Barbican Centre and Jerwood Hall, LSO St Luke’s
Tuning In (Omnibus film by Barrie Gavin, introduced by Barrie Gavin)
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Stockhausen – Adieu, for wind quintet
Stockhausen – Klavierstücke, nos. I-IV, VII, and IX
Stockhausen – Kontra-Punkte
Stockhausen – Choral
Stockhausen – Chöre für Doris
Stockhausen – Litanei 97
Nicolas Hodges (piano)
Emma Tring (soprano)
Guildhall New Music Ensemble
BBC Singers
Richard Baker (conductor)
David Hill (conductor)
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Stockhausen – Inori
Kathinka Pasveer (dancer-mime)
Alain Louafi (dancer-mime)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
David Robertson (conductor)
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Stockhausen – Hymnen
The first of three BBC Symphony Orchestra ‘Total Immersion’ days was devoted to Karlheinz Stockhausen. Last year’s Stockhausen Day at the Proms and the KLANG Festival at the Southbank would have provided an ideal context for many although, given the size of the ferociously hard-working composer’s œuvre, there remains much more music to be discovered. Barrie Gavin’s 1978 Omnibus film on the composer provided a stimulating appetiser, the director proving a diverting speaker in his introduction to this introduction. Centred around excerpts from a Songcircle performance of Stimmung and from Stockhausen’s fascinating lecture at the Oxford Union, it was sad to reflect – as Gavin did – that it would be inconceivable for such a film to be made today, let alone shown on BBC One. It might, he joked, just about make it onto a putative BBC Thirty-two at midnight. What most surprised me was how witty a speaker the composer proved to be. In my experience, his music, whatever its other virtues, is singularly lacking in humour; yet here, he was able to employ that very quality not for its own sake, not as a dubious means of acquiring popularity, but to grant insights into his music.
The first of the day’s three concerts was to my mind the most rewarding in ‘purely’ musical terms, the presence of some interesting but hardly representative juvenilia notwithstanding. LSO St Luke’s Jerwood Hall provided the setting, whilst the two evening concerts would take place in the Barbican Hall. Adieu (1966) was one of the few non-electronic works Stockhausen wrote during the 1960s, prompted by a request from the oboist Wilhelm Meyer for a memorial to his son, Wolfgang Christian. I had never heard the piece before but was instantly taken by how well Stockhausen wrote for wind quintet (flute/piccolo, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon). For a composer who was often most keen of all his contemporaries to forge ahead, apparently to sever links with tradition, there was a surprising degree of Mozartian reference or at least consonance, albeit with a typical fearlessness in creating something quite new. An opening cadence hinted at what was to come, sounding like a Mozartian objet trouvé, followed by mesmerising airborne material, which put me in mind of Ligeti’s Lontano. Such a pattern would continue throughout the piece, with a more ‘traditional’ gesture, always conducted, followed by freer, exploratory material, often of a similar nature to that mentioned, although one episode displayed considerable violence. Paul Griffiths’s helpful notes explained that the durations of events were given by the Fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144) and that ordered increase, both in composition and in performance, was palpable: something more stratified, hierarchical even than, for instance, the fantasy of Boulezian proliferation. The ending, when it came, was charming, almost Classical. Richard Baker and members of the Guildhall New Music Ensemble proved excellent guides in this initial exploration.
Next were six of Stockhausen’s seminal Klavierstücke, expertly performed by Nicolas Hodges. I-IV were performed as a group, followed by V, then VII. It was a while since I had heard any of Stockhausen’s piano music in concert, the previous occasion having been a spellbinding recital by Maurizio Pollini, when, heard in the context of Brahms, Webern, and subsequently Beethoven, my ears had readily related Stockhausen’s music to German tradition. I suspected that this would be less the case in an all-Stockhausen concert but, for whatever reason, I was mistaken, probably a sign that this music is now truly taking its place in the repertoire but also surely a sign of the pianist’s genuine musical artistry. Written in 1952 and 1953, the first four pieces fit very well together; when performed in this way, as Griffiths noted, we can hear them almost as four brief sonata movements. I also thought of the single-movement/four movement duality of the Liszt B minor piano sonata or the Schoenberg Chamber Symphony no.1. The first piece displayed a gleaming, crystalline sound: neo-Bauhaus, if you like. Hodges’ performance drew attention to the crucial importance – as signalled by the composer himself – of the duration of pauses in relation to the serialised dynamic contrasts. Everything sounded – as indeed it is – both fantastical and absolutely logical. The same could be said for the other three pieces, the flowing, Andante-like second ‘movement’, the ‘scherzo’ of Webernesque concision, and the pointillistic ‘finale’, in which one could almost see the stars from which Stockhausen would soon draw such inspiration – and indeed descent. In the fifth piece (1954), some chords – which were most definitely heard as chords – could have come straight out of a set of Schoenberg Klavierstücke. Hodges imparted a true sense of continuity and seemed to refer back to the ‘cascade of gestures’ (Griffiths) that had characterised the first piece. Indeed, I heard the fifth almost as an expansion of the possibilities of the first, not least in the clearly audible demonstration of serialised dynamics as an integral part of composition, dynamic contrasts no longer being relegated to the realm of ‘expression’ of some higher-level material. The composer’s exploration of different registers of the piano, with different consequences for sustaining and ‘natural’ resonance was expertly projected here and in the seventh piece, although the latter certainly presented its own character, ‘personality’ even: more abrupt, more austere, yet spun with a similar musical line. There was violence too, all the more telling given that it followed such attention to detail in making every one of the repeated sounds different in its attack and dynamic projection. Intervals, pauses, and the relations between them were anything but hermetic abstractions. Stockhausen had a narrative to tell and Hodges told it. Something one often forgets – or perhaps never knew in the first place – about Stockhausen is that, whilst working in the Norwestdeutscher Rundfunk’s Studio for Electronic Music, he pursued doctoral studies in phonetics and communication theory, subsequently describing his supervisor, Werner Meyer-Eppler as the best teacher he ever had. Stockhausen may have been an intrepid explorer but always in the service of communication.
For Kontra-Punkte (1952, revised 1953), Baker and the Guildhall New Music Ensemble (here flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, piano, harp, violin, and ’cello) returned. Widely considered to be his ‘breakthrough piece’ – the composer himself made it ‘no.1’ in his cataloguing system – it has lost none of its lustre. It was most interesting to hear it with memories of Punkte, the piece ‘against’ which it is to some extent written, not yet faded from the Gürzenich Orchestra’s Proms performance last year (albeit in the last of the composer’s heavily revised versions). Baker and his players imparted not only a ‘technical’ musical sense of points giving way to groups – Stockhausen’s work is partly a commentary, intentional or otherwise, upon the progression of his own compositional technique – but also a poetic sense of how this might be understood as blossoming. I was impressed by the way in which each instrument retained, arguably acquired, its own character, again rather like a star in the night sky, whilst forming part of a greater constellation. There is another shift within the work, towards predominance of the piano part, somewhat helped by the similar tones of the harp, but largely the product of a Herculean effort on the part of the ensemble’s pianist. Here, Richard Uttley’s effort was not in vain, helping Baker to shape the dramatic trajectory of this wonderful work. No wonder that the notoriously demanding Boulez entertains no reservations about it.
The second half opened with the early Choral, from just two years earlier, 1950. It certainly does what it says on the tine, the line-by-line treatment standing in direct descent from Bach, albeit without any sense of compositional originality. David Hill shaped the BBC Singers’ mellifluous response to the text very well, including a telling pause between stanzas. I fancied that I heard something of another of Stockhausen’s teachers, Frank Martin, as I also did in the following Chöre für Doris, settings in translation of Verlaine, also from 1950. Three contrasting choruses, ‘Die Nachtigall’, ‘Armer junger Hirt’, and ‘Agnus Dei’, again displayed considerable aplomb in the handling of choral forces and again seemed singularly lacking in intimations of what was to come. I was, however, rather taken with the way in which different vocal parts displayed different vocal characters – in more senses than one – in the middle number, telling of a poor young shepherd and his love. The line, in which Verlaine, in Rilke’s translation, beseeches the Lamb of God to grant us peace, not war, was aptly imploring, both in composition and in performance.
Hodges then returned with the ninth of the Klavierstücke (1954-5, revised 1961). He was fully equal to the implacable opening with its long diminuendo of repeated and almost-repeated notes. Once heard, this cannot be forgotten, certainly not whilst the rest of the piece vainly attempts to break free of its oppressive shadow – not unlike the horrendous discord towards the end of the first movement of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony – and certainly not in this fine performance. Except, of course, it is not merely a memory, for it recurs, foreshortened and punctuated, until finally some provisional escape is attained. Once again, Hodges conveyed not only the musical but also the dramatic substance of Stockhausen’s vision.
Finally, we heard the extraordinary Litanei 97, Stockhausen’s 1997 reworking of ‘Litanei’, one of the ‘text compositions’ making up the 1968 Aus den sieben Tagen. Here the composer sets his original text, for speaking chorus and Japanese rin (bowl-shaped gongs from temple rituals, here struck by the conductor). This is ritual and difficult to judge in musical terms, but the spectacle, replete with blue and silver robes, was captivating. The singers formed a circle with the priestly conductor in the centre, the circle – later two concentric circles – sometimes rotating, eventually turning outwards and dispersing. Bells added both a haunting sound in themselves and a resonant punctuation. Members of the choir rather than the conductor intoned; I was not quite sure why this was the case, but it did no particular harm. There were two unfortunate interventions, one from a member of the audience in the balcony, who dropped a programme from on high, and the other from David Hill, who knocked over one of the bowls. It is, of course, easy to mock, but the question of the purpose of music in a modern, all-too-secular world is of crucial importance, and one Stockhausen, unlike so many others, was not afraid to address.
This nicely set the scene for the first of the evening performances, that of Inori (1973-4). Stockhausen’s decisive return to the ‘formula’-melodic method of composition, first broached in Mantra, was admirably described in David Robertson’s clear yet far from patronising spoken introduction. In these ‘adorations’, the basic elements of music – rhythm, dynamics, melody, harmony, and polyphony – are brought into being, one by one, each of the five sections devoted to one of the five sections of the composer’s generative formula. The mime-dancers, acting according to Stockhausen’s precise instructions, mirror – or do they lead? – the musical development and once again impart an undeniable sense of ritual to the unfolding proceedings. Certainly the basic, primæval opening aptly presented the ‘invocation’ of the work’s title. Oddly enough, the monotone G, pervading almost the entire work, is not ‘monotonous’ in the popular sense, although it proved impossible to shift it from my memory at the end of the performance. This is process music but not minimalism, as ultra-serialist as anything Stockhausen wrote during his Darmstadt years, both maddening and beguiling in its inexorable simplicity. Robertson and the BBC Symphony Orchestra could not, I suspect, have been bettered as advocates, understanding all of this perfectly. Their handling of the several crucial echoes was especially impressive, quite magical. It was unfortunate that, occasionally, the mime-dancers fell a little out of sync, a failing that drew attention away from the ritual. As the work became louder and the orchestra was given its head, there were sounds which, taken in isolation, would not have been totally out of place in Mahler, but context is all, or almost all. We were being led, visually as well as musically, towards an entrance into a mysterious temple. Applause was, I suppose, inevitable at the end, but I found the experience unsettling. Either this was a ritual of quite a different nature from conventional concert-going, in which case the reaction seemed inappropriate, or, given the supreme lack of irony, it was charlatanry, in which case...
But on to the final performance, returning to the mid-sixties for the internationalist tape-work, Hymnen (1966-7). There are actually two versions for musicians too, yet it was the ‘pure’ original we heard here. Hymnen is quite a testament to Stockhausen’s unique imagination, a montage of four ‘regions’ – I to IV, dedicated respectively to Boulez, Pousseur, Cage, and Berio – in which we hear various national anthems, shortwave radio signals, voices, crowds, aircraft, Stockhausen in discussion with his assistant, and so on, until finally reaching some sort of peace with the composer’s breathing. There is much that is of great interest – and, as ever with Stockhausen, it never seems that the concept is more important than the result. The distortions, intersections, and juxtapositions are genuinely compelling. Yet I could not help but wonder whether it needed to last two hours (one might answer, ‘but why should it not?); or, if it did, whether the Barbican Hall without lights was really the place for such a ‘performance’. No use was really made of the space, in sharp contrast, say, with the imaginative deployment of the Royal Albert Hall for last year’s British premiere of COSMIC PULSES. Yet in suggesting to us that a conventional concert hall may not really be an appropriate setting for his music, in disturbing our ideas about what a ‘concert’ might be, Stockhausen is doubtless performing a great service. That he is not merely doing that but is creating something utterly new elevates him from the merely Cageian.
Monday, 19 January 2009
Thursday, 15 January 2009
RPO/Gatti - Mahler, 14 January 2009
Royal Festival Hall
Mahler – Symphony no.9
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniele Gatti (conductor)
I have been privileged to attend two performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony that have verged upon greatness: from Sir Simon Rattle with the London Symphony Orchestra, and Daniel Barenboim with the Staatskapelle Berlin. In one of his final performances as Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniele Gatti did not join their company; he surpassed it. Orchestrally, there may have been a very few minor blemishes, Moreover, the RPO, even at its best as here, may not quite rank with the aforementioned orchestras, although the gap was not so wide as many might suspect; it could also have done with just a few more strings. Nevertheless, Gatti’s reading swept all before it, going beyond very fine performances I have heard from him and this orchestra of Mahler’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies.
If there was occasional slight wiriness from the violins earlier on in the first movement, the RPO achieved a rounded tone for its climaxes. The sound was appropriately string-saturated, though certainly not to the exclusion of opportunities well taken for solos, the woodwind in particular looking forward to Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. Indeed, an expressionistic menace, to which brass interjections and powerful timpani blows contributed, characterised the entire movement: not exaggerated but, by the same token, not underplayed. Tempo fluctuations were well handled, never abrupt, and nothing was rushed; more than that, one had the sense of an epic unfolding, as if in one breath. Silences played their haunting part, yet they never marked caesuras; that miraculous single breath went unbroken. For an onward tread marked Gatti’s reading of this movement, recalling the procession of souls in the final movement of Mahler’s Second Symphony, albeit bathed in the apparent world-weariness of Parsifal’s harmonic language. When the bells sounded, both of these earlier works were recalled, brought together, and transmuted into something old yet new. Towards the end, Emer McDonough’s newly strange flute solo stopped just short of crossing over from Mahler’s side of atonality to Berg’s; however, one could imagine that a stone’s throw might have changed everything. Seemingly subsiding into a nothingness that presaged the latter composer’s Three Orchestral Pieces, Op.6, it was left to other instruments – violin, clarinet, and horn – to proffer some consolation in the final bars. Whatever were certain members of the audience thinking of when they applauded? (Sadly, they would twice turn out to be recidivists.)
From the opening bar of the second movement, Gatti displayed a strong sense of rhythm. Again, there was no question of rushing, rendering Mahler’s Ländler all the more rustic – and modernistically constructed. For the first episode, there was a nicely judged upward shift in tempo, yet this never came at the expense of rhythm and style. Relaxations were never abrupt, always telling. Before long, we heard nasty, expressionistic shrieks from the woodwind, again looking forward – though, of course, not so very far forward – to Schoenberg. Silences provided a sense of heart-stopping stillness until the ghostly marionettes resumed their play, coming to truly horrifying life – or should that be death? It was by now apparent that this was a great performance of the symphony, a realisation that crept upon me, rather as in some of Claudio Abbado’s Mahler performances, though perhaps a little less slow-burning. The close of the movement brought a similar sense of onward tread as that heard previously, yet it was now less world-weary, more a bringer of death. A fine example of this was the superb viola solo from Andrew Williams, suggestive of a more malign version of the Fourth Symphony’s scordatura fiddle.
In the Rondo-Burleske, the strings could not dig quite so deep as those of the Staatskapelle Berlin had for Barenboim, but they were not so very far off and their tone stood still closer to the expressionism of Wozzeck. Gatti’s rhythmic command was once again impeccable and I include harmonic rhythm in that observation. The savage counterpoint was truly nasty, akin to a Bergian Mahler Fifth – or Bach on acid. Sweetness came in the episodes but within limits. It remained a dubious sweetness and would be undermined afterwards and sometimes even simultaneously, for instance by Douglas Mitchell’s clarinet, straight out of Pierrot. There was a marionette-kinship with the second movement, for clearly, Gatti not only heard each movement in one, but the symphony as a whole. The terrible dances acquired an unstoppable force –which does not mean that the performance became inflexible, anything but. Vouchsafed an hallucinogenic vision of another world (the after-life?), this I found both beautiful and terrifying. Gatti understood that Mahler’s questions are metaphysical; the recent, Shostakovich-derived cheap thrills of Valery Gergiev in this repertoire could not have been more distant. And when the climax came, it was truly horrific. The subject – whoever or whatever that might be – attempted to escape, increasingly frantic; yet there was nowhere to hide. Implacable Fate proved the victor.
Then came the Adagio. The richness of tone in the violins’ opening phrase harked back to Parsifal and looked forward to the first movement of the unfinished Tenth. There was consolation in four-part comparatively diatonic harmony but this was a noble, strong account. Sentiment was not confused with sentimentality; there was still a fight to be had. Fate, however, was now more benign, allowing this extraordinary slow movement to unfold with inevitability towards something quite different from the conclusion of the Rondo-Burleske. Leader Simon Blendis’s violin solo exhibited an icy beauty, beneath which Mahler’s grand harmonic plan continued to work itself out – here, of course, in the surest of hands: Gatti’s. At times the espressivo nature of the strings’ vibrato threatened to become unbearable, as it should. Against this passionate warmth, we heard a still-beautiful spareness of death from the RPO’s woodwind. Brass and percussion brought us towards the precipice, enabling Mahler to cross over into another world, to somewhere we are not permitted to go. His progressive tonality leaves us unsure, even as we are consoled. The Second Viennese School, of whose music Gatti has proved an ardent advocate, is almost upon us. There is a Nietzschean sense of uncertain freedom, evoked in the following passage from The Gay Science:
... we philosophers and ‘free spirits’ feel, when we hear the news that ‘the old god is dead,’ as if a new dawn shone upon us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an ‘open sea’.
It was finally, understandably, as if Gatti – and Mahler – did not want to let go, yet ultimately must. This was shattering.
Mahler – Symphony no.9
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniele Gatti (conductor)
I have been privileged to attend two performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony that have verged upon greatness: from Sir Simon Rattle with the London Symphony Orchestra, and Daniel Barenboim with the Staatskapelle Berlin. In one of his final performances as Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniele Gatti did not join their company; he surpassed it. Orchestrally, there may have been a very few minor blemishes, Moreover, the RPO, even at its best as here, may not quite rank with the aforementioned orchestras, although the gap was not so wide as many might suspect; it could also have done with just a few more strings. Nevertheless, Gatti’s reading swept all before it, going beyond very fine performances I have heard from him and this orchestra of Mahler’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies.
If there was occasional slight wiriness from the violins earlier on in the first movement, the RPO achieved a rounded tone for its climaxes. The sound was appropriately string-saturated, though certainly not to the exclusion of opportunities well taken for solos, the woodwind in particular looking forward to Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. Indeed, an expressionistic menace, to which brass interjections and powerful timpani blows contributed, characterised the entire movement: not exaggerated but, by the same token, not underplayed. Tempo fluctuations were well handled, never abrupt, and nothing was rushed; more than that, one had the sense of an epic unfolding, as if in one breath. Silences played their haunting part, yet they never marked caesuras; that miraculous single breath went unbroken. For an onward tread marked Gatti’s reading of this movement, recalling the procession of souls in the final movement of Mahler’s Second Symphony, albeit bathed in the apparent world-weariness of Parsifal’s harmonic language. When the bells sounded, both of these earlier works were recalled, brought together, and transmuted into something old yet new. Towards the end, Emer McDonough’s newly strange flute solo stopped just short of crossing over from Mahler’s side of atonality to Berg’s; however, one could imagine that a stone’s throw might have changed everything. Seemingly subsiding into a nothingness that presaged the latter composer’s Three Orchestral Pieces, Op.6, it was left to other instruments – violin, clarinet, and horn – to proffer some consolation in the final bars. Whatever were certain members of the audience thinking of when they applauded? (Sadly, they would twice turn out to be recidivists.)
From the opening bar of the second movement, Gatti displayed a strong sense of rhythm. Again, there was no question of rushing, rendering Mahler’s Ländler all the more rustic – and modernistically constructed. For the first episode, there was a nicely judged upward shift in tempo, yet this never came at the expense of rhythm and style. Relaxations were never abrupt, always telling. Before long, we heard nasty, expressionistic shrieks from the woodwind, again looking forward – though, of course, not so very far forward – to Schoenberg. Silences provided a sense of heart-stopping stillness until the ghostly marionettes resumed their play, coming to truly horrifying life – or should that be death? It was by now apparent that this was a great performance of the symphony, a realisation that crept upon me, rather as in some of Claudio Abbado’s Mahler performances, though perhaps a little less slow-burning. The close of the movement brought a similar sense of onward tread as that heard previously, yet it was now less world-weary, more a bringer of death. A fine example of this was the superb viola solo from Andrew Williams, suggestive of a more malign version of the Fourth Symphony’s scordatura fiddle.
In the Rondo-Burleske, the strings could not dig quite so deep as those of the Staatskapelle Berlin had for Barenboim, but they were not so very far off and their tone stood still closer to the expressionism of Wozzeck. Gatti’s rhythmic command was once again impeccable and I include harmonic rhythm in that observation. The savage counterpoint was truly nasty, akin to a Bergian Mahler Fifth – or Bach on acid. Sweetness came in the episodes but within limits. It remained a dubious sweetness and would be undermined afterwards and sometimes even simultaneously, for instance by Douglas Mitchell’s clarinet, straight out of Pierrot. There was a marionette-kinship with the second movement, for clearly, Gatti not only heard each movement in one, but the symphony as a whole. The terrible dances acquired an unstoppable force –which does not mean that the performance became inflexible, anything but. Vouchsafed an hallucinogenic vision of another world (the after-life?), this I found both beautiful and terrifying. Gatti understood that Mahler’s questions are metaphysical; the recent, Shostakovich-derived cheap thrills of Valery Gergiev in this repertoire could not have been more distant. And when the climax came, it was truly horrific. The subject – whoever or whatever that might be – attempted to escape, increasingly frantic; yet there was nowhere to hide. Implacable Fate proved the victor.
Then came the Adagio. The richness of tone in the violins’ opening phrase harked back to Parsifal and looked forward to the first movement of the unfinished Tenth. There was consolation in four-part comparatively diatonic harmony but this was a noble, strong account. Sentiment was not confused with sentimentality; there was still a fight to be had. Fate, however, was now more benign, allowing this extraordinary slow movement to unfold with inevitability towards something quite different from the conclusion of the Rondo-Burleske. Leader Simon Blendis’s violin solo exhibited an icy beauty, beneath which Mahler’s grand harmonic plan continued to work itself out – here, of course, in the surest of hands: Gatti’s. At times the espressivo nature of the strings’ vibrato threatened to become unbearable, as it should. Against this passionate warmth, we heard a still-beautiful spareness of death from the RPO’s woodwind. Brass and percussion brought us towards the precipice, enabling Mahler to cross over into another world, to somewhere we are not permitted to go. His progressive tonality leaves us unsure, even as we are consoled. The Second Viennese School, of whose music Gatti has proved an ardent advocate, is almost upon us. There is a Nietzschean sense of uncertain freedom, evoked in the following passage from The Gay Science:
... we philosophers and ‘free spirits’ feel, when we hear the news that ‘the old god is dead,’ as if a new dawn shone upon us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation. At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an ‘open sea’.
It was finally, understandably, as if Gatti – and Mahler – did not want to let go, yet ultimately must. This was shattering.
Friday, 9 January 2009
Hanno Müller-Brachmann/András Schiff recital, 8 January 2009
Wigmore Hall
Schubert – Willkommen und Abschied, D 767
Schubert – Versunken, D 715
Schubert – An Schwager Kronos, D 369
Schubert – Meeres Stille, D 216
Schubert – Prometheus, D 674
Mendelssohn – Variations sérieuses in D minor, op.54
Busoni – Fünf Goethe Lieder
Wolf – Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo
Brahms – Vier ernste Gesänge, op.121
Hanno Müller-Brachmann (bass-baritone)
András Schiff (piano)
Hanno Müller-Brachmann certainly manages to attract excellent pianists. The previous recital in which I had heard him was in Berlin, with no less an ‘accompanist’ than Daniel Barenboim: part of an all-Busoni chamber and Lieder concert prefacing a spellbinding Staatsoper performance of Doktor Faust. Now we were treated to András Schiff, again offering an all-too-rare opportunity to hear Busoni, for me one of the highlights of a fine programme.
However, it was with Schubert that the recital began. There is no greater Schubert pianist alive than Schiff and he did not disappoint. From the galloping echoes of Erlkönig in the opening Willkommen und Abschied, we were in eminently musical hands. Müller-Brachmann proved equal to the challenges not only of Schubert’s line but also of Goethe’s verse, for all of the first half’s songs were settings of the German master. When ‘The moon gazed from a bank of cloud/mournfully through the haze,’ (Richard Stokes’s translation, both here and for the rest of the programme) there was just the right degree of hanging back upon the haze of ‘dem Duft’. Likewise, the pause after the revelation of a lovely face and the exclamation ‘ihr Götter!’ was perfectly judged, followed by a marvellously hushed ‘Ich hofft’es, ich verdient’ es nicht!’ (‘This I had hoped but never deserved!’). Schiff supplied a magically handled modulation midway through the final stanza, as he would for the line, ‘Da fühl ich mich von Herzengrund gesund’ (‘the depths of my heart are healed’) in the second song, Versunken. Those depths certainly sounded healed and this song was full of hope, fantasy, and expectation (I thought of the German Erwartung, with its prophetic glances towards Schoenberg) from both performers. An Schwager Kronos brought an urgency that was not confused with undue haste, as much from the piano as from the voice and indeed I heard distinct echoes or, perhaps better, foreshadowings of some of the piano sonatas in Schiff’s performance. The extraordinary Meeres Stille, its piano part restricted – for once, to Goethe’s approval – to thirty-two arpeggiated semibreve chords gave a paradoxical and/or dialectical sense both of suspended time in its quasi-recitative style, and of the utmost urgency. Prometheus¸ in whose words Goethe lays down an almost Young Hegelian gauntlet to Zeus/God, provided a splendid opportunity for Müller-Brachmann not to hector, but to display his dramatic skills. ‘Ich kenne nichts Ärmeres/Unter der Sonn’, als euch, Götter!’ (‘I know nothing more paltry/beneath the sun than you, gods!’) had the unanswerable force of ‘There it is; I have said it.’ And perhaps it also offered the invitation of ‘do your worst!’ The lines immediately following, in which the paltry nature of the gods’ majesty is delineated, looked forward to Wagner’s Ring in their subtle arioso – and in their content. Schiff’s piano part provided punctuation and formal construction, keeping this defiant monologue just within the bounds of song. Whatever Goethe may foolishly have believed, Schubert knew how to let words and ideas speak for themselves. So, on this evidence, did Müller-Brachmann and Schiff.
Upon my last hearing of Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses, I had voiced my doubts concerning the strength of the work; this time, I happily recanted, for which thanks must go to a superior performance. I liked the interesting pre-sentiments of Bach-Busoni in the canonical first variation and indeed the Bachian end to the Thalberg ‘three-handed’ means in the thirteenth, a combination that put me in mind of Chopin. We heard echt-Mendelssohnian gracefulness in the fifth, yet never was it divorced from structural and dramatic meaning; likewise, the lightness of the ninth variation was never glib, expressing instead a powerfully contained passion. The turn to D major for the chorale brought an inevitable reminder of the Bach – or Bach-Busoni – Chaconne, even if ultimately it could not but lack Bach’s sublimity. Schiff’s performance overall impressed upon us that Mendelssohn’s classicism did not equate to mere gentility.
With Busoni, we returned to Goethe, to the five (out of nine) settings from the composer’s later years that were published in 1964 as Fünf Goethelieder. The Lied des Brander was suitably sardonic, followed by a fine performance of the Lied des Mephistopheles, which subsequently found its way into Doktor Faust. Schiff proved ever responsive, both to the score and to Müller-Brachmann, the piano part acquiring greater intensity – not to be confused with hurrying – as the vocalist span his false narrative. Once again, we heard echoes of Bach in the piano part of the Lied des Unmuts. Schlechter Trost unsettled with its nocturnal ghosts, without any vulgar melodramatics; the means were always musical, although Müller-Brachmann’s face, here as elsewhere, was wonderfully expressive in itself. In the final Zigeunerlied, the wolves’ refrain, ‘Wille wau wau wau!/Wille wo wo wo!/Wito hu!’ was rendered almost meaningful – as if we had gained a momentary insight into some arcane tongue – by the singer’s artistry. And in the final stanza, we again heard a touch of the operatic, albeit once again without overstepping the bounds of Lieder-singing.
The second half left Goethe behind but certainly did not embrace the frivolous, for the music was now unremittingly serious in tone. I did not feel that the performances in this section of the programme always matched the level of those in the first, but that was partly because the bar had been set so high. The first of Wolf’s Michelangelo settings, ‘Wohl denk’ ich oft,’ was all the more keenly felt for not trying so hard to be just that, although here – as elsewhere in the set – there were occasional intonational slips in Müller-Brachmann’s performance. The very words that open ‘Alles endet, was entstehet,’ put me in mind of Wagner’s Erda, and whilst Müller-Brachmann is obviously no contralto, his depth of tone on low notes such as those for ‘vergehet’ had a similarly other-worldly effect. The word ‘Leblos’ likewise was surely painted, devoid of meaningless earthly life, or rather existence. I was impressed by the almost Lisztian – despite Schiff’s oft-voiced disdain for his compatriot – hope voiced in both piano and vocal parts during the dream or vision of ‘Fühlt meine Seele,’ whilst the final lines sounded almost Tristan-esque in their longing.
With the opening of Brahms’s Four serious songs we were immediately plunged into that world of sounds and ideas voiced earlier in Ein deutsches Requiem and perhaps even faintly in the composer’s early organ works. (Arguably, we are taken back as far as Schütz.) The opening stanza of the first song, ‘Dann es gehet dem Menschen,’ had a powerful sense of all being preordained, everything being as it must be, both in the musical form and in its expression. I wondered whether a little more understatement would have benefited ‘Ich wandte mich,’ but there was an undoubted sense of existential tragedy to its conclusion. In ‘O Tod,’ however, I felt the lack of a darker voice, recalling a superlative Salzburg account of these songs by Thomas Quasthoff (admittedly with a lesser pianist than Schiff). I did not, moreover, feel that the final ‘Wenn ich mit Menschen’ quite captured the stentorian Pauline voice of the writer of the First Epistle to the Corinthians: a tall order, but a feat that Hans Hotter was certainly able to pull off. Despite my reservations, largely confined to the final set, this remained a distinguished recital, and the encores – more Schubert and that Brahms lullaby – provided a winning, heartfelt au revoir.
Schubert – Willkommen und Abschied, D 767
Schubert – Versunken, D 715
Schubert – An Schwager Kronos, D 369
Schubert – Meeres Stille, D 216
Schubert – Prometheus, D 674
Mendelssohn – Variations sérieuses in D minor, op.54
Busoni – Fünf Goethe Lieder
Wolf – Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo
Brahms – Vier ernste Gesänge, op.121
Hanno Müller-Brachmann (bass-baritone)
András Schiff (piano)
Hanno Müller-Brachmann certainly manages to attract excellent pianists. The previous recital in which I had heard him was in Berlin, with no less an ‘accompanist’ than Daniel Barenboim: part of an all-Busoni chamber and Lieder concert prefacing a spellbinding Staatsoper performance of Doktor Faust. Now we were treated to András Schiff, again offering an all-too-rare opportunity to hear Busoni, for me one of the highlights of a fine programme.
However, it was with Schubert that the recital began. There is no greater Schubert pianist alive than Schiff and he did not disappoint. From the galloping echoes of Erlkönig in the opening Willkommen und Abschied, we were in eminently musical hands. Müller-Brachmann proved equal to the challenges not only of Schubert’s line but also of Goethe’s verse, for all of the first half’s songs were settings of the German master. When ‘The moon gazed from a bank of cloud/mournfully through the haze,’ (Richard Stokes’s translation, both here and for the rest of the programme) there was just the right degree of hanging back upon the haze of ‘dem Duft’. Likewise, the pause after the revelation of a lovely face and the exclamation ‘ihr Götter!’ was perfectly judged, followed by a marvellously hushed ‘Ich hofft’es, ich verdient’ es nicht!’ (‘This I had hoped but never deserved!’). Schiff supplied a magically handled modulation midway through the final stanza, as he would for the line, ‘Da fühl ich mich von Herzengrund gesund’ (‘the depths of my heart are healed’) in the second song, Versunken. Those depths certainly sounded healed and this song was full of hope, fantasy, and expectation (I thought of the German Erwartung, with its prophetic glances towards Schoenberg) from both performers. An Schwager Kronos brought an urgency that was not confused with undue haste, as much from the piano as from the voice and indeed I heard distinct echoes or, perhaps better, foreshadowings of some of the piano sonatas in Schiff’s performance. The extraordinary Meeres Stille, its piano part restricted – for once, to Goethe’s approval – to thirty-two arpeggiated semibreve chords gave a paradoxical and/or dialectical sense both of suspended time in its quasi-recitative style, and of the utmost urgency. Prometheus¸ in whose words Goethe lays down an almost Young Hegelian gauntlet to Zeus/God, provided a splendid opportunity for Müller-Brachmann not to hector, but to display his dramatic skills. ‘Ich kenne nichts Ärmeres/Unter der Sonn’, als euch, Götter!’ (‘I know nothing more paltry/beneath the sun than you, gods!’) had the unanswerable force of ‘There it is; I have said it.’ And perhaps it also offered the invitation of ‘do your worst!’ The lines immediately following, in which the paltry nature of the gods’ majesty is delineated, looked forward to Wagner’s Ring in their subtle arioso – and in their content. Schiff’s piano part provided punctuation and formal construction, keeping this defiant monologue just within the bounds of song. Whatever Goethe may foolishly have believed, Schubert knew how to let words and ideas speak for themselves. So, on this evidence, did Müller-Brachmann and Schiff.
Upon my last hearing of Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses, I had voiced my doubts concerning the strength of the work; this time, I happily recanted, for which thanks must go to a superior performance. I liked the interesting pre-sentiments of Bach-Busoni in the canonical first variation and indeed the Bachian end to the Thalberg ‘three-handed’ means in the thirteenth, a combination that put me in mind of Chopin. We heard echt-Mendelssohnian gracefulness in the fifth, yet never was it divorced from structural and dramatic meaning; likewise, the lightness of the ninth variation was never glib, expressing instead a powerfully contained passion. The turn to D major for the chorale brought an inevitable reminder of the Bach – or Bach-Busoni – Chaconne, even if ultimately it could not but lack Bach’s sublimity. Schiff’s performance overall impressed upon us that Mendelssohn’s classicism did not equate to mere gentility.
With Busoni, we returned to Goethe, to the five (out of nine) settings from the composer’s later years that were published in 1964 as Fünf Goethelieder. The Lied des Brander was suitably sardonic, followed by a fine performance of the Lied des Mephistopheles, which subsequently found its way into Doktor Faust. Schiff proved ever responsive, both to the score and to Müller-Brachmann, the piano part acquiring greater intensity – not to be confused with hurrying – as the vocalist span his false narrative. Once again, we heard echoes of Bach in the piano part of the Lied des Unmuts. Schlechter Trost unsettled with its nocturnal ghosts, without any vulgar melodramatics; the means were always musical, although Müller-Brachmann’s face, here as elsewhere, was wonderfully expressive in itself. In the final Zigeunerlied, the wolves’ refrain, ‘Wille wau wau wau!/Wille wo wo wo!/Wito hu!’ was rendered almost meaningful – as if we had gained a momentary insight into some arcane tongue – by the singer’s artistry. And in the final stanza, we again heard a touch of the operatic, albeit once again without overstepping the bounds of Lieder-singing.
The second half left Goethe behind but certainly did not embrace the frivolous, for the music was now unremittingly serious in tone. I did not feel that the performances in this section of the programme always matched the level of those in the first, but that was partly because the bar had been set so high. The first of Wolf’s Michelangelo settings, ‘Wohl denk’ ich oft,’ was all the more keenly felt for not trying so hard to be just that, although here – as elsewhere in the set – there were occasional intonational slips in Müller-Brachmann’s performance. The very words that open ‘Alles endet, was entstehet,’ put me in mind of Wagner’s Erda, and whilst Müller-Brachmann is obviously no contralto, his depth of tone on low notes such as those for ‘vergehet’ had a similarly other-worldly effect. The word ‘Leblos’ likewise was surely painted, devoid of meaningless earthly life, or rather existence. I was impressed by the almost Lisztian – despite Schiff’s oft-voiced disdain for his compatriot – hope voiced in both piano and vocal parts during the dream or vision of ‘Fühlt meine Seele,’ whilst the final lines sounded almost Tristan-esque in their longing.
With the opening of Brahms’s Four serious songs we were immediately plunged into that world of sounds and ideas voiced earlier in Ein deutsches Requiem and perhaps even faintly in the composer’s early organ works. (Arguably, we are taken back as far as Schütz.) The opening stanza of the first song, ‘Dann es gehet dem Menschen,’ had a powerful sense of all being preordained, everything being as it must be, both in the musical form and in its expression. I wondered whether a little more understatement would have benefited ‘Ich wandte mich,’ but there was an undoubted sense of existential tragedy to its conclusion. In ‘O Tod,’ however, I felt the lack of a darker voice, recalling a superlative Salzburg account of these songs by Thomas Quasthoff (admittedly with a lesser pianist than Schiff). I did not, moreover, feel that the final ‘Wenn ich mit Menschen’ quite captured the stentorian Pauline voice of the writer of the First Epistle to the Corinthians: a tall order, but a feat that Hans Hotter was certainly able to pull off. Despite my reservations, largely confined to the final set, this remained a distinguished recital, and the encores – more Schubert and that Brahms lullaby – provided a winning, heartfelt au revoir.
Monday, 5 January 2009
Ax/NYPO/Maazel, 3 January 2009
Avery Fisher Hall, New York
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto no.2 in F major, BWV 1047
Szymanowski – Symphony no.4, for piano and orchestra, op.60
Strauss – Burleske in D minor, for piano and orchestra
Mussorgsky, orch. Ravel – Pictures at an exhibition
Emanuel Ax (piano)
Philip Smith (trumpet)
Sheryl Staples (violin)
Robert Langevin (flute)
Liang Wang (oboe)
New York Philharmonic Orchestra
Lorin Maazel (conductor)
This was a curious programme. Part way through Pictures at an exhibition, I wondered whether a connecting theme might have been unusual concerto forms – at least in Classical terms – although I doubt that this could have been the intention. I had better explain why Mussorgsky-Ravel would fall into such a category, so shall start with that, the final work, which had the second half to itself. Pictures at an exhibition is not, of course, a concerto for orchestra but in Lorin Maazel’s performance, it rather sounded like one. Ravel’s transcription has become very much an orchestral showpiece and seeking for a Mussorgskian heart beating beneath the Ravelian glitter may be somewhat to miss the point, but I do think it worth making the attempt. This performance was verily sped through, all sections of the New York Philharmonic on superb technical form, yet I could not help thinking that something was missing. The tone was set with an opening Promenade as brisk as – probably brisker than – any I have ever heard, and almost every movement was considerably quicker than usual. The cart in ‘Bydlo’ is drawn by oxen; here it sounded motorised, almost turbo-charged. By contrast, the ‘Great Gate of Kiev’ seemed to last for an eternity, excessively drawn out even without the irritating inserted pregnant pauses. Much of the audience clearly enjoyed such a virtuosic account – I hesitate to say ‘interpretation’ – but I found this the least interesting of the four performances.
Let us return to the beginning. Bach’s second Brandenburg Concerto is one of the greatest of all concerti grossi and I liked this performance very much. It may not have plumbed the Bachian depths; Maazel is no Klemperer or Richter. But we benefited from elegant style and a praiseworthy refusal to genuflect before the false god of ‘authenticity’. Each of the soloists proved eminently musical and exhibited great beauty of tone. Balances both between concertino and ripieno and between the soloists themselves – often tricky in this work – were perfect. Dynamic contrasts were sometimes terraced, though never aggressively of the ‘sewing-machine’ Baroque school, and sometimes shaded, especially in the beautiful slow movement. It flowed in the best sense, ‘flowing’ here being what it says rather than a euphemism for dogmatically fast. The contrast with the opening of the third movement, characterised by a perky trumpet entry, was musical rather than a perverse shock-tactic. Maazel here adopted a tempo that seemed just right: lively but not frenetic, and with a nice but not vulgar rallentando at the close.
Szymanowski’s Fourth Symphony is not a concerto, but has a concertante piano part, here played by Emanuel Ax. The music and the style are of course Szymanowski’s own, but for the uninitiated, one hears something between Bartók and Zemlinsky. It is a marvellous work and it was gratifying to hear it performed by musicians who are not especially known as advocates of the composer. Maazel drove some of the music, especially in the outer movements, a little hard but the great washes of orchestral sound came over well, with excellent solo work from the leader and timpanist, amongst others. Ax could be rather heavy-handed, playing his part as if this really were a Romantic concerto. However, he was most impressive as the hot-house accompanist of the slow movement’s night-chamber-music. King Roger, the composer’s operatic masterpiece, was palpably close.
Maazel and Ax both seemed better acquainted with Strauss’s Burleske, Ax now playing without a score. It is an endearing if un-Straussian work, generally more redolent of Brahms, sometimes Schumann, and occasionally Liszt; there is perhaps but one progression that puts me in mind of the later Strauss (Rosenkavalier, certainly not Elektra). Not even so good a performance as this was could convince me that Strauss always knows where he is going harmonically, but this movement is in conventional concerto-style and sounded like it. Both pianist and conductor proved more yielding than they had been in the Szymanowski, although some of the brass interventions were unnecessarily brash. Ax’s virtuosic style was more appropriate here. I only wish that the programme had amounted to more than the sum of its parts.
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto no.2 in F major, BWV 1047
Szymanowski – Symphony no.4, for piano and orchestra, op.60
Strauss – Burleske in D minor, for piano and orchestra
Mussorgsky, orch. Ravel – Pictures at an exhibition
Emanuel Ax (piano)
Philip Smith (trumpet)
Sheryl Staples (violin)
Robert Langevin (flute)
Liang Wang (oboe)
New York Philharmonic Orchestra
Lorin Maazel (conductor)
This was a curious programme. Part way through Pictures at an exhibition, I wondered whether a connecting theme might have been unusual concerto forms – at least in Classical terms – although I doubt that this could have been the intention. I had better explain why Mussorgsky-Ravel would fall into such a category, so shall start with that, the final work, which had the second half to itself. Pictures at an exhibition is not, of course, a concerto for orchestra but in Lorin Maazel’s performance, it rather sounded like one. Ravel’s transcription has become very much an orchestral showpiece and seeking for a Mussorgskian heart beating beneath the Ravelian glitter may be somewhat to miss the point, but I do think it worth making the attempt. This performance was verily sped through, all sections of the New York Philharmonic on superb technical form, yet I could not help thinking that something was missing. The tone was set with an opening Promenade as brisk as – probably brisker than – any I have ever heard, and almost every movement was considerably quicker than usual. The cart in ‘Bydlo’ is drawn by oxen; here it sounded motorised, almost turbo-charged. By contrast, the ‘Great Gate of Kiev’ seemed to last for an eternity, excessively drawn out even without the irritating inserted pregnant pauses. Much of the audience clearly enjoyed such a virtuosic account – I hesitate to say ‘interpretation’ – but I found this the least interesting of the four performances.
Let us return to the beginning. Bach’s second Brandenburg Concerto is one of the greatest of all concerti grossi and I liked this performance very much. It may not have plumbed the Bachian depths; Maazel is no Klemperer or Richter. But we benefited from elegant style and a praiseworthy refusal to genuflect before the false god of ‘authenticity’. Each of the soloists proved eminently musical and exhibited great beauty of tone. Balances both between concertino and ripieno and between the soloists themselves – often tricky in this work – were perfect. Dynamic contrasts were sometimes terraced, though never aggressively of the ‘sewing-machine’ Baroque school, and sometimes shaded, especially in the beautiful slow movement. It flowed in the best sense, ‘flowing’ here being what it says rather than a euphemism for dogmatically fast. The contrast with the opening of the third movement, characterised by a perky trumpet entry, was musical rather than a perverse shock-tactic. Maazel here adopted a tempo that seemed just right: lively but not frenetic, and with a nice but not vulgar rallentando at the close.
Szymanowski’s Fourth Symphony is not a concerto, but has a concertante piano part, here played by Emanuel Ax. The music and the style are of course Szymanowski’s own, but for the uninitiated, one hears something between Bartók and Zemlinsky. It is a marvellous work and it was gratifying to hear it performed by musicians who are not especially known as advocates of the composer. Maazel drove some of the music, especially in the outer movements, a little hard but the great washes of orchestral sound came over well, with excellent solo work from the leader and timpanist, amongst others. Ax could be rather heavy-handed, playing his part as if this really were a Romantic concerto. However, he was most impressive as the hot-house accompanist of the slow movement’s night-chamber-music. King Roger, the composer’s operatic masterpiece, was palpably close.
Maazel and Ax both seemed better acquainted with Strauss’s Burleske, Ax now playing without a score. It is an endearing if un-Straussian work, generally more redolent of Brahms, sometimes Schumann, and occasionally Liszt; there is perhaps but one progression that puts me in mind of the later Strauss (Rosenkavalier, certainly not Elektra). Not even so good a performance as this was could convince me that Strauss always knows where he is going harmonically, but this movement is in conventional concerto-style and sounded like it. Both pianist and conductor proved more yielding than they had been in the Szymanowski, although some of the brass interventions were unnecessarily brash. Ax’s virtuosic style was more appropriate here. I only wish that the programme had amounted to more than the sum of its parts.
Sunday, 4 January 2009
Thaïs, Metropolitan Opera, 2 January 2009
Metropolitan Opera, New York
Cenobite monks – Daniel Clark Smith, Roger Andrews, Kurt Phinney, Richard Pearson, Craig Montgomery
Palémon – Alain Vernhes
Athanaël – Thomas Hampson
Guard – Trevor Scheunemann
Crobyle – Alyson Cambridge
Myrtale – Ginger Costa-Jackson
Nicias – Michael Schade
Thaïs – Renée Fleming
La Charmeuse – Leah Partridge
Albine – Maria Zifchak
Solo dancer – Zahra Hashemian
Violin solo – David Chan
John Cox (producer)
Christian Lacroix (costumes for Renée Fleming)
Duane Schuler (lighting)
Sara Jo Slate (choreographer)
Metropolitan Opera Chorus (chorus master: Donald Palumbo)
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Jesús López-Cobos (conductor)
This was unlike any operatic performance I have previously attended: not only the work itself – I can hardly claim to be a Massenet habitué and Thaïs is distinctly odd – but also the production and general experience. First, let us consider Thäis. It has tended to be revived and was arguably created as a ‘vehicle’ for a star soprano. We certainly had that in Renée Fleming and I assume that it was her allure that drew in the crowds to the Metropolitan Opera. It is difficult to imagine that this could justly be attributed to a sizable Massenet constituency in New York – or indeed, one that might have flown in for the occasion. For Thaïs, I am afraid to say, contrives to be both bizarre and for the most part dull. Part of the problem would seem to be the work of the librettist, Louis Gallet, who appears to have extracted the ironic anti-clericalism from Anatole France’s novel – which sounds rather interesting: I should be keen to read it – and left us with a story in which a fanatical fourth-century monk, Athanaël attempts and succeeds to win over to his ascetic faith the courtesan, Thaïs, only to succumb to his suppressed lusts and attempt to win her back for the dark side. However, she dies and in her already-declared sainthood is not far off assumed into heaven, as she experiences a vision of angels. (As the late Anna Russell used to say, 'I’m not making this up, you know!') Thaïs’s conversion is so incredibly abrupt that the phrase ‘suspension of disbelief’ seems risibly inadequate for what one must do to one’s dramatic faculties. Moreover, there is no longer any attack upon clerical hypocrisy, for Athanaël fights temptation rather than dissembles. If anything, Athanaël is more the central character, yet that principal reason we might have for him being so has vanished. There might remain interesting contemporary resonances in his fundamentalism but they would need to be dealt with more forcefully than in this production. What in the world of television used to be called ‘continuity’, and perhaps still is, did not seem to have been closely attended to, for the libretto – yes, this was no quirk of the production – had Athanaël threatened with a rifle as he entered Nicias’s Alexandrian palace. (I am well aware of the clock in Julius Caesar, but that is no excuse.)
Before coming to the production, it is worth commenting upon the score itself. It has odd moments, such as the offstage music at the beginning of the second scene of Act II – very well performed. There is also some slightly more interesting music by the oasis in the third act, although it is hardly ‘superbly effective’, to quote the wildly enthusiastic programme note by Thomas May. For the most part, however, it is insipid, with the odd very watered-down Wagnerism. Pelléas this is not, in any sense. Sometimes, such music can sound better than it is. I imagine that Sir Thomas Beecham might have worked some magic upon it. Jesús López-Cobos did not, seeming content to let it flow, or sometimes drag. The playing of the Met orchestra sounded routine; it is easy to sympathise. More worryingly still, so in thrall did the conductor seem to Fleming that he often appeared to be following her rather than vice versa. And what we might charitably term her tempo fluctuations were more than a little on the arbitrary side.
If ever a work cried out for Regietheater it was this: a new twist just might have granted some dramatic credibility to what is at best kitsch, but more often plain uninteresting. As the reader may have guessed, such was not to be in this production shipped in from the Lyric Opera of Chicago. John Cox had us veer between poster-paint scenes of the Egyptian desert and an Alexandria that more or less resembled modern Las Vegas. The cast seemed more or less left to fend for themselves, for the real point of the production seemed to be to showcase the dress designs of Christian Lacroix. They might have worked wonders for a fundraising operatic gala but they had little connection with anything else that was going on. Fleming’s countless changes of wardrobe – they probably were not that many, yet their focal nature made it seem as if they were – resembled the behaviour of a television hostess for an awards ceremony. The last one was almost – but not quite – surreally inappropriate for someone who had entered a convent and was on her deathbed. All too lengthy scene changes, not only between but even within acts, dissipated what little dramatic tension there might have been. And certain members of the audience seemed unable even to listen, applauding before numbers had finished, perhaps most bizarrely during the celebrated violin Méditation. What happened once the Méditation had oame to an end verged upon the incredible. Not only was there applause, but López-Cobos joined in and summoned the soloist to his feet in the pit. Was this a post-modern take upon performance, reception, and so on? It would have been irritating or worse if it had been, but it just appeared to be part of the same ‘gala experience’. If the performers and production team do not even try to take the work seriously, it is a little much to ask others to do so.
What of the singing? That was better, though hardly outstanding. Fleming at her best sounded at her best but her diction was variable and she exhibited some surprisingly ropy intonation. Thomas Hampson was more dramatically credible as Athanaël. During the first act, his performance sometimes tended towards crudity, but it might be argued that this was not inappropriate for the character. Later on, he became more mellifluous, although his French did not always sound idiomatic. Michael Schade was better in that respect as Nicias, even though he sometimes sounded a little out of vocal sorts. (I am not sure that I can blame him; he would surely have preferred to be singing Tamino.) It was quite a relief to hear the French style – both verbal and musical – of Alain Vernhes’s Palémon. I was not surprised when consulting the programme afterwards to discover that the role had been assumed by a Frenchman. Maria Zifchak’s small contribution as Albine was therefore all the more to be cherished, since she had no such native advantage.
What I cannot understand, though, is why one would choose this work if one were Renée Fleming. It seems difficult to believe that there was any other reason for its revival. And yet, surely there are so many other, more gratifying roles in which she could have excelled. Much as I may deplore it, I can understand the cult of the singer, but it is an odd cult indeed if the music and the drama are so uninvolving. Thaïs or the Marschallin? I should have thought that decision would be, as many Americans like to say, a ‘no-brainer’.
Cenobite monks – Daniel Clark Smith, Roger Andrews, Kurt Phinney, Richard Pearson, Craig Montgomery
Palémon – Alain Vernhes
Athanaël – Thomas Hampson
Guard – Trevor Scheunemann
Crobyle – Alyson Cambridge
Myrtale – Ginger Costa-Jackson
Nicias – Michael Schade
Thaïs – Renée Fleming
La Charmeuse – Leah Partridge
Albine – Maria Zifchak
Solo dancer – Zahra Hashemian
Violin solo – David Chan
John Cox (producer)
Christian Lacroix (costumes for Renée Fleming)
Duane Schuler (lighting)
Sara Jo Slate (choreographer)
Metropolitan Opera Chorus (chorus master: Donald Palumbo)
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Jesús López-Cobos (conductor)
This was unlike any operatic performance I have previously attended: not only the work itself – I can hardly claim to be a Massenet habitué and Thaïs is distinctly odd – but also the production and general experience. First, let us consider Thäis. It has tended to be revived and was arguably created as a ‘vehicle’ for a star soprano. We certainly had that in Renée Fleming and I assume that it was her allure that drew in the crowds to the Metropolitan Opera. It is difficult to imagine that this could justly be attributed to a sizable Massenet constituency in New York – or indeed, one that might have flown in for the occasion. For Thaïs, I am afraid to say, contrives to be both bizarre and for the most part dull. Part of the problem would seem to be the work of the librettist, Louis Gallet, who appears to have extracted the ironic anti-clericalism from Anatole France’s novel – which sounds rather interesting: I should be keen to read it – and left us with a story in which a fanatical fourth-century monk, Athanaël attempts and succeeds to win over to his ascetic faith the courtesan, Thaïs, only to succumb to his suppressed lusts and attempt to win her back for the dark side. However, she dies and in her already-declared sainthood is not far off assumed into heaven, as she experiences a vision of angels. (As the late Anna Russell used to say, 'I’m not making this up, you know!') Thaïs’s conversion is so incredibly abrupt that the phrase ‘suspension of disbelief’ seems risibly inadequate for what one must do to one’s dramatic faculties. Moreover, there is no longer any attack upon clerical hypocrisy, for Athanaël fights temptation rather than dissembles. If anything, Athanaël is more the central character, yet that principal reason we might have for him being so has vanished. There might remain interesting contemporary resonances in his fundamentalism but they would need to be dealt with more forcefully than in this production. What in the world of television used to be called ‘continuity’, and perhaps still is, did not seem to have been closely attended to, for the libretto – yes, this was no quirk of the production – had Athanaël threatened with a rifle as he entered Nicias’s Alexandrian palace. (I am well aware of the clock in Julius Caesar, but that is no excuse.)
Before coming to the production, it is worth commenting upon the score itself. It has odd moments, such as the offstage music at the beginning of the second scene of Act II – very well performed. There is also some slightly more interesting music by the oasis in the third act, although it is hardly ‘superbly effective’, to quote the wildly enthusiastic programme note by Thomas May. For the most part, however, it is insipid, with the odd very watered-down Wagnerism. Pelléas this is not, in any sense. Sometimes, such music can sound better than it is. I imagine that Sir Thomas Beecham might have worked some magic upon it. Jesús López-Cobos did not, seeming content to let it flow, or sometimes drag. The playing of the Met orchestra sounded routine; it is easy to sympathise. More worryingly still, so in thrall did the conductor seem to Fleming that he often appeared to be following her rather than vice versa. And what we might charitably term her tempo fluctuations were more than a little on the arbitrary side.
If ever a work cried out for Regietheater it was this: a new twist just might have granted some dramatic credibility to what is at best kitsch, but more often plain uninteresting. As the reader may have guessed, such was not to be in this production shipped in from the Lyric Opera of Chicago. John Cox had us veer between poster-paint scenes of the Egyptian desert and an Alexandria that more or less resembled modern Las Vegas. The cast seemed more or less left to fend for themselves, for the real point of the production seemed to be to showcase the dress designs of Christian Lacroix. They might have worked wonders for a fundraising operatic gala but they had little connection with anything else that was going on. Fleming’s countless changes of wardrobe – they probably were not that many, yet their focal nature made it seem as if they were – resembled the behaviour of a television hostess for an awards ceremony. The last one was almost – but not quite – surreally inappropriate for someone who had entered a convent and was on her deathbed. All too lengthy scene changes, not only between but even within acts, dissipated what little dramatic tension there might have been. And certain members of the audience seemed unable even to listen, applauding before numbers had finished, perhaps most bizarrely during the celebrated violin Méditation. What happened once the Méditation had oame to an end verged upon the incredible. Not only was there applause, but López-Cobos joined in and summoned the soloist to his feet in the pit. Was this a post-modern take upon performance, reception, and so on? It would have been irritating or worse if it had been, but it just appeared to be part of the same ‘gala experience’. If the performers and production team do not even try to take the work seriously, it is a little much to ask others to do so.
What of the singing? That was better, though hardly outstanding. Fleming at her best sounded at her best but her diction was variable and she exhibited some surprisingly ropy intonation. Thomas Hampson was more dramatically credible as Athanaël. During the first act, his performance sometimes tended towards crudity, but it might be argued that this was not inappropriate for the character. Later on, he became more mellifluous, although his French did not always sound idiomatic. Michael Schade was better in that respect as Nicias, even though he sometimes sounded a little out of vocal sorts. (I am not sure that I can blame him; he would surely have preferred to be singing Tamino.) It was quite a relief to hear the French style – both verbal and musical – of Alain Vernhes’s Palémon. I was not surprised when consulting the programme afterwards to discover that the role had been assumed by a Frenchman. Maria Zifchak’s small contribution as Albine was therefore all the more to be cherished, since she had no such native advantage.
What I cannot understand, though, is why one would choose this work if one were Renée Fleming. It seems difficult to believe that there was any other reason for its revival. And yet, surely there are so many other, more gratifying roles in which she could have excelled. Much as I may deplore it, I can understand the cult of the singer, but it is an odd cult indeed if the music and the drama are so uninvolving. Thaïs or the Marschallin? I should have thought that decision would be, as many Americans like to say, a ‘no-brainer’.
Monday, 22 December 2008
Performances of the Year 2008
This is the first full year in which I have been reviewing concert and opera performances for my blog. Many, though by no means all, of those performances I also reviewed for Seen and Heard. Last week, my editor asked me to select three reviews as S&H Performances of the Year; they should be posted early in the New Year. It was no easy task selecting just three, although there was a sense in which the performances nevertheless selected themselves. I attended more performances than those reviewed there and posted something on every one of them here. Not only because there are more from which to choose but also in order to point to a wider field of achievement, I have chosen twelve performances of the year. This selection of twelve still leaves a good number unmentioned; when making distinctions between performances, one can all too readily forget just how high the general standard of professional music-making is. Anyway, here are the final twelve, in no order other than the chronological, each with a link to its review:
Piano sonatas by Beethoven. Daniel Barenboim, 17 February 2008. (I could readily have chosen all three of the Barenboim Beethoven recitals I attended; they are all reviewed here.)
Nash Inventions: works by Turnage, Birtwistle, MacMillan, Goehr, and Colin Matthews. Nash Ensemble, 12 March 2008.
Gluck: Iphigénie en Tauride. Komische Oper, Berlin, Paul Goodwin/Barrie Kosky, 21 March 2008.
Works by Bach, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Scharoun Ensemble/Pierre Boulez, 18 April 2008.
Works for piano duet/duo: Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Debussy. Richard Goode and Jonathan Biss, 31 May 2008.
Alfred Brendel’s final London piano recital: works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, 27 June 2008.
Henze: The Bassarids. Munich Opera Festival, Marc Albrecht/Christof Loy, 19 July 2008.
Songs by Schubert, Britten, and Strauss. Jonas Kaufmann, Helmut Deutsch, 22 July 2008.
Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos. Munich Opera Festival, Kent Nagano/Robert Carsen, 24 July 2008.
Wagner: Parsifal. Bayreuth Festival, Daniele Gatti/Stefan Herheim, 6 August 2008.
Works by Messiaen, Harvey, and Varèse. BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ilan Volkov, 19 August 2008.
Szymanowski: King Roger. Mariinsky Opera, Valery Gergiev/Mariusz Treliński, 27 August 2008.
Piano sonatas by Beethoven. Daniel Barenboim, 17 February 2008. (I could readily have chosen all three of the Barenboim Beethoven recitals I attended; they are all reviewed here.)
Nash Inventions: works by Turnage, Birtwistle, MacMillan, Goehr, and Colin Matthews. Nash Ensemble, 12 March 2008.
Gluck: Iphigénie en Tauride. Komische Oper, Berlin, Paul Goodwin/Barrie Kosky, 21 March 2008.
Works by Bach, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Scharoun Ensemble/Pierre Boulez, 18 April 2008.
Works for piano duet/duo: Schubert, Schumann, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Debussy. Richard Goode and Jonathan Biss, 31 May 2008.
Alfred Brendel’s final London piano recital: works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, 27 June 2008.
Henze: The Bassarids. Munich Opera Festival, Marc Albrecht/Christof Loy, 19 July 2008.
Songs by Schubert, Britten, and Strauss. Jonas Kaufmann, Helmut Deutsch, 22 July 2008.
Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos. Munich Opera Festival, Kent Nagano/Robert Carsen, 24 July 2008.
Wagner: Parsifal. Bayreuth Festival, Daniele Gatti/Stefan Herheim, 6 August 2008.
Works by Messiaen, Harvey, and Varèse. BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ilan Volkov, 19 August 2008.
Szymanowski: King Roger. Mariinsky Opera, Valery Gergiev/Mariusz Treliński, 27 August 2008.
Sunday, 21 December 2008
Fidelio, Opéra national de Paris, 18 December 2008
Palais Garnier
Don Fernando – Paul Gay
Don Pizarro – Alan Held
Florestan – Jonas Kaufmann
Leonore – Angela Denoke
Rocco – Kurt Rydl
Marzelline – Julia Kleiter
Jaquino – Ales Briscein
First Prisoner – Jason Bridges
Second Prisoner – Ugo Rabec
Johan Simons (director)
Jan Versweyveld (scenery and lighting)
Greta Goiris (costumes)
Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Winfried Maczewski)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Sylvain Cambreling (conductor)
This was the best Fidelio I have seen in the theatre. By far the best performance I have heard in the flesh was a concert performance with the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis, but the others, all in the opera house, were all let down by a variety of factors, not least by, though not restricted to, their conductors. Certain musicians notwithstanding, ours does not seem to be an age that responds well to Beethoven. I am, then, delighted to report that this new Paris production, whilst far from perfect, was much better than reports had led me to expect.
For one thing – and, when it comes to Beethoven this is a very big thing indeed – the orchestra was on excellent from. It had weight, so often lacking nowadays in this music; it had rhythmic security; nor was it without human tenderness. Sylvain Cambreling, the unofficial house conductor, presented a controversial version of the score. Opening with the least-known Leonore overture, no.1, he proceeded to restore an earlier plan, whereby Beethoven proceeded from aria, to duet, to trio, to quartet, stressing an underlying original tonality of C major. There seems to be something of a fashion for tampering with Fidelio at the moment; the Hungarian State Opera did so earlier this season. I was not ultimately persuaded by Cambreling’s decisions but at least they had some rationale behind them. And how many opportunities is one likely to have to hear Leonore I in the theatre? At least we were spared the dramatic nonsense, again perpetrated in Budapest, of Leonore III during the second act. (And yes, I am well aware of the illustrious roll-call of conductors who once followed this practice. Yet what Mahler or Furtwängler might have been able to get away with is best disregarded by mere mortals.) Moreover, whilst there were certain tempi decisions with which I might have disagreed, for instance an excessively fast, even carefree first act March, Cambreling spared us the indignities of metronomic ‘authenticity’. There was even the odd occasion when I thought him a little slow. It was welcome to hear ‘O namenlose Freude!’ as something other than the typical unmusical rush, but starting at the speed it did, it should have gathered momentum at some point. As I said above, Colin Davis remains hors concours from my otherwise disappointing live experience of the work. Yet Cambreling’s reading was vastly superior to the dullness of Richard Hickox (English National Opera), to Antonio Pappano (Royal Opera), less out of his depth than failing even to enter the Beethovenian shallows, or to the straightforwardly inappropriate veering towards Rossini (!) of Ádám Fischer (Budapest). The great recorded legacy remains, of course, another matter entirely.
There was another controversial aspect to the version of Fidelio presented. Gérard Mortier, in honour of whose sixty-fifth birthday the first performance of this production was mounted, had decided that the spoken dialogue was nowadays of dubious theatrical value. Alternative dialogue was therefore commissioned from Martin Mosebach. I am not at all sure that there is anything especially wrong with what we usually hear – for one thing, its familiarity has made it part of our expectation of ‘the work’ – but I was quite sure that this was no improvement. Some of it was perfectly acceptable, although even then I could not quite understand why it should be preferred. However, it made for a considerably longer evening than otherwise might have been, not least given the typical inability – this goes for every performance of Fidelio I have attended, bar that in English – of the non-Germans in the cast to speak the language with credibility. One can generally hear every word, partly because it is spoken at half-speed. Some of the new text was also rather peculiar. At the beginning, we hard Marzelline ponder at some length over what sort of man she would prefer. Having considered the hairier option, she proceeded to wonder about a man who was more like a woman. The difficulty of accepting Leonore’s disguise as Fidelio may detain literal-minded souls, but I am not sure that broaching a ‘bi-curious’ interpretation of Marzelline would have assisted them.
The production was in general convincing. It was not unforgettable, but nor was it married to an irrelevant concept or concepts. (I think here of Balázs Kovalik’s production in Budapest, where all sorts of odd ideas did battle against one other.) The surveillance cameras in a sinister control room during the first act pointed to a terrifying feature of our own society. Florestan was always being watched, just as we are. And what went on around? People attended to their ‘daily lives’ – for such, of course, is the dramatic material of the first half of the first act – some of them doubtless quite sure that, in their accustomed Daily Mail-speak, they had ‘nothing to hide’. How many days’ detention without trial would New Labour have inflicted upon Florestan? Ask Pizarro. Of course, Johan Simons is unlikely to have had specifically British references in mind, but the point is increasingly general in Western societies; it is just rather more advanced in my own. There was a contrasting timelessness to the dungeon scene. Whilst there is, of course, a place for specific references and we can hardly fail to think of Guantánamo, it is worth reminding ourselves that such obscenities can happen at any time, in any place. The willingness of human beings to torture has been reaffirmed through scientific experiment; it is part of the role of culture, of works such as Fidelio, to make us rise above such barbarism.
In the title role, Angela Denoke sometimes struggled vocally. There were moments when her voice was simply not strong enough, although not so many as I had expected from other reports. However, she responded readily to the text – both spoken and sung – and brought her considerable skills as a singing actress to the role. Whilst this was not a performance I should wish simply to hear on a recording, I was often gripped by it on stage. Alan Held oozed malevolence as Don Pizarro, though I thought his hysterical laughter overdone and strangely camp: more Rocky than Rocco Horror. Kurt Rydl was a late substitute for Franz-Josef Selig as the jailkeeper. He acted splendidly: quite an achievement, when he could hardly have had close acquaintance with the production. However, he exhibited considerable wobble. I also found it dramatically odd to have so much blacker a voice in this role than for Pizarro. (Admittedly, that is not a problem confined to this production.) Julia Kleiter and Ales Briscein were lively and attentive as Marzelline and Jaquino, whilst Paul Gay impressed as Don Fernando.
But the undoubted star of the show was Jonas Kaufmann. I cannot imagine that there has ever been a better Florestan. He exhibited a heroism to rival that of Jon Vickers, albeit without the vocal oddness. Kaufmann displayed an an astonishing range, not only of dynamics, but also of timbre. The crescendo upon his first note, delivered head down to the floor, starting off mezza voce and leading up to a radiant, ringing, yet never crude fortissimo, was something I suspect I shall never experience again – unless, of course, it comes from him. He managed to sound utterly credible both as a starved, tortured prisoner and as a virile incarnation of freedom. Moreover, his acting was on an equally exalted level, marrying perfectly with the vocal portrayal. This Fidelio, even had it lacked other virtues, would have been justified by Jonas Kaufmann alone.
Don Fernando – Paul Gay
Don Pizarro – Alan Held
Florestan – Jonas Kaufmann
Leonore – Angela Denoke
Rocco – Kurt Rydl
Marzelline – Julia Kleiter
Jaquino – Ales Briscein
First Prisoner – Jason Bridges
Second Prisoner – Ugo Rabec
Johan Simons (director)
Jan Versweyveld (scenery and lighting)
Greta Goiris (costumes)
Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Winfried Maczewski)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Sylvain Cambreling (conductor)
This was the best Fidelio I have seen in the theatre. By far the best performance I have heard in the flesh was a concert performance with the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis, but the others, all in the opera house, were all let down by a variety of factors, not least by, though not restricted to, their conductors. Certain musicians notwithstanding, ours does not seem to be an age that responds well to Beethoven. I am, then, delighted to report that this new Paris production, whilst far from perfect, was much better than reports had led me to expect.
For one thing – and, when it comes to Beethoven this is a very big thing indeed – the orchestra was on excellent from. It had weight, so often lacking nowadays in this music; it had rhythmic security; nor was it without human tenderness. Sylvain Cambreling, the unofficial house conductor, presented a controversial version of the score. Opening with the least-known Leonore overture, no.1, he proceeded to restore an earlier plan, whereby Beethoven proceeded from aria, to duet, to trio, to quartet, stressing an underlying original tonality of C major. There seems to be something of a fashion for tampering with Fidelio at the moment; the Hungarian State Opera did so earlier this season. I was not ultimately persuaded by Cambreling’s decisions but at least they had some rationale behind them. And how many opportunities is one likely to have to hear Leonore I in the theatre? At least we were spared the dramatic nonsense, again perpetrated in Budapest, of Leonore III during the second act. (And yes, I am well aware of the illustrious roll-call of conductors who once followed this practice. Yet what Mahler or Furtwängler might have been able to get away with is best disregarded by mere mortals.) Moreover, whilst there were certain tempi decisions with which I might have disagreed, for instance an excessively fast, even carefree first act March, Cambreling spared us the indignities of metronomic ‘authenticity’. There was even the odd occasion when I thought him a little slow. It was welcome to hear ‘O namenlose Freude!’ as something other than the typical unmusical rush, but starting at the speed it did, it should have gathered momentum at some point. As I said above, Colin Davis remains hors concours from my otherwise disappointing live experience of the work. Yet Cambreling’s reading was vastly superior to the dullness of Richard Hickox (English National Opera), to Antonio Pappano (Royal Opera), less out of his depth than failing even to enter the Beethovenian shallows, or to the straightforwardly inappropriate veering towards Rossini (!) of Ádám Fischer (Budapest). The great recorded legacy remains, of course, another matter entirely.
There was another controversial aspect to the version of Fidelio presented. Gérard Mortier, in honour of whose sixty-fifth birthday the first performance of this production was mounted, had decided that the spoken dialogue was nowadays of dubious theatrical value. Alternative dialogue was therefore commissioned from Martin Mosebach. I am not at all sure that there is anything especially wrong with what we usually hear – for one thing, its familiarity has made it part of our expectation of ‘the work’ – but I was quite sure that this was no improvement. Some of it was perfectly acceptable, although even then I could not quite understand why it should be preferred. However, it made for a considerably longer evening than otherwise might have been, not least given the typical inability – this goes for every performance of Fidelio I have attended, bar that in English – of the non-Germans in the cast to speak the language with credibility. One can generally hear every word, partly because it is spoken at half-speed. Some of the new text was also rather peculiar. At the beginning, we hard Marzelline ponder at some length over what sort of man she would prefer. Having considered the hairier option, she proceeded to wonder about a man who was more like a woman. The difficulty of accepting Leonore’s disguise as Fidelio may detain literal-minded souls, but I am not sure that broaching a ‘bi-curious’ interpretation of Marzelline would have assisted them.
The production was in general convincing. It was not unforgettable, but nor was it married to an irrelevant concept or concepts. (I think here of Balázs Kovalik’s production in Budapest, where all sorts of odd ideas did battle against one other.) The surveillance cameras in a sinister control room during the first act pointed to a terrifying feature of our own society. Florestan was always being watched, just as we are. And what went on around? People attended to their ‘daily lives’ – for such, of course, is the dramatic material of the first half of the first act – some of them doubtless quite sure that, in their accustomed Daily Mail-speak, they had ‘nothing to hide’. How many days’ detention without trial would New Labour have inflicted upon Florestan? Ask Pizarro. Of course, Johan Simons is unlikely to have had specifically British references in mind, but the point is increasingly general in Western societies; it is just rather more advanced in my own. There was a contrasting timelessness to the dungeon scene. Whilst there is, of course, a place for specific references and we can hardly fail to think of Guantánamo, it is worth reminding ourselves that such obscenities can happen at any time, in any place. The willingness of human beings to torture has been reaffirmed through scientific experiment; it is part of the role of culture, of works such as Fidelio, to make us rise above such barbarism.
In the title role, Angela Denoke sometimes struggled vocally. There were moments when her voice was simply not strong enough, although not so many as I had expected from other reports. However, she responded readily to the text – both spoken and sung – and brought her considerable skills as a singing actress to the role. Whilst this was not a performance I should wish simply to hear on a recording, I was often gripped by it on stage. Alan Held oozed malevolence as Don Pizarro, though I thought his hysterical laughter overdone and strangely camp: more Rocky than Rocco Horror. Kurt Rydl was a late substitute for Franz-Josef Selig as the jailkeeper. He acted splendidly: quite an achievement, when he could hardly have had close acquaintance with the production. However, he exhibited considerable wobble. I also found it dramatically odd to have so much blacker a voice in this role than for Pizarro. (Admittedly, that is not a problem confined to this production.) Julia Kleiter and Ales Briscein were lively and attentive as Marzelline and Jaquino, whilst Paul Gay impressed as Don Fernando.
But the undoubted star of the show was Jonas Kaufmann. I cannot imagine that there has ever been a better Florestan. He exhibited a heroism to rival that of Jon Vickers, albeit without the vocal oddness. Kaufmann displayed an an astonishing range, not only of dynamics, but also of timbre. The crescendo upon his first note, delivered head down to the floor, starting off mezza voce and leading up to a radiant, ringing, yet never crude fortissimo, was something I suspect I shall never experience again – unless, of course, it comes from him. He managed to sound utterly credible both as a starved, tortured prisoner and as a virile incarnation of freedom. Moreover, his acting was on an equally exalted level, marrying perfectly with the vocal portrayal. This Fidelio, even had it lacked other virtues, would have been justified by Jonas Kaufmann alone.
Thursday, 18 December 2008
Orchestre de Paris/Salonen - Richard Dubugnon and Mahler, 17 December 2008
Salle Pleyel, Paris
Richard Dubugnon – Violin Concerto (world premiere)
Mahler – Das klagende Lied (original version, 1880)
Janine Jansen (violin)
Melanie Diener (soprano)
Lilli Passikivi (viola)
Jon Villars (tenor)
Sergei Leiferkus (bass)
Members of the Tölzer Knabenchor (choirmaster: Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden)
Chœur de l’Orchestre de Paris (chorus-masters: Didier Bouture and Geoffroy Jourdain)
Orchestre de Paris
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)
Swiss composer Richard Dubugnon’s new work was commissioned by Musique Nouvelle en Liberté and the city of Paris. It is dedicated to Janine Jansen and Esa-Pekka Salonen, who gave its world premiere at the Salle Pleyel. In his programme note, Dubugnon said that he had tried to reconcile the form and duration of the Romantic concerto with images, sounds, and colours from today, including some rhythms and harmonies taken from popular music: new wine into old bottles. The problem I had with much of this lengthy three-movement concerto – about three-quarters of an hour in total – concerned the wine itself. Frankly tonal, its harmonies were not only of the twentieth century, but of its earliest years. Various composers came to mind, including, in relatively conventional voice, Debussy, Bartók, and Scriabin, and, more interestingly in the slow movement, early Messiaen, but seemingly lacking an individual, let alone contemporary voice. As for the popular influences – ‘house’ and ‘funk’, according to the composer – these did not seem to go beyond odd rhythms, often repeated or recurring, rhythms which might equally well have had their origins in early or even ‘symphonic’ jazz. A few passages sounded as if they might have strayed in from a ‘Hooked on Classics’ sequence. The overall form was admirably clear; the old bottle did not leak. Nor, I think, would it have done, even if we had languished without Dubugnon’s comprehensive programme note. This is clearly a composer who can orchestrate, in an almost classically ‘French’ fashion, although Debussy or Ravel would never have relied so much upon stock combinatory effects. There was perhaps greater individuality in some of the writing for tuned percussion, although little that progressed so far as, still less beyond, Messiaen.
Salonen kept a tight grip upon proceedings and Jansen displayed great virtuosity and sensitivity. As a vehicle for her talents, the concerto worked well enough, some of the solo writing perhaps echoing that of Prokofiev, but I could not help thinking that there might have been better ways to show off her technique. One thing this definitely goes to show, however, is what nonsense are the malcontent attempts one sometimes hears to portray Pierre Boulez as some kind of dictator of French musical life. I think I can safely say that Boulez would never have been interested in such a work; its co-commissioning by the city of Paris itself signals a thoroughgoing musical pluralism.
It is not clear to me why Mahler’s Das klagende Lied was thought an appropriate companion-piece, or vice versa for that matter. For those who might have responded with greater enthusiasm to the violin concerto, it is difficult to imagine that they would have made many connections with Mahler’s first principal completed work, steeped in German Romanticism, yet also looking forward to his later symphonies, especially the First and Second, and even to Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. Never mind; it was a relatively rare opportunity to hear Das klagende Lied, here given in its original, 1880 version, as submitted for the 1881 Beethoven Prize. There were good things to the performance, yet, as a whole, I did not feel that it quite came together, almost as if this were a rehearsal rather than the ‘real thing’. Barring a few too many lapses of ensemble, especially in some of the offstage music, the Orchestre de Paris played well enough. I did not find the orchestra’s sound especially Mahlerian; the strings and indeed many of the other instruments came across a little too brightly for that. Nor was there especial depth to the bass, although this may have been at least partly a result of the Salle Pleyel’s notoriously difficult acoustic. There were, however, some splendid orchestral moments, not least the ominous kettledrum role at the very opening of Waldmärchen and the solos of leader, Philippe Aïche. The rumbustiousness of the public scenes in the final Hochzeitsstück was ably conveyed too; Tannhäuser’s arrival of the guests and indeed Hagen’s call to the Gibichungs were not so very distant. Salonen guided the work’s progress with considerable care for clarity in the orchestral textures, yet I was rarely gripped by an inexorable narrative as I had hoped to be. Lengthy pauses between movements did not help in that regard, yet even those three movements themselves came across as a little diffuse at times.
The soloists, impressive on paper, proved a mixed bunch in practice. Melanie Diener has an attractive voice but the quality of her diction varied enormously. Jon Villars came in and out of focus with disturbing frequency; there were some splendid Heldentenor-ish passages, whilst others sounded tentative and muffled. Sergei Leiferkus’s best days would, on this evidence, appear very much to be behind him. But Lilli Passikivi impressed as a true contralto, especially in her eery, Erda-like passages from Waldmärchen. Whilst far from flawless, the two boy soloists from the Tölz Boys’ Choir – anonymous, but this tends to be the practice – exhibited most movingly the extraordinary treble tone we know and love. That ghostly quality which Mahler demands for the murdered knight’s accusation was thereby chillingly conveyed. The choral singing was varied too, again moving in and out of focus, although this was less of a problem in the Götterdämmerung-like passages from the Hochzeitsstück. Again, I wonder how much of that resulted from the acoustic. I also wonder whether a second performance the following evening might have melded the parts into a more satisfying whole.
Richard Dubugnon – Violin Concerto (world premiere)
Mahler – Das klagende Lied (original version, 1880)
Janine Jansen (violin)
Melanie Diener (soprano)
Lilli Passikivi (viola)
Jon Villars (tenor)
Sergei Leiferkus (bass)
Members of the Tölzer Knabenchor (choirmaster: Gerhard Schmidt-Gaden)
Chœur de l’Orchestre de Paris (chorus-masters: Didier Bouture and Geoffroy Jourdain)
Orchestre de Paris
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)
Swiss composer Richard Dubugnon’s new work was commissioned by Musique Nouvelle en Liberté and the city of Paris. It is dedicated to Janine Jansen and Esa-Pekka Salonen, who gave its world premiere at the Salle Pleyel. In his programme note, Dubugnon said that he had tried to reconcile the form and duration of the Romantic concerto with images, sounds, and colours from today, including some rhythms and harmonies taken from popular music: new wine into old bottles. The problem I had with much of this lengthy three-movement concerto – about three-quarters of an hour in total – concerned the wine itself. Frankly tonal, its harmonies were not only of the twentieth century, but of its earliest years. Various composers came to mind, including, in relatively conventional voice, Debussy, Bartók, and Scriabin, and, more interestingly in the slow movement, early Messiaen, but seemingly lacking an individual, let alone contemporary voice. As for the popular influences – ‘house’ and ‘funk’, according to the composer – these did not seem to go beyond odd rhythms, often repeated or recurring, rhythms which might equally well have had their origins in early or even ‘symphonic’ jazz. A few passages sounded as if they might have strayed in from a ‘Hooked on Classics’ sequence. The overall form was admirably clear; the old bottle did not leak. Nor, I think, would it have done, even if we had languished without Dubugnon’s comprehensive programme note. This is clearly a composer who can orchestrate, in an almost classically ‘French’ fashion, although Debussy or Ravel would never have relied so much upon stock combinatory effects. There was perhaps greater individuality in some of the writing for tuned percussion, although little that progressed so far as, still less beyond, Messiaen.
Salonen kept a tight grip upon proceedings and Jansen displayed great virtuosity and sensitivity. As a vehicle for her talents, the concerto worked well enough, some of the solo writing perhaps echoing that of Prokofiev, but I could not help thinking that there might have been better ways to show off her technique. One thing this definitely goes to show, however, is what nonsense are the malcontent attempts one sometimes hears to portray Pierre Boulez as some kind of dictator of French musical life. I think I can safely say that Boulez would never have been interested in such a work; its co-commissioning by the city of Paris itself signals a thoroughgoing musical pluralism.
It is not clear to me why Mahler’s Das klagende Lied was thought an appropriate companion-piece, or vice versa for that matter. For those who might have responded with greater enthusiasm to the violin concerto, it is difficult to imagine that they would have made many connections with Mahler’s first principal completed work, steeped in German Romanticism, yet also looking forward to his later symphonies, especially the First and Second, and even to Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. Never mind; it was a relatively rare opportunity to hear Das klagende Lied, here given in its original, 1880 version, as submitted for the 1881 Beethoven Prize. There were good things to the performance, yet, as a whole, I did not feel that it quite came together, almost as if this were a rehearsal rather than the ‘real thing’. Barring a few too many lapses of ensemble, especially in some of the offstage music, the Orchestre de Paris played well enough. I did not find the orchestra’s sound especially Mahlerian; the strings and indeed many of the other instruments came across a little too brightly for that. Nor was there especial depth to the bass, although this may have been at least partly a result of the Salle Pleyel’s notoriously difficult acoustic. There were, however, some splendid orchestral moments, not least the ominous kettledrum role at the very opening of Waldmärchen and the solos of leader, Philippe Aïche. The rumbustiousness of the public scenes in the final Hochzeitsstück was ably conveyed too; Tannhäuser’s arrival of the guests and indeed Hagen’s call to the Gibichungs were not so very distant. Salonen guided the work’s progress with considerable care for clarity in the orchestral textures, yet I was rarely gripped by an inexorable narrative as I had hoped to be. Lengthy pauses between movements did not help in that regard, yet even those three movements themselves came across as a little diffuse at times.
The soloists, impressive on paper, proved a mixed bunch in practice. Melanie Diener has an attractive voice but the quality of her diction varied enormously. Jon Villars came in and out of focus with disturbing frequency; there were some splendid Heldentenor-ish passages, whilst others sounded tentative and muffled. Sergei Leiferkus’s best days would, on this evidence, appear very much to be behind him. But Lilli Passikivi impressed as a true contralto, especially in her eery, Erda-like passages from Waldmärchen. Whilst far from flawless, the two boy soloists from the Tölz Boys’ Choir – anonymous, but this tends to be the practice – exhibited most movingly the extraordinary treble tone we know and love. That ghostly quality which Mahler demands for the murdered knight’s accusation was thereby chillingly conveyed. The choral singing was varied too, again moving in and out of focus, although this was less of a problem in the Götterdämmerung-like passages from the Hochzeitsstück. Again, I wonder how much of that resulted from the acoustic. I also wonder whether a second performance the following evening might have melded the parts into a more satisfying whole.
Sunday, 14 December 2008
LPO/Jurowksi - Mahler and Wagner (Tristan und Isolde, Act II), 13 December 2008
Royal Festival Hall
Mahler – Adagio from Symphony no.10 in F-sharp major
Wagner – Tristan und Isolde: Act Two
Isolde – Anja Kampe
Tristan – Robert Dean Smith
Brangäne – Sarah Connolly
King Marke – László Polgár
Melot/Kurwenal – Stephen Gadd
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)
I held high expectations for this concert. Perhaps they were too high, for they were only intermittently fulfilled. That said, the Mahler Adagio received a very good performance. There is a place to hear it by itself, every now and again, even if I think that happens far too often. At any rate, this was not an inappropriate occasion, especially given Vladimir Jurowski’s efforts to underline the kinship with Tristan und Isolde. (Valery Gergiev’s placing it before Mahler’s Ninth made far less sense, even if we leave on one side the unsatisfactory nature of the performances themselves.) Though a little concerned about the fastish opening tempo, I soon became accustomed to it and, in any case, Jurowski’s reading proved anything but rigid. Much nonsense is written about division of violins to the right and left of the conductor. It is a practice of which I approve, yet it is not mandatory, as one would think from the writing of some zealots, for whom commentary appears to be a matter of a performance conforming to their own derivative checklists. What matters is what advantage is taken of such antiphonal placing – or, indeed, on certain occasions, what advantage is taken of alternatives. Here, Jurowski ensured that the adopted seating contributed to that contrapuntal intensity that was in any case a hallmark of the performance. The texture was appropriately string-saturated, though certainly not to the exclusion of other parts, such as the meltingly Romantic horns. Violin vibrato was marvellously expressive: thank goodness no one had listened to the bizarre claims of Roger Norrington. And the violas showed that their part was every bit as important, providing us with reminiscences of and connections with Parsifal and indeed Tristan. There was always an apt lilt to the music’s progress and we heard an equally apt aspirant limping to the ’cellos’ pizzicato. Despite the odd imperfection in the visionary section leading up to the great discord, there was – unlike, say in Gergiev’s reading – a real sense that the music and its progress meant something, whether or no that could be put into words. If a more Romantic, less expressionistic, account than we often hear, there is nothing wrong with that, especially when one is about to hear part of Tristan. This is music in a rare tonality, that of F-sharp major, not quite the air of another planet. And the ending was beautifully rapt; here, Jurowski knew to take his time and the LPO strings knew how to shine.
The second act of Tristan opened like a continuation; indeed, if anything, it sounded a little more expressionistic, the Prelude exhibiting a febrile, expectant intensity. Indeed, throughout the act, there would be a great intensity to the orchestral playing, especially to the inner parts already foretold in Mahler’s viola writing. The dialogue between the off-stage horns – off-stage to left and right – was nicely handled. On stage, the horns sounded as close as I can recall hearing to one of Wagner’s favourite indications: sehr weich. I found the lower strings less impressive in general; they did not always sound so focussed as the violins and violas, and there was an occasional thinness to their sound. Jurowski generally handled the vast structure surely, although a few gear-changes would have benefited from greater instruction in Wagner’s fabled ‘art of transition’. He ensured nevertheless that the love duet seemed, if anything, shorter than one might have expected. And the terrible moment of coitus interruptus sounded as an interesting counterpart to the cataclysmic discord of the Mahler, not so glaring but perhaps all the more terrifying: certainly more terrifying than any I have heard for a while. Jurowski seemed to be itching to conduct the score in the theatre, which he will do at Glyndebourne next summer. A concert performance seemed a bit too much of a compromise, a ‘trial run’, an impression underlined by the inconsistent use of scores by the soloists: the women used them but the men did not.
And it was with the soloists that the real drawbacks of this performance lay. Sarah Connolly was probably the best of the bunch. As Brangäne, she displayed – the vocal score notwithstanding – an attentive thoughtful response to the music and to the words. One could readily dispense with the titles, so clear was her diction. László Polgár was suffering from a cold and sadly, it showed. To begin with, he sounded – quite promisingly – as if he had stepped straight out of Bluebeard’s Castle, but the condition of his voice soon deteriorated. The sympathy one felt was not inappropriate in terms of Marke’s character, but even so, the dryness of tone and increasingly wayward tuning were something of a trial. I was a little surprised at the intonation difficulties Robert Dean Smith has as Tristan, especially during his response to the king’s monologue. Yet on the whole, his was a reasonably sound, if hardly exciting performance. It did not help that he sounded rather ‘old’ throughout. Intonation was also a problem with Anja Kampe’s Isolde. I also felt that her voice was simply not right for the part; it sounded far too mezzo-like in quality. She acted with her facial expressions during Marke’s monologue; perhaps she too needs the theatre for her interpretation really to live. That said, the theatre can be no cure for what were on occasion alarming deficiencies in tuning. I can understand why Stephen Gadd was asked to be Melot and Kurwenal; it was confusing nevertheless.
This act of Tristan should clearly be considered work in progress for Jurowski. I certainly never had the feeling – as I always have, say, with Antonio Pappano’s Wagner – that the music would remain beyond him; far from it. One has to start somewhere and there was a great deal to commend his handling of the orchestra. Furtwänglerian Fernhören may develop with experience. Yet I hope that Jurowski and the LPO will be blessed with better soloists at Glyndebourne, for the Prelude and the shattering orchestral postlude were the best parts of this performance.
Mahler – Adagio from Symphony no.10 in F-sharp major
Wagner – Tristan und Isolde: Act Two
Isolde – Anja Kampe
Tristan – Robert Dean Smith
Brangäne – Sarah Connolly
King Marke – László Polgár
Melot/Kurwenal – Stephen Gadd
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)
I held high expectations for this concert. Perhaps they were too high, for they were only intermittently fulfilled. That said, the Mahler Adagio received a very good performance. There is a place to hear it by itself, every now and again, even if I think that happens far too often. At any rate, this was not an inappropriate occasion, especially given Vladimir Jurowski’s efforts to underline the kinship with Tristan und Isolde. (Valery Gergiev’s placing it before Mahler’s Ninth made far less sense, even if we leave on one side the unsatisfactory nature of the performances themselves.) Though a little concerned about the fastish opening tempo, I soon became accustomed to it and, in any case, Jurowski’s reading proved anything but rigid. Much nonsense is written about division of violins to the right and left of the conductor. It is a practice of which I approve, yet it is not mandatory, as one would think from the writing of some zealots, for whom commentary appears to be a matter of a performance conforming to their own derivative checklists. What matters is what advantage is taken of such antiphonal placing – or, indeed, on certain occasions, what advantage is taken of alternatives. Here, Jurowski ensured that the adopted seating contributed to that contrapuntal intensity that was in any case a hallmark of the performance. The texture was appropriately string-saturated, though certainly not to the exclusion of other parts, such as the meltingly Romantic horns. Violin vibrato was marvellously expressive: thank goodness no one had listened to the bizarre claims of Roger Norrington. And the violas showed that their part was every bit as important, providing us with reminiscences of and connections with Parsifal and indeed Tristan. There was always an apt lilt to the music’s progress and we heard an equally apt aspirant limping to the ’cellos’ pizzicato. Despite the odd imperfection in the visionary section leading up to the great discord, there was – unlike, say in Gergiev’s reading – a real sense that the music and its progress meant something, whether or no that could be put into words. If a more Romantic, less expressionistic, account than we often hear, there is nothing wrong with that, especially when one is about to hear part of Tristan. This is music in a rare tonality, that of F-sharp major, not quite the air of another planet. And the ending was beautifully rapt; here, Jurowski knew to take his time and the LPO strings knew how to shine.
The second act of Tristan opened like a continuation; indeed, if anything, it sounded a little more expressionistic, the Prelude exhibiting a febrile, expectant intensity. Indeed, throughout the act, there would be a great intensity to the orchestral playing, especially to the inner parts already foretold in Mahler’s viola writing. The dialogue between the off-stage horns – off-stage to left and right – was nicely handled. On stage, the horns sounded as close as I can recall hearing to one of Wagner’s favourite indications: sehr weich. I found the lower strings less impressive in general; they did not always sound so focussed as the violins and violas, and there was an occasional thinness to their sound. Jurowski generally handled the vast structure surely, although a few gear-changes would have benefited from greater instruction in Wagner’s fabled ‘art of transition’. He ensured nevertheless that the love duet seemed, if anything, shorter than one might have expected. And the terrible moment of coitus interruptus sounded as an interesting counterpart to the cataclysmic discord of the Mahler, not so glaring but perhaps all the more terrifying: certainly more terrifying than any I have heard for a while. Jurowski seemed to be itching to conduct the score in the theatre, which he will do at Glyndebourne next summer. A concert performance seemed a bit too much of a compromise, a ‘trial run’, an impression underlined by the inconsistent use of scores by the soloists: the women used them but the men did not.
And it was with the soloists that the real drawbacks of this performance lay. Sarah Connolly was probably the best of the bunch. As Brangäne, she displayed – the vocal score notwithstanding – an attentive thoughtful response to the music and to the words. One could readily dispense with the titles, so clear was her diction. László Polgár was suffering from a cold and sadly, it showed. To begin with, he sounded – quite promisingly – as if he had stepped straight out of Bluebeard’s Castle, but the condition of his voice soon deteriorated. The sympathy one felt was not inappropriate in terms of Marke’s character, but even so, the dryness of tone and increasingly wayward tuning were something of a trial. I was a little surprised at the intonation difficulties Robert Dean Smith has as Tristan, especially during his response to the king’s monologue. Yet on the whole, his was a reasonably sound, if hardly exciting performance. It did not help that he sounded rather ‘old’ throughout. Intonation was also a problem with Anja Kampe’s Isolde. I also felt that her voice was simply not right for the part; it sounded far too mezzo-like in quality. She acted with her facial expressions during Marke’s monologue; perhaps she too needs the theatre for her interpretation really to live. That said, the theatre can be no cure for what were on occasion alarming deficiencies in tuning. I can understand why Stephen Gadd was asked to be Melot and Kurwenal; it was confusing nevertheless.
This act of Tristan should clearly be considered work in progress for Jurowski. I certainly never had the feeling – as I always have, say, with Antonio Pappano’s Wagner – that the music would remain beyond him; far from it. One has to start somewhere and there was a great deal to commend his handling of the orchestra. Furtwänglerian Fernhören may develop with experience. Yet I hope that Jurowski and the LPO will be blessed with better soloists at Glyndebourne, for the Prelude and the shattering orchestral postlude were the best parts of this performance.
Saturday, 13 December 2008
Wagner recommendations on CD and DVD
There is an interesting assortment of recommendations here, from various Wagner scholars, performers, directors, enthusiasts, etc. (including yours truly). The many contributors include Barry Millington, Hans Jürgen Syberberg, and Dame Anne Evans.
http://www.wagneropera.net/Recommendations/Recommendations-2008.htm
I am sure that no one will agree with any particular set of recommendations - I should be astonished if anyone agreed with mine - but a merit of such surveys is to inform or to remind one of other possibilities.
The rest of this excellent site is well worth exploring.
http://www.wagneropera.net/Recommendations/Recommendations-2008.htm
I am sure that no one will agree with any particular set of recommendations - I should be astonished if anyone agreed with mine - but a merit of such surveys is to inform or to remind one of other possibilities.
The rest of this excellent site is well worth exploring.
Friday, 12 December 2008
Carter Centenary Concert - Carter and Boulez, Aimard/Damiens/EIC/Boulez, 11 December 2008
Queen Elizabeth Hall
Carter – Dialogues
Carter – Matribute, for solo piano
Carter – Intermittences, for solo piano
Carter – Caténaires, for solo piano
Carter – Clarinet concerto
Boulez – Dérive II
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Alain Damiens (clarinet)
Ensemble Intercontemporain
Pierre Boulez (conductor)
Following the previous night’s Messiaen celebrations – in practice, at least as much a celebration of Boulez – the Ensemble Intercontemporain, its founder, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard moved on to Elliott Carter, for his hundred birthday. The astounding difference, or one of them, is of course that Carter is still with us – and still composing: unprecedented for one entering his eleventh decade.
Prior to the opening work, we saw a recorded interview with him, in which he was still very much the Carter of old, buoyed with enthusiasm for his most recent projects, including a clarinet quintet for Charles Neidich and the Juillard Quartet, and a flute concerto for Emmanuel Pahud. Carter poignantly expressed the hope that he might hear the latter, none of its first performances having taken place in America. Europe, he explained, has always been more receptive to his music, not least since broadcasting is not here – perhaps one should add, not solely – based upon the needs of advertising. If it is true, as Carter claimed, that he has more ‘friends’ in Europe than in his own land, we should consider that to be an honour. On the other hand, we should also consider how, in the words of Daniel Barenboim in one of several programme tributes, Carter ‘combines America with Europe’. This concert made a very good start.
Dialogues, a concertante piece for piano and ensemble, provided a glittering opening. Rather to my surprise, and despite Aimard’s predictably fine performance, I found much of the orchestral writing more compelling than the piano part – although perhaps this will change with greater acquaintance. As ever with Carter, there was an abundant sense of life, of joy. Poised midway between chamber and orchestral music, a work such as this is the lifeblood of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, whose performance could hardly be faulted.
With Matribute – ‘ma tribute’ – a short piece written for James Levine, to honour Levine’s mother, we reached the solo piano selection. I was taken with the contrast between melodic development, rising up through the keyboard’s octaves, and that characteristic Carter kinetic energy, both influencing each other and yet never quite merging. Intermittences and Caténaires were given what was described as the United Kingdom premiere of their joint existence as Two Thoughts about the Piano. If this were stretching a point somewhat, there was no need, since such fine piano writing needs no pretext for performance. It was, in any case, my first hearing of either piece. Aimard once again proved a spellbinding guide, though the silences (intermittences, as in Proust) and eruptions of the first piece. His fingers and feet – for here, pedalling is crucial, not least with regard to the middle pedal – were wholly at the service of the music and as communicative to the audience as one could imagine. The different ‘characters’ – always a key feature of Carter’s writing – were vividly portrayed, as was the more single-character nature of Caténaires. Its toccata-like single line spun if anything an even more gripping narrative, almost miraculously transforming the chordal instrument into a giant violin – solo Bach sprang to my mind – all the more to impress us with the variety of colours a single line can produce.
The Clarinet Concerto received an equally commanding interpretation. Commissioned by Boulez and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, and written with Alain Damiens in mind – he and they premiered the work in 1997 – one could hardly have wished for a more authoritative or, again, vivacious performance. The five sections of the orchestra each had their opportunities to shine, to interact, to project their ‘character’ or ‘characters’, and they took them. Damiens and Boulez not only held the work together – Damiens literally moving around the stage, to interact with each group – but appeared to engage in a dialogue of their own, reminding us that this is a concerto, with considerable ambiguity concerning the relationship between blend and battle when it comes to the soloist and other players. Once again, there was energetic game-playing aplenty, but there were also oases of calm, the harmonies of the string-based Largo section quite ravishing, and unerringly placed in terms of the dramatic game-plan.
Where the previous evening, Boulez had presented his sur Incises, here we had the revision, completed in 2006, of Dérive II. The work was now double the length of the previous time I had heard it. In many ways, it seems Janus-faced, connecting back to the SACHER-inspired works of the 1970s and 1980s, whilst also showcasing much of his more recent harmonic and structural development. As ever, the overwhelming sensation is of proliferation, in every aspect of the music. It was also striking how every instrument in the ensemble – eleven instrumentalists: woodwind, strings, and tuned percussion, including piano – was given ample opportunity to shine; it would be invidious to single out any one in particular, though I must mention the echoes of the Rite of Spring in the bassoon writing. One aspect that somewhat surprised me was how frankly thematic much of Boulez’s writing proved to be. In this, the expert performance of the EIC, under his direction, contributed a great deal. The oft-elusive ability to find an ending, most definitely achieved in sur Incises, was again displayed here: rhythmically exciting in the lead-up to its final, unanswerable unison.
Carter – Dialogues
Carter – Matribute, for solo piano
Carter – Intermittences, for solo piano
Carter – Caténaires, for solo piano
Carter – Clarinet concerto
Boulez – Dérive II
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Alain Damiens (clarinet)
Ensemble Intercontemporain
Pierre Boulez (conductor)
Following the previous night’s Messiaen celebrations – in practice, at least as much a celebration of Boulez – the Ensemble Intercontemporain, its founder, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard moved on to Elliott Carter, for his hundred birthday. The astounding difference, or one of them, is of course that Carter is still with us – and still composing: unprecedented for one entering his eleventh decade.
Prior to the opening work, we saw a recorded interview with him, in which he was still very much the Carter of old, buoyed with enthusiasm for his most recent projects, including a clarinet quintet for Charles Neidich and the Juillard Quartet, and a flute concerto for Emmanuel Pahud. Carter poignantly expressed the hope that he might hear the latter, none of its first performances having taken place in America. Europe, he explained, has always been more receptive to his music, not least since broadcasting is not here – perhaps one should add, not solely – based upon the needs of advertising. If it is true, as Carter claimed, that he has more ‘friends’ in Europe than in his own land, we should consider that to be an honour. On the other hand, we should also consider how, in the words of Daniel Barenboim in one of several programme tributes, Carter ‘combines America with Europe’. This concert made a very good start.
Dialogues, a concertante piece for piano and ensemble, provided a glittering opening. Rather to my surprise, and despite Aimard’s predictably fine performance, I found much of the orchestral writing more compelling than the piano part – although perhaps this will change with greater acquaintance. As ever with Carter, there was an abundant sense of life, of joy. Poised midway between chamber and orchestral music, a work such as this is the lifeblood of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, whose performance could hardly be faulted.
With Matribute – ‘ma tribute’ – a short piece written for James Levine, to honour Levine’s mother, we reached the solo piano selection. I was taken with the contrast between melodic development, rising up through the keyboard’s octaves, and that characteristic Carter kinetic energy, both influencing each other and yet never quite merging. Intermittences and Caténaires were given what was described as the United Kingdom premiere of their joint existence as Two Thoughts about the Piano. If this were stretching a point somewhat, there was no need, since such fine piano writing needs no pretext for performance. It was, in any case, my first hearing of either piece. Aimard once again proved a spellbinding guide, though the silences (intermittences, as in Proust) and eruptions of the first piece. His fingers and feet – for here, pedalling is crucial, not least with regard to the middle pedal – were wholly at the service of the music and as communicative to the audience as one could imagine. The different ‘characters’ – always a key feature of Carter’s writing – were vividly portrayed, as was the more single-character nature of Caténaires. Its toccata-like single line spun if anything an even more gripping narrative, almost miraculously transforming the chordal instrument into a giant violin – solo Bach sprang to my mind – all the more to impress us with the variety of colours a single line can produce.
The Clarinet Concerto received an equally commanding interpretation. Commissioned by Boulez and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, and written with Alain Damiens in mind – he and they premiered the work in 1997 – one could hardly have wished for a more authoritative or, again, vivacious performance. The five sections of the orchestra each had their opportunities to shine, to interact, to project their ‘character’ or ‘characters’, and they took them. Damiens and Boulez not only held the work together – Damiens literally moving around the stage, to interact with each group – but appeared to engage in a dialogue of their own, reminding us that this is a concerto, with considerable ambiguity concerning the relationship between blend and battle when it comes to the soloist and other players. Once again, there was energetic game-playing aplenty, but there were also oases of calm, the harmonies of the string-based Largo section quite ravishing, and unerringly placed in terms of the dramatic game-plan.
Where the previous evening, Boulez had presented his sur Incises, here we had the revision, completed in 2006, of Dérive II. The work was now double the length of the previous time I had heard it. In many ways, it seems Janus-faced, connecting back to the SACHER-inspired works of the 1970s and 1980s, whilst also showcasing much of his more recent harmonic and structural development. As ever, the overwhelming sensation is of proliferation, in every aspect of the music. It was also striking how every instrument in the ensemble – eleven instrumentalists: woodwind, strings, and tuned percussion, including piano – was given ample opportunity to shine; it would be invidious to single out any one in particular, though I must mention the echoes of the Rite of Spring in the bassoon writing. One aspect that somewhat surprised me was how frankly thematic much of Boulez’s writing proved to be. In this, the expert performance of the EIC, under his direction, contributed a great deal. The oft-elusive ability to find an ending, most definitely achieved in sur Incises, was again displayed here: rhythmically exciting in the lead-up to its final, unanswerable unison.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Messiaen Centenary Concert - Messiaen and Boulez, Aimard/Ensemble Intercontemporain/Boulez, 10 December 2008
Royal Festival Hall
Messiaen – Couleurs de la cité céleste, for piano, wind, and percussion
Messiaen – Sept Haïkaï, for piano and orchestra
Boulez – sur Incises
Sébastien Vichard (piano)
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Ensemble Intercontemporain
Pierre Boulez (conductor)
And so, the Southbank Centre’s festival, From the canyons to the stars: the music of Oliver Messiaen, directed by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, came to an end on Messiaen’s hundredth birthday. Aimard, typically self-effacing, and on typically spectacular form, played in only one of the three works performed. He ceded the stage to the greatest of Messiaen’s many pupils, Pierre Boulez, not only as conductor of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, but also as composer of sur Incises. There was added historical weight to Boulez’s presence in that he had conducted the first performances of both Messiaen works: Couleurs de la cite céleste at Donaueschingen in 1964 and Sept Haïkaï as part of the legendary Domaine Musical concert series – precursor in a sense to the permanently-established EIC – two years earlier. To Boulez as conductor we must therefore, in the case of the latter work, add Boulez as commissioner.
For Couleurs de la cite céleste, Aimard ceded his place as pianist to Sébastien Vichard, a member of the EIC. Vichard was more than adequate to the task; it was only when Aimard played for Sept Haïkaï that it became truly apparent what a musician so utterly steeped in Messiaen’s music might have added. There remained much to savour, however, despite the occasional – and most surprising – slightly ragged moment from the woodwind. The ensemble sounded more ‘French’ in timbre than I had expected, harking back, whether through chance or design, to the sounds Messiaen might have heard in Parisian concert-life. A typically Messiaenesque polarity was set up and implacably maintained between the unbending ritualism of his alleluias and the freedom of birdsong. In between, trombone and bells sounded the apocalypse in splendidly sonorous fashion. Vichard shone as his piano sang in unison with the bells, imparting a true sense of awe. The Brucknerian silences – and gong-echoes – of the conclusion were given their full worth by Boulez, mindful perhaps of his more recent success in conducting the music of another deeply pious and in some senses untimely composer.
Sept Haïkaï is, I think, a tougher proposition for the listener, at least for the Western listener. Not only is there a good dose of late-‘Darmstadt’ – actually, as mentioned above, Donaueschingen – aggression; there is none of the Catholic mooring that often helps us to find our bearings in Messiaen. Here instead the religious aspect relates to the Buddhist and Shinto temples of Japan and birdsong plays a still greater, parallel role than in the first work. Yet there is the same polarity between freedom and ritual, which once again Boulez brought to the fore. The eruption of birdsong in the third movement, Yamanaka – cadenza, gave the impression of an ultimately irrepressible force finally bursting forth. Aimard’s solo cadenzas transformed notes into music, leaving this listener utterly spellbound. In the Gagaku, as Peter Hill explained in a characteristically excellent programme note, Messiaen imitated the timbres of traditional Japanese instruments such as the reedy hichiriki – which Messiaen himself described as 'extremely disagreeable and at the same time expressive' (!) – and the shô, a form of mouth organ. Messiaen’s description seemed to be followed to the letter by the combination of two oboes and English horn; nor did I care for the string harmonies, played sul ponticello and non vibrato. Still, that is what Messiaen wrote – and that is what we heard. Far more to my taste was the range of sonorities Aimard employed and the staggering virtuosity he unleashed in the sixth movement, Les Oiseaux de Karuizawa. Boulez’s command was almost unnervingly displayed in the strange deceleration with which that movement closes. (According to Hill, Messiaen’s notebook describes the Ô-yoshikiri bird’s song as resembling the acceleration and deceleration of an engine.) In the coda, there was a palpable sense of return to the guardian gods of the first-movement introduction, of coming full circle. And then both music and performance straightforwardly stopped.
Impressive though the Messiaen pieces in the first half were, sur Incises is the considerably greater work, indeed a masterpiece, receiving a performance to match. It is now more than eight years since I first heard sur Incises, in a performance conducted by Pierre-André Valade, with the London Sinfonietta, on Boulez’s seventy-fifth birthday. Good though that had been, this performance, under the non-baton of the composer himself, seemed to me definitive. The musicians of the EIC – three pianists, three harpists, and three percussionists – had the music under their skins and could therefore interpret it as part of the repertoire, rather than merely presenting it as new music: always a stated aim of Boulez’s music-making. There is, in the instrumentation, of course, the odd echo of Les Noces, but in reality Boulez’s strategy is quite different. The spatial element, here superbly realised, and assisted by the much-improved acoustic of the Royal Festival Hall, allows one to hear solo lines but also different groups: three groups, considered vertically, each of percussion, harp, and piano, and, considered horizontally, the three percussionists, the three harpists, and the three pianists. One of the most startling aspects of the latter formations is to hear passages transferring spatially across, say, the three pianos, whilst remaining in a sense part of the one giant piano – Incises, the original work, is for piano solo – played by the composer-conductor. Another striking aspect is the often Romantic tinge to the piano writing; I even fancied that I heard the influence of Chopin. It is also as if Boulez is playing with a musical magical square, albeit in a rather different sense from Webern’s, the three rows and columns constantly shifting, and yet somehow always adding up to the whole. For in a host of different ways, it is the sonorities that beguile; indeed, I do not think that any composer has secured, nor any conductor elicited, such beguiling sonorities. There are harmonies of Debussyan sumptuousness, but there is also a kinetic, rhythmic energy that brings to mind Stravinsky and Bartók to mind. The ghost of Bartók seems especially present in some of the piano writing, which then proves contagious for the other instrumentalists. Such progressions are the stuff of this music, another being that of reflection, for instance in the ruminative cadenza-like passages for piano, bringing forth life, and vice versa. The serial principle, so powerfully realised in this performance, is anything but constricting; it is rather a principle of an ever expanding universe, forever sparking off some further musical reaction. Moreover, this performance reminded one of Boulez’s infinite compositional flexibility, putting him, despite the context of this context, rather closer to Debussy than to Messiaen. Despite the sense – and, I suspect, for many, the desire – that this universe could have gone on expanding, its materials proliferating, forever, the very real, magical conclusion proved quite a contrast from the abrupt, if perfectly timely curtailment of the Sept Haïkaï. There could be no doubt that this was Boulez’s night, as was underlined by the surprisingly – at least to me – ecstatic reaction he received from the audience. I ought, like Messiaen, to have had greater faith.
Messiaen – Couleurs de la cité céleste, for piano, wind, and percussion
Messiaen – Sept Haïkaï, for piano and orchestra
Boulez – sur Incises
Sébastien Vichard (piano)
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Ensemble Intercontemporain
Pierre Boulez (conductor)
And so, the Southbank Centre’s festival, From the canyons to the stars: the music of Oliver Messiaen, directed by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, came to an end on Messiaen’s hundredth birthday. Aimard, typically self-effacing, and on typically spectacular form, played in only one of the three works performed. He ceded the stage to the greatest of Messiaen’s many pupils, Pierre Boulez, not only as conductor of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, but also as composer of sur Incises. There was added historical weight to Boulez’s presence in that he had conducted the first performances of both Messiaen works: Couleurs de la cite céleste at Donaueschingen in 1964 and Sept Haïkaï as part of the legendary Domaine Musical concert series – precursor in a sense to the permanently-established EIC – two years earlier. To Boulez as conductor we must therefore, in the case of the latter work, add Boulez as commissioner.
For Couleurs de la cite céleste, Aimard ceded his place as pianist to Sébastien Vichard, a member of the EIC. Vichard was more than adequate to the task; it was only when Aimard played for Sept Haïkaï that it became truly apparent what a musician so utterly steeped in Messiaen’s music might have added. There remained much to savour, however, despite the occasional – and most surprising – slightly ragged moment from the woodwind. The ensemble sounded more ‘French’ in timbre than I had expected, harking back, whether through chance or design, to the sounds Messiaen might have heard in Parisian concert-life. A typically Messiaenesque polarity was set up and implacably maintained between the unbending ritualism of his alleluias and the freedom of birdsong. In between, trombone and bells sounded the apocalypse in splendidly sonorous fashion. Vichard shone as his piano sang in unison with the bells, imparting a true sense of awe. The Brucknerian silences – and gong-echoes – of the conclusion were given their full worth by Boulez, mindful perhaps of his more recent success in conducting the music of another deeply pious and in some senses untimely composer.
Sept Haïkaï is, I think, a tougher proposition for the listener, at least for the Western listener. Not only is there a good dose of late-‘Darmstadt’ – actually, as mentioned above, Donaueschingen – aggression; there is none of the Catholic mooring that often helps us to find our bearings in Messiaen. Here instead the religious aspect relates to the Buddhist and Shinto temples of Japan and birdsong plays a still greater, parallel role than in the first work. Yet there is the same polarity between freedom and ritual, which once again Boulez brought to the fore. The eruption of birdsong in the third movement, Yamanaka – cadenza, gave the impression of an ultimately irrepressible force finally bursting forth. Aimard’s solo cadenzas transformed notes into music, leaving this listener utterly spellbound. In the Gagaku, as Peter Hill explained in a characteristically excellent programme note, Messiaen imitated the timbres of traditional Japanese instruments such as the reedy hichiriki – which Messiaen himself described as 'extremely disagreeable and at the same time expressive' (!) – and the shô, a form of mouth organ. Messiaen’s description seemed to be followed to the letter by the combination of two oboes and English horn; nor did I care for the string harmonies, played sul ponticello and non vibrato. Still, that is what Messiaen wrote – and that is what we heard. Far more to my taste was the range of sonorities Aimard employed and the staggering virtuosity he unleashed in the sixth movement, Les Oiseaux de Karuizawa. Boulez’s command was almost unnervingly displayed in the strange deceleration with which that movement closes. (According to Hill, Messiaen’s notebook describes the Ô-yoshikiri bird’s song as resembling the acceleration and deceleration of an engine.) In the coda, there was a palpable sense of return to the guardian gods of the first-movement introduction, of coming full circle. And then both music and performance straightforwardly stopped.
Impressive though the Messiaen pieces in the first half were, sur Incises is the considerably greater work, indeed a masterpiece, receiving a performance to match. It is now more than eight years since I first heard sur Incises, in a performance conducted by Pierre-André Valade, with the London Sinfonietta, on Boulez’s seventy-fifth birthday. Good though that had been, this performance, under the non-baton of the composer himself, seemed to me definitive. The musicians of the EIC – three pianists, three harpists, and three percussionists – had the music under their skins and could therefore interpret it as part of the repertoire, rather than merely presenting it as new music: always a stated aim of Boulez’s music-making. There is, in the instrumentation, of course, the odd echo of Les Noces, but in reality Boulez’s strategy is quite different. The spatial element, here superbly realised, and assisted by the much-improved acoustic of the Royal Festival Hall, allows one to hear solo lines but also different groups: three groups, considered vertically, each of percussion, harp, and piano, and, considered horizontally, the three percussionists, the three harpists, and the three pianists. One of the most startling aspects of the latter formations is to hear passages transferring spatially across, say, the three pianos, whilst remaining in a sense part of the one giant piano – Incises, the original work, is for piano solo – played by the composer-conductor. Another striking aspect is the often Romantic tinge to the piano writing; I even fancied that I heard the influence of Chopin. It is also as if Boulez is playing with a musical magical square, albeit in a rather different sense from Webern’s, the three rows and columns constantly shifting, and yet somehow always adding up to the whole. For in a host of different ways, it is the sonorities that beguile; indeed, I do not think that any composer has secured, nor any conductor elicited, such beguiling sonorities. There are harmonies of Debussyan sumptuousness, but there is also a kinetic, rhythmic energy that brings to mind Stravinsky and Bartók to mind. The ghost of Bartók seems especially present in some of the piano writing, which then proves contagious for the other instrumentalists. Such progressions are the stuff of this music, another being that of reflection, for instance in the ruminative cadenza-like passages for piano, bringing forth life, and vice versa. The serial principle, so powerfully realised in this performance, is anything but constricting; it is rather a principle of an ever expanding universe, forever sparking off some further musical reaction. Moreover, this performance reminded one of Boulez’s infinite compositional flexibility, putting him, despite the context of this context, rather closer to Debussy than to Messiaen. Despite the sense – and, I suspect, for many, the desire – that this universe could have gone on expanding, its materials proliferating, forever, the very real, magical conclusion proved quite a contrast from the abrupt, if perfectly timely curtailment of the Sept Haïkaï. There could be no doubt that this was Boulez’s night, as was underlined by the surprisingly – at least to me – ecstatic reaction he received from the audience. I ought, like Messiaen, to have had greater faith.
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Hänsel und Gretel, Royal Opera, 9 December 2008
Royal Opera House
Hänsel – Angelika Kirchschlager
Gretel – Diana Damrau
Gertrud – Elizabeth Connell
Peter – Sir Thomas Allen
Witch – Anja Silja
Sandman – Pumeza Matshikiza
Dew Fairy – Anita Watson
Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier (directors)
Christian Fenouillat (set designer)
Agostino Cavalca (designs)
Christophe Forey (lighting)
Tiffin Boys' Choir and Tiffin Children's Chorus
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)
This is the Royal Opera’s first production of Hänsel und Gretel since 1937: most surprising, given the halo that tends to accompany Humperdinck’s Märchenoper. I had a few niggling, even curmudgeonly doubts during the first act, especially when it came to the passages that sound not so much influenced by Wagner as plagiarised from his works, especially Die Meistersinger. However, as time went on I was much more convinced – and that, I think, should be credited to so excellent a performance.
I can imagine some taking against Sir Colin Davis’s reading of the score but for me this was a very great advantage. He luxuriates in its Wagnerisms; for, although Wagner is not the first composer one thinks of in terms of this conductor, he has had considerable experience, both at the Royal Opera and at Bayreuth. The conclusion to the second act gave a sense of being subsumed, Parsifal-like into heavenly revelation, albeit without any of those troubling doubts one always entertains concerning who or what is being redeemed. With this Hänsel, we had a case of magical dreams, pure and simple. The following morning, as Gretel awoke, there was a nice sense – not overdone, but certainly there – of a miniature Brünnhilde’s awakening. It is all there in the score, of course, lest this sound like superimposition. Many conductors might have taken the music a little more quickly but Davis did not need to do so. Details were made to count, yet always in the context of a sure, loving narrative flow and an unimpeachable command of structure. And, as ever, the members of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House played their hearts out for Davis. Especially lovable were the rapt strings and the almost unbearably beautiful horns: this could have been another orchestra with which Davis has a longstanding relationship, the venerable Staatskapelle Dresden.
There was not a weak link in the cast. Angelika Kirchschlager is a truly wonderful boy Hänsel, as utterly credible as when she plays Octavian. Her every movement betokened a great affinity with the part; vocally, she was every bit as good. I did not think that Diana Damrau, probably the greatest Zerbinetta I have heard, made quite so convincing a girl, but musically I should have little but praise for her. Elizabeth Connell sounded gorgeous in the maternal role of Gertrud, although her diction was not always so clear as that of the rest of the cast. It becomes almost wearisome to say this upon his every appearance, but Thomas Allen yet again proved what a consummate musician and musical actor he is, as Peter. Jette Parker Young Artists Pumeza Matshikiza and Anita Watson both gave excellent performances in the lovable roles of the Sandman and the Dew Fairy respectively, cushioned and seemingly inspired by Davis and the orchestra. And then there was Anja Silja as the Witch. Age has certainly not dimmed her lustre; she remains a truly formidable vocal actress, with no need to ham up the part, presenting a truly nasty old woman of a sort children might actually meet and fear.
In this, Silja was assisted by the production. Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier provided her with a Zimmer frame (which she did not need: we have all met such fraudulent recipients...) and a modern but slightly deranged appearance. This was a credible character, just as Hänsel was a credible boy. Not only had great attention gone into the Personenregie; it worked. There was a true sense of magic when the angels appeared and the children dreamed of Christmas, whilst the industrial ovens of the witch’s house brought a real danger to proceedings. The sets were uncontroversial without cloying – although I did think the space, if not the decor, for the house in the first act looked suspiciously like that for the directors’ Barber of Seville a few years ago. To have the forest, so crucial to the tales of the Brothers Grimm, visibly surrounding every scene was a welcome touch, although more might perhaps have been made of its menace. There was a veritable coup de théâtre in the explosion that followed the trapping of the witch – and the subsequent liberation of the biscuit-children, who sang their song rather well. It is a difficult balancing act, to present something that would work both for children and for adults, but I think that this production and this performance managed to do so.
Hänsel – Angelika Kirchschlager
Gretel – Diana Damrau
Gertrud – Elizabeth Connell
Peter – Sir Thomas Allen
Witch – Anja Silja
Sandman – Pumeza Matshikiza
Dew Fairy – Anita Watson
Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier (directors)
Christian Fenouillat (set designer)
Agostino Cavalca (designs)
Christophe Forey (lighting)
Tiffin Boys' Choir and Tiffin Children's Chorus
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)
This is the Royal Opera’s first production of Hänsel und Gretel since 1937: most surprising, given the halo that tends to accompany Humperdinck’s Märchenoper. I had a few niggling, even curmudgeonly doubts during the first act, especially when it came to the passages that sound not so much influenced by Wagner as plagiarised from his works, especially Die Meistersinger. However, as time went on I was much more convinced – and that, I think, should be credited to so excellent a performance.
I can imagine some taking against Sir Colin Davis’s reading of the score but for me this was a very great advantage. He luxuriates in its Wagnerisms; for, although Wagner is not the first composer one thinks of in terms of this conductor, he has had considerable experience, both at the Royal Opera and at Bayreuth. The conclusion to the second act gave a sense of being subsumed, Parsifal-like into heavenly revelation, albeit without any of those troubling doubts one always entertains concerning who or what is being redeemed. With this Hänsel, we had a case of magical dreams, pure and simple. The following morning, as Gretel awoke, there was a nice sense – not overdone, but certainly there – of a miniature Brünnhilde’s awakening. It is all there in the score, of course, lest this sound like superimposition. Many conductors might have taken the music a little more quickly but Davis did not need to do so. Details were made to count, yet always in the context of a sure, loving narrative flow and an unimpeachable command of structure. And, as ever, the members of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House played their hearts out for Davis. Especially lovable were the rapt strings and the almost unbearably beautiful horns: this could have been another orchestra with which Davis has a longstanding relationship, the venerable Staatskapelle Dresden.
There was not a weak link in the cast. Angelika Kirchschlager is a truly wonderful boy Hänsel, as utterly credible as when she plays Octavian. Her every movement betokened a great affinity with the part; vocally, she was every bit as good. I did not think that Diana Damrau, probably the greatest Zerbinetta I have heard, made quite so convincing a girl, but musically I should have little but praise for her. Elizabeth Connell sounded gorgeous in the maternal role of Gertrud, although her diction was not always so clear as that of the rest of the cast. It becomes almost wearisome to say this upon his every appearance, but Thomas Allen yet again proved what a consummate musician and musical actor he is, as Peter. Jette Parker Young Artists Pumeza Matshikiza and Anita Watson both gave excellent performances in the lovable roles of the Sandman and the Dew Fairy respectively, cushioned and seemingly inspired by Davis and the orchestra. And then there was Anja Silja as the Witch. Age has certainly not dimmed her lustre; she remains a truly formidable vocal actress, with no need to ham up the part, presenting a truly nasty old woman of a sort children might actually meet and fear.
In this, Silja was assisted by the production. Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier provided her with a Zimmer frame (which she did not need: we have all met such fraudulent recipients...) and a modern but slightly deranged appearance. This was a credible character, just as Hänsel was a credible boy. Not only had great attention gone into the Personenregie; it worked. There was a true sense of magic when the angels appeared and the children dreamed of Christmas, whilst the industrial ovens of the witch’s house brought a real danger to proceedings. The sets were uncontroversial without cloying – although I did think the space, if not the decor, for the house in the first act looked suspiciously like that for the directors’ Barber of Seville a few years ago. To have the forest, so crucial to the tales of the Brothers Grimm, visibly surrounding every scene was a welcome touch, although more might perhaps have been made of its menace. There was a veritable coup de théâtre in the explosion that followed the trapping of the witch – and the subsequent liberation of the biscuit-children, who sang their song rather well. It is a difficult balancing act, to present something that would work both for children and for adults, but I think that this production and this performance managed to do so.
Monday, 8 December 2008
La finta giardiniera, Royal College of Music, 6 December 2008
(Serpetta and Nardo)
(Ramiro, Arminda, Serpetta, Don Anchise, Sandrina, Belfiore, Nardo)
(Ramiro, Don Anchise, Arminda)
(Belfiore, Sandrina)
(Images copyright: Chris Christodoulou)
Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music
Ramiro – Anna Huntley
Don Anchise (Podestà) – Tyler Clarke
Violante/Sandrina – Colette Boushell
Roberto/Nardo – Peter Braithwaite
Contino Belfiore – Alexander Vearey-Roberts
Serpetta – Sadhbh Dennedy
Arminda – Lorna Bridge
Jean-Claude Auvray (director)
Alison Nalder (designer)
Mark Doubleday (lighting)
Ramiro – Anna Huntley
Don Anchise (Podestà) – Tyler Clarke
Violante/Sandrina – Colette Boushell
Roberto/Nardo – Peter Braithwaite
Contino Belfiore – Alexander Vearey-Roberts
Serpetta – Sadhbh Dennedy
Arminda – Lorna Bridge
Jean-Claude Auvray (director)
Alison Nalder (designer)
Mark Doubleday (lighting)
Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra
Michael Rosewell (conductor)
This was both an excellent performance and an excellent showcase for the work of the Royal College of Music’s Benjamin Britten International Opera School. Every bit as importantly, it reminded or informed us just how fine a work La finta giardiniera is. In many respects it as crucial a work in Mozart’s operatic development as Idomeneo, not the fully-fledged masterpiece that the latter – a greater work when written than any opera since Monteverdi, leaving even the Gluck of Iphigénie en Tauride standing – is, yet nevertheless a great leap forward. There is nothing generic here about Mozart’s musical language; although only eighteen years old at the time of composition, this is indubitably the composer of the later Salzburg years, perhaps more familiar to many listeners from contemporary sacred and symphonic works, not least the ‘little’ G minor symphony, KV 183. Most crucially, we now encounter a musical dramatist with extraordinary powers of characterisation. We may not be talking about Figaro here, but Mozart’s operatic characterisation already surpasses that of Handel or Haydn. It is perhaps no coincidence that La finta giardiniera is an opera buffa, only Mozart’s second comedy. The problematical form of opera seria was not yet dead – indeed, it would continue into the nineteenth century – but Mozart’s genius and indeed the imperatives of the Classical style were not truly of that world. La clemenza di Tito would be Mozart’s sole mature contribution to the form, in sharp distinction to the practice of his earlier years, and even Tito would benefit from a considerable infusion of buffo musical practice. Tellingly, in La finta giardiniera, social distinctions and to some extent social conflict are sharply in evidence, a mark of Mozart’s increasing skills of characterisation and a clear stepping-stone towards Figaro and Don Giovanni. This work needs no excuses but evidently it still requires advocacy. The Royal Opera, when recently staging it for the first time, condescendingly abandoned it to period instruments; the RCM knew better.
I feared a little when hearing the overture. Many modern performances of Classical operas seem a little unsure when handling purely orchestral music, accentuating irritating, allegedly ‘period’ characteristics. Here, the phrasing could certainly have been more lovingly handled and the whole could have been more relaxed: no need to be autumnal, but summer would have been fitting. However, Michael Rosewell’s reading soon settled down and if there remained occasions when less haste would have aided the flow, I should not wish to exaggerate. The orchestral playing itself was of a very high standard, allowing the audience to savour Mozart’s increasingly bold writing – never more so than in that extraordinary first-act aria, ‘Dentro il mio petto il sento,’ in which almost every instrument is hymned and in return hymns us, ravishing our senses. The only blemishes here were kettledrums lacking in bloom, trumpets that sounded suspiciously ‘natural’: either they were, or they had been instructed to sound so. In neither case could the players be held responsible. The excellent acoustic of the Britten Theatre assisted in conveying the delights of their performance, rhythmically firm but far from unyielding, but of course it only assisted.
Vocally, this score is quite a challenge for any cast, yet the singers of the BBIOS rose to that challenge with considerable credit. The youth of their voices probably assisted in the blend of ensembles, but the arias, not least the more elaborate ones for the noble personages, are full of pitfalls; these were here skilfully navigated and even relished in the act of avoidance. Lorna Bridge was rather cruelly set up for a fall in an interpolated quotation from the Queen of the Night when making made her entrance as Arminda. It might have worked, had she sung in tune. Thereafter, however, she proved herself a fine soprano and a fine actress, secure if dislikeable in her upwardly mobile status as the mayor’s niece, seeking a noble marriage. Anna Huntley did well in the somewhat unexciting castrato role of Arminda’s suitor, Don Ramiro; likewise Tyler Clarke as the mayor, Don Anchise. I was not especially taken with Colette Boushell as the pretended garden girl herself. Her phrasing and diction were impressive – indeed, the same should be said of the entire cast – but there was often an unsteady quality to her voice, save for when singing at forte level or above, which too often she did. I wondered whether hers was really the right voice for the role and whether she was therefore in some sense attempting to compensate. However, Alexander Vearey-Roberts was a true discovery in the role of Belfiore. There was the occasional faltering, but this counted for little in the face of a commanding portrayal. Tender, ardent, and beguiling of tone, he also showed himself a fine actor. Both Boushell and Vearey-Roberts handled the surprisingly plentiful accompanied recitative – appropriate to their true, noble standing – with security and with flair. Sadhbh Dennedy and Peter Braithwaite also excelled in stage and vocal terms as Serpetto and Nardo respectively. Dennedy, who had impressed me last year in The Rake’s Progress, evinced a sure grasp of her serving-girl idiom, harking back to Pergolesi but also looking forward to Susanna. Braithwaite made the most of his role, neither over- nor underplaying its comic potential, exhibiting a fine young baritone in the process.
Jean-Claude Auvray’s production ran in a slightly stylised eighteenth-century setting, which is probably the ideal way to perform such a work. It cannot quite be taken at face value but may prove a little too fragile to an unduly radical reinterpretation, at least until it can properly be said to have entered the repertoire. Costumes were of their period, without fetishising, and occasional birdsong gave a sense of the outdoors, without jarring. One trick that was overdone was the emergence of cast members from within the theatre. Sometimes this can work but it needs to be done sparingly, or it becomes, as here, a mannerism – and a pointless one at that. Auvray’s direction of the singers as actors was, however, most impressive. He is clearly a director who knows how to achieve what he wants. Moreover, he has a sense of and respect for the music; what ought to be a sine qua non is often, sadly and infuriatingly, anything but. Auvray’s most signal achievement was to permit the talented cast to explore and to communicate the riches of Mozart’s wonderful score.
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