Pike/Arensky CO/Kunhardt - Ravel, Couperin, and Beethoven, 7 May 2013

Queen Elizabeth Hall

 

Ravel – Le Tombeau de Couperin
Couperin – Concerts royaux (excerpts)
Beethoven – Violin Concerto in D major, op.61

Jennifer Pike (violin)

Arensky Chamber Orchestra

William Kunhardt (conductor)

 

Matthew Sharp (actor)

Simon Gethin Thomas (lighting)

 

It is an obvious thing to do, or at least one might hope it would be, to perform Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin with music from Couperin’s Concerts royaux; the problem is that to do so nowadays is to take on the ‘authenticity’ Taliban, a task which many, in the teeth of such vociferous hostility, have decided is no longer worth it. They are wrong, yet one can understand the reasons for their wariness. After all, even Pierre Boulez, not a stranger to controversy, once ruefully remarked, concerning Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, ‘... even as I was making my way forward, until about 1978, the specialists were simultaneously taking over. They were starting to say, “If they’re not played in the true baroque manner, with baroque instruments, it’s useless to play them any other way.” Then one isn’t going to play them at all.’ One would have thought it axiomatic that, in Boulez’s words, ‘A musician approaching an eighteenth-century work after playing something from the twentieth would have a much broader view than these eighteenth-century specialists who end up locking themselves in an antique armoire.’ Alas it has taken longer than anyone, perhaps even Adorno, might have feared to escape the armoire, a state of affairs compounded by the culture industry’s compartmentalisation of ‘period’ music as something akin to so-called ‘costume drama’. Three cheers, then, to the Arensky Chamber Orchestra, already having made quite a name for itself in terms of bold programming and bold presentation, for defying the armoire fatwas! 

 

Anyway, irrespective of inclement performing conditions, the concert’s the thing. Interspersing movements from the first, third, and fourth Concerts royaux with those from Le Tombeau de Couperin proved an inspired choice. The ‘Prélude’ was swift, fleeting even, perhaps a reflection of the relatively small forces (strings 6.5.4.4.2) but perhaps not. The sharp attack and unanimity I have noted on previous occasions again proved a hallmark of the ACO’s excellent ensemble. William Kunhardt conducted without the score (though he would use one for Beethoven.) Urgency was perhaps underlined by the players’ standing to play (save for cellos and basses). The ‘Prélude’ from the Third Couperin suite was taken, as indeed were all the Couperin excerpts, with darkened lighting, focused upon the soloists, a chamber rather than orchestral approach having been decided upon. It was a good choice to follow the Ravel, not least on account of the continuity of oboe-playing (here, beguilingly played by Johnny Roberts). Strings, who had definitely been ‘accompanying’, came into their own in the ensuing ‘Forlane’ from the fourth Concert royal. Rhythms were nicely turned throughout. Ravel’s ‘Forlane’ was characterised by freshness, by a spring in its step, rhythmic alertness apparently ‘carried over’ from its Couperin predecessor. The ‘Menuet’ was more relaxed, indeed affectionate, Kunhardt differentiating it nicely from the previous dance. Harmonic echoes of, for instance, the Pavane pour une infante défunte were allowed to speak; rubato was well judged. There was a true sense of a world – ‘real’ or ‘imaginary’ – lost. The ‘Menuet en trio’ from Couperin’s first suite had a good degree of give-and-take between parts; violin, flute, and cello were equal partners in a graceful reading. Strings again played alone in the ‘Rigaudon’ from the fourth: a catchy reading, somewhat akin to courtlier Purcell, with especially fine articulation from Charlotte Maclet’s violin. Ravel’s own ‘Rigaudon’ perhaps suffered a little from less-than-ideal balance, the brass somewhat dominating the small orchestra. Otherwise, it was a lively account, with welcome hints of greater languor in the central section.

 

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto followed the interval: a contrast rather than a connection, but no less welcome for that. Actor Matthew Sharp, dressed as Beethoven, seated at a desk, read the ever-moving Heiligenstadt Testament (in translation), after which Jennifer Pike, a former BBC Young Musician of the Year, joined the orchestra onstage. Wind instruments were naturally more prominent in a small orchestral performance than they would have been with a full symphony orchestra, and very good they were too. But there was, from the outset, a febrile intensity to the string playing too. Kunhardt led a relatively swift, but never hard-driven, performance of the first movement, Pike proving a bright- and clean-toned soloist, quite ready to yield where necessary. Ensemble was again excellent throughout. If the soloist’s intonation were not always perfect, nor were any such shortcomings other than minor. Certainly, taken as a whole there was a proper sense of the goodness of composer and music, as heard in the Testament, and anyone who does not regard Beethoven’s music as concerned with ethics has no business performing it. Small string forces emphasised the kinship of the slow movement with chamber music, poised in this case not so very far away from the Beethoven of the string quartets, whilst woodwind offered a quickening sense of the world of the outdoor serenade. Pike’s silvery tone brought the music closer to Mendelssohn than one often hears. The transition to the finale was very well handled by conductor and orchestra alike; that movement brought with it more than a faint echo of the Mozartian ‘hunting’ finale, more ebullient than often, and rather winningly so. Horns and other wind unquestionably sounded in their element.

Arditti Quartet, JACK Quartet - Clarke, Mincek, Pelzel, and Lanza, 6 May 2013

Wigmore Hall

James Clarke – 2012-S, for two string quartets (2012, British premiere)

Alex Mincek – String Quartet no.3, ‘lift – tilt – filter – split’ (2009-10, London premiere)
Michael Pelzel - ... vers le vent ... (2010, British premiere)
Mauro Lanza – Der Kampf zwischen Karneval und Fasten, for eight strings (2012, British premiere)

 

Irvine Arditti, Ashot Sarkissjan (violins)
Ralf Ehlhers (viola)
Lucas Fels (cello)

Christopher Otto, Ari Streisfeld (violins)

John Pickford Richards (viola)
Kevin McFarland (cello)

 

A hurricane had prevented the Arditti Quartet and the JACK Quartet from coming together in November to present these two British premieres from James Clarke and Mauro Lanza. The Ardittis had nevertheless presented a programme of four quartets, one of them as shockingly old as to date from 2002-3, again a Clarke work, his first string quartet. Now we heard the postponed premieres, plus two more: Alex Mincek’s third string quartet (a London premiere, anyway) and Michael Pelzel’s ... vers le vent ....

 

Clarke’s 2012-S is written for two string quartets rather than a string octet, the point being the relationship between the two quartets, who sometimes play together, but at others pass material between each other, transform it, or, in the composer’s term, ‘contradict’ it. The quartets might, for instance, play at slightly different speeds, ‘all ... precisely written and timed’. Effort seems very much part of the sound – and the meaning? There is real violence in the conversation, and yet, even if at some remove, the quartet convention of ‘conversation’ seems to remain – as it did in this fine performance. Polyphony, even cacophony, is part of the extremity, and yet a sense of unity remains, almost akin to older homophony, and not only in the lengthy sustaining chords whose obvious contrast lies with much faster material.

 

Alex Mincek’s third quartet, ‘lift – tilt – filter – split’, concerns itself at one level with representation, in the composer’s words, of ‘physical shape, tactility, and movement’, the listener being permitted ‘to bounce back and forth from the recognition of the unique parts and the undifferentiated whole’. Near, though not total, identity, may often be found between one phrase and the next, but change, be it in ‘composite rhythm’, timbre, pitch, and register content, nevertheless occurs; there is not the slightest sense of static. Insofar as I was able to tell, the JACK Quartet captured that process very well indeed, proving fine advocates for the work. The performance opened as if on a coiled spring,  with tight rhythmic focus and attack. Quasi-echoes in harmonics offered a contrasting soundworld, as did the scurrying of high violins, perhaps echoing, if only accidentally, certain string writing of Schoenberg, which one might trace back at least as far as Verklärte Nacht. There was, in what seemed to me a clever piece of programming, a continued yet different sense of Either/Or – and not just on account of Kierkegaard’s bicentenary, celebrated the day previously. It may not be uncommon for a quartet, or indeed for chamber music more generally, to conclude by disappearing, as it were, into the ether, but this provides a spellbinding example.

 

Michael Pelzel’s string quartet, ... vers le vent..., was performed by the Ardittis. In three movements, it is perhaps in some senses more ‘traditional’. According to Pelzel, the first movement is intended to depart from the idea of ‘a passacaglia on a rhythmic ground with figurative variations, steadily digressing from its original idea until culminating in a homophonic line with great energetic intensity.’ There was certainly that sense of departure in the performance we heard, indeed from the very opening, viola answered by cello. The second movement offered a ‘frozen’ opening, vertiginous harmonics melting to a certain degree thereafter; Pelzel thinks of it as similar to ‘a film in which different narratives unfold simultaneously,’ but also draws attention to its role as something of a slow introduction to the third movement, ‘a scintillating, filigree and virtuoso “Toccata volubile”.’ The quality of a perpetuum mobile in contemporary terms was one that struck me before having seen the composer’s notes. There was, both in work and performance, perhaps even something of the quality of a latter-day Haydn, or better Bartók, finale: tradition present, but reimagined.   

 

Both quartets came together for the British premiere of Mauro Lanza’s Der Kampf zwischen Karneval und Fasten, inspired in some sense by Breugel’s depiction of the battle between feasting and fasting, which is broadened, as Lanza points out, to a conflict between ‘meat and fish ..., winter and spring, tavern and church, whose literary pendant can be the battle between [the monster] Quaresmeprenant and the army of sausages in Rabelais’s Quart Livre.’ Punctuating chimes – I could see neither where they were, nor who sounded them – and more than a little reminiscence, especially early on, from Lanza’s work with electronics at IRCAM made their presence felt. So did a slow sense of progression, more so, at least to my ears, than the dualism signalled in the title, which would certainly have provided continuity with works in the first half. I am sure the problem was mine, but confess that I did not find the work, however excellently performed, as compelling as its title might have suggested, at least until its rather magical coda-like conclusion, more delicate, fragile even. A second hearing would doubtless reveal more of the dialectic to which the composer appeals.  

Sir Colin Davis: some personal highlights

A touching documentary (click here) will be available until Friday. Thoughtful, profound, without intellectualising, this is the Sir Colin Davis we knew and loved, above all through his music-making. Haunted by death but not afraid of it, it is the Davis we heard in so many of his later performances. It also has some wonderful footage of Sir Colin's earlier career, including a performance of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet.


It is a difficult, indeed impossible, task, but I thought I should select five great live performances, not necessarily 'the greatest', if such a thing should exist, but which nevertheless touched me greatly and whose memory continues to do so. I have restricted myself to those about which I have written here, so we are dealing only with the period 2007-12. You may click on the titles to read the full reviews. (Numerical position in the list indicates nothing.)


Berlioz Requiem

Not quite his final performance, but one of the last, and the last time I heard him. The orchestra and chorus who adored him, the London Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Chorus, could not have done more. It was fitting, no doubt, that it should be with the composer for whom he had done far more than anyone else, Berlioz, that I should bid Davis farewell. At the time, I concluded (and as I sad, the full review may be read by clicking on the title): 'Cyclic completion, which if not exactly symphonic is not entirely un-symphonic, brought a satisfaction which, if not of the nature of a peace that passes all understanding, nevertheless passed beyond mere understanding. We heard the wisdom and cogency of a performance that seemed to sum up the devotion of a career – except that, nowadays, whenever one thinks that Sir Colin has crowned that extraordinary career, one is likely to experience a subsequent coronation a month or so later.' Though it was to prove a final coronation, what a coronation!


Beethoven Missa Solemnis

With the same forces, but at the Proms rather than in St Paul's Cathedral for the City of London Festival, this was a performance of the previous year every bit as profound, as granitic, as ready to wrestle with the angels, whoever they were. Again, this was a conductor of wisdom looking death - and Beethoven - squarely in the face and communicating the consequences. I know of no performance since Klemperer - certainly not the vaunted Bernstein, or indeed Karajan - who came so close to unlocking the secrets of this most enigmatic and perhaps greatest of all Beethoven's works. If anything, and if only on account of the work itself, it was a still more astounding performance than that of the Berlioz. Sir Colin had a point when, in the aforementioned documentary, he described this as the last great Mass (Requiem Masses being another matter). Whatever one thinks of that claim, he conducted it as if it were, and with all the consequences to which such a final reckoning with the Almighty might lay claim.


Haydn, The Creation

This oratorio will always have a very special place in my heart, not only because it - along with The Seasons - was the subject of what I count as my first piece of academic work, my third-year undergraduate dissertation. Its combination of joy, sublimity, and profound humanity would have seemed made for Davis, and so it was, though this seems - rather surprisingly - to have been the first time he had conducted the work. Once again, the LSO and LSC did him proud, even if the solo singing were patchier. Indeed, I thought then, and continue to do so, that even the legendary Karajan Berlin recording had almost met its match here. If Karajan's soloists will surely always have the edge, orchestra, chorus, and perhaps even conductor may well have excelled further at the Barbican. At any rate, it was a model performance, seemingly effortlessly variegated and yet unquestionably sure of divine - and human - purpose.


Così fan tutte

Mozart's music was of course Davis's greatest love, as it is mine. This was quite simply a performance such as I could never have dared think I should hear. In an age tormented by absurd ideas of 'authenticity', about which he would from time to time most trenchantly express his views, it had become almost unheard of to hear Mozart treated as music, let alone both to resound so profoundly and to ravish the senses so beautifully and yet so cruelly. In Mozart's most perfect opera, so ludicrously misunderstood by many from at least Beethoven onwards, one should experience, yet rarely does, a reckoning with the world's darkness that is both tragic and anything but. The experience became all the more painful given the contrast with Jonathan Miller's tawdry, anti-Mozartian production; Sir Colin's and Mozart's victory somehow became all the more sweetly, deliciously, and yes, tragically ambivalent.


Benvenuto Cellini

Not quite his Berlioz operatic swansong, for I should later hear a wonderful Royal Academy Beatrice and Benedict, this was a performance that almost vied with the stunning 2000 Proms account of The Trojans. (That would certainly have been included, had I been writing at the time.) Again on the home soil of the Barbican with the LSO and LSC, Sir Colin communicated, relished Berlioz's mercurial vision as scintillatingly as anyone can ever have done - the contrast with a hard-driven, largely uncomprehending performance I should hear soon after from Valery Gergiev was telling - but form was of equal importance. As I wrote at the time, 'The authority with which he approached the score was evident from the first to the last bar, and the Overture set the scene for both work and performance. Orchestral weight and lightness of touch stood in perfect equilibrium. There was never any question, given the conductor's long experience with this work and with Berlioz's œuvre as a whole, that he knew precisely where he was going and that every episode would fall precisely into its allotted place.' If that makes the performance sound dull, then I have failed, and I fear that I have. For there was here, as in the performances above, an apparently straightforward 'rightness' to the performance, which opened up vistas not for a physical stage, but for a concert-performance theatre of the imagination. And for Berlioz, imagination is everything.

Keller Quartet - Bach, Art of Fugue, 1 May 2013

Hall One, Kings Place

Die Kunst der Fuge, BWV 1080

András Keller, Zsófia Környei (violins)

Zoltán Gál (viola)
Judit Szabó (cello)

 

How to perform The Art of Fugue? Period zealots sound even more ridiculous here than usual when they foam at the mouth concerning their beloved ‘authenticke’ practices, entirely missing the point of a work almost beyond performance, which nevertheless comes to life as much as in the performative act and its reception as in reading of the score. Post-Romantics that we are – and those who rebel, only end up being all the more so – we love the idea of an almost Platonic Idea of the artwork; yet we want and need to hear it. The piano works very well; the best performance I have yet heard came in a superlative Wigmore Hall recital from Konstantin Lifschitz. Orchestral renditions have their place too; Hermann Scherchen demands to be heard. In an otherwise highly questionable programme note – taken, it seems, from the Keller Quartet’s ECM recording – by Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, the writer, enthusiastic, as he doubtless had to be. for performance by string quartet nevertheless sounded a note of caution, in that the formation is to our ears is so strongly associated with Classical-Romantic repertoire from Haydn onwards. Yet the quartet offers notable advantages in terms of clarity; moreover, associations with later music, even later forms, offer their own advantages.

 

It seems that the Keller Quartet’s relative – though far from total – abstinence from vibrato may be understood in this light. (I wonder what they do when pairing Bach with Kurtág: is contrast intended, does Bach acquire a more Kurtág-like sound, or does Kurtág veer towards the low-vibrato end of the scale?) At any rate, the initial sound took some getting used to, though that process was certainly assisted, even within Contrapunctus I, by the leavening of tone, especially in first violin flourishes from András Keller, by a more generous approach. Taken as a whole, the fugue was considerably but not exaggeratedly inflected: a compromise perhaps, between allegedly ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’, but with virtues of its own. The second and fourth fugues, being performed considerably quicker, more rhythmically propulsive, stood in contrast to the first and third, offering variety as well as continuity. Contrapunctus III benefited from further loosening of the low-vibrato noose, followed winningly by a more dance-like Contrapunctus IV. The opening second violin entry of Contrapunctus V  managed to impress upon us that this might in some ways be considered a new section of the work: something, doubtless, to do with the fact that the subject is first heard in the second voice, but not only that. ‘Style’ of course played a part in performance of its successor: ‘Contrapunctus VI, a 4, in Stylo Francese’. Characterisation and differentiation convinced; they were certainly present but not overriding, not a substitute for the true musical substance in harmony and counterpoint. Rhythm propelled rather than put on a display. Harmonic shifts in the eighth fugue seemed, quite winningly, to offer ready assimilation into the ‘string quartet tradition’ from which the Kellers had earlier somewhat distanced themselves – ironically, perhaps, given that the second violin remained silent for this Contrapuntus a 3. Perhaps, bearing Mozart in mind, it was actually the string trio that was more operative as an idea, conscious or otherwise. The kinetic energy of Contrapunctus IX brought late Beethoven, if still at something of a remove, to mind. (We know that Beethoven studied this particular work. Indeed, we can surely hear that he did.)

 

An interval separated the ninth and tenth fugues. Contrapunctus XI again offered links with quartet tradition, ‘progressive’ in an almost Classically developmental sense. Sinuous chromaticism again could not help but make one think of Mozart, whilst well-nigh motivic diminution rivalled, indeed presaged, Beethoven. Canons, partly through rhythm but also through their two-part texture (first violin and cello), brought Bach’s English Suites and Inventions to mind, though their particular character remained. Utterly satisfying in musical terms, one simply wished for them to go on and on – as, in a sense, prophetic of the post-war serialism of Boulez and Stockhausen, they well might. (Not for nothing did Boulez present this very work in his Domaine musical concerts.) It was unclear to me why the third canon marked a return to relative astringency of tone, but its working out suggested a progressive performative choice; that is, greater warmth infused the notes as time went on. Whole epochs of music seemed to resound through the final movement; the golden ages of polyphony summoned before us, as present as Bach’s incalculable legacy to his successors. The appearance of the BACH motif and the ending in midstream (no chorale, let alone completion) turned our attention to the more recent past, to Schoenberg (not least his Op.31 Variations) and indeed to the modernist fragment, whether unfinished (Moses und Aron) or a work that so chillingly stops rather than ends (Wozzeck). Sometimes one wonders why anyone bothered to compose music after Bach; then one hears the imperative to do just that.

For May Day: Eisler's Lied der Komintern

La bohème, English National Opera, 29 April 2013

The Coliseum

Marcello – Richard Burkhard

Rodlofo – Gwyn Hughes Jones
Colline – Andrew Craig Brown
Schaunard – Duncan Rock
Benoit, Alcindoro – Simon Butteriss
Mimì – Kate Valentine
Parpignol – Philip Daggett
Musetta – Angel Blue
Policeman – Paul Sheehan
Foreman – Andrew Tinkler

Jonathan Miller (director)

Natascha Metherell (revival director)
Isabella Bywater (designs)
Jean Kalman, Kevin Sleep (lighting). Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Genevieve Ellis)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Oleg Caetani (conductor)

 

This second revival of Jonathan Miller’s La bohème was the first time I had caught the production. Miller has often been over-praised, particularly by those ‘of a certain age’, apparently unaware or unwilling to accept that the world has moved on from the 1960s of their youth; indeed, Miller’s Royal Opera Così fan tutte is not simply bad, but one of the most objectionable stagings I have seen of anything. This Bohème, whilst hardly groundbreaking, does its job reasonably enough. For some reason, the action is updated to the Paris of the 1930s. Beyond imparting a certain cinematic quality – though not necessarily nearly so much as Miller and his designer, Isabella Bywater seem to think it does – it is not clear what is gained, but nor for that matter is a great deal lost. An individual’s fondness for the photography of George Brassaï does not in itself seem to me justification for a production, but anyway... The characters are for well directed on stage, for which revival director, Natascha Metherell should doubtless receive much of the credit. (Both Metherell and Miller appeared on stage to take a bow.) Occasionally, I wondered whether the action were a little too prey to domestification of the wrong way; the meeting between Rodolfo and Mimì is decidedly low-key, more akin to a neighbourhood watch meeting than an ignition of passion. However, the selfishness of ‘Bohemian’ youth comes across at least as strongly as I can recall upon other occasions: are not these boys to some extent playing at poverty, whilst Mimì’s suffering is the real thing?

 

Described in the publicity blurb as a ‘cast of young British talent’, that is for the most part what it is. I have little patience with those who castigate ENO – or Covent Garden, for that matter – for ‘failing to promote British artists’. The arts world has, let us be grateful, yet to capitulate to the insidious yet hysterical nationalism pervading much of our political class and media. What we want are singers, artists in general, who are good, and preferably more than that. With the exception of Gwyn Hughes Jones, we did pretty well. Though his Rodolfo improved somewhat during the third and fourth acts, and was not without sensitivity, there was too much that was simply crude, almost an allegedly ‘Italianate’ parody, or strangely faceless. The vacuum extended to stage presence too; it would have been well-nigh impossible to believe in him as a Romantic lead. Kate Valentine’s Mimì, on the other hand, was a credit to her and to ENO. Nobility of spirit was allied to sterling, necessary musical values of phrasing and tonal variegation. It was a delight to make the acquaintance of the charismatic American singer, the splendidly named Angel Blue (an exception in terms of nationality, but certainly not quality). She sang as well as she acted, holding the stage without effort, imparting both ‘artistic’ superiority to Musetta as singer and, increasingly, warm humanity to her as woman. Richard Burkhard’s Marcello impressed too, as did the excellently sung – and acted – Colline of Andrew Craig Brown and Schaunard of Duncan Rock. It was a pity that Simon Butteriss over-acted – ‘silly voice’ rather than expression of the text through singing – in the role of Benoit; maybe he was doing so under orders. A greater pity was the banality of Amanda Holden’s translation; making Puccini sound satisfactory in English is not the easiest of tasks, but too often, a tin ear revealed itself in the straightforward incompatibility of words and vocal line.

 

Oleg Caetani made a very welcome return to the Coliseum. His direction of the ENO Orchestra was splendid, rich in tone – sometimes, a little more, alla Daniele Gatti, would have been appreciated there, but then Gatti, last summer, had the Vienna Philharmonic – but above all, dramatically alert. Temptations to linger, to sentimentalise, were eschewed, without draining the drama of its lifeblood. Wagnerisms – I noticed some especially Tristan-esque progressions – and modernisms were not necessarily underlined, yet, given Caetani’s ear for balance and line, caught one’s ear nevertheless. I should love one day to hear a properly modernistic Bohème – or Tosca. This was not it, but refusal to play to the gallery, and underlining of solid, yet certainly not stolid, musical virtues proved a great relief for a work in which superficial gloss can all too readily hold sway. Choral singing and direction of the chorus also proved estimable throughout.

Hannigan/LPO/Jurowski: Webern, Berg, Bartók, and Martinů, 27 April 2013

Royal Festival Hall

Webern – Variations for Orchestra, op.30

Berg – Lulu-Suite
Bartók – Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Martinů – Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano, and Timpani

Barbara Hannigan

London Philharmonic Orchestra,

Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

 

It was good of Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO to dedicate this concert to the memory of Sir Colin Davis, although in reality it was not a very Davis-like programme. No matter: the focus was on ‘Music from Dark Times’, Berg’s Lulu-Suite having been written in 1934 and Webern’s Variations for Orchestra in 1940-1. There seems to have been some confusion concerning ordering: Jurowski at the opening claimed that the programme had been reordered, so that the pieces would be heard chronologically backwards. If so, Martinů’s Double Concerto should have swapped places with the Berg work, the earliest on the programme. As it was, it certainly made some sense for Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, and the Martinů to be heard together, though Martinů’s work, despite what was undoubtedly the best performance of the night, could not help but pale into relative insignificance following Bartók’s masterpiece.

 

Anyone who programmes Webern’s Variations deserves a vote of thanks. It seems extraordinary that we find ourselves just as starved of Webern performances as audiences were decades earlier. A while ago, Pierre Boulez was asked whether Webern was back in purgatory, and responded by asking his questioner whether Webern had in fact ever left. That one of the most important, most intensely expressive composers of the twentieth century or indeed any other still languishes unperformed reflects poorly on all concerned. Whatever the shortcomings of this performance, Jurowski’s enthusiasm could not be doubted, both when he held the score up for applause at the end and when his spoken introduction helped prepare the audience beforehand. There was much to admire: this was highly dramatic Webern, almost as if communicating via a serial version of Baroque Affekt. Pieter Schoeman’s violin solos were especially well judged, sweetly Romantic, even hyper-Romantic, just as Webern’s music demands. However, the LPO’s performance suffered from a few loose ends, including one especially noticeable false entry. Moreover, this was a perhaps surprisingly pointillistic, or indeed intervallic, performance, at least earlier on; sometimes one longed for Jurowski and his players to join up the dots more audibly. It was closer, say, to the Boulez of his first, Sony Webern than to the later recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, though without the pinpoint accuracy. That said, one nevertheless emerged, especially from the later variations, with a proper sense of ‘late Webern’, that is, of straining towards larger, more extended forms. And Jurowski’s commitment was something to treasure in itself.

 

Berg’s Lulu-Suite immediately sounded more fluid in conception, as if heard in the opera house. The first movement was a little on the fast side, with the effect of somewhat skating over the admittedly beautiful surfaces; at least, if fast, it was not harried. Moreover, if weight had been lacking earlier on, there was an emotional payoff at the opening of the ‘Hymn’ that marks that movement’s conclusion. Dance rhythms were etched sharply, though not didactically. A tighter hand on the formal reins might, however, have put paid to nagging suspicions of sprawl, however wonderful it may be to luxuriate in Berg’s sonic tapestry. (One certainly never harbours such doubts with Boulez or Abbado.) There was excellent saxophone playing to be relished from Martin Robertson. The second movement was altogether tauter, more focused; it really packed quite a punch. Tempi, including transitions between them, were very well judged, simply sounding ‘right’. Barbara Hannigan arrived on stage for the ‘Lied der Lulu’, very much dressed for the role. Indeed, she offered a more ‘acted’ performance than I have hitherto encountered in the Suite, her use of the text very much bound to her visual expression. There was just the right degree of lilt to her performance, as there was to that of the LPO. High notes hit the spot in every sense, and coloratura told dramatically as well as musically. One longed to see her in the entire role. Jurowski balanced his forces and shaped the musical argument well. Berg’s extraordinary cityscape was relished at the opening of the fourth movement, almost as if this were Petrushka, albeit ‘Petrushka im Bauhaus’, with liberally applied sleaze. It was not all dramatic action without a stage though; variation form was audibly communicated throughout. The ending was somewhat abrupt, though. Grim foreboding characterised the closing ‘Adagio’; this was undoubtedly a different world, that of Whitechapel. The darkness of tragedy unfolded, though so eventually did the warmth of that reconciliation the young Boulez found so suspicious in Berg’s later work. Jurowski undoubtedly dug deeper here than in the first movement, and with excellent results; there was more than enough to make one keen to hear him conduct Berg’s operas in the theatre. Hannigan’s reappearance proved harrowing and yet consoling, like the opera itself.

 

Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta had its moments. The first movement was very good indeed: the build-up potent, emotionally satisfying, with true depth to the LPO strings, expertly guided by Jurowski, their subsiding equally impressive. There was precision, though not always quite enough, in the ensuing ‘Allegro’. Perhaps, though, it was taken a little too fast; at any rate, the performance seemed unable, for whatever reason, to dig deeper, to take the music by the scruff of its neck. Catherine Edwards’s contribution on the piano was, however, excellent. The third movement was nicely alert to the apparent paradox, properly generative, of the clockwork nature to Bartók’s ‘night music’, having one think also of a not entirely dissimilar paradox, or dialectic, with respect to Webern’s ideas of Nature. The finale again seemed too fast to permit the full strength of the strings to shine through, though that may well have been a deliberate ‘lightness’ on Jurowski’s part. There was nothing especially wrong with it, but again, the music seemed skated over at times, almost balletic. A strangely excessive holding back of tempo just before the end caused confusion, seemingly catching the orchestra unawares.

 

Martinů continues to have his cheerleaders, and this Double Concerto certainly did not find him at his worst; by the same token, it hardly benefited from being performed in the same concert as Webern, Berg, and Bartók. Jurowski and the LPO nevertheless gave the concerto as convincing an account as conceivable; for one thing, it sounded more thoroughly rehearsed than the Bartók and Webern works. Rhythms in the first movement were ominously generative. Stravinskian motor-rhythms were relished, making one long to hear these musicians in the ‘real thing’, for instance the Symphony in Three Movements. Neo-classical – or better, neo-Baroque – form was sharply delineated, the implicit violence of such playing with time rendered explicit. Edwards again proved excellent in the slow movement. Jurowski could not dispel my doubts regarding the apparent emptiness at the heart of the composer’s note-spinning, though he did a good job in trying. It seems that Martinů’s music is attempting to depict turbulence from without rather than actually being turbulent; that, however, is not the performers’ fault. Again, rhythmic command was excellent in the finale. I wish I could have felt more enthusiastic about the music itself, which, despite its apparent ‘excitement’, is little more than derivative. Some Hindemith (the Nobilissima visione Suite?) or perhaps Honegger’s Second Symphony might ultimately have worked better, despite the outstanding performance and the second-half Paul Sacher connection.

Royal Academy of Music/BBC SO/Denève - Poulenc and Ravel, 26 April 2013

Barbican Hall

Poulenc – Les Animaux modèles

Ravel – L’Enfant et les sortilèges

The Child – Rozanna Madylus

Mother, The Dragonfly, The Ottoman – Fiona Mackay
The Bergère – Rosalind Coad
The Chinese Cup/The Female Cat/The Wicker Chair – Saraha Shorter
The Fire/The Nightingale – Jennifer France
The Princess – Sónia Grané
The Bat/Animal – Tereza Gevorgyan
The Owl/The Settle – Helen Bailey
The Squirrel – Irina Loskova
A Shepherdess/The Sofa – Alice Privett
A Shepherd/Animal – Katie Howden
The Armchair – Samuel Queen
The Grandfather Clock/The Tomcat – Samuel Pantcheff
The Teapot (Black Wedgwood) – Ross Scanlon
The Little Old Man (Arithmetic) – Bradley Smith
A Tree – Nicholas Crawley
The Frog – Iain Milne
Animal – Gwilym Bowen
Animal – Andri Björn Róbertsson

 Stephen Mangan (actor)

Members of the Royal Academy of Music

Jean-Baptiste Barrière (video)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Stéphane Denève (conductor)

 

A good number of my finest and enjoyable operatic experiences in London over the past few years have come courtesy of our conservatoires rather than our big houses. Royal Academy Opera seems to be on an especial high at the moment, this season having offered excellent performances of both Lavera costanza – the best performance I have attended of a Haydn opera anywhere – and Eugene Onegin. An enticing double bill awaits next month: Dido and Aeneas and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse. This evening, however, a good number of familiar voices crossed town to the Barbican, to sing in a concert performance of L’Enfant et les sortilèges, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Stéphane Denève, a highly laudable form of collaboration, which one can only hope will continue.

 

There is absolutely no need for condescension when treating with these young singers; indeed, their contribution in many respects outclassed that of the orchestra and conductor. Not that, once past some very un-Ravelian imprecision at the opening, there was anything terribly wrong with it, and perhaps I am being grossly unfair, retaining very fond memories of a Berlin performance I heard from the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle in 2008, but a more luxuriant canvas might well have heightened the sense of fantasy. Denève’s drier approach offered, I suppose, a valid alternative, though I could not help but wonder whether it was in part a response to the thinner tone of the orchestra.

 

Anyway, the singers did Ravel proud. From such an extensive cast, it might seem hyperbole to say that there was not a weak link, but there really was not. Singers, save The Child, centre-stage throughout, came together at the side of the stage for the chorus, whose contributions were notably well directed by Denève, and moved to the front when required for solos. First amongst equals had to be Rozanna Madylus as The Child, impetuous and wide-eyed, as Ravel demands. Equally impressive, if anything more so still, was the star turn offered by Sónia Gráne’s beautifully floated yet splendidly precise Princess; I was delighted to read afterwards in her biography that she is about to join the Berlin Staatsoper, whence I have just returned, as a Young Artist there. It was a pleasure, moreover, to hear light, convincingly ‘French’ voices, with a fine command of language and idiom, from singers such as Ross Scanlon and Samuel Queen. Jean-Baptiste Barrière’s video sequences I found a little on the dull side, too straightforwardly representational, though at least they made a change from his screen-saver-cum-wallpaper contribution to a Philharmonia performance of Wozzeck a few years ago.

 

Perhaps Denève was simply being ‘considerate’ – not that I think it was necessary – to his soloists, since there was more bite to the first-half performance of Poulenc’s suite from the 1940s ballet, Les Animaux modèles. The opening ‘Le Petit jour,’ offered enticing echoes of Daphnis et Chloé, with a definite ‘French’ quality to the BBC SO’s sound, strings especially, with a vibrato it is difficult not to define as ‘glamorous’. The slight lack of body here was less of a problem; indeed, it arguably added to a sense of idiom, recalling recordings of Poulenc’s own time, some of them involving him. I was less sure about Stephen Mangan’s delivery of contemporary versions of La Fontaine’s fables, all too audibly miked. Surely an actor should be able to project without? The greater part of the audience, however, seemed to be eating out of his hand, so perhaps I am just being grumpy. (Might we not at least, however, progress beyond the idea that employment of a generic ‘Northern’ accent is intrinsically amusing?) ‘Le Lion amoureux’ offered similar sonic ‘glamour’ to the first movement, though brass at times seemed a little loud. Denève’s glittering, unsentimental direction of ‘L’Homme entre deux æges et ses deux maîtresses’ again recalled, or in this context, presaged Ravel, though with a more cinematic bent, whilst the opening gravity of ‘La Mort et la bûcheron’ was finally matched by the elegant, vielle France of Death as a duchess in response. Prokofiev-like spikiness at the opening of ‘Les Deux coqs’ was likewise balanced by the most chic of hen-houses. There is surprising weight, relatively speaking, to the final movement, ‘Le Repas de midi,’ though is that what Poulenc does best? I tended to think it was a bit like going to Bach for slapstick. Fine performances, anyway, for a little-heard score.

 

 

Götterdämmerung, Berlin Staatsoper, 21 April 2013

Schiller Theater, Berlin

Siegfried – Andreas Schager

Gunther – Gerd Grochowski
Alberich – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Hagen – Mikhail Petrenko
Brünnhilde – Iréne Theorin
Gutrune – Anna Samuil
Waltraute – Waltraud Meier
First Norn – Margarita Nekrasova
Second Norn – Waltraud Meier
Third Norn – Anna Samuil
Woglinde – Aga Mikolaj
Wellgunde – Maria Gortsevskaya
Flosshilde – Anna Lapkovskaja

Guy Cassiers (director, set design)

Enrico Bagnoli (set design, lighting)
Tim van Steenbergen (costumes)
Arjen Klerkx, Kurt D’Haeseleer (video)
Michael P Steinberg, Detlef Giese, Erwin Jans (dramaturgy)
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (choreography)
Luc de Wit (choral choreography)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Staatkapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

 

(Image: Monika Rittershaus)
Iréne Theorin (Brünnhilde)

This, I know, has become wearily repetitive, but the rewards of the Berlin Ring were once again shown to be entirely musical. Götterdämmerung had for some reason acquired a third dramaturge, prior instalments having relied upon a mere brace. What they might have done, or rather what director Guy Cassiers might have listened to, is utterly beyond me. For all its faults, and it seems to me undeniable that Götterdämmerung was a bit of a mess dramaturgically, Keith Warner’s Covent Garden Ring had ambition, had ideas, and some of the time managed to communicate them. This sorry co-production with La Scala, brought to us courtesy of the Toneelhuis Antwerpen, appears, quite literally, to have nothing whatsoever to say to us. That would be odd in the case of any musical drama worthy of the name – many are not, but that is another story – but, in the case of Der Ring des Nibelungen, it is simply beyond comprehension. Yet again, we are simply faced with a few ‘tasteful’ costumes and effects, and in this case, far too much video. The Tarnhelm dancers return, rather to my surprise offering the saving grace of the staging. Their menacing writhing around Brünnhilde during her shameful and shaming possession by Siegfried struck a note of rare, indeed unique, dramatic power. The appearance of sub-Damien Hirst creatures in formaldehyde offers slight variety, but no discernible point, and more than anything irritates in its acquiescence to the wearisome stylisation of the designs. As I said with respect to Siegfried, we might as well have been at the Met. Of Wagner’s desired ‘emotionalisation of the intellect’, Cassiers offers neither emotion nor intellect, let alone a dialectic between the two. Baffling!

 

If not on quite such superlative form as in Siegfried, Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin nevertheless did Wagner’s score proud, a more than promising augury for the forthcoming Proms performances of the Ring as a whole. (I shall be speaking at an introduction to Siegfried.) Line and dramatic momentum were impressive, though tension sagged slightly – and surprisingly – at a somewhat anti-climactic conclusion to the second act. Maybe that was a matter of tiredness more than anything else. Barenboim’s almost ‘French’ ear for colour – he knows that Wagner leads to Debussy as well as to Schoenberg, and indeed employs that ear in the music of the latter composer too – offered more than its fair share of textural revelation, the Staatskapelle’s woodwind as euphonious here as in Mozart. Eberhard Friedrich’s chorus acquitted itself very well throughout.

 

There was a great deal to praise in terms of singing too. Waltraud Meier as Second Norn must be the very definition of luxury casting. Stage animal that she is, she made something out of the non-production even here, let alone in her well-nigh definitive Waltraute (also one of the very few redeeming features of the recent, dismal New York Götterdämmerung). Meier can have few peers, if any, and certainly no superiors, in her melding of text and music, in her instinctive yet searching theatrical communication. She offered a standing rebuke to the vacuity of the contribution from Cassiers. Iréne Theorin continued to present a creditably variegated account of Brünnhilde’s part. There was more of the lyrical, less of the heroic, than one often hears, though there remained plenty of the latter nonetheless. I wondered occasionally whether her choices with respect to scaling down, to containment, always made the best sense, but there was a great deal to admire here. Mikhail Petrenko’s Hagen remains controversial. I first heard it in Aix-en-Provence, under Simon Rattle. During the first act, I was less convinced, the relative lightness – this is definitely not the black-toned Hagen we have come to expect – veered on occasion towards the non-committal, though of course Cassiers did not help. However, menace asserted itself, psychotically so, ensuring that the darkness of Hagen’s character duly struck a terror quite lacking in the staging. Gerd Grochowski offered more in the way of clear verbal projection than psychological depth, but again the fault for that may really have lain elsewhere. Anna Samuil’s Gutrune, alas, seemed a victim of miscasting; there was little sense of character and her blowsy delivery, though reined in during the third act, was by any standards stylistically quite inappropriate. The trio of Rhinemaidens (Aga Mikolaj, Maria Gortsevskaya, and Anna Lapkovskaja) was truly excellent, both in solo and ensemble terms.

 

Andreas Schager’s Siegfried I have left until last. Schager was a replacement for the advertised Ian Storey, Lance Ryan having taken the part in Siegfried, but not Götterdammerung. (Schlager had also had to step in for Ryan in the previous cycle, when the Canadian tenor arrived late to the theatre, missing the first act.) I am not sure that I have heard so excellent an account of the role in the theatre; I have certainly heard none better. We can hark back to Melchior all we like, even to Windgassen, but we all know that such expectations are, for whatever reasons, entirely unrealistic. Schager’s Siegfried was of the here and now, dramatically committed – certainly not something of which one could always accuse Melchior – and finely sung, without a hint of the dreadful barking, let alone shouting, that disfigures so many performances. There was no discernible tiring; indeed, a portrayal of youthful, naïve enthusiasm did much of the work the staging ought to have been doing by itself, contrasting tellingly with the corruption of the Gibichung court. This is a production, then, that should be discarded as quickly as humanly possible; it remains just possible, however, that a star may have been born amongst this all-too-tastefully-designed ‘heap of broken images’.

Die Feen, Oper Leipzig, 20 April 2013

Images: Tom Schulze
Igor Durlovski (Fairy King)

Leipzig Opera House

Fairy King, Voice of Groma – Igor Durlovski

Ada – Christiane Libor
Zemina – Viktoria Kaminskaite
Farzana – Jean Broiekhuizen
Arindal – Arnold Bezuyen
Lora – Eun Yee You
Morald – Detlef Roth
Drolla – Jennifer Porto
Gernot – Milcho Borovinov
Gunther – Guy Mannheim
Harald – Roland Schubert
Messenger – Tae Hee Kwon
Children of Ada and Arindal – Lukas Gosch, Leon Heilmann

Renaud Doucet (director)

André Barbe (designs)
Guy Simard (lighting)
Marita Müller (dramaturgy)

 

Chorus of Oper Leipzig (chorus master: Alessandro Zuppardo)

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
Ulf Schirmer (conductor)
 

What is it about London buses or, in this case, buses in London and Leipzig? Hot on the heels of the Chelsea Opera Group’s concert performance of Die Feen last month, a fully-staged production has followed from Oper Leipzig. (In fact, its premiere took place in February, but this was my opportunity to see it.) The COG’s performance was a valiant effort, and boasted some fine singing, but was sadly let down by an apparently under-rehearsed orchestra. Leipzig did its greatest son proud, in a production and performance that made the case beyond any doubt, reasonable or otherwise, that Die Feen deserves a regular place in the repertory. It is not Parsifal, of course, yet what is? The Bayreuth ‘canon’ has done a great deal of harm, yet there is no reason why reparations should not be made, and in this of all years.

 

Since the Munich premiere in 1888, a production that received numerous repeat performances, stagings and concert performances have been sporadic. Angelo Neumann staged the work in Prague in 1893, as part of his cycle to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of Wagner’s birth and the tenth of his death. The first Leipzig performance took place in 1938, conducted by Paul Schmitz and directed by Hans Schüler, with designs by Max Elten, forming part of another cycle, in this case the Geburtstadt’s celebrations for Wagner’s 125^th birthday. In more recent years, especially celebrated was Wolfgang Sawallisch’s 1983 cycle of the complete operas; other stagings have been proffered by Munich (Gärtnerplatz, 1989), Kaiserslautern and Würzburg (2005), and the Châtelet (2009, on period instruments). Though the present production is offered in collaboration with the Bayreuth Festival, Bayreuth’s performance of Die Feen is, somewhat oddly, and unlike those of Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi, to be in concert. (None of the performances will belong to the Festival proper, but will instead take place in July, in the Statdhalle.)

 

So Leipzig may well be the only opportunity we have; it should be seized by anyone who can. As Wagner himself, far from ashamed of his first completed opera, put it in Mein Leben:

While I had written [the incomplete, preceding] Die Hochzeit without operatic embellishments and treated the material in the darkest vein, this time I festooned the subject with the most manifold variety: beside the principal pair of lovers I depicted a more ordinary couple and even introduced a coarse and comical third pair, which belonged to the operatic convention of servants and ladies’ maids. As to the poetic diction and the verses themselves, I was almost intentionally careless about them. I was not nourishing my former hopes of making a name as a poet; I had really become a ‘musician’ and a ‘composer’ and wanted simply to write a decent libretto, for I now realised nobody else could do this for me, inasmuch as an opera book is something unique unto itself and cannot be easily brought off by poets and literati.

 

Ada (Christiane Libor), Arindal (Arnold Bezuyen)

 

Renaud Doucet has a background in dance, though by now he has directed a good number of opera productions too. On this basis, I should happily see more, metatheatricality worn lightly, humorously, yet tellingly. Following a Saturday evening family meal, a father tunes in to a live broadcast of Die Feen from Oper Leipzig. The rest of the family departs, leaving him in peace to listen. (A nice touch is his turning up the volume for the Overture as the conductor does similarly in the pit.) Music becomes the key to the work as a whole; it enlists his emotions, transforms his understanding. In something of a modern fairy-tale, his living room becomes the performance space, not entirely unlike The Nutcracker, or indeed, closer to home, the tales of ETA Hoffmann. Romantic, pseudo-Nazarene mediævalism, Wagner’s (relative) youth, and our own time come together, in a (Midsummer Night’s?) dream-like mélange that prompts rather than answers our questions. What might seem a counterpart to all-too-comfortable Biedermeier home life soon has its tensions exposed: though the paterfamilias – and he is at best a weak example of the type – welcomes back his wife at the end of the broadcast, and leaves Ada to the fairies, beret-clad Wagner included, will he tire of his quotidian existence and hanker again after the immortality of that other world, that to which, as Arindal, he had exceptionally been admitted?

 

Wagner’s subsequent intellectual journey, via Feuerbach’s Thoughts on Death and Immortality, complicates the notion further. It is fitting, then, that Romanticism is both embraced and kept at a distance. (There is more than a little Romanticism in Feuerbach’s writings and indeed in Schopenhauer’s too.) At the time of writing, it was, especially in its German manifestation, at the time a somewhat problematical notion. (One might ask, in Goethian fashion, whether it has ever not been.) In the context of Metternichian repression, Heine and Young Germany suspected and attacked its reactionary tendencies, yet its progressive – a loaded word, but let us have that pass just for the moment – seeds were far from fruitless yet, especially in the musical world. The celebratory final scene, in some senses perhaps an early presentiment of the Festwiese scene from Die Meistersinger, is thus neither presented nor received straightforwardly. As ever with Wagner, we are left with more questions than we started with.

 

Ulf Schirmer’s conducting of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra proved well-judged. Influences were apparent, Weber and Marschner especially but far from exclusively, but so, as in the staging, were hints – and sometimes rather more than hints – of what was to come. A phrase here or there might be ever so slightly underlined, or so I fancied, to alert one to a similarity with a phrase in Lohengrin, and indeed beyond. More importantly, the straining even at this stage towards through-composition was readily apparent, without entirely undermining the ‘number’ structure of this Romantic opera. Wagner without a great, or at least a very good, orchestra really is a waste of everyone’s time; the dark, ‘German’ sonorities of the Gewandhaus Orchestra suited Die Feen to a tee. What a relief it was to hear that this great orchestra’s traditions have not been traduced by ill-advised forays into pseudo-authenticity at the hands of the bewilderingly fêted Riccardo Chailly.

 

The cast was strong too. Early Wagner, like early Mozart or early Beethoven, does not take kindly to condescension; there was not a hint of that here. First among equals was Christiane Libor’s stunning Ada, her insane, Abscheulicher-squared aria fully realising Wagner’s Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient-inspired vision. Arnold Bezuyen, quite understandably, tired a little at one point as Arindal, but otherwise impressed with a fine combination of heft and tone. Detlef Roth was everyone one might have hoped for as Morald, words and vocal line in properly Wagnerian, even musico-dramatic, tandem. Jennifer Porto and Milcho Borovinov delighted as Drolla and Gunther, their buffa duet cut in the COG concert performance yet triumphantly vindicated by its inclusion here, even though one could readily tell that it marked for Wagner more or less the end of a line, give or take a Liebesverbot. Only Eun Yee You’s Lora was a little disappointed, outclassed by COG’s wonderful Elisabeth Meister; the voice simply did not seem big enough and tuning was more than occasionally awry. Choral singing was of a consistently high standard throughout, as was direction of the chorus on stage.

 

London desperately needs a first-class performance of this wonderful work. If none of our companies can marshal the resources for a new production – and frankly, it is a matter of priorities; there is no reason why it should not be done – then I strongly urge bringing this staging here. Let us hope, also, for a DVD release. In the meantime, if at all possible, a visit to Leipzig approaches the mandatory for anyone with an interest in Wagner.