Ensemble Modern/Benjamin - Milliken, Mason, Dallapiccola, and Benjamin, 5 March 2019

Wigmore Hall

Cathy Milliken: Bright Ring (UK premiere)

Christian Mason: Layers of Love

Dallapiccola: Piccola musica notturna

Benjamin: Into the Little Hill

Anu Komsi (soprano)

Helena Rasker (contralto)
Ensemble Modern

George Benjamin (conductor)

This week, the Wigmore Hall presents two concerts from George Benjamin and Frankfurt’s Ensemble Modern, the first ‘at home’ on Wigmore Street, the second moving north to Camden’s Roundhouse. For the first, we heard Benjamin’s now classic first opera, Into the Little Hill, prefaced by three ensemble works by Cathy Milliken, Christian Mason, and, for the evening’s spot of ‘early music’, Luigi Dallapiccola.

An Ensemble Modern commission, here receiving its United Kingdom premiere, Milliken’s Bright Ring spoke, to quote the composer, of ‘fields of energy that I perceived whilst performing with the Ensemble Modern,’ an energy ‘of collaboration and interaction, whether pulsing or still (or both)’. I initially read such lines with a degree of scepticism, but having heard the piece, they made a good deal of sense, the idea furthered by the title reference to the line, ‘Bright is the ring of words’, from a Robert Louis Stevenson poem, and the rings of Saturn. Two violins vied with each other at the opening, joined by viola and intermittently others, in music that seemed to depict and/or express both pent-up rhythmic violence and something (ring-like?) more numinous, often led by flute or tuned percussion. There was, I think, a sense of something akin to an extra-terrestrial landscape and narrative, not in a filmic way, but perhaps more akin to the tone poems of the past. The close, in which a flickering cello line initiated a final explosion, thereafter subsiding, seemed once again to encapsulate that tension between ensemble and solo instrument, planet and ring, pulse and its withdrawal.

Christian Mason’s 2015 Layers of Love, written for and recorded by Klangforum Wien, announced itself with slithering, mysterious microtones. Movement in various ways, rhythmic and harmonic, was initially slow and hard won, yet undeniable. There was a strangeness that seemed more of this world than Milliken’s other, but I am not sure I could explain what, practically, I mean by that. Certainly there was drama, albeit less pictorial than in the previous work. More than once, Bernd Alois Zimmermann came to my mind: again, I am not entirely sure why, but think it may have had something to do with the ultimately achieved rhythms and their relationship to sound, not least from the double bass.

Dallapiccola’s Piccola musica notturna spoke with the distilled mastery of a true classic, as perfectly formed in work and performance as a piece by Mozart, Schoenberg, or Debussy. Indeed, rather to my surprise, I found something naggingly Debussyan, if only in correspondence, to the turns of several phrases, however different the serial method one could hear and feel as clearly as if chez Schoenberg or his pupils. It was not difficult to understand what might have attracted Benjamin to so exquisitely logical, warmly expressive a miniature. If ever there were a composer whose music we should hear far more often…

I had last heard Into the Little Hill only in September, in Berlin, also conducted by the composer, albeit with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Its small performing forces (two vocal soloists and ensemble), formal perfection, and dramatic power render it a highly attractive work for regular performance, whether on stage or in concert; yet possession of such qualities does not always translate into such (relative) popularity. In this case, as with Benjamin’s two subsequent, larger-scale operas, Written on Skin and Lessons of Love and Violence, it is heartening to report that widespread enthusiasm continues. Stravinskian incision, violence, and economy, marked the opening – not just for itself, but as the opening to this complete (compleat) drama of modern political life, more bitingly relevant, so it seems, with every hearing. Whether it were the cool hieratic (Symphonies of Wind Instruments?) quality to the Minister’s addressing the crowd; the latter’s controlled yet increasing hysteria; the deathly tension of electric woodwind lines as the Minister meets the Stranger; or the latter’s wheedling, seductive way (heightened no end by Anu Komsi in particular, likewise her bloodcurdling cries ‘Swear by your sleeping child’): one could have cut the air with a knife – and that only in the first scenes to Part One.

As so often, operatic mastery shows itself particularly in the interludes between scenes. What a composer says and does not, unconstrained by words and indeed voices, will often – not always – penetrate to the heart of his or her musical dramaturgy. Such was certainly the case here, both in work and performance; so too in orchestral writing and playing elsewhere, as for instance in the terror of the intricately inviting processional that underlies the scene between Mother and Child. ‘The rats will stream like hot metal to the rim of the world.’ Indeed, they would – and did. A similar observation might be made of the division into two parts, the latter’s opening sounding and feeling strongly as if a new act, as if marking the return from an interval for the opera’s final, fatal events to unfold. ‘And music?’ ‘All music – smiles the minister – is incidental.’ Not at all. For the true rodent ghosts were now in the machine; so too, led by far-from-incidental music, was the child whose grasping, mendacious politician of a father had stolen its future. The will of the people had been enacted: The Little Hill meant The Little Hill.

Happy 90th birthday, Bernard Haitink!

Image: Monika Rittershaus

Of any performing musician alive today, none has had a more formative influence on me than Bernard Haitink. Not only did I hear my first Ring – at the Royal Albert Hall, when the Royal Opera looked in grave danger of never returning to Covent Garden – from him; it has remained musically one of the very best. (Ironically, its sole rival would hail also from that same, unpromising venue, under the direction of Daniel Barenboim.) I took the train down from Cambridge and back every day, and stood right up in the Gallery, seemingly miles from the stage. Not once did my feet tire, let alone my ears and mind. Haitink’s integrity, wisdom, and communicative understanding gripped me from beginning to end. I had barely attended any live opera, let alone Wagner, at the time. Even without his quietly heroic plea on the day of Götterdämmerung, beseeching us in the shortest of sentences to do what we could to defend an institution Rupert Murdoch and philistine New Labour stood eager to consign to the flames, it would have been an unforgettable experience. To me, it seemed, rightly or wrongly, that he saved the Royal Opera. He certainly inspired me early on to continue a Wagner journey that will most likely never end.


Since then, I have tried to hear him whenever I can: mostly here in London, occasionally elsewhere. In Amsterdam with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe for Brahms; in Zurich for Tristan (my one and only visit to date to cripplingly expensive Switzerland, but worth every penny); in Salzburg for Haydn’s Creation; but above all, since what proved, regrettably, his final Covent Garden appearance, for Parsifal in 2007, in concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra: time and time again, his musicianship, his inspiration of musicians and audience alike, have afforded an undemonstrative masterclass in that most unfashionable of virtues, musical ‘greatness’. We can chip away at that all we like, often with good reason. Bernard Haitink reminds us how and why it can still matter: not in terms of some throwback to an age of great ‘maestri’, but now, in the present, in our terms. May I wish him the happiest of ninetieth birthdays, and look forward to the next time I shall share in his artistry?


In the meantime, here is a link to my review of Haitink conducting Mahler’s Ninth Symphony with the LSO at the Proms in 2009: a performance I shall never forget.

And here is his legendary recording of La Mer with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra:

Robin Hood, The Opera Story, 27 February 2019 (world premiere)

Bussey Building, Peckham

The Merry Men (Oliver Brignall, Cliff Zammit Stevens, Nicholas Merryweather)
Images: Robert Workman

Robin Hood – Nicholas Merryweather

Joanna – Lorna Anderson

Marian – Siân Cameron

Little John – Oliver Brignall

Will Scarlett – Cliff Zammit Stevens

The Boy – William Barter-Sheppard

Polly Graham (director)

April Dalton (designs)

Claire Childs (lighting)

Berrak Dyer (conductor)

The Opera Story has given birth to a new opera by a young composer and young creative team each year in Peckham since it was founded, three years ago. Unable to attend previous productions, I was eager to hear what was made of Robin Hood, with libretto by Zoe Palmer and Rebecca Hurst, and score by Dani Howard. As with so many essays in the genre from Jacopo Peri’s Dafne onwards, an existing story has been taken and modified. Intrinsically, the idea has much to recommend it: delving beneath the surface of the legend to ask whether Robin Hood and his merry men really were – are – what they seem.


And so, Palmer, Hurst, Howard, and director Polly Graham present a contemporary (to us) political fable, in which a Bullingdon-style group of male politicians in tweeds profess concern for the poor and yet do something quite different; or so it initially seems. At a certain point, it became difficult (at least for me) to grasp quite what drives the plot. Is it that these were essentially posh boys (men-children)? Is it destruction to the environment, the Greenwood, threatened by property developer, Joanna, and defended by Robin’s sister, Marian? Is it paedophilia, the men having gone into the woods and killing a passing child, Joanna’s? Or is it (homosexual) love, Little John at a couple of points having declared himself Robin’s lover? There is nothing wrong with complexity, of course, with themes that intertwine; far from it. For the first two of the three acts, I found the libretto suggestive of how such ideas might coexist and conflict; in the third, resolution, such as it was, seemed a little contrived, the whole amounting to less than the sum of its parts. Perhaps it would have been better to have retained a little more of the ‘original’, so that the implied comparison and contrast would have meant more.

Marian (Siân Cameron)

Meanwhile, Howard’s score seemed to grow, more impressive in that third act than in what had gone before. Strangely, even bizarrely, tonal – post-minimalist, I suppose – it had seemed content earlier on just to offer a background to what was transpiring onstage, more interesting in the passages where it came closer to Britten in creepy mode, less so when it sounded as though it might have been written for a television series. A greater focus on ensemble writing in the third act paid dividends, though, perhaps indicative of greater confidence and flair acquired through the business of writing. There was no gainsaying the commitment of performances from a fine cast of singers, nor of that from the ten-piece ensemble (string quartet, double bass, flute, clarinet, trumpet, French horn, and percussion), incisively directed by Berrak Dyer. Oddly, the players sounded heavily amplified. Either that, or it was a very peculiar acoustic (always possible!) A pity, I thought.

Perhaps, then, it is better to think of this as a valuable workshop opportunity, from which all – those of us in the audience too – will have learned. Performances were excellent and, if I had my doubts about the work itself, there was certainly promise to be discerned. Whatever one’s thoughts on that, there was insight to be had both into the writing and performance of opera by those at an early stage in their careers and, just as important, into the success of so worthy an initiative. I look forward to seeing – and hearing – what The Opera Story brings us next.

Così fan tutte, Royal Opera, 25 February 2019

Royal Opera House

Dorabella (Serena Malfia)
Images: ROH 2019/Stephen Cummiskey

Ferrando – Paolo Fanale

Guglielmo – Gyula Orendt

Don Alfonso – Thomas Allen

Fiordiligi – Salome Jicia

Dorabella – Serena Malfi

Despina – Serena Gamberoni

Jan Philipp Gloger (director)

Julia Burbach (revival director)

Ben Baur (set designs)

Karin Jud (costumes)

Bernd Purkrabek (lighting)

Katharina John (dramaturgy)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)

Stefano Montanari (conductor)

Ensemble

First the good news. With one partial exception, there was much splendid singing, and stage performance more generally, to enjoy from an entirely new cast for the first revival of Jan Philipp Gloger’s Così fan tutte (reviewed here first time around). Our pairs of male and female lovers were nicely differentiated, whilst blending with equal skill and pleasure – crucial in an opera with so much ensemble writing, endlessly varied, endlessly revised and renewed. (There is dramaturgical genius in that, of course, not that sceptics and outright decriers – believe it or not, there remain a few – bother to think about that before regaling us with their ‘thoughts’ on the work.) Salome Jicia and Serena Malfia made for a sparkling pairing of ladies from Ferrara, linear clarity matched by complementary contrast such as one might enjoy in a fine wind ensemble. Much the same, perhaps still more so, might be said of Paolo Fanale’s Ferrando and Gyula Orendt’s Guglielmo, the former’s arias as sweetly sung, tenderly phrased as anyone might reasonably ask. Serena Gamberoni’s keenly sung Despina was properly knowing without lapsing into the unduly arch. Thomas Allen’s Don Alfonso had its moments, but it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that this, a role he long made his own, is now a vocal challenge too far, whatever his continued enthusiasm on stage. Hand on heart, I cannot say that any of these performances surpassed those at Holland Park last year, but I doubt that anyone would have had serious grounds for disappointment either.

 

Dorabella and Guglielmo (Gyula Orendt)

There were, alas, grounds aplenty for disappointment in both the conducting and the production: concerning the former, rather more than mere disappointment. Described in the programme as ‘charismatic’, Stefano Montanari certainly made his presence felt Charisma, however, entails a gift, not a curse, be it divine or otherwise. It is difficult to think of anyone more deserving of the claim than Mozart. If only we had heard a little more of his work and a little less of Montanari’s extraordinary – extraordinarily ignorant, too – arrogance. Arrogating to himself the fortepiano continuo too, Montanari went on to show us that he has little ability at conducting but considerable ability at obscuring scores with his own, allegedly witty, yet in truth tediously predictable, sonic vandalism. To begin with, his ‘contributions’ remained within the realm of the unnecessary, if still highly irritating. The level of premature ejaculation soon, however, reached the level of medical emergency, at times entirely taking leave of Mozart’s bass line and harmony so as simply to present some ‘songs from the shows’. It was the sort of thing a bumptious first-year organ scholar might have done over late-night drinks, albeit more cleverly; here, the results were quite unforgivable. Occasionally hard-driven, Montanari’s conducting was more often merely flaccid: nothing to do with speed, everything to do with a lack of harmonic and formal understanding; it was as if the performance were led by the lovechild of René Jacobs and Marc Minkowski. For a performance of Così fan tutte drag so much is an achievement of sorts, not one I wish to hear repeated. To hear it in the house that was once Sir Colin Davis’s was little short of scandalous.

Dorabella and Ferrando (Paolo Fanale)

Some changes have been made to Gloger’s production since its first outing, presumably by revival director, Julia Burbach. In the first act in particular, they are to its benefit, tightening and clarifying, although the second act fizzles out much as it had done before (if slightly differently). It is, perhaps, indicative of the state of British opera audiences that anyone would see something remotely adventurous in the hamfisted attempt at metatheatricality on show – ‘show’ being the thing – here. Clichés abound, without apparent awareness that clichés they are, and therefore might be played with. The more promising moment remains the substitution of applauding members of the real cast, initially seated in an audience box, for the cast in eighteenth-century garb on stage. There is nothing wrong with the idea that the characters might learn from a performance of the work; it has much to commend it. There is everything wrong, however, with the confusion – somewhat mitigated now, yet only somewhat – with which that is allegedly accomplished. Identities, acts, characters are not ambiguous; they appear simply not to have been thought through, rather as if this were an early sketch for a production rather than the finished article.

As for Gloger’s preposterous claim, allegedly justifying such confusion, namely that to be ‘realisable in realistic terms’, the female characters must ‘know from the beginning of the second act that the “foreign men” are really their own boyfriends,’ it is difficult to think of a graver admission of incompetence. By all means play with such an idea, should it prove dramatically fruitful. The idea, however, that such banal realism has anything to do with the work, that ‘we decided to explain…’ signifies anything other than a catastrophic misunderstanding of the opera’s artificiality and its dramatic consequences, is both saddening and infuriating. Perhaps there is scope for further revisions; I certainly appreciate the attempt. I cannot, however, claim to be hopeful. Like Montanari's conducting, if less so, the production thinks itself far cleverer than it is. More seriously, neither seems remotely to appreciate not only the intelligence but the profundity of this most ravishing of operas.

My new book: Arnold Schoenberg

This has truly been a labour of love. (What book is not?) Arnold Schoenberg, my contribution to Reaktion Books’s Critical Lives series, is now available to buy from the publisher’s website. I have a discount code for readers: ARNOLD20; it will give a full 20% off the price of £11.99, making the cost just £9.59. (Please click here.) No one should feel under any obligation, but I hope this very reasonable price will enable most of those who might be interested to read the book. Readers in the Western hemisphere may prefer to order the book from University of Chicago Press ($19); it is not available yet, but should be next month (April) and may be ordered in advance. For anyone who would prefer, for whatever reason, to order from Amazon, please find a link immediately below.

Trio Zimmermann - Schoenberg and Bach, 23 February 2019

Wigmore Hall

Schoenberg: String Trio, op.45

Bach (arr. Trio Zimmermann): Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

Frank Peter Zimmermann (violin)

Antoine Tamestit (viola)

Christian Poltéra (cello)

Schoenberg’s String Trio is well-nigh universally considered not only one of the composer’s greatest works but one of the finest of the genre (a notoriously difficult combination of instruments). So it sounded here in this outstanding performance from the Trio Zimmermann. Febrile, disjunct, and yet finding ultimate unity in that state, it unavoidably brings – and here brought – late Beethoven to mind; this is music that, in Michael Cherlin’s words, ‘is full of abrupt and striking changes of texture and affect as musical ideas are broken off, interrupted by other ideas that are themselves interrupted’. It proved hyper- in almost every respect: almost too much to listen to, yet so commanding of one’s attention that one can do no other. Strange, unheimlich ghosts of old Vienna danced before us, ghosts in anything other than a machine. Schoenberg’s Lisztian form of several-movements-in-one, familiar also from Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony, achieved both further compression and further relief in a performance that made every phrase, indeed every note count. The difficulty of the medium as such never really registered; rather, this was a challenging, all-absorbing musical drama. And drama it was above all, reminding me of words Schoenberg spoke concerning this Fourth String Quartet, yet of relevance here too: ‘I said this time I must compose like Mozart does it, without looking at all whether I see relations or not, juxtaposing ideas. … The characteristic for Mozart is this interruption, I would not be sure to contend that this is a higher or a more primitive technique [than Beethoven]. It is difficult to evaluate this aesthetically. I think it derived from his dramatic technique.’ Here, it surely derived from Schoenberg’s too.

Bach’s Goldberg Variations have received a number of transcriptions and arrangements. Some have opted for supposedly Baroque forces and formations – which almost seemed hinted at in Trio Zimmermann’s performance of the opening ‘Aria’, less so elsewhere. Others have taken advantage of ‘modern’ possibilities, ranging from one of the earliest in 1883, by Josef Rheinberger (revised by Reger), for two pianos, to the 1938 orchestral version by Polish dodecaphonist Józef Koffler. More recent contributions have included two for string trio, from Dmitry Sitkovetsky (1984) and Federico Sarudiansky (2010). Sitkovetsky’s version came at a time of peak ‘authenticity’, when certain voices would frown upon any such reimagination. Following his 2009 revision, he recalled: ‘When I first wrote my transcription of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations for string trio, in 1984, it was both a labour of love and an obsession with the 1981 Glenn Gould recording. […] Generally, at that time, transcriptions were out of fashion and I recall that my own colleagues and managers were sceptical about such an audacious idea. Since then, my transcriptions have been played all over the world and moreover they have opened the floodgates of new interpretive possibilities for the piece, which have included solo harp, wind instruments of all kinds, saxophone quartets, Renaissance viols and even a fascinating concoction of Uri Caine, among many others.’ First having played Sitkovetsky’s edition, the players of the Trio Zimmermann subsequently decided to join this merry throng, offering an alternative to Sitkovetsky, in a version ‘which is as much as possible neither an arrangement nor a transcription, but basically an unveiling of Bach’s score and its genius’.

I am not entirely sure I follow that meaning, but there was certainly much to relish in the performance. Following that curiously – I assume deliberately – ‘white’ Aria, something more Classical emerged: doubtless as much a matter of the ‘Classical’ instruments as performance, yet a matter of that too, I think. Warmly expressive, highly variegated, never lapsing into too-easy Romanticism, this was throughout a performance in which procedures were clear – one could almost see, Schoenberg-like, inversions in an imaginary score, as well as hear them – yet also placed within a familiar, if never hackneyed schema of musical history: viols occasionally behind it, especially in the minor mode, the (once-)central Austro-German tradition in front. Endless invention was experienced, yet so was the contemplative emotion of Bach’s Passions. Canonical variations maintained the integrity of their own progression, yet also played a crucial role in punctuating their companions. There was sadness to Wanda Landowska’s ‘black pearl’ (no.25) without becoming overwrought; perhaps it might even have been ‘blacker’ at times. Whatever the truth of that, there was a splendid sense of release to be felt in its successor, no.26, treated to richer, not necessarily more Romantic, tone, as if Purcell were being recomposed before our ears. Bach moved towards conclusion in very different ways, ever closer, yet ever reinventive, the restatement of the Aria unquestionably an arrival rather than a mere return.

Kulman/Skelton/BBC SO/Oramo - Mozart, Larcher, and Mahler, 22 February 2019

Barbican Hall

Mozart: Symphony no.35 in D major, KV 385, ‘Haffner’

Thomas Larcher: Nocturne – Insomnia

Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde

Elisabeth Kulman (mezzo-soprano)

Stuart Skelton (tenor)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

A strange concert, this, in which the Barbican Hall proved Mahler’s enemy in particular. In a half-reasonable world, London would have a decent orchestral concert hall; let us hope that plans to give the London Symphony Orchestra a new home will come to something sooner rather than later. The LSO sounds transformed when heard elsewhere – even at the more than problematical Royal Albert Hall for the Proms. Other orchestras, even when, like the BBC Symphony Orchestra, they play at the Barbican with some regularity, often experience greater difficulties. Woodwind playing in particular here sounded distinctly odd, even crude, at least from where I was seated; the sound could not remotely have corresponded to how the musicians were ‘really’ playing. A new hall cannot come soon enough.

The two pieces in the first half suffered less. Mozart’s Haffner Symphony had an excellent start, the first movement cultivated, warm, nicely phrased, and directed – if occasionally a little fussy. Its tonal and motivic drama registered with strength and meaning, having one marvel at the composer’s concision. The Andante had many similar virtues, yet ultimately Sakari Oramo’s vision had one missing both warmth and charm. It was very much on the fast side: not necessarily a problem in itself, had it yielded more. This was Mozart progressing efficiently rather than having us enter a garden of delights. If the minuet and trio were at times also a little plain, their direction was clear. The finale, alas, was driven so mercilessly as to lose much of its humanity. It can be taken as fleet as you like, but speed should never be an end in itself, still less a cause for hardening. If only the three succeeding movements had been at the same level as the first.

Thomas Larcher’s ensemble piece, Nocturne-Insomnia, was written in 2007-8 and revised in 2017. Its two parts correspond audibly and meaningfully to the two words of the title, so much so as to offer something not so very different from a post-romantic tone poem. We heard a keen ear for harmony and how to make broadly tonal harmonies sound once again new(ish). What one might have expected to sound commonplace here sounded hard-won, the first part strangely reminiscent of a Bruckner Adagio. The music wound down, as it had, in retrospect, wound up, leading us far from what we had been led to expect, insomnia upon us. Even the coda of apparent sleep at the close, high string harmonics and accordion, sounded provisional, ready to be disrupted.

Larcher’s piece received, for me at least, the most compelling performance, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde only intermittently convincing, let alone moving, until the great final movement. The ferocity of the opening took me by surprise, although it was probably more a matter of the congested Barbican acoustic than anything else. Stuart Skelton had no difficulty making himself heard in this ‘Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde’, although his performance here and elsewhere was not without effort. (I suspect he may not have been well.) There was, rightly, bitter anger to be heard at times, for instance when he told us of the ‘wild-gespenstische Gestalt’ amongst the graves. At any rate, his diction was excellent, set against admirable orchestral clarity from the BBC SO and Oramo. The orchestra sounded as if framing a finely-etched painting in ‘Der Einsame im Herbst’. Set against the fine burgundy pinot noir of Elisabeth Kulman’s mezzo, all that lacked was a sense of the orchestral moments of painting coming to life, of movement rather than a frieze. It is autumn, after all, not winter. The third movement, ‘Von der Jugend’, would have benefited from greater charm, however ironic, though its chinoiserie was piquant enough. By now, alas, Skelton seemed all too audibly to be struggling.

Oramo’s stiffness of gear change in ‘Von der Schönheit’ sounded strange, as did the blatant vulgarity of the brass sound (again, perhaps partly the fault of the acoustic). It all sounded a little too close to Shostakovich. The more overtly inward moments of ‘Der Trunkene im Frühling’ fared better, the rest oddly unsettled. Nevertheless, the darkness of the opening to ‘Der Abschied’ sounded a necessary note of fatal certainty, at first a sharper-etched successor to the fourth movement of the Third Symphony, before proceeding along its own, very different path. The brook, ‘der Bach’, suggested a now unattainable Beethovenian pastorale: our glance back towards something no longer possible. If balances were often less than ideal, there remained something plausible to the alienation that even that elicited. At last, I realised what had truly been missing (as well as a better hall): a sense that this was symphony as much as song cycle. It was too late for that really to be put right, but the close, from that long orchestral interlude onwards, vouchsafed a taste of that richer alternative.

The Monstrous Child, Royal Opera, 21 February 2019 (world premiere)

Linbury Theatre

Hel (Marta Fontanals-Simmons)
Images: Stephen Cummiskey/ROH 2019

Hel – Marta Fontanals-Simmons

Angrboda – Rosie Aldridge

Loki – Tom Randle

Modgud – Lucy Schaufer

Baldr – Dan Shelvey

Odin – Graeme Broadbent

Nanna, Thora – Elizabeth Karani

Actors and Puppeteers – Laura Caldow, Stuart Angell

Timothy Sheader (director)

Paul Wills (designs)

Howard Hudson (lighting)

Ian William Galloway (video)

Josie Daxter (movement)

Sound Intermedia (sound design)

Aurora Orchestra

Jessica Cottis (conductor)

The Royal Opera House’s choice of work for the first new production in the splendidly redesigned Linbury Theatre – not unreasonably, it seems to have lost ‘Studio’ from its name – is, perhaps, a declaration of intent; it may certainly be received as such. Not only is it a new work; it is billed specifically as ‘our first opera for teenage audiences’. Following somewhat in the line of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Coraline – last year’s premiere for children – Gavin Higgins’s The Wondrous Child, to another libretto by a children’s author, this time Francesca Simons, seems to me to have a good chance of prospering not only in that specific role, but also more generally. It is certainly a successful first opera – from the Linbury, from Higgins, from Simons, and indeed from the production team and performers, without which any single effort would likely come to naught. Opera, we were reminded, is above all a company effort – which should, of course, include the audience too. Let us hope, then, that plenty of teenagers were among those who were able to secure tickets before the run sold out; and/or that further tickets will be released, as often happens in practice.

Baldr (Dan Shelvey)

Many – though perhaps not so many of us on the first night – will doubtless come to the opera through Simons’s book ‘of the same name’, as Peter Cook and Dudley Moore might have had it. Not that there is anything of ‘Little Miss Britten’ here; for not only is the plot drawn from Norse mythology, from the myth of Hel, goddess of the dead; the libretto is distinctly on the Anglo-Saxon and perhaps even the Norse roots of the English language. Had his English been better, Wagner might have lauded the lack of Latinism. The immediacy, not to mention the ‘earthiness’ of some of the vocabulary make particular sense in a primaeval realm – and will surely appeal to teenagers of all ages in the audience too. To a certain extent, staging and score work with that, performances perhaps still more so; they also recall (to us), however, consciously or otherwise, that we are no more Anglo-Saxons than we are Norse gods. The false immediacy of which Wagner could occasionally – very occasionally – prove guilty in theoretical, though never dramatic, writing stands always in need of puncturing in our modern condition. That is not a value judgement, simply an observation.

Simons knows that as well as Higgins, as well as by director, Timothy Sheader and his team. And so, we are reminded by the puppetry in the first half of the staging, actors and singers lightly detached – this is not The Mask of Orpheus, nor does it try to be! – from their characters in some cases, as well as by Hel’s narration of that first part, the later character recounting the deeds of the child-puppet her, that even in – particularly in – a drama dealing with (supposedly) eternal gods, time plays a mediating role. Again, Wagner of all musical dramatists could have told us that – and does. Higgins offers much in the way of readily associative and memorable leitmotifs in his score, as well as plenty of ‘atmosphere’ and ‘action’, after a fashion that would surely make sense to teenagers – and others – accustomed to the ways of film scores, without ever sounding ‘like’ film music. Video and electronic sound help us shift between locations, for instance from the gods realm in the skies to the place of Hel’s banishment, from which she will bring about the end of the gods’ rule.

Angrboda (Rosie Aldridge)

Leaving aside the (understandable) exaggeration about what opera ‘is’, for it can be any number of things, one knows what Simons means when she writes in the programme: ‘It took me a while to understand how different writing a libretto is to writing a novel. Opera is much more direct: people say what they think – repeatedly. Opera is so heightened, it really is the perfect way to express the emotion and epic sweep of myths about gods and giants, love and hate, as well as a young girl’s journey towards creating her own life.’ To my mind – and increasingly on reflection – Simons and Higgins achieve this with great success here. Pacing is different too; the analogy Simons draws with a picture book – ‘the words need to allow space for the illustrations’ – is interesting. Again, one senses a true collaboration: between librettist and composer, of course, but also with the production team and performers.

Marta Fontanals-Simmons gave a fine performance as Hel: half human, half corpse. Never sentimental – she does not want mere pity – she involved us in her plight, her hopes, her decision through sheer force and variety of vocal personality. Rosie Aldridge and Tom Randle impressed and (not a little) repelled as her parents: those who cursed her and ultimately the world by bringing her into it. Lucy Schaufer proved typically compassionate as the giantess Modgud, keeper of the bridge to Niflheim and the dead. Odin, king of the gods, received a sharply observed performance from Graeme Broadbent, taking us plausibly from hauteur to downfall. Dan Shelvey’s Baldr, as carefree and compassionate in tone as the lovelorn Hel thought him, offered a performance both delightful and moving. The Aurora Orchestra and Jessica Cottis could hardly have offered surer advocacy in the pit.

Trifonov/LSO/Rattle - Rameau, Ravel, Poulenc, and Jolas, 17 February 2019

Barbican Hall

Rameau: Les Indes galantes: Suite

Ravel: Piano Concerto in G major

Betsy Jolas: A Little Summer Suite

Poulenc: Les Biches: Suite

Ravel: La Valse

Daniil Trifonov (piano)

London Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

An evening of French delights from Simon Rattle and the LSO? Certainly, even if some – not necessarily those one might have expected – delighted more than others. First among not-quite-equals stood the earliest and latest works: a dance suite from Rameau’s Les Indes galantes and a parallel Little Summer Suite, composed in 2015 by Betsy Jolas for Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.

One silly, at least borderline offensive, newspaper ‘article’ and a host of tedious imitators notwithstanding, Betsy Jolas and her music have not recently been ‘discovered’. Her music deserves to be better known, more frequently performed; that, however, is a different matter entirely. The best response to such nonsense is to do what Rattle and the LSO did here: perform it – and perform it with such excellence. Seven vividly etched miniatures abound with echoes and correspondences, but does not all music when one is acquainting oneself with it? A few Messiaenesque harmonies, even the odd marriage of rhythm and instrumentation recalling Boulez’s Notations, speak not of overt ‘influence’ but perhaps of kinship – and what kinship. The scoring is much sparer than that for the latter. Although the orchestral forces are relatively large – certainly not so large as Boulez’s – the writing is more often ensemble-like. Four of the movements echo – consciously, I presume – Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. ‘Strolling’ movements – ‘Strolling away’, ‘Strolling about’, ‘Strolling under’, and finally, ‘Strolling home’ – they offer continuity and connection; a dark, menacing, almost nineteenth-century Russian bass suggests that honoured predecessor, before taking in Ligetian ‘Knocks and clocks’, responsorial (to that) ‘Shakes and quakes’ and similarly post-liturgical ‘Chants and cheers’, suspended, it seems, in musical mid-air. Succinct, witty, with a nonchalant sign-off suggestive, as noted in Jeremy Thurlow’s booklet note, of Debussy’s Jeux, one was left wanting more, yet admiring of the taste and judgement that had the music end when it did.

The very opening of Jolas’s suite had, at least in context, intriguingly echoed the chains of Rameau’s opening ‘Air pour les esclaves africains’. If Rameau’s (relative) battery of percussion veered in danger of the wearisome, taken out of dramatic context (for a review of a Munich performance of the entire work, click here), the relief of such enlightened Baroque music-making was eminently worth the slight wait. Each of the five movements danced with colour, grace, and a refreshing lack of doctrinaire ‘authenticity’. String vibrato was withdrawn at the opening of the ‘Air pour l’adoration du soleil’, but with good reason, that anticipation prefiguring sunrises in Haydn (both The Creation and The Seasons). The most celebrated number, the ‘Air pour les sauvages’, proceeded with splendid swing. It may be problematic to our postcolonial minds, yet it is far from unprogressive by Enlightenment standards. The closing Chaconne stood, rightly, worlds away from our one-sided notions of the dance, too influenced by Bach and his Romantic successors. The world of Les Indes Galantes, not unlike the Tiepolo frescoes for the stairwell of Würzburg’s Balthasar Neumann Residenz, present a Eurocentric world, to be sure, but one that attempts to embrace, even in small way to elevate, other cultures as surely as did Montesquieu and Voltaire. Trumpets and drums rejoiced, without effacing a tenderness that spoke both to Rameau’s age and our own. For all Rattle’s evident, longstanding belief in ‘period’ performance practice, this did not sound so very distant from the Rameau of forebears such as Raymond Leppard and Jean-François Paillard – and was all the better for such kinship.

Daniil Trifonov joined the orchestra, post-Rameau, for Ravel’s G major Piano Concerto. He appeared transfixed at the opening. Whose spell? Ravel’s or his own? It was unclear, as was much of the rest of his performance. There were delights aplenty in such pellucid pianism, but much of the first movement was indulgent, lacking line and, on occasion, connection with Rattle’s – and the LSO’s – able accompaniment. Harp-led washes of sound were duly gorgeous, likewise woodwind solos seemingly harking back to the Rameau we had just heard, but Trifonov appeared oblivious, pursuing instead, so it seemed, his own rêveries. The slow movement nevertheless proved bewitching. Here, Trifonov’s exquisite modulation of dynamics, silken touch, and above all, endlessly long-breathed phrasing were quite the match for Ravel’s not entirely un-self-regarding writing. There was here a chamber intimacy, pent up with emotion that never quite dared speak its name that revealed darker undercurrents than I can hitherto recall: a tragic Tombeau de Rameau composed before our ears. If only the first movement and an often oddly-balanced – at least from my seat – finale had matched such extraordinary music-making. Still, Trifonov’s closing exuberance reaped its own rewards – even if he again occasionally parted company from the orchestra. What I believe to have been his own transcription from Rachmaninov’s cantata, The Bells, made for a richly exploratory encore.

Poulenc’s Les biches, here given in suite form, has its admirers. Love much of Poulenc’s music though I do, I cannot help but find much of this ballet music somewhat thin gruel. At any rate, it is very much a period piece. Rattle and the LSO did what they could to point up Stravinskian correspondences, the opening of the ‘Andantino’ very much a case in point, likewise the Pulcinella-like writing of the ‘Final’. (If only the latter benefited from Stravinsky’s – and Pergolesi (attrib.)’s – concision. At its best, for instance in the opening ‘Rondeau’, there was a charming air of an imaginary vieille France: not Rameau’s, but why should it be? Ravel’s La Valse proved a similarly mixed bag: not, of course, as work, but as performance. Rattle certainly captured the dark strangeness of the opening, likewise a later, hallucinogenic nausea to the strings. I was less convinced, though, by the driven, almost vulgar quality to climaxes and other passages. A militaristic subtext? Perhaps; this, however, sounded close to Shostakovich. An odd performance, discontinuities to the fore, was played as well as one would expect; it certainly had me think.