Luca Francesconi: Quartett, Royal Opera, 18 June 2014

Images: ROH/Stephen Cummiskey

Linbury Studio Theatre

Marquise de Mertueil – Kirstin Chávez

Vicomte de Valmont – Leigh Melrose

Soutra Gilmour (designs)

Ravi Deepres (film)

Bruno Poet (lighting)

Serge Le Mouton (computer music design)

Julien Aléonard (recording, editing, mixing of choir and orchestra at La Scala)

Sound Intermedia
London Sinfonietta
Andrew Gourlay (conductor)

Luca Francesconi has been commissioned to write a new opera for Covent Garden, due for performance, alongside three others, in 2020: a development which marks a long-overdue departure from the parochial practice of only or mostly commissioning British composers. Six years is a long time for us to wait, but this performance of Quartett, premiered at La Scala in 2011, whetted the appetite.

 

Moreover, Francesconi, in a Guardian interview with Tom Service, certainly whetted the appetite for Quartett itself: ‘Don’t dare to come if you can’t accept that you need to analyse what you do and who you are.’ Sadly, as we shall see, certain members of the audience predictably failed to take note. ‘This piece is violent, it’s sex, it’s blasphemy, it’s the absence of mercy. The only two characters in the opera are the definition of cynical, they have made a pact that they don’t have to love any more. Love and sentiment are banned, the only thing that’s left and that matters is a kind of chess game with people’s souls and bodies.’ In this opera, the composer’s own libretto based upon Heiner Müller’s play, itself freely inspired – as you will probably now have guessed – by Les Liaisons dangereuses, you may ‘face the reality of how dried up your heart is, how little space there is in your feelings for anything that doesn’t come from being self-defensive, from being totally scared by the world.’ As usual, some of our esteemed newspaper critics failed to take note. The ‘real last message of the piece [is] that we can no longer hide our problems – and that we shouldn’t.’

 

Bold words indeed. Does the opera live up to them? For the most part, yes, both as work and as performance. Francesconi is more readily associated with Berio than with Nono, and rightly so; but here, one feels a certain degree of technical and spiritual kinship with the latter too. If there is little or none of the extremity of Nono’s writing, and the use of electronics proves nothing in particular, there is perhaps something of Nono’s insistently humanistic drawing in, of that embodiment within the work of the imperative ‘to listen’, even, on occasion, of those searingly beautiful post-Webern angular melodies. Without wishing to reduce a distinguished composer to a sum of ‘influences’, but simply to try to place him, it is nevertheless Berio’s love of games and the juxtapositions that come with them, which seem more apparent. That is hardly surprising, given that we are, as Francesconi observes in a programme interview, ‘living a whirling, virtuosic game of masks, impossible to understand, which push the boundary between reality and acting. This is Theatre for Müller as it was for Shakespeare: the possibility of staging one vision of the world and its opposite.’ Undeniably Teutonic dialectics present themselves, then, but with a somewhat different voice, more ‘Italianate’ in both a traditional and modern sense, than, say, Hans Werner Henze, always so eager to adopt the spirit of the Mediterranean, would ever be permitted by his German inheritance fully to assume.

 

 

Form is both readily apparent and slightly beyond our grasp: just as it should be, one might say. One senses the different musico-dramatic imperatives of the different scenes, or at least sections, of this one-act work, just as one does the palimpsest of voices: ‘real’, instrumental, electronic memories and presentiments. Sometimes the language comes (perilously or self-confidently?) close to tonality, but why should it not, the composer apparently perfectly clear that he has something or some things to say, and that he knows how to say them? There is development in the sense of ebb and flow, but also in the tragic – or should that be tragi-comic? – route taken to the death of the Vicomte de Valmont and the subsequent ‘waiting’ of the Marquise de Merteuil. Francesconi’s ear for blending live and electronic music, for the shifting boundaries between them, for the ways in which one might emerge from the other, is not only impeccable, but beguiling and, crucially in this context, seductive. For it is music, above all, that wins through, as it always will in successful opera, be it Così fan tutte, Parsifal, or Die Soldaten. ‘Cinema,’ as Francesconi points out in his programme interview, ‘is only a facsimile, it’s not happening here and now. … Music is the alchemy that triggers’ the ‘miracle’ of theatre, of what happens ‘in real time’. The interaction between what is ‘live’ and what is not perhaps further problematises, indeed dramatises, such tension, rendering it all the more productive.

 

John Fulljames does an excellent job in the difficult space of the Linbury. Presented more or less ‘in the round’, the opera is able to draw us in spatially as well as musically – though of course there is a strong spatial element to the electronics in any case. A post-apocalyptic element features strongly, but with a ‘play’ that is darkly redolent of Beckett, not of unmediated desperation. Human beings, however deprived and depraved, will continue to play, to create: such is a corner-stone of politics and æsthetics not only from Schiller onwards, but from as far back as we can trace, indeed from Creation itself. All elements of the staging are tightly integrated – not only with each other, but with work and performance.

 

Andrew Gourlay led an incisive performance from the London Sinfonietta. Certainly those qualities of the score I mentioned above came across with penetrating clarity and seductive suggestion. Kirstin Chávez and Leigh Melrose sang on this, the first night; Angelica Voje and Mark Stone will appear in some of the subsequent performances. Chávez and Melrose offered outstanding performances, musical and dramatic commitment shown to be quite as one, frenzied abandon and cool reflection inciting one another in the increasingly self-sufficient imperative of the characters’ role-play. This was not Müller as such, but it was something he might have appreciated; as Francesconi, it would be very difficult indeed to match. Vocal and dramatic range stretched themselves as required, towards but never beyond breaking point.

 

After such a performance, I try to write something as quickly as possible, but various commitments made that impossible on this occasion, by which time I had already been made aware of typically uncomprehending newspaper ‘reviews’. One might have hoped that the writers would have learned something from their humiliation in the recent Rosenkavalier debacle, but no, the usual suspects have breezily paraded their ignorance of Francesconi, of Müller, of music and indeed of culture in general. What would it take, one wonders, for newspapers to decline a review, if the likes of this and this, are deemed fit for publication? At least we have that interesting interview with Tom Service. Perhaps, though, in the cases of the ‘critics’ from The Independent and The Daily Telegraph, sub-editors have, for once, done their jobs. Headlines – ‘A shameful waste of money…’ and ‘Generic wittering’ – may best be understood as useful comment upon the reviewers rather than the works. Let them stick with Donizetti; the rest of us will try to engage with opera as a living art-form. Who knows: we might even succeed? Francesconi seems to have done so.

 

Manon Lescaut, Royal Opera, 17 June 2014

Royal Opera House

Manon Lescaut – Kristïne Opolais

Lescaut – Christopher Maltman

Chevalier des Grieux – Jonas Kaufmann

Geronte de Revoir – Maurizio Muraro

Edmondo – Benjamin Hulett

Innkeeper –Nigel Cliffe

Singer – Nadezhda Karyazina

Dancing Master – Robert Burt

Lamplighter – Luis Gomes

Sergeant of the Royal Archers – Jihoon Kim

Naval Captain – Jeremy White

Jonathan Kent (director)

Paul Brown (designs)

Mark Henderson (lighting)

Denni Sayers (choreographer)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Stephen Westrop)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)

 

A moronic audience and obscenely high ticket prices were not designed to have one in the best of moods. The Royal Opera House should be ashamed of itself for its cynical pricing: I had to pay £51, more than I could really afford, for the most distant reaches of the Upper Amphitheatre, from which it is impossible to see the singers’ fasces, whilst Stalls tickets far exceeded £200. So more should those who, having previously been laughing, shuffling, talking, opening sweets, coughing, sneezing, etc., booed the production team. Jonathan Kent’s staging has all sorts of problems, yes, but such boorish, threatening behaviour has nothing to do with art and suggests the perpetrators would be better off at a football match, of which there seems to be no shortage at the moment.

 

Indeed, it was tempting to conclude that such people received what they deserved. Having tittered at the surtitles – is it not side-splittingly hilarious that someone should be interested in preserving an emerald or too? – they, needless to say, failed to notice what might have been the virtue of Kent’s production, had it been coherently thought through and presented. Turning the tables on spectators of different varieties, most notably during the filmed ‘show’ of Manon’s antics in the second act, set to a backdrop of sickly pink vulgarity, might have worked in a Katie Mitchell-like manner; it might even have succeeded in indicting those who had turned up for an evening of conspicuous consumption and sentimental refusal to hear something other than ‘lovely tunes’. One might be able to set aside jarring details, such as this modern(-ish) woman having had parents decide to send her to a convent. The problem is that a not uninteresting idea – and I appreciate that this is a generous reading of what we see – utterly collapses following the interval. Suddenly, without warning, and more to the point without discernible agency, we appear to be in a different production altogether. The point – and again I am trying to be generous – may well be that now the audience, having been rendered aware (a fine chance with most of that lot!) of its complicity, should now be more or less conventionally harrowed, but that is not how it comes across. What registers instead are incoherence and ineptitude, increased by designs which seem to have been ‘borrowed’ from Kent’s less than successful Flying Dutchman.

 

By the time one reaches the fourth act, the production team seems to have given up completely. Not only is it well-nigh impossible, even for the most sympathetic viewer, to consider the cartoon-like presentation with a hint of irony; it is far from clear whether Des Grieux’s failure to bother to find some water, instead just sitting down a few yards away, is deliberate or just an unknowing commentary on what we have been watching. If Kent had had the strength of his (apparent) convictions, had continued to undermine an ‘easy’ reading, perhaps by having Manon fake her death and return to a life of luxury, this would have been worthier of respect; as it stands, one can neither sympathise with the characters nor with the botched attempt at critique of the ‘drama’, such as it is.

 

With a cast such as this, there are compensations of course, but again, bearing in mind the cynical pricing, that is hardly enough. Jonas Kaufmann sounded at times a little strained in the first act – he would surely be more home as Siegmund, the sort of role in which the ROH never permits us to hear him – but, even from the very back of the house, one could see as well as hear his dramatic presence. The Italianate sobs are not overdone, thank goodness, and one could take dictation from his words and vocal line alike, however softly sung. Much the same, bar the Siegmund observation, could be said of Kristïne Opolais, whose shaping of her lines was every bit as impressive as Kaufmann’s. The voices may not always quite have blended, but they certainly came together powerfully in the fourth act – which would have been far better off in a concert performance. Christopher Maltman’s Italian sometimes seemed a little deliberate, but his was an alert reading of the role of Lescaut, both on stage and in voice. Maurizio Muraro probably had the best of the production in terms of the presentation of Geronte; his was a powerful presence throughout. ‘Supporting’ roles were pretty much all well taken; especial mention might be made of Benjamin Hulett’s finely observed Edmondo. Choral singing was of an equally high standard.

 

As for Antonio Pappano’s conducting: well, at least it was not his Wagner. Many extol him in Puccini; he certainly seems more at home here than in a great deal of other repertoire. There remains, though, more than a little stiffness, and that same desire to ‘accompany’ rather than to lead. The Wagnerisms of Puccini’s score came through, perhaps ironically, far more strongly than when I had heard the work in Leipzig in April, but, like much of the rest, they seemed isolated rather than properly placed within a greater scheme. Delicacy was more to the fore than passion, let alone a dialectic between them. The orchestra, bar some surprisingly thin string tone at times, played very well, considered in itself, though it was too rarely given its head; I could not help but wonder what a symphonic conductor such as Daniele Gatti, Semyon Bychkov, or Riccardo Muti would have brought to the performance. That said, the most glaring shortcomings were those of the half-baked staging.  This really is not, or at least should not be, the place to present work-in-progress.
 

Richard Strauss at 150

For Strauss's 150th birthday (today), I have written a piece for The Conversation, which may be read here.

Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, 7 June 2014

Don Giovanni (Elliot Madore) and Donna Anna (Layla Claire)
Images: Robert Workman

Glyndebourne Festival Theatre

Leporello – Edwin Crossley-Mercer

Donna Anna – Layla Claire

Don Giovanni – Elliot Madore

Commendatore – Taras Shtonda

Don Ottavio – Ben Johnson

Donna Elvira – Serena Farnocchia

Zerlina – Lenka Máčiková

Masetto – Brandon Cedel

 

Jonathan Kent (director)

Lloyd Wood (revival director)

Paul Brown (designs)

Denni Sayers (movement)

Mark Henderson (lighting)

The Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines)

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Andrés Orozco-Estrada

 

Having become so jaded with indifferent – or, sadly, far worse than merely indifferent – stagings of an opera I love more than words can tell, it proved a relief and indeed a joy for me to attend this first revival of Jonathan Kent’s 2010 Glyndebourne production, especially its first act. It was not perfect; perfection we leave for Mozart. But Kent’s staging, as revived by Lloyd Wood – I am afraid I am in no position to say how much is Kent and how is Wood – treats this masterpiece seriously and joins a select group of productions I should happily see again, not least because I suspect there would be intriguing points revealed to me that I had missed upon a first viewing. (Incidentally, its Glyndebourne predecessor, from Graham Vick, forms part of that small band.)

 

Kent’s staging may lack the cocaine-fuelled kinetic energy of Calixto Bieito’s unforgettable ENO production, or the (apparently) all-encompassing, Calderón-like Salzburg World Theatre of Herbert Graf’s production for Furtwängler (the most precious opera DVD this side of the Boulez-Chéreau Ring?), but even such magnificent achievements as those can only begin to hint at the possibilities Mozart and Da Ponte offer us. Most stagings come nowhere near accomplishing even that. Social tensions are either absent or underplayed – an all too common shortcoming – but a seriousness and sensibility it is perhaps not unduly exaggerated to call theological nevertheless comes to the fore. Giovanni’s unflinching, libertine atheism is of course the true heroism of the opera. The dark force of what to him may be reaction is symbolised by the darkness of Paul Brown’s excellent set designs, from out of which the action seems to emerge and into which it retreats. But some in the audience – and some of the characters too – might equally decide that it is the temporal stability of the revolving cube (the Mother Church, perhaps?) which protects and which ultimately proves the villain’s downfall.

 

 

Such openness to interpretation is quite different from a lack of direction. There is room for the burning conviction of strong directorial lines – Bieito is surely one of the greatest and unquestionably one of the most celebrate examples – and for more reticent yet nevertheless intelligent productions, permitting of various understandings. In that respect, Kent’s likening, in his brief director’s note, of Brown’s spinning cube to ‘a kind of Cabinet of Curiosities or, perhaps, a great sarcophagus,’ proves fruitful both in itself and for the further consideration it might suggest. Moreover, such properly Baroque references, in a more broadly cultural sense rather than the narrow conceptions of ‘style’ prevalent today, prove equally stimulating to the imagination – just as they do in Mozart’s score and Da Ponte’s libretto. The 1950s updating registers if one wishes: Kent suggests a ‘time of transition, in which a sexual, social and moral revolution, a dolce vita world, coexisted with the remnants of a devout society. However, at least to my eyes, it does not force itself unduly upon one’s consciousness. The staging is again, then, suggestive; it does not make the mistake of trying to shoehorn the drama into a pointlessly narrow conception, let alone somehow attempt to make Don Giovanni ‘about’ the era in question.

 

There remains, however, one significant reservation. I do not know whose decision it was to serve up what seemed pretty much to be the Vienna version of the score, but I wish he or she had thought again; it made a change, though, from the unholy conflation of Vienna and Prague generally foisted upon us. To anyone who cares to think about it, Prague wins every time, although I have yet to attend a single performance in which Mozart’s dramatic sensibility is thus honoured. At any rate, we heard both of Donna Elvira’s arias, just the one of Don Ottavio’s (‘Dalla sua pace’), and the very rare Vienna duet for Zerlina and Leporello, ‘Per queste tue manine’. It was not, of course, uninteresting to hear the latter, for once, but it is almost unworthy of late Mozart, and holds up the action just as much as if we were to hear both of Ottavio’s arias (and/or, for that matter, both of Elvira’s: just as much a problem with Vienna). There was, at least, no messing about with the scena ultima – a relief, given the recent butchery perpetrated by the Royal Opera. It was a great pity, though, about the surtitles, whose translation was unworthy of Da Ponte’s matchless marriage of wit and profundity.

 

Andrés Orozco-Estrada’s Mahler I greatly admired in Vienna a year-and-a-half ago. At first, that is, in the Overture, I found him somewhat wanting in Mozart. I have learned to live with the opening being taken at an allegedly alla breve tempo far too fast to my ears; off the top of my head, only Barenboim and Muti, amongst living conductors, come close to what I hear in my head. More concerning were a general thinness of tone and apparent lack of concern with harmonic rhythm.  If those were not actually natural trumpets – I could not see the pit – they certainly sounded like them; others, of course, respond better to that rasping sound than I do. However, once past that disappointing opening, there was much to admire, though such tendencies were far from entirely banished. There will always be tempi with which one can quibble, but this was a variegated performance which did not harry the music, and which permitted both the on-stage drama to develop and the excellent London Philharmonic Orchestra to have its say. The Stone Guest Scene, however, was strangely un-climactic: partly, I think, a matter of the failure to use the Prague score, but it was more than that, for that failing is common to many other performances. Though beautifully played by the LPO and – for the most part – well sung, the final scene therefore did not jolt quite as it should.

 



Leporello (Edwin Crossley-Mercer) and Don Giovanni

Indeed, the main factor was probably the underpowered singing of  Taras Shtonda’s Commendatore. The other disappointment amongst the cast was Layla Claire’s vibrato-laden Donna Anna, whose musical line really needed to be clearer throughout.  Otherwise, a cast almost entirely unknown to me acquitted itself well, with a fine sense of company. Ben Johnson, whom I had heard before as Ottavio, albeit in English, sang exquisitely, almost to the extent of having one regret the lack of ‘Il mio tesoro’. Serena Farnocchia was a stylish Elvira, whilst Lenka Máčiková and Brandon Cedel offered vocally lively assumptions of the roles of Zerlina and Masetto. If Elliot Madore lacked the charisma of the great Giovannis, then he nevertheless delighted in the musico-dramatic quicksilver of the role, sufficiently differentiated from the equally lively Leporello of Edwin Crossley-Mercer. There was genuine chemistry between them. Perhaps ironically, given the ‘loss’ of his aria, it was only Johnson’s Ottavio which continued to ring in my ears; but this, like the production and performance as a whole, was a cast that proved considerably greater than the sum of its parts.

Benvenuto Cellini, English National Opera, 5 June 2014

Coliseum

(sung in English)

Benvenuto Cellini – Michael Spyres

Giacomo Balducci – Pavlo Hunka
Teresa – Corinne Winters
Fieramosca – Nicholas Pallesen
Pope Clement VII – Sir Willard White
Ascanio – Paula Murrihy
Francesco – Nicky Spence
Bernardino – David Soar
Pompeo – Morgan Pearse
Innkeeper – Anton Rich

Terry Gilliam (director, set designs)

Leah Hausmann (co-director, movement)
Aaron Marsden (set designs)
Katrina Lindsay (costumes)
Finn Ross (video)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Nicholas Jenkins)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Edward Gardner (conductor)

 

First, a sigh of relief: in almost every respect, this new ENO staging of Benvenuto Cellini marks a significant improvement upon Terry Gilliam’s ‘Springtime for Hitler’ Damnation of Faust. If that sounds like faint praise, for beating a ‘Holocaust as entertainment’ travesty is perhaps setting the bar unreasonably low, then such is not entirely the intention. Gilliam’s Cellini has its virtues, though for me they are considerably fewer than they seemed to be for the audience at large. It is far from unreasonable to depict anarchy and ribaldry in the Carnival, and indeed during the ‘carnival’ overture – though Gilliam’s reported remark that ten minutes of music are ‘too long for the audience to sit through waiting for the show to begin’ are unworthy of anyone working in opera. There is nothing wrong in principle with ‘staging’ an overture, but the reason should be better than that; if the results are a little over the top, they are certainly superior to the justification.

 

And yet… here and in the Carnival itself we also experience the main problem: Gilliam’s seeming inability to trust Berlioz’s opera, an infinitely more successful work than ignorant ‘criticism’ will suggest. Yes, there is excess, even at times an excess of excess, in Berlioz’s work, but what I suspect Gilliam’s fans will applaud as ‘wackiness’, be it the director’s or the composer’s, is far from the only or indeed the most important facet of the opera. Despite the handsome, splendidly adaptable Piranesi-inspired designs, the plentiful coups de théâtre, the impressive collaboration of set design and video for the forging, etc., etc., what matters most of all – Berlioz’s score and, more broadly, his musical drama – often seems forgotten. Perhaps that also explains the unaccountable cuts, which serve to exacerbate alleged ‘weaknesses’ – many of which turn out to be deviations from the operatic norm – instead of mitigating them.

 

Matters improve considerably after the interval, and there is a genuine sense of dark, nocturnal desperation to the foundry and surroundings at dawn on Ash Wednesday (though there was, admittedly, little sense of the significance or even the coming of that day of mortification). Much of the first act, by contrast, is overbearing and in serious need of clarification. Yes, by all means harness spectacle as a tool of drama, but too often it runs riot in an unhelpful sense; it also encourages a large section of the audience to guffaw, applaud, chatter, make other, apparently unclassifiable, noises, often to the extent that one cannot hear the music. I could not help but think that a smaller budget would have removed a good number of excessive temptations and resulted in something less perilously close to a West End musical. There are the germs, and sometimes rather more than that, of something much better here, but those ‘editing’ Berlioz perhaps themselves stand in need of an editor. The updating to what would appear to be more or less the time of composition, perhaps a little later, does no harm; indeed, it proves generally convincing.

 

Edward Gardner’s conducting of the first act was disappointing, the Overture, insofar as it could be heard, setting out the conductor’s stall unfortunately: excessive drive followed by excessive relaxation. Wild contrasts are part of what Berlioz’s music demands, of course, but there still needs to be something that connects. Throughout, there were many occasions once again to mourn the loss of Sir Colin Davis, whose 2007 LSO concert performance of this work was simply outstanding. The orchestra proved impressively responsive, though, and, once both Gardner and Gilliam had somewhat calmed down, truly came into its own, sounding as the fine ensemble that it undoubtedly is. Gardner is rarely a conductor to probe beneath the surface, but as musical execution, there was a good deal to savour following the (protracted) interval. Choral singing – and blocking – were more or less beyond reproach, a credit to chorus master Nicholas Jenkins and Gilliam’s team alike, as well of course as to the singers themselves.

 

Michael Spyres performed impressively in the sadistically difficult title role, there being but a single example, quickly enough corrected, of coming vocally unstuck. His stage swagger seemed true to Gilliam’s conception, and his vocal style – insofar as one can tell, in English translation – was keenly attuned to that of Berlioz. A few ‘veiled’ moments notwithstanding, especially later on in the first act, Corinne Winters impressed equally as Teresa. ‘Entre l’amour et le devoir’ could hardly have been more cleanly sung in the most exacting of aural imaginations. Nicholas Pallesen revealed himself to be a thoughtful and at times impassioned baritone as Fieramosca, though Pavlo Hunka’s Balducci sounded thin and generally out of sorts. Despite Willard White’s undeniable stage presence, his appearance as the Pope did little to dispel suspicions that, sadly, his voice is now increasingly fallible. Paula Murrihy, however, proved an excellent Ascanio: characterful and attractive of tone in equal measure. There were few grounds for complaint from the ‘smaller’ roles either.

 

ENO’s description of this opéra semi-seria as a ‘romantic comedy’ is puzzling. It is, to be fair fair to Gilliam and all those involved, a description that stands at some distance from their vision too. An opéra comique was originally Berlioz’s conception, but that is a matter of form rather than of sentimentality. We should doubtless be grateful that we were spared a ‘heart-warming’ Richard Curtis version. Nor does it help, of course, that we are subjected to an English translation, which inevitably sounds ‘wrong’ for Berlioz, especially when so apparently deaf to musical line and cadence as this present version. If only ENO would reconsider its stance on a once vexed question, now resolved by the use of surtitles, it could truly transform its fortunes.

 

Buniatishvili - Ravel, Brahms, Chopin, and Stravinsky, 4 June 2014

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Ravel – Gaspard de la nuit

Brahms – Intermezzi: op.117 nos 1 and 2, op.118 no.2

Chopin – Scherzo no.2 in B-flat major, op.31

Ravel – La Valse

Stravinsky – Three Movements from ‘Petrushka’

Khatia Buniatishvili (piano) 

It was not difficult on the basis of this recital to understand why comparisons have been drawn between Khatia Buniatishvili and Martha Argerich. Though Buniatishvili is definitely her own person, and such comparisons rarely shed much light, there is a not entirely dissimilar fire in performance. With one exception, I was greatly impressed here.

 

In a reversal of the advertised running order, the first half opened with Gaspard de la nuit, followed by three Brahms Intermezzi. ‘Ondine’ opened with quiet shimmering, making its way towards reminiscences of Liszt that were never too much.  Buniatishvili’s ppp was quite mesmerising. Much the same might be said of ‘Le Gibet’. Inexorable tread was observed yet there remained an appropriately nymph-like lightness of touch. Chords were somehow both crystalline and upon the verge of dissolution. The pianist’s control was little short of awe-inspiring; likewise, if in a different way, in the case of ‘Scarbo’. Debussyan pyrotechnics were perhaps a little cool at times, but there was ultimately plenty of that aforementioned fire.

 

The trio of Brahms pieces made for an affecting, thoughtful change of musical voice. The first piece from op.117 offered a sense of ancient familiarity, something almost folk-like, yet without any hint of the routine. One was subtly rendered aware of the undeniably modern quality of its lines and their progress, not the first time Buniatishvili’s skill at voicing came into its own. The apparent simplicity of its ternary form was revealed through variation to be development, no mere ornamentation. A mood of expressive intimacy continued in op.117 no.2; if anything, it was intensified. The A major of op.118 no.2 came as balm, though introspection and circumspection ensured that ambiguity remained, at least for more time than they were eroded. Though in no real sense a Schoenbergian performance, the absolute necessity of every note was communicated, albeit without didacticism.

 

Chopin’s B-flat minor Scherzo was the exception I mentioned, though, judging by the audience’s reaction, mine was a minority opinion. It was on the brisk side, though far from inflexible. The problem for me was that much of the material sounded underplayed, reduced to the ‘merely’ ornamental. Something of that iron necessity governing the Brahms pieces would have been welcome here. Structure was clear in an external sense, but form remained curiously lacking in dynamism. It may be grossly unfair to invoke Pollini here; nevertheless, I longed for his deeper understanding. That said, in the second encore, the finale to Prokofiev’s Seventh Piano Sonata, Buniatishvili’s pianism proved every inch the equal of the Italian pianist in his legendary recording.

 

The solo piano version of La Valse remains a poor substitute for the ‘real thing’, though I can well imagine we might feel differently had we never heard it. Again, Buniatishvili took the piece at considerable speed; perhaps one needs to, without the sustaining power of a full orchestra. Sometimes she might have yielded more, but that was not too much of a problem. What I missed, and this may well be as much a matter of the version as the performance, was a sense of darkness, indeed of tragedy; it remained on the level of a tour de force, though the virtuosity in itself was spellbinding.

 

There was little to fear from even the most exalted of comparisons (such as Pollini, again) in the Three Movements from ‘Petrushka’. Exuberant, vigrorous, precise: here, there was no reason whatsoever to miss the extraordinary colours of Stravinsky’s orchestra. Dramatic characterisation, variety of touch and articulation, great dynamic range: all were equally impressive. Rhythm often governed, as it should, but not at the expense of melody. A rare slip served only to show that the purveyor of such pianism was human after all. And those glissandi…!

 

La fanciulla del West, Opera Holland Park, Tuesday 3 June 2014

Holland Park


Minnie – Susannah Glanville
Dick Johnson – Jeff Gwaltney
Jack Rance – Simon Thorpe
Nick – Neal Cooper
Sonora – Nicholas Garrett
Trin – Jung Soo Yun
Sid – Peter Braithwaite
Bello – James Harrison
Harry – Oliver Brignall
Joe – Edward Hughes
Happy – John Lofthouse
Jim Larkens – Aidan Smith
Ashby – Graeme Broadbent
Wowkle – Laura Woods
Billy Jackrabbit – Tom Stoddart
Jake Wallace – Simon Wilding
Jose Castro – Henry Grant Kerswell
Pony Express Rider – Michael Bradley

Stephen Barlow (director)
Yannis Thavoris (designs)
Richard Howell (lighting)

Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus master: Timothy Burke)
City of London Sinfonia
Stuart Stratford (conductor)


‘I like the atmosphere of the West’, Puccini wrote after seeing three of David Belasco’s plays performed on Broadway in 1907, ‘but in all the “pièces” I have seen, I have found only a few scenes here and there. Never a simple thread, all muddle, and, at times, bad taste and old hat.’ It was nevertheless there and then that the first dramatic seeds were sown for La fanciulla del West were sown; it would be written to a libretto after Belasco, dedicated to Queen Alexandra (!), and premiered in New York in 1910. Even after considerable compression, modification, and so forth, I am not convinced the work is a resounding triumph, though many Puccini lovers esteem it highly indeed. It is certainly full of musical interest: the Wagnerisms of old are perhaps not so prominent, though the love scene in the second act surely takes partly after Tristan, but the influence of Debussy in particular is fruitful indeed. Whole tone scales pervade the score, and there is more than the occasional nod to Pelléas. The story itself, the characters included, remains more of a problem. They are not the easiest people to care about, and without that, Puccini’s trademark emotional manipulations cannot do their work. He may have wished the opera to be a ‘second Bohème, only stronger, bolder, and more spacious,’ but that ambition would only fitfully be fulfilled. The sentimentality of the ‘redemptive’ ending is, alas, only too readily resisted.


Or so it seemed here, despite an excellent orchestral performance from the City of London Sinfonia under Stuart Stratford. The number of occasions when one really felt the lack of a larger orchestra was surprisingly small, the strings proving more luscious than one would have had any right to expect, the woodwind piquant and alluring, and the brass offering dramatical fatalism aplenty. Stratford’s direction seemed to me splendidly judged, those Debussyan resonances both readily apparent and seamless incorporated into the score. There is little that can be done about a rather annoying theme – friends tell me that it has been ‘borrowed’ by a composer of musical theatre, though it stands out like a sore thumb even before one is aware of that – but the score was certainly given its due. Stratford’s – and his cast’s – crewing up of musical tension during the second-act wager was beyond reproach.


Susannah Glanville shone as Minnie; I had not encountered her before, but was mightly impressed by her vocal reserves and the dramatic use to which they were bit. This was a performance that would have graced many a ‘major’ stage, not that the ever-enterprising Opera Holland Park has any reason to fear such lazy comparisons. Jeff Gwaltney sometimes struggled to make himself heard – in particular, his words – but offered a sensitive portrayal of Dick Johnson. Simon Thorpe presented the conflicting emotions of Jack Rance with considerable skill, permitting one initially to sympathise, then to be repelled. A strong supporting cast included a highly impressive performance by Nicholas Garrett as Sonora. Choral singing was likewise greatly to be admired.


The problem, then, lay with Stephen Barlow’s production. This, at least it seems to me, is a vulnerable work, and the updating to a 1950s Nevada atomic testing ground makes little sense. A number of those who know the opera far better than I do say that it is a work that resists relocation in any sense. I am not so sure; I can imagine, for instance, a metatheatrical treatment in Hollywood, which played upon musical themes as well as the more obvious metaphor of gold-digging. The name ‘Camp Desert Rock’ seemed to promise something that remained un-delivered, but perhaps that should come as a relief. Barlow’s concept, however ably assisted y Yannis Thavoris’s designs, seems not to involve any real re-thinking; re-location jars and perplexes, rather than reinvigorates. Puccini’s ‘never a simple thread, all muddle, and, at times, bad taste and old hat’? That would be too harsh, but work and musical performance alike are done no favours by pointless, eye- but hardly ear-catching interpolations, of Minnie’s final act arrival upon a motorcycle and the lovers’ subsequent airline departure. It was difficult to resist the conclusion that the opera would have been better off left in Gold Rush California.

Dialogues des Carmélites, Royal Opera, 2 June 2014

Images: Stephen Cummiskey/Royal Opera House

 

 

Royal Opera House

Chevalier de la Force – Yann Beuron

Marquis de la Force – Sir Thomas Allen

Blanche de la Force – Sally Matthews

Thierry – Neil Gillespie

Mme de Croissy – Deborah Polaski

Sister Constance – Anna Prohaska

Mother Marie – Sophie Koch

M. Javelinot – John Bernays

Mme Lidoine – Emma Bell

Carmelites – Yvonne Barclay, Katy Batho, Tamsin Coombs, Eileen Hamilton, Anne Osborne, Deborah Peake Jones, Louise Armit, Andrea Hazell, Elizabeth Key, Kate McCarney, Deborah Pearce

Sister Mathilde – Catherine Carby

Mother Jeanne – Elizabeth Sikora

Chaplain – Alan Oke

First Commissary – David Butt Philip

Second Commissary – Michel de Souza

Officer – Ashley Riches

Gaoler – Craig Smith

Robert Carsen (director)

Michael Levine (set designs)

Falk Bauer (costumes)

Jean Kalman (lighting)

Philippe Giradeau (movement)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Stephen Westrop)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

 

This was a performance whose intensity increased almost immeasurably as the evening went on. That seemed to be as much a matter of the production as the conducting, of the singing as the orchestral playing, although there were, of course, exceptions. At any rate, the final scene proved devastating in its combination of abstraction and directness, the amplified (electronic?) guillotine notwithstanding. Robert Carsen’s staging, and in this case especially Philippe Giradeau’s movement, exemplary throughout, frame the action simply and without hysteria, as the equally exemplary ensemble thins out one by one – until the appearance of Blanche, to whom Constance reaches out from afar, and then… Yes, the opera veers dangerously close to sentimentality, and perhaps in some places crosses that boundary, but the frisson experienced near that boundary is part, though only part, of what Poulenc is about. Musically, the scene is not quite reducible to the ghost of Œdipus Rex, haunted by an earlier ghost of Gounod; it is, indeed, its own unforgettable self. And the other influences, Puccini, Mussorgsky, and Debussy amongst them, never overpower the ‘dialogues’ of the title, with their roots in a very French understanding of plainsong and religious life. It was not only in the final scene that music, staging, and performance came together very well indeed, but it was perhaps the finest example and of course the climax.

 

Mme de Croissy (Deborah Polaski) and Blanche (Sally Matthews)

If only Carsen’s understandable interest in the revolutionary crowd did not overpower some of the other scenes, this would be a great staging indeed; as it stands, Carsen’s divided attention seems to run along the lines of much (mis-)understanding of the opera. I do not wish to carp about the role played by the volunteer Community Ensemble, whose direction and performance deeply impressed, and whose achievement, some of its participants having experienced homelessness, prison, and long-term unemployment, can hardly fail to move and to cheer. But Carsen’s presentation tends to suggest that the opera is more ‘about’ the French Revolution than it really is. This is a drama about Divine Grace, a truth at least as often forgotten, or overlooked, as the similar truth about Parsifal, a work with which Poulenc’s opera would otherwise have little or nothing in common. There are moments, nevertheless, when the ensemble works wonders, perhaps above all acting as a human – or inhuman? – dividing line between Blanche and her brother, the Chevalier, when he visits her in the convent. Still, the loss is perhaps a price worth paying for the redemptive involvement and prospects afforded to members of the ensemble, who have also been invited to take part in a careers support programme by the Royal Opera House and its partner organisations (Streetwise Opera, Synergy Theatre Project, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama).

Mother Marie (Sophie Koch) at the centre

Sir Simon Rattle’s role in proceedings was impressive too – as one might expect from this conductor in French music. Rattle’s leadership of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, generally on very good form itself, refused to sentimentalise, taking the opera faster than some may have wished, but hardly offensively so and quite without the mannerisms that so often disfigure his readings of the ‘central’ Austro-German symphonic repertoire. And the big moments had great punch, the unanimity of orchestral and vocal ensemble alike quite remarkable. Poulenc once remarked that he did not want his music to be analysed but to loved; perhaps a better way to love it, though, is to accord it the dignity of some degree of analytical, as well as dramatic, thought.



Constance (Anna Prohaska) and other Carmelites

 

Sally Matthews’s performance of the central role was one which improved almost out of recognition as the evening went on. The first scene was troubled by thick vibrato and less than convincing French. It would be vain to contend that Matthews’s French diction or style ever truly convinced, but it became possible to leave to one side one’s doubts, as her dramatic sincerity won one over. Anna Prohaska made a wonderful foil as Constance: vivacious, pure and clean of tone, yet full of fun. In short, she simply ‘lived’ the character, convincing us that this was how she must be; it would be a pity if we were not one day to hear her Blanche. Deborah Polaski’s Old Prioress impressed through sheer strength of personality, even if, again, her French was far from beyond reproach. Her Erwartung did not seem so very far away at the end of the first act. Emma Bell was sensational as her replacement, ringing as true and clear as I have ever heard; indeed, this was the finest performance I have heard from her. Equally distinguished was Sophie Koch’s Mother Marie: a tricky, yet crucial role. Her inner demons and ultimate humanity were powerfully portrayed in a reading of vocal distinction too. Yann Beuron’s Chevalier de la Force made a headstrong and imploring mark, whilst Alan Oke captured better than I had previously encountered the ambivalent role of the Chaplain. Indeed, pretty much every one of the smaller roles was well taken, and the choral singing could hardly be faulted either. This was, then, whatever quibbles one might have had concerning aspects of Carsen’s production and the French diction, an excellent company effort, and should be lauded as such.

Eberle/Prohaska/LSO/Rattle - Beethoven, Henze, and Schumann, 1 June 2014

Barbican Hall

Beethoven – Violin Concerto in D major, op.61

Henze – Being Beauteous

Schumann – Symphony no.2 in C major, op.61

Veronika Eberle (violin)

London Symphony Orchestra

Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

 

This was very much a concert of two halves. A well-nigh unlistenable performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was arbitrarily pulled about to an extent I had never heard before, and hope never to hear again. It was followed by a truly ravishing performance of Henze’s Being Beauteous, and – given Sir Simon Rattle’s record in the Beethoven – a surprisingly convincing account of Schumann’s Second Symphony. The London Symphony Orchestra, it should be added, proved to be on fine form throughout, though how one longed to hear it play Beethoven under the likes of the late Sir Colin Davis or Bernard Haitink.

 

The concerto did not start so badly, though even the opening orchestral tutti had some oddities: strangely accented notes, eccentric highlighting of certain parts. (A tendency that has bedevilled much of Rattle’s work with the Berlin Philharmonic, doing something simply because the orchestra has the technical capability of doing so, reasserted itself here with the LSO. It is perhaps not entirely fanciful to think that Rattle’s best work has often been either with works of great technical complexity, less prone to allow space for interpretative eccentricity, or with orchestras of less than the first rank.) Unfortunately, matters became worse once Veronika Eberle had made her entry, suggesting that the responsibility lay at least as much with her as with Rattle, an impression furthered as time went on. In some sections of a movement that seemed to go on forever, there was barely a phrase that was not pulled about in one way or another. Any sense of basic pulse was lost. There is plenty of licence in the cadenza (Kreisler), of course, but Eberle somehow even went beyond the bounds of the permissible, or at least the comprehensible, there; shape and direction were entirely lacking. Her tone was often light, edgy even, though matters improved in that respect, if in few others. A tendency of Rattle towards dynamic extremes, especially in the register beyond pianissimo, was felt still more strongly in the slow movement, which was taken very slowly indeed, more of an Adagio than a Larghetto. There were ‘interesting’ moments, but it all felt too much like hard work: being made to sing rather than singing freely. The mood of enforced rêverie was rudely shattered by an aggressive, though less mannered, finale. It was an improvement, and the LSO continued to play very well indeed, but it remained too little, too late. The audience for the most part, however, seemed to think otherwise, responding rapturously.

 

Henze’s Being Beauteous, a Rimbaud cantata for coloratura soprano, four cellos, and harp, was given its premiere by members of the Berlin Philharmonic, so it seemed particularly fitting for a successor to Karajan and another Berlin-based musician, Anna Prohaska, to revisit it. The performance – let us not forget cellists, Rebecca Gilliver, Minat Lyons, Alastair Blayden, and Jennifer Brown, and harpist, Bryn Lewis – was utterly beyond reproach. Here, at last, there was no point-making, but music-making of the very highest and indeed most erotic order. The intensity of string playing brought out Henze’s debts to the Second Viennese School, yet equally apparent was the ‘Apollonian’, Stravinskian side to his musical identity. Prohaska’s performance, moreover, underlined, consciously or otherwise, potential connections with Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, a work of which she is also a distinguished exponent, and perhaps even the same composer’s Herzgewächse, surely an ideal piece for such a voice. For the floating of the high notes was something truly to be savoured, especially against such an instrumental background, expertly shaped by Rattle, of musical and sexual frisson and fulfilment. Moreover, this was true chamber music: the way in which voice and cellos would slide together, as well as differentiate themselves from each other, was second to none. This remained German, dialectically questing music, but there was no denying the sultry lyricism, whether in work or performance. It was rather as if Wagner had after all heeded Nietzsche’s call, ‘il faut méditerraniser la musique’. Oh! nos os sont revêtus d’un nouveau corps amoureux…

 

Then on to Schumann’s Second Symphony. After an oddly subdued introduction to the first movement, the music continued in unobjectionable, if somewhat unremarkable fashion, relatively ‘straight’ and all the better for it. Pointing of details was not excessive, and the orchestra was largely permitted to get on with performing the work. The graceful phrasing of the LSO strings was a joy to hear – and a meaningful joy at that. I have heard the movement’s Beethovenian echoes resound more strongly, but this was nevertheless a reading of purpose, quite unlike the actual Beethoven we had heard. The scherzo was taking at a bracingly fast tempo, but was never garbled, the LSO’s fabled virtuosity here a necessity rather than a luxury. There were some agogic touches which I could have done without, but they were not unduly disruptive. Likewise, whilst the trios arguably slowed too much, that was not to the point of breakdown. Indeed, there were revealed in that context suggestive affinities with Schumann’s piano music. The slow movement was – what a relief! – very much at ease with itself. It sang; it had line. There was excellent playing from all concerned, whether the burnished strings or the Mozartian wind-band; the horns in particular sounded ravishing. It was a pity that one unduly mannered passage of ultra-quiet playing disrupted the general flow, but normal service was soon resumed. The finale was taken quickly: more in the line of Mendelssohn than Beethoven or Brahms. However, its levity of mood, its buoyant good humour, proved infectious. Fluctuations of tempo made sense, as opposed to seeming arbitrarily applied. This offered a fitting conclusion to a generally impressive reading.

 
 

Kozhukhin/Philharmonia/Temirkanov - Tchaikovsky and Dvořák, 31 May 2014

Royal Festival Hall

Tchaikovsky – Piano Concerto no.1 in B-flat minor, op.23

Dvořák – Symphony no.9 in E minor, op.95

Denis Kozhukhin (piano)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Yuri Temirkanov (conductor)

I keep trying with Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, and a Richter performance can just about momentarily dispel my doubts, but less than that simply confirms me in my belief that Nikolai Rubinstein’s initial dismissal of the work was not so far off the mark. It is certainly difficult to imagine on what conceivable musical grounds it is performed so frequently, the greatest problem being that apparently tacked-on introduction. Yes, it can be argued from looking at the score that there is a connection with subsequent material, but does it ever sound like it? Perhaps it does, and I have yet to hear the right performance; at any rate, this was not it.

 

Yuri Temirkanov’s conducting of the Philharmonia was impressive; he can probably conduct this concerto in his sleep, but it certainly did not sound as if he were. The introduction was somewhat on the swift side, no great loss. Thereafter, the first movement was characterful and agile – at least from the orchestra, which, when having the spotlight to itself, might have been performing one of the symphonies. Denis Kozhukhin, alas, rarely showed any sign of listening to the other players; it was as if it were his show and his show alone, the orchestra treated as if it were a mere ‘accompaniment’, certainly no way to salvage so problematical a work. It was a pity, since Kozhukhin was perfectly capable of exhibiting dark, weighty tone, at times melting away into nothingness. The slow movement was, on the surface, well played, but it was difficult to detect anything much beneath the surface, at least when it came to the pianist. The orchestra, alive with dance tunes and rhythms was another matter. A typically alert orchestral opening promised well for the finale, dispelling a predictable bronchial outburst. There was a sense of urgency throughout, though at times, Temirkanov perhaps drove a little too hard. Indeed, at times, the performance felt on the verge of falling apart. Meanwhile, Kozhukhin apparently remained in a world of his own, his playing increasingly brutalising. Thank goodness it was not Mozart.

The second half offered an estimable account of Dvořak’s ‘New World’ Symphony. The opening intrigued, sounding more as if were plunged into action that had been going for some time than I can recall. The first movement’s exposition proper clearly derived from material we had heard: not only analytically, but dramatically (as if there were such an opposition!) Temirkanov drove the performance urgently, but not too much, and relaxed significantly for the second group, which benefited from lilting rubato. Here, as in Tchaikovsky, the Philharmonia’s strings sounded splendidly full of one. The concision of the movement registered very well indeed. Its successor benefited from an unsentimental approach. Jill Crowther’s beautifully-played English horn solo was first among equals in an excellent woodwind section. This was a songful account, with due understanding of harmonic development. The third movement bore definite kinship to the contrasting sections in the slow movement; rhythmic detail was very well pointed. In that respect, one might even have called it ‘balletic’, so long as that were not understood to detract from its symphonism. If the work bears its ‘cyclic’ features too obviously on its sleeve, then that is not the performers’ fault; at least they were duly suggestive here. The same might be said of the finale, given an impassioned, perhaps more overtly Romantic performance: full of dramatic tension, without a hint of the routine.

Birtwistle at 80 (4) - 'Fields of Sorrow': Britten Sinfonia/Brönnimann, 30 May 2014

Milton Court Concert Hall

Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis

Holst – Eight Canons: ‘If you love songs,’ ‘Lovely Venus,’ ‘David’s Lament for Jonathan,’ ‘The Fields of Sorrow’
Birtwistle – The Fields of Sorrow
Birtwistle – Melancolia I
Vaughan Williams – Flos Campi

Joy Farrall (clarinet)

Helen Tunstall (harp)
Clare Finnimore (viola)
Britten Sinfonia Voices (director: Eamonn Doughan)
Students from the Royal Academy of Music
Britten Sinfonia
Baldur Brönnimann (conductor)
 

This final concert in the Barbican Centre’s ‘Birtwistle at 80’ series – I managed to attend all but one – presented some of the composer’s music in a more general English context.  Whilst there are doubtless correspondences to be drawn here, I could not help but wonder whether something a little more international might have been preferable. There are strands of pastoralism – albeit of rather different nature – and melancholy in common, but might it not have been more revealing to hear either some music from the more distant past or music from Birtwistle’s contemporaries? The Britten Sinfonia nevertheless offered fine performances under Baldur Brönnimann, joined by students from the Royal Academy of Music for Melancolia I.

 

Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis received an excellent, very ‘different’ performance: perhaps in part, though this is too easy an answer by itself, the result of having a conductor unburdened by a host of ‘traditional English’ associations? The score sounded febrile, almost Baroque (in a positive sense); but Ravel was present too, and, despite the small forces, so was lushness of sound. Structure was admirably clear – and meaningful, developmental in spite of the tendencies to stasis. Novelty of interpretation notwithstanding, the aforementioned vein of melancholy remained.  

 

The interest Holst seems to have held for Birtwistle is understandable. Birtwistle is quoted in the programme as having described his predecessor as ‘a strange, shadowy figure’, who ‘didn’t really ever find himself and suffered from the English label’. No one could accuse Birtwistle of having failed to find himself, but the blurred line between ‘English’ and ‘continental’ music may suggest something in common. One can also imagine Birtwistle having set some of the same texts, especially in the case of the Eight Canons from 1932. I wondered whether the performances from Britten Sinfonia Voices were sometimes a little too bright in character for the texts, imbued as they are with loss. Words were not always as distinctly communicated as they might have been. That said, one had due sense of the musical processes at work, as one did with Birtwistle’s own Ausonius piece, The Fields of Sorrow, which followed on immediately from Holst’s (seemingly unknown to Birtwistle at the time of composition) From the piano opening and English horn response, to the very close, this was a melancholy, but never maudlin, experience, its symmetries seemingly both reflective of and helping to construct an imaginary – ‘mechanical pastoral’? – landscape. ‘Old flowers that were once bewailed names of kings’ came to life – and, perhaps, to death in the final antiphonal exchanges.

 

Melancholia I came in 1976, five years after The Fields of Sorrow. The composer’s tool of ‘stasis in progress’ was audibly present not only in work but also potent, well-shaped performance. Joy Farrell’s performance on clarinets and Helen Tunstall’s on harp were irreproachable, the former perhaps inevitably bringing to mind ghosts of Pierrot, however different the material and its working. Swarming strings, the Royal Academy players significantly augmenting their ranks, offered spatial as well as dramatic distinctions. A return to Vaughan Williams for the final Flos campi brought an apparent echo of the English horn from The Fields of Sorrow. The performance was purposeful, with excellent singing and playing from all concerned; Clare Finnimore made a fine last-minute replacement for the indisposed Maxim Rysanov. Vaughan Williams’s sensual, wordless delight may be very different from Birtwistle’s landscapes, but there is virtue in contrast as well as in correspondence, and in practice one is likely to find, as here, something of both.