to be the last. There were peculiarities, which is arguably to put it mildly, to the first half, but I had assumed that Liszt would play more to Volodos’s strengths; as it turned out, I should have been better advised to have left at the interval.

The first movement of Schubert’s A minor sonata, D 784, added up to considerably less than the sum of its parts, even when the parts were often distinctly odd. There were fine moments, such as a beautifully quiet opening, though the sonority seemed more suited to Tchaikovsky than to Schubert. Moreover, Volodos showed himself alert to, or at least suggestive of, those weird foreshadowings of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. However, one often, for instance at the opening of the second group, had a sense of him holding back, afraid – doubtless not without reason – of unleashing his firepower upon a composer whose temperament might seem somewhat less than an ideal match. That said, there was certainly little holding back in the development section, which sounded, if hardly idiomatic, at least impressive. Volodos, from his outward appearance, was clearly committed to what he was doing, apparently lost in his own reveries. But as for what Schubert’s music might mean, let alone how it might add up… The slow movement had ultra-Romantic tone lavished upon it, and I can imagine that many would think it drawn out. Yet at least – and certainly by comparison with its predecessor – it had purpose and coherence. It sounded rather like a Liszt transcription of a Schubert song: not quite right, perhaps, but not so bad either. The finale had a surprisingly Brahmsian tone to its opening, not at all unfitting. Melodic oases were exquisitely voiced, moving in their way, though it was really too late by now.

The Brahms Intermezzi, op.117, received an individual reading by any standards, yet arguably provided the highlight of the evening. Each of the three pieces followed a similar trajectory: voicing as exquisite as that mentioned in the final movement of the Schubert sonata, with half-lighting – or perhaps rather less than half – wondrously evoked. I am not sure that I have ever heard the opening of the E-flat intermezzo so meltingly beautiful. Were the performances distended? Almost certainly, yet they intrigued rather than infuriated. Brahms sounded closer to Chopin, and in the central section of the third, to Liszt, than to Schoenberg; however, there was at the end a sense of loss, of aching longing, that stood not entirely unrelated to Brahms.

The Liszt B minor sonata opened with great promise, the piano sound apparently just right. Unfortunately, even that soon descended into bludgeoning, the delicate passages coming off much better. Why, however, I soon asked myself, all the agogic accents? Why the inserted pauses? Why was everything pulled around to no apparent purpose? This of all works, certainly the most extraordinary piano sonata in formal conception between Schubert and Boulez, requires a musician who will project both its overall structure and its motivic cohesion. Volodos turned the work into something resembling an over-extended operatic paraphrase. He did not deserve the minute or so when an audience member declined to answer the telephone, just as he had not deserved the barrage of coughing here and in the first half, but this was as uncomprehending a performance of Liszt’s towering masterpiece as I have ever heard. That many members of the audience could greet it with a standing ovation for me simply beggared belief. Whatever would they do, were they, to cite two recent outstanding performances on the South Bank, to hear Maurizio Pollini or Pierre-Laurent Aimard perform the work? Here, alas, there was not the slightest sense of an Idea. Most of the recapitulation was simply brutalised. Oddly, the first encore, Liszt’s En rêve sounded, if a little sugary, at least conceived of in a single breath. As for the other encores, I think I have said enough already.

Loriot Hustensymphonie

Contemporary performance practice, as sent to me by a kind reader...

Kožená/Uchida - Mahler, Debussy, and Messiaen, 20 May 2012

Wigmore Hall

Mahler – Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn

Debussy – Chansons de Bilitis

Mahler – Rückert-Lieder

Debussy – Ariettes oubliées

Messiaen – Poèmes pour Mi: Book II (selection)

Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano)

Dame Mitsuko Uchida (piano)

Though an announcement was made to the effect that Magdalena Kožená was suffering from a sore throat, for the most part one would barely have known, for this was a fine recital, intriguingly programmed and committed in performance. It did no harm, of course, having a pianist of the stature of Dame Mitsuko Uchida, the individuality of her artistry apparent from the introduction to ‘Rheinlegendchen,’ the first of the two Wunderhorn sonds. Uchida’s shaping of phrases, her voicing of harmonies, and the sheer weight of tone made it abundantly clear that this was no ‘accompanist’. The individuality of Kožená’s voice, a deep mezzo that sometimes borders upon the rare realm of the contralto, was an equal joy to experience. Searing drama was to be heard in ‘Das irdische Leben,’ its tale of a child’s starvation peering forward towards the Rückert-Lieder heard later in the programme and indeed to Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder. The final line, starkly delivered, ‘Lag das Kind auf der Totenbahr’ (‘The child lay on the funeral bier’), chilled to the bone.

The Rückert-Lieder were equally distinguished. ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’ brought an almost straightforward sunniness, whilst the will-o’-the-wisp quality imparted to ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!’ inevitably reminded one of Schubert’s ‘Irrlicht’. Uchida’s leaning into accented notes was judged to dramatic perfection. A chilling stillness pervaded the piano introduction to ‘Um Mitternacht’, its first interlude well-nigh orchestral in its colour – and drama. The blissful repose both artists conveyed in the final stanza of ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ provided a spellbinding conclusion to the first half.

In between the two Mahler sets we had heard the contrasting erotics of Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis. Uchida’s experience in Debussy really told, the opening to ‘La flute de Pan’ sounding as if a newly-discovered Prélude, its conclusion simply exquisite in its touch. Kožená’s quasi-spoken vocal style drew inevitable parallels with Pelléas et Mélisande, whose latter role she has sung with her husband, Sir Simon Rattle. ‘La chevelure’ could also not help but bring to mind that most subtly ravishing of operas (with the perennial exception of Così), the deepness of Kožená’s voice an especial boon here. The climax, ‘ou que tu entrais en moi comme mon songe’ (‘where you enter into me, as in my dream’) left one in need of a cold shower afterwards. Ecstasy was finely counterbalanced in ‘Le tombeau des Naïades’ by the fine sense of storytelling Kožená brought to proceedings.

Ariettes oubliées opened the second half. ‘C’est l’extase langoureuse, c’est la fatigue amoureuse,’ are Verlaine’s opening lines – and so it was: languorous rapture, amorous fatigue. Attention to detail without the slightest hint of exaggeration is crucial to these songs, a splendid example of which was the expectant pause, beautifully judged, after ‘C’est’, before ‘vers les ramures grises’. An unfortunate broken note upon the final word, ‘bas’ was a rare sign of Kožená’s indisposition. The dramatically, musically alert playing Uchida contributed to ‘Il pleure dans mon cœur,’ once again had one fancy this was a piano Prélude – with obbligato voice. Uchida’s virtuosity and Kožená’s vocal impetuosity proved a fine match in ‘Chevaux de bois’, its final stanza bringing an apt sense of sickness, following the whirling of the merry-go-round. ‘Spleen’ was operatic, but never too much – just like Pelléas itself, of course.

Messiaen’s Poèms pour Mi, or rather a selection from the second book, made one long to hear these artists in both books. Uchida brought an unsurpassable feeling for harmony and its progression. ‘L’épouse,’ the first song programmed, benefited from startling muscular performances from her and from Kožená: one was left in no doubt of the imperative to go where the Spirit leads. Rhythmic command is equally crucial, as displayed in an ecstatic ‘Ta voix’ (second) and the difficult metrics of the final ‘Prière exaucée’, whose melismatic solos terrified and mesmerised. In between, we heard an intensely dramatic, both weird and orthodox ‘Les deux guerriers,’ which penetrated to the very heart of Messiaen’s unique French mysticism, and a duly heated ‘Le collier’, two arms entwined around the neck.

Concertgebouw/Haitink - Bruckner, 20 May 2012

Barbican Hall

Symphony no.5 in B-flat major (revised version, 1877-8)

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

I rarely find myself in the realm of the juste milieu, ever aware of Schoenberg’s dictum that only the middle road does not lead to Rome. Nevertheless, when it comes to Bruckner, I seem to be somewhere along that road, slightly fearful of where its non-Roman destination might turn out to be. I admire the later symphonies greatly; indeed, the final two I find truly awe-inspiring. The earlier works I continue, however, to find problematical, and cannot help but contrast their formal difficulties – devotees will doubtless respond that the difficulties are mine, not Bruckner’s, and perhaps they are – with the unanswerable ‘rightness’ and satisfaction afforded by Brahms. Nor can I bring myself to become hopelessly absorbed in the business of interminable numbers of ‘versions’, though I cannot help but think that some judicious editorial work would not necessarily be a bad thing.

It is testament, then, to the excellence of this performance from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Bernard Haitink – ‘in the presence’ of a Dutch princess of whom I had never heard, but who required a welcoming committee and police guard – that there were times when I was almost convinced. Not all of the time, I admit, but I do not recall hearing a better sense of the work as a whole, not even from Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra last year. From the opening pizzicati, orchestra and conductor were utterly at home. The excellence of playing was such that a split horn note registered more strongly than otherwise it would have done. The weight, both sonorous and historical, of the Concertgebouw’s bass line contrasted strongly with the lighter approach adopted by Abbado. This was Bruckner with a reassuringly traditional, almost mediævalist, character to our pilgrim’s progress. There was, moreover, the inestimable advantage of having a great Wagnerian at the helm, even down to the level of the handling, the resounding, of string tremolos. Haitink’s way with – I am tempted to say, ‘creation of’ – the melos, the guiding thread, almost convinced me that Bruckner could develop here, rather than juxtapose. The splendid peals of rejoicing at the end proved a fitting culmination to a journey led by the surest of guides.

Command of line was equally supreme in the slow movement, likewise Haitink’s ability to conjure so gloriously full an orchestral sound – and, of course, the orchestra’s ability to provide it. Lucas Macías Navarro’s oboe solos were an especial melancholy joy. Indeed, the oases of woodwind stillness had me spellbound. I truly felt that the pathways, thickets even, mattered, as well as beguiled; Haitink again proved a magisterial guide. The abruptness of transition between material in the scherzo I continued to find bewildering, perhaps bizarre, but everything was wonderfully characterised and the menace imparted to peasant dances proved properly terrifying.

Apparent reassurance in the return of earlier material at the opening of the finale, after the model of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, was immediately questioned by the majesty of the Concertgebouw’s brass section in voicing the chorale. One could not doubt the conviction in all the contrapuntal working out that followed, riveting in its way, and yet, does it not actually go on a bit? Does the writing of a fugue not continue to feel like an externally-imposed decision rather than an organic dictate of the material? In a lesser performance, I might have started gazing at my watch, but not here. Nevertheless, longing for a spot, or more than a spot, of Brahmsian developing variation was still felt on my doubtless heretical part. That said, the magnificence of the playing at the conclusion sent shivers down the spine. It was a pity, then, that someone who sounded suspiciously similar to the idiotic purveyor of multiple Bravos at the previous Barbican Concertgebouw appearance(under Mariss Jansons) again contrived to make his presence felt immediately.

Arensky CO/Kunhardt - Mozart, 19 May 2012

Cadogan Hall

Sinfonia concertante, for violin and viola, KV 364

Symphony no.41 in C major, KV 551, ‘Jupiter’

Andrew Haveron (violin)

Andriy Viytovych (viola)

Arensky Chamber Orchestra

William Kunhardt (conductor).

This was the final instalment of a three-concert series, Revolutionaries of Vienna, from the Arensky Chamber Orchestra. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the previous two concerts, devoted to Beethoven and Haydn, but was keen to hear whether Mozart would receive his due, which in large part he did. Regular readers, should I have any, will be aware that there is no composer about whom I am touchier or more exacting – delete according to taste – than Mozart, so that is no mean praise, especially for so young an orchestra.

Or perhaps not, for I was encouraged to think that maybe what used to be called the 'green shoots of recovery '– none of us today even thinks those exist economically – might be seen in the battle against the monstrous regiments of authenticity. Maybe it is actually the case that the absurd zealotry of the Leonhardts, Hogwoods, Norringtons, et al., will die with them. Certainly this performance of the Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola suggested that there were still musicians who were willing to treat Mozart as music, rather than as some preposterous parody of a pseudo-archaeological exercise. Conductor William Kunhardt’s tempi were well chosen, seemingly dictated, or rather suggested, by the music, instead of imposed upon it. There will always be different options one might follow, or let us at least hope so, but even if the slow movement were less ‘slow’ than one once might have expected, it flowed rather than being harried – and the closing bars displayed an alert ear for Mozart’s ineffable sense of tragedy. (The relationship between E-flat major and C minor in Mozart is always powerful; consider, for instance, the ninth piano concerto or the twenty-third.) From the opening bars of the first movement, the orchestra showed itself alert, sprightly, and yet always, crucially, warm in timbre. Soloists Andrew Haveron and Andriy Viytovych complemented each other and the orchestra with excellence. The richness of Viytovych’s tone and the sweetness of that of Haveron again took one back to an age that respected Mozart enough never to make him sound remotely unpleasant. (However is it the case that we have reached a situation in which it has become almost de rigueur?) And there was a fine sense of fun, not at least in the finale, whose progress was shaped by an excellent command of line from all concerned. As a welcome encore, we were treated to the slow movement of the second duo for violin and viola, KV 424, deceptive in its apparent simplicity.

I was a little less enamoured with the performance of the Jupiter Symphony, though my reservations were principally restricted to the first movement. Here I wondered, despite undoubtedly committed playing from the ACO, whether there remained a few spectres of ‘authenticity’ to be banished. It seemed unsmiling, driven, unwilling to relax even for the second subject. Moreover, there was a certain astringency to violin tone such as had never surfaced in the first half. Here, and not only here, the kettledrums were more prominent than they might have been, very much in the fashion nowadays favoured. Nevertheless, the slow movement flowed in a good sense. Again, one might have wished for a more relaxed approach – though I can imagine that many, by the same token, would not – but there were splendid details revealed along the way, especially from a fine woodwind section. Though taken one-to-a-bar, there was nevertheless plenty of welcome give-and-take in the minuet, orchestral musicians clearly listening to each other as estimable chamber musicians. The miracles of the finale will never pall; repeats were taken, for which one felt not the slightest regret.

R.I.P Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925-2012)

Philharmonia/Gatti - Wagner and Mahler, 17 May 2012

Royal Festival Hall

Wagner – Parsifal: Prelude to Act I and ‘Good Friday Music’

Mahler – Symphony no.5

Philharmonia Orchestra
Daniele Gatti (conductor)

Let there be no beating about the bush: this was a great concert. Taking time off from conducting Falstaff at Covent Garden – why can we not hear him there in Wagner, Strauss, Schoenberg, Berg…? – Daniele Gatti led the Philharmonia Orchestra in excerpts from Parsifal and Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Parsifal was instantly recognisable as ‘his’ Parsifal from Bayreuth. Not only was the Prelude ‘lit from behind’, in Debussy’s doubtless over-used and yet essential phrase; it emerged in its opening free-floating, transcendent, though that quality would be dialectically opposed by increasing striving. (One might point here to the dramatic conflict between Hegelian and Schopenhauerian tendencies and influences in Wagner’s thought.) The sound Gatti drew from the Philharmonia might have been that of a great Continental orchestra. String depth and sonority, woodwind purity, quasi-liturgical brass certainty: all not sounded wonderful but played a dramatic role born of lengthy experience in the theatre. I was compelled to want to tell Nietzsche that I was proud to be a Wagnerian – and then remembered how, following years of a priori abuse, it was hearing this Prelude that utterly bowled over the apostate philosopher. The ‘Good Friday Music’ rarely seems to me a well-advised ‘bleeding chunk’, though I suppose that it is inevitable conductors and orchestras will wish to play it in the concert hall from time to time. Insofar as it makes sense by itself, it sounded both questing and consoling, quite mesmerising. Gatti shaped its contours meaningfully – again, insofar as he could – in both motivic and harmonic terms. However, I could not help missing everything that should have gone in between.

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, like the Parsifal excerpts, was conducted without a score. The excellence of Alastair Mackie’s opening trumpet solo – I suspect he will have played it a good few times, but am sure it will always remain a challenge – offered a good sign of things to come. Tempo, which is so much more than speed, seemed just right, the dialectic Gatti traced and brought to life between onward tread and Weltschmerz suggestive of the first movement of the Sixth. Slight pulling back on the beat ensured that progress sounded hard work, as it should; and then, he pressed on, blending fury and defiance. This was a highly dramatic reading, utterly gripping, as much so even as Leonard Bernstein’s celebrated Vienna account. The closing bars exhibited a true sense of the apocalyptic, looking forward to late works such as the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Symphonies. A furious attack led us straight into the second movement, another hallmark of this performance being the keen characterisation of the symphony’s three parts (movements one and two/three/four and five). The Philharmonia’s strings really dug into the music, cellos especially noteworthy in that respect. Mahler’s mood here sounded akin to the bitter drunkenness of the first movement of Das Lied von der Erde, that mood coming to contrast with an almost Wagnerian eroticism (Tristan). Violin solos from leader Andrew Haveron impinged upon our consciousness as if fleeting ghosts from the Fourth Symphony. And, in this of all movements, there were plenty of false dawns, to confound – or perhaps even to fulfil? – our hopes. Above all, Gatti’s dramatic sweep, his sense of the whole, made this a special reading. A hint of Lisztian bombast at the emergence of the chorale, soon of course to be denied, made perfect sense in this context, the Philharmonia, and not just its brass, sounding magnificent here.

The scherzo’s opening brought another great contrast with its Alpine bucolics, though they would soon be questioned by nagging disintegrative counterpoint, a properly Adornian dialectic. In a sense, Mahler’s celebrated desire for a symphony to encompass a world was taken further: this movement appeared to do so in itself – though, of course, there is no ‘in itself’, its pivotal function making it what it is. Would-be carefree charm and an echt-Viennese lilt made themselves felt. Counterpoint seemed to be attempting to become something less Mephistophelean, more constructive: could Mahler yet become Bach? No answers, quite rightly, were forthcoming, for this is such a radically inconclusive movement, as captured to perfection in the strivings to life of that extraordinary pizzicato dance of death – or should that be strivings to death of a dance of live? And those final bars: the movement in microcosm, almost in absurdum. They terrified and elated. Mahler is not a drug, as I occasionally feared during my teenage years; he is a thousand times more powerful.

Forget silly arguments about the Adagietto. It can work – or not – in various ways, according to the context of the performance. Here, it was a warm, erotic, though anything but decadent, love-song. Beautifully shaped, poignantly sincere, one could not separate ‘work’ and ‘performance’. Bright sounds from the woodwind emerged from its conclusion, the third part of the symphony taken, like the first, without a break. Bachian lessons seemed well learned – or were they parodied, a dubious praise of ‘hohen Verstandes’? An either/or approach is to miss the point, which Gatti certainly did not. Mahler’s contrapuntal ingenuity and drive was certainly enjoyed. Radical discontinuities were voiced – this is such a tricky movement, in such a tricky symphony – but in dialectic with a sense of the whole. Battle was not nearly so easily won as it is in many performances, a Beethovenian journey from darkness to light no longer possible. This was a distinguished conclusion to a distinguished performance. After so many disappointments during unnecessary ‘anniversary’ performances, Mahler in his second century truly became special once again.