Die Walküre, English National Opera, 19 November 2021

Coliseum

Siegmund – Nicky Spence
Sieglinde – Emma Bell
Hunding – Brindley Sherratt
Wotan – Matthew Rose
Brünnhilde – Rachel Nicholls
Fricka – Susan Bickley, Claire Barnett-Jones
Gerhilde – Nadine Benjamin
Ortlinde – Mari Wyn Williams
Waltraute – Kamilla Dunstan
Schwertleite – Fleur Barron
Helmwige – Jennifer Davis
Siegrune – Idunna Münch
Rossweisse – Claire Barnett-Jones
Grimgerde – Katie Stevenson

Richard Jones (director)
Stewart Laing (designs)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Sarah Fahie (movement)
Akhila Krishnan (video)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Images: (C) Tristram Kenton
Siegmund (Nicky Spence) and Sieglinde (Emma Bell)

I wanted so much to like this more than I did. It is not quite ENO’s return to the Coliseum after you-know-what, but in many ways it felt like it. (A Philip Glass revival and a new production of Gilbert and Sullivan will have had their devotees, but they are not my potion of forgetfulness.) Anneliese Miskimmon, ENO’s Artistic Director, could not have been more welcoming in her brief address from the stage before the performance. And what could be a greater declaration of intent for a new era than a new Ring? Perhaps a Schoenberg or, still more so, a Stockhausen series? But even then, the Ring retains for many the status of non plus ultra. Its all-encompassing nature continues to surpass all competitors; no artwork has more to tell us, so it seems, at any juncture in our dubious human development.

No Ring is therefore going to be perfect; even the most exalted performance, let alone staging, will have imperfections. It would be too easy to judge perfection a lesser thing; it is not, necessarily, but it is a different thing—one which Mozart (often) has covered. Yet if a Ring in performance will always fall short, it should not fall so short as Richard Jones’s half-hearted attempt at a production, which detracted all too much from a mixed musical performance laying claim to not inconsiderable virtues. Perhaps more would have been gleaned had we seen Das Rheingold first. Starting with the second instalment is not without precedent, but I remain unconvinced that it is a good idea. Berlin’s Deutsche Oper has had to present Stefan Herheim’s new Ring as and when it can, but that is a different case, planned performances having to be cancelled, given without an audience, and so on. (How I long to see what Herheim has done!) Yet it is difficult to imagine that much light being shed on a Walküre (sorry, Valkyrie, as ENO obstinately continues to refer it) seemingly without a concept or indeed much of an idea at all. Presumably, money was tight, for what we see is not so much minimalism as people wandering a little lost around a stage that sometimes has scenery and sometimes does not. As in Jones’s recent, wretched La clemenza di Tito for the Royal Opera, there was a vague look: in this case, noir-ish ‘Scandinavia’, though it would be difficult to say anything more precise than that. ENO’s publicity suggests the idea that this is a family saga: well, sort of, I suppose, but only if that is taken to be the crucible for something greater. Use of video to show Alberich (‘Nibelung’ tattooed on his forehead), Grimhilde, and Hagen when referred to in Wotan’s narration—nothing more, just show them—seemed both patronising and pointless, though perhaps in a greater context it contributes to the banal theme of family feud. The appearance of Hunding’s clan on stage might have contributed further, but ultimately undirected (like so much else), they proved little more than a distraction, the lack of much to distract from notwithstanding.

 

Alberich (Jamie Campbell), Brünnhilde (Rachel Nicholls), Wotan (Matthew Rose)

Maybe the strange claim (Christopher Wintle) that opened one of the programme notes offered a clue to the lack of any exterior, let alone political element: ‘Most of us can agree that The Valkyrie is “about” incest.’ I do not know precisely to whom ‘us’ refers; certainly not to me, anyway. Wagner’s drama is no more ‘“about” incest’ than The Flying Dutchman is ‘about’ sailing. The point of Siegmund and Sieglinde’s love is that it breaks the violent, cruel bonds of marriage, family, and custom (which Wagner specifically identified with Fricka); that it leads Siegmund to reject immortality, and thus to put Brünnhilde on her way to doing likewise, to attaining the superior status of ‘purely human’; and precisely that it does not matter whether the Volsung twins are brother and sister, not that it does. Here, occasional straining towards a familial idea, for instance Hunding’s physical brutality to Sieglinde, seemed little more than striving after effect, given a lack of embedding in anything more than an IKEA catalogue. The production team sported more interesting clothes than those given to the cast; maybe they should have swapped.

Grimgerde (Katie Stevenson), Rossweisse (Claire Barnett-Jones),
and Siegrune (Idunnu Münch)

 

Or maybe they should have given them to the curious animals that pranced around the stage, Wotan’s ravens (I think) included: more Sesame Street than creatures of the forest. Whether the concept were malevolent or ironic, neither possibility was achieved. For some reason, a lone tap dancer did her stuff during the Ride of the Valkyries, whilst actors in horse costumes struggled around on tip toe. Why on earth Grane, understandably fidgeting, was made to balance in this way through the entirety of the final scene—and not only then—I have no idea; but then I have little idea about anything else either. Inability to set the stage ablaze at the close was attributed to a late intervention from Westminster City Council. Alas, Wotan’s protracted fumbling to attach to Brünnhilde a harness that would awkwardly suspend her above the stage, without the slightest sign of flames that had intermittently flickered earlier, seemed all too apt a metaphor. Quite what the Met, where Jones’s third (!) attempt at the Ring is heading, will make of it is anyone’s guess. It is certainly devoid enough of intellectual content to satisfy Friends of Otto Schenk. But the ‘look’, for that is all it is, and lack of discernible stage action will surely trouble many. 

Martyn Brabbins’s conducting was sane, measured, and doubtless sensitive—perhaps too sensitive—to the needs of his singers. Brabbins clearly appreciates the need to think in the broadest terms about Wagner’s structures, yet often seemed to confuse that with maintaining a slow speed throughout, occasionally changing gear when that could not conceivably be maintained any longer. A few understandable fluffs—every performance has them—notwithstanding, the ENO Orchestra played beautifully, if often in strangely subdued fashion, especially in the first act (!) I do not know how long it lasted in actual minutes, but it felt like the longest I had ever heard. By contrast, the third act often seemed rushed, if hardly short. This was clearly a work in progress, but there may be considerably more hope for improvement here than in the staging.

 

Brünnhilde

Had it not been for an initial announcement, no one would have known Nicky Spence was suffering from a cold. Siegmund is clearly a role for which he is ready—and for which he has well prepared. There are strength, vulnerability, and many other of the qualities we need, even in so unpromising a setting as this. It was difficult to discern much in the way of chemistry with Emma Bell’s Sieglinde; nor did this seem to be ironic or deconstructive detachment. However, considered on its own terms, her performance also impressed, indicative of a woman bruised yet determined to command her own destiny. Dart-playing Rachel Nicholls, lumbered with a strange skater-girl look, trod a fine, shifting line between Brünnhilde's youthful impetuosity and the glimmers of something more moving, more human—which is to say she understood what was at stake, even if Jones did not. Matthew Rose, lumbered with, well, being a lumberjack-turned-television-detective, offered a typically detailed and thoughtful performance as Wotan, though the third act did not show him at his strongest. These things vary from night to night. Brindley Sherratt's focus as Hunding varied too, though at its best it offered something darkly psychopathic. One of the strongest, most committed and sustained performances came from the team of Susan Bickley (finely observed, on stage) and Claire Barnett-Jones (also finely observed and with gleaming tone, from a box above) as Fricka. This, again, was a performance that truly used words, music, and gesture to suggest drama beyond Jones’s imagination.

 

So too did John Deathridge’s new singing translation. It was in many respects remarkably faithful not only to what Wagner said but, crucially, to what he did not, employing suggestion and ambiguity in the right places. It had an intriguing line too in something akin to Stabreim. Word order and stress played their part, as did various other considerations one might find—with profit—in reading Wagner’s own Opera and Drama. This did not, like many of ENO’s translations, attempt to draw attention to itself, still less to elicit inappropriate laughter; rather it participated in the dramatic effort in a way the singers and orchestra, if hardly the director, did. The sort of people who drone on about ‘the Coli’ and alleged halcyon days of Reginald Goodall will doubtless bemoan the lack of Andrew Porter, but their parochial concerns need not be ours.

 

Fricka (Susan Bickley) and Wotan

‘Mark well my poem,’ wrote Wagner to Liszt in 1853, enclosing a copy of the Ring in verse; ‘it contains the beginning of the world and its end.’ One might argue that beginning(s) and end happen elsewhere in the Ring; but were this the generic television ‘show’ from which Jones & Co. appeared to have taken non-inspiration, it seems doubtful, even in the unlikely event of a decision to renew for another ‘season’, that many viewers would have been remaining. To achieve not only an Annunciation of Death, but an entire Walküre, in which nothing whatsoever seemed to be at stake, was a peculiar, perverse and strangely pointless achievement. Either Jones needs to rethink—the prefix ‘re-’ may be too kind—or ENO should act decisively with courage and substitute another production or concert performances. With Wagner, in Wagner, much is or should be at stake.

Philharmonia/Schiff - Mozart, 18 November 2021

Royal Festival Hall

Piano Concerto no.9 in E-flat major, KV 271
Symphony no.36 in C major, KV 425, ‘Linz’
Don Giovanni, KV 527: Overture
Piano Concerto no.20 in D minor, KV 466

Philharmonia Orchestra

András Schiff (piano, conductor)

‘A feast of Mozart’ is how this concert was advertised—and indeed in many ways it was, not least for those of us unlikely to be able to attend (yet again) Salzburg’s Mozartwoche next January. It was, though, a somewhat inconsistent feast, though and oddly planned at that, a piano concerto followed by an unrelated symphony making for a strange first half. The second half—rather less than half, in minutes taken—was more impressive, although there were certainly things earlier on to admire and enjoy. It was nonetheless difficult to resist the conclusion that, nowadays, the best of András Schiff’s pianism is to be heard on period instruments and certainly not on a modern Steinway; in addition, it is difficult to credit him as much of a conductor.

The opening of the miraculous E-flat major Piano Concerto, KV 271, augured well, the Philharmonia’s playing crisp and cultivated, Schiff’s tempo well chosen. And there was sometimes, if not always often enough, a willingness to yield. More concerning was an intermittent disinclination to phrase, ends of phrases merely left hanging, cut off abruptly. That was especially odd given an evident ability to phrase where so inclined, for instance in the passage for crossed hands. Why Schiff felt the need to play piano continuo throughout the opening tutti and beyond, I do not know; it added little other than distraction. Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, I gained the impression the pianist would be happier playing a fortepiano. Fair enough, but in that case, why not do so? The slow movement was taken swifter than Schiff would once have been likely to, but had more in the way of dynamic contrast. His dogged continuo playing continued to irritate, but that is clearly now his way. The music’s restlessness was often well conveyed, but again a reluctance to yield was concerning. An ebullient finale seemed less hidebound by determination to eschew Romanticism: not because Schiff’s approach was notably different, but more on account of its intrinsic qualities. Again, passages for crossed hands were beautifully taken. The central episode was honest and unfussy, if hardly seductive, the Philharmonia offering some lovely orchestral playing nevertheless. 

The first movement of the Linz Symphony proved a disappointment. A broad introduction tailed off at its close, dissipating the energy required for the main Allegro spiritoso to burst forth as surely it must. The impression was of flatness, and of an inability quite to settle on the right tempo. It took until the recapitulation to do so. Period trumpets with modern horns (and other instruments) made for a strange compromise; perhaps there was reason behind it. The second movement, together with the finale the most convincing, flowed with greater coherence. There was something of an edge to the Philharmonia strings, but that seemed to be an interpretative decision. A graceful minuet gave way to a slightly distended trio, small-scale (with radically reduced strings) rather than intimate. Momentum was restored in the finale, well pointed, nicely directed, and full of life and direction. Schiff largely left the players to play: a distinct improvement on earlier, fussy intervention. Taking the closing repeat is doubtless justifiable, but here it offered little beyond repetition for its own sake. 

The Overture to Don Giovanni was much better. Its introduction taken unfashionably in four, and all the better for it, was grander than anything heard hitherto, but more to the point offered due sense of expectation, fulfilled in the main body of the overture. It duly fizzed, crucially emerging from what had gone before. Again, Schiff wisely left the musicians largely to play for themselves. Although Schiff held up his hands to forestall applause, wishing to move straight into the D minor Piano Concerto, many applauded anyway. 

The concerto’s first movement was similarly ‘traditional’, but also more focused than anything we had heard in the first half. Schiff seemed more at ease with himself and with the Philharmonia. The opening tutti was exemplary, articulation integral to the musical drive, not a strange end in itself. If there were still occasions when his playing seemed more suited to an older instrument, they were fewer and less glaring. And the Philharmonia by now seemed to know when not necessarily to follow the arms waved around from the keyboard. Schiff used Beethoven’s cadenza. The Romanze was on the swift side, though not unreasonably so; better that than laboured. Focus remained, in a performance nicely sung and without fuss. During the central G minor episode, Schiff’s care to voice every note—not always the case in the first movement—went to show just how essential each of them is. The movement as a whole was well shaped, which is to say there was no overt shaping at all; it sounded just ‘right’. Mozart’s treacherous opening to the finale was despatched without fear, the orchestral response wondrous in diabolical grandeur. This was properly Catholic Mozart. Indeed, there was a keen sense of solo/tutti versicle and response, melting where necessary into chamber music. That is Mozart, of course, but it requires understanding and communication in performance too. The cadenza may have seemed a good idea in the abstract, opening with material from Don Giovanni before returning to music from the concerto itself, yet ultimately it failed to convince. It would surely have needed something more Mephistophelian, more Lisztian (a composer Schiff has long disdained), and less disjointed. Still, the coda, full of energy, offered a proper release. As an encore, we heard an unpretentious account of the Adagio from the extraordinary late B-flat major Piano Sonata, KV 570.

Chamayou/LSO/Roth - Gossec, Saint-Saëns, and Beethoven, 11 November 2021

Barbican Hall

Gossec: Symphonie à 17 parties in F major, Rh 64
Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto no.2 in G minor, op.22
Beethoven: Symphony no.3 in E-flat major, op.55, ‘Eroica’

Bertrand Chamayou (piano)
London Symphony Orchestra
François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

 

François-Joseph Gossec lived a very long life during ‘interesting times’, born in 1734 in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) and dying in Paris in 1829, just short of the July Revolution. His Symphonie à 17 parties was written under Napoleon, in 1809, so makes for an interesting companion piece to Beethoven’s Sinfonia Eroica, composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grande Uomo, its initial dedication (to Bonaparte) famously scratched out in fury in response to the First Consul’s self-elevation to the rank of Emperor. If closer comparison is beside the point—whatever the virtues of Gossec’s piece, it would pale if heard after Beethoven—then this was an excellent opportunity to hear a little-known work, with fine advocacy from François-Xavier Roth and the LSO, Bertrand Chamayou contributing a blistering account of Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto in between. 

Gossec’s Symphony immediately catches the ear with its grandly rhetorical opening bars, prior to what comes across to our ears as fond looking (listening?) back to the eighteenth century, unquestionably from the standpoint of a composer for French orchestras. (Gossec had founded the Concert des Amateurs in 1769, offering for twelve years a serious rival to the celebrated Concert Spirituel.) And that was only the introduction. The first movement as a whole proved colourful and theatrical, testament to the composer’s interest in concert and dramatic work alike (sacred music too). If the movement’s close relied heavily on tonic and dominant harmony, that in itself is hardly a fault; one might—many do—say the same of Beethoven. The Larghetto second movement showed some rather more surprising harmonic shifts, allied to a keen ear for colour as heard earlier. Such music can all too readily be rushed, but not here; nor did it drag. The minor-mode Minuetto (I should have guessed ‘scherzo’) came as a considerable surprise, both in itself and for its counterpoint. Split violins, as well as considerable LSO heft (twelve first violins down to five double basses), truly told, as did unmistakeably Gallic use of bassoons. The trio’s Harmoniemusik was attractive enough, though perhaps it outstayed its (symphonic) welcome. The finale again had a strong sense of the opera house to it. Some phrases sounded superficially Mozartian in themselves, but the construction is very different. 

Chamayou ensured a properly arresting opening to the Saint-Saëns Concerto, as if extemporising on Romantic memories of Bach—which, in a way, is very much what the composer is doing. The LSO’s response was equally, differently rhetorical, the first movement’s course meeting somewhere in between, broadly Lisztian. What some say of Liszt, I might wonder of Saint-Saëns; this movement does sound to me a little like an introduction to an introduction. I am probably missing the point, though, and there was no denying the superior quality of Chamayou’s pianism: glistening, melting, virile, double octaves and all. Fantasia-like swirling mists prior to the close proved mysteriously alluring. A sparkling, sprightly, even sprite-ly second movement began in Mendelssohnian vein, before moving in quite different directions. The tarantella finale sounded ambiguous, perhaps ambivalent, certainly a whirlwind. One could only marvel at the pianist’s technique and musicianship, Roth ever the alert, discerning accompanist. As an encore, we were treated to the Adagio from Haydn’s late Piano Sonata in C major, Hob.XVI:50. Rapt in its intensity, it benefited from a similar sense of the improvisatory, founded in attention to detail and command of line. I should love to hear more Haydn from Chamayou. 

The opening of the Eroica came as quite a culture shock (to me, at least). I do not think I have ever heard it so fast: presumably taken at the ever-controversial metronome marking. Roth’s musicianship won me over, though. This was a very different Beethoven from that of Wagner, Furtwängler, Klemperer, Barenboim, or a host of others. Of course it was, Colin Davis included. (It was under him, I think, that I last heard the LSO play this symphony.) But comparison, or for that matter contrast, is not the point here. Roth, anything but dogmatic, had his own vision and it worked splendidly. Ultimately, I missed a degree of grandeur, but here, in Beethoven’s first movement, not only did notes fly off the page; they fairly danced. There was, moreover, a fine sense of exploration to the development and what is in effect a second development (recapitulation). 

The Funeral March was brisk, if less (to my ears) iconoclastically so. Obsequies grew in stature, as if grief were approaching us from a distance. There was, fittingly for the programme, a strong sense of French Revolutionary processional. It was, perhaps, more Berlioz’s Beethoven than Wagner’s—and none the worse for it. Excellent woodwind solos (Olivier Stankiewicz’s oboe here first among equals) contributed to the greater whole. Counterpoint lay at the movement’s very heart; if sometimes I had wondered quite what was at stake in the first movement, here there was little doubt. Busy energy, born of detail and line, characterised the scherzo, the trio’s celebrated horns sounding with vernal freshness all the more welcome in dark November. Taken attacca, the finale constantly surprised, rethought in many ways by Roth. No variation was taken for granted, that for strings alone taken by solo instruments with strikingly ‘period’ tone. But that was a means to an expressive end, not an end in itself, the entry of the LSO’s woodwind creating all the greater contrast and later string vibrato far from parsimonious. It was exciting and coherent: neither quite what many would have expected, nor in any sense perverse. It was quite something (even to a die-hard Furtwänglerian such as yours truly).

And it was salutary to be reminded by Roth from the podium that Beethoven, here conducted by a Frenchman and played by an (international) British orchestra, was the most European of composers. ‘Vive l’Europe!’ as he said, to great applause. London needs to hear that more than ever right now.

LPO/Gardner - Haydn and Bartók, 6 November 2021

Royal Festival Hall

Haydn: Symphony no.90 in C major, Hob.I:90
Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle

Ildikó Komlósi (soprano)

John Relyea (bass)

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Edward Gardner (conductor)

Image: Mark Allan

Intelligent programming, this, the C major of Haydn’s Ninetieth Symphony prefiguring one of the most jaw-dropping moments in all opera, indeed in all music: Bluebeard’s revelation of his kingdom in all its glory as the Fifth Door of his castle is flung open. There is ultimately greater difference, of course, than similarity between Haydn’s exploration of his Classical tonal universe and his tricks with our ears and expectations, and Bartók’s grandiose use of a C major chord as luminous, associative tonal centre; yet that in itself could be understood and, more important, perceived to be the point.

A broadly germinal introduction to Haydn’s first movement proclaimed just such a voyage of exploration. Under Edward Gardner, the LPO sounded lively and variegated, if also a touch hard-driven. For better or worse, such is the way of much Haydn performance today, perhaps an excessive if understandable reaction to clichés of geniality. More important was the strong sense of motivic development, not only in the ‘development’ section itself, but also in a recapitulation sounding on the cusp of Beethovenian second development. In that context, I could live with certain ‘period’ affectations, which did little harm, save for sometimes obscuring, more so later in the symphony, a longer term sense of line. 

The second movement flowed as one would expect in such a reading, its stern contrasts traced not without yielding. Again, Haydn’s score was finely articulated and variegated, albeit sometimes at that expense of traditional line, though with a welcome mystery to the course it would take (again prefiguring Bartók?) Solo lines, for instance flute (Juliette Bausor) and cello (Kristina Blaumane) were without exception very well taken. Gardner presented the minuet nicely on the cusp of one- and three-to-a-bar, its symphonic nature and individuality relished and communicated. A dainty reading of the trio, led by Ian Hardwick’s fine solo oboe, was given to a smaller ensemble, the return of full orchestra for the minuet’s reprise grandly moving. The finale blazed like fireworks outside (this was the sixth of November). Arguably, it too was a little hard-driven, though Gardner’s tempo had a sense of rightness, and the general yet particular character of a Haydn finale was undeniably present. The false ending caught out many—understandably. 

Following the interval, music emerged—not as in the Haydn’s introduction, yet in a way that could perhaps be associated with it—from words, from bardic verse, in the guise of the recorded spoken Prologue to Bluebeard’s Castle. The orchestra spoke, it seemed, doubtless in part testament to Gardner’s operatic experience, especially with orchestral recitative. Song, ineffably Bartókian rhythm, equally ineffable post-impressionist harmonies, and of course Bluebeard and Judit took centre (aural) stage. There was a sense of awe, of wonder, and of foreboding to our first encounter with the castle—listed by Bartók as a ‘character’—that never left us. Ildikó Komlósi’s request for the keys because she loved Bluebeard chilled, as shifting orchestral colours reoriented and disoriented us as equally helpless spectators to Fate’s progress (and regress). ‘Because I love you’: terror spoke, above all through the orchestra. All the while, John Relyea as Bluebeard remained implacable, until he too bowed, with a hint of brokenness, to what seemed to be—but is it?—the inevitable.   

Treasures glistened, eliciting audience wonder; likewise at timbre and tonality when, at the Fourth Door, the sun finally shone in, Bluebeard’s garden revealed. There was blood on the flowers’ petals, though, and we felt it. The opening of the Fifth Door would, in a half-decent performance, send shivers down the spine at any time, yet now, after all this waiting, it truly felt as though the symphony orchestra, here underpinned by organ (Richard Gowers) had returned in all its glory. Relyea was magnificently ecstatic beholding and introducing his kingdom. Judit, however, knew already that the game was up. The sheer horror we heard in the orchestra as the Seventh Door was opened, Bluebeard’s former wives present, Judit now bound to join them, was only furthered by the tenderness that followed. There was something beautifully elegiac, not entirely un-Straussian, to Bluebeard’s introductions here: not quite regretful, for he was certain, but resigned. The final, wordless climax told us night would now last forever.

Le nozze di Figaro, HGO, 5 November 2021

Jackson’s Lane Theatre

Figaro – Louis Hurst
Susanna – Shafali Jalota
Count Almaviva – Thomas Chenhall
The Countess – Camilla Harris
Cherubino – Esme Bronwen-Smith
Don Basilio, Don Curzio – Martins Smaukstelis
Doctor Bartolo – Hector Bloggs
Marcellina – Becca Marriott
Antonio – Owain Evans
Barbarina, Second Bridesmaid – Astrid Joos
First Bridesmaid – Phoebe Smith
Chorus – Anna Simmons, Angela Yang

Julia Mintzer (director)
Benjamin Anderson (assistant director)
Carmine de Amicis (choreography)
Charles Ogilvie (set designs)
Ruben Cameiro (costumes)
Jancy Dancinger (sound and lighting design)
Ben Poore (dramaturgy)

HGO Chamber Orchestra
Thomas Payne (conductor)

Images: Laurent Compagnon

HGO (formerly Hampstead Garden Opera) has been one of the musical heroes of the pandemic. Last year, it brought opera back to London with Holst’s Savītri; this year, it was one of the first to bring it back again, with Cavalli’s L’Egisto. Now, in a new production from the director of Savītri, Julia Mintzer, and in a return to the company’s ‘home’ at Jackson’s Lane Arts Centre in Highgate, we have perhaps the most beloved opera, most central to the repertoire of all: The Marriage of Figaro. 

It used to be said that one could not go wrong with Figaro, at least in terms of staging. Don Giovanni was the director’s graveyard, largely because directors ignored its theology and treated it with one-sided psychological realism. Latterly, though, a good few stagings have shown it is possible to make just as much a mess of its predecessor. Not this one, though, far from it; its path proves thoughtful, surprising, and in the best sense provocative. Had I been asked during the interval where it was heading, I should never have guessed. There was a welcome dose of matters that lie beyond individual rationality—the socio-political and what I think we can call the Freudian. That did not come, however, at the expense of the basic necessities of character delineation and development, whose expression is of course the achievement not only of the production team but of the young artists on stage too. What matters is how things come together—and they came together very well.

Initially, we seemed to have a more or less conventional updating to an English country estate of the early twentieth century, which dating became clearer, as the work progressed, to the time of the Great War. As soon as one truly watched and listened, though, it became clear that this was far from conventional. An eye for period detail, creditable in itself, also suggested haunting by the past—perhaps even by the broader Enlightenment project that had led there and of which this opera may be considered part. The Count’s injuries—we see him either with cane or transported by sedan chair—would seem to have been sustained in prior action, relived a little too enthusiastically by the guard (Antonio) on the estate. Figaro, as his valet, shared in some of that haunting too. The Countess mourned her youth, of course, but may also have been mourning a civilisation that has collapsed and yet which all onstage, in their way, continue manically to celebrate. Laudanum helped, or probably did not—but was widely available to all. 

And so, the delirium of war, when it came, was both a natural development and that which has most been feared. The strobe lighting chaos it wrought at the close of the third act—marriage ceremonial itself—is psychological as well as political, throwing up the characters, their affections, and their impulses, and seeing where they land. The fourth act worked out some at least of the consequences. Its final scene needed to celebrate similarly: both as reasoned necessity and as something that, like the final number of Cosí fan tutte, rang hollow and yet true. English titles generally offered straightforward translation, sometimes supplemented by updating and commentary: perhaps in some sense also visualising workings of the unconscious. 

The score, slightly cut beyond the norm, was presented with commendable alertness and cultivation by a small band of soloists (two violins, viola, cello, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, timpani, and synthesised harpsichord) in an arrangement by Jonathan Lyness, conducted by Thomas Payne. Tempi were often, though not always, brisk, yet eminently capable of flexibility too, the Countess’s final words given notably slowly (indeed, as we shall see, tragically). There were a few occasions when instrumentalists and singers drifted apart, but Payne ensured that they came back together quickly. There seemed every reason to expect minor first-night infelicities to be ironed out later in the run.

 

Heading the cast were a fine Count and Countess Almaviva. Thomas Chenhall as the former was proud, virile, and crucially wounded within and without. His third-act aria proved uncommonly successful in conveying the crucial seria element to the Count’s musical identity. Camilla Harris’s Countess truly had one sit up upon her vocal appearance—what wonderful cunning on Da Ponte’s part to save his trump card until the second act—in a performance as beautifully sung as it was intelligently presented. Louis Hurst’s Figaro and Shafali Jalota’s Susanna were keenly observed throughout, properly animating the entire action from within. As Cherubino, Esme Bronwen-Smith captivated though force of personality and similar attention to detail. Martins Smaukstelis did likewise as Basilio, an intriguingly chameleon-like portrayal, boasting notable ease in Italian as well as a finely expressive face. The very different, more diffident impression presented by his Don Curzio confirmed the individuality of portrayal. All the cast contributed, though, to a fine ensemble performance very much greater than the sum of its parts. Hector Bloggs and Becca Marriott carved out a Bartolo and Marcellina of genuine depth, no mere buffa caricatures. Owain Evans and Astrid Joos made much of their roles as Antonio and Barbarina, as even did the Bridesmaid (Phoebe Smith) and additional chorus members (Anna Simmons and Angela Yang).

Could there, then, yet be emancipation, even liberation? Perhaps, if only in the moment. A nice touch, pregnant with meaning, was the Countess assuming Susanna’s (presumed) soubrette voice, a mere caricature, to Susanna’s horror. There remained a social gulf between them. Basilio’s final leap into the arms of Antonio suggested other possibilities, not least in the wake of wartime chaos. That said, the weight of past, present, perhaps even future could not be disregarded. Long after the final chord, one remained haunted by the devastation on the Countess’s face following her closing (false) benediction. In this Freudian Figaro, God is dead, which calls into question her words of forgiveness and implicit redemption and is certainly not the case with Mozart and Da Ponte. If, however, they can still offer something in the moment, as well as recognition that things are never quite so straightforward as schematic explanations of human behaviour would have us believe, the work and its authors, above all Mozart, remain productive and provocative as ever.

Zimmermann/Helmchen - Beethoven, 27 October 2021

Wigmore Hall

Violin Sonata no.8 in G major, op.30 no.3
Violin Sonata no.9 in A major, op.47, ‘Kreutzer’
Violin Sonata no.10 in G major, op.96

Frank-Peter Zimmermann (violin)

Martin Helmchen (piano)

The last music I heard before lockdown had been these three sonatas, performed by PinchasZukerman and Daniel Barenboim in Berlin. This had been the last concert in a series of three, covering all ten Beethoven violin sonatas. There was, of course, very little music of any kind to be heard in the rest of 2020 and still less Beethoven. Barenboim conducting the nine symphonies, Kirill Petrenko conducting Fidelio, and so much else went by the wayside. I assume that this concert from Frank-Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen was either a (belated) conclusion to a similar series, or had been intended as such. In any case, there will always be illumination to hearing the three sonatas in question together, whether in broader Beethovenian company or not. They were, moreover, performances very different from those I had heard in Berlin, so highly emotional memories did not intrude in the way they otherwise might. 

The first, op.30 no.3, opened in promising fashion. Fresh, alert, energetic, it bade fair to navigate Beethoven’s tricky Classical-Romantic dialectic. And so the first movement did, in its own way, very much not an Old World way. At its best, it put me in mind of the modernist Beethoven of Michael Gielen. However, with Gielen, there was always an understanding, such as Barenboim’s, of ebb and flow founded upon harmonic rhythm. This I felt more in the recapitulation than elsewhere, which had been somewhat rigid. The second movement, here assuredly not a slow movement, was similarly swift, quite lacking in sentimentality; but was sentiment thrown out with the sentimental bathwater? At times, though the gravely beautiful turn to the minor spoke of deeper matters. Zimmermann’s vibrato was intelligently varied, telling and illustrating its own story and that story’s contours. Restless brilliance and vigour characterised the finale in both parts. It took no prisoners, but something remained missing, at least for me. 

In the Kreutzer, the introductory dialogue between violin and piano was keenly delivered: serious, without being weighted down; potentiality the thing. It soon gave way, however—as had already been the case in op.30 no.3, and as would continue to be the case in the rest of the recital—to fermata embellishment in both parts that increasingly distracted rather than illuminated. At least that my reaction; others may have felt differently. Fast and furious, not a little breathless, the first movement was, if not one-dimensional, then less multi-dimensional than ideal. So too were the earlier variations of its successor, welcome character notwithstanding, though it developed into something stronger, quite magical by its close. By the time of the finale, somewhat confrontational but perhaps none the worse for that, I had begun to tire of those interventionist interpolations. Doubtless others found them refreshing. Personal taste always plays an important role here. 

The enigmatic G major sonata, op.96 was to my mind ultimately the most successful of the three, especially once past its first movement, which would have benefited from a stronger sense of a guiding musical thread. It never quite settled, but perhaps that was the point. The Adagio espressivo did, though, and emerged both soulful and directed, ornamentation here duly expressive, even elucidatory, rather than distracting. The scherzo was similarly direct, both musicians clearly relishing its radical concision. If the finale was not entirely free of earlier fussiness, there was much to appreciate and enjoy in its variegated textures and mood swings. The closer one listened, the more one was rewarded, and the more complex Beethoven’s vision became: rather like the finale to the Eighth Symphony. Dedicated to the memory of Bernard Haitink, a ‘great friend’ to Zimmermann and Helmchen, the encore was the slow movement of the A major Sonata, op.30 no.1.

Esfahani - ‘Bach: Before and After’, 21 October 2021

Wigmore Hall

Pachelbel: Fantasia ex dis
Georg Böhm: Partita on ‘Wer nun den lieben Gott lässt walten’
Pachelbel: Chaconne in D major
Samuel Scheidt: Allemande: ‘Also gehts also stehts’, SSWV 137
Sweelinck: Fantasia cromatica; Six Variations on ‘Mein junges Leben hat ein End’
Johann Kuhnau: Frische Clavier-Früchte: Sonata no.6 in B-flat major
C.P.E. Bach: Sonata in G minor, Wq.65/17
Johann Wilhelm Hässler: Grande Gigue in D minor, op.31
W.F. Bach: Sonata in D major, F 3

Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord)

I have been to recitals by Mahan Esfahani when I have known, or rather been acquainted with, all the music; only, I think, though, when the programme has been devoted to Bach (and not even always then). More often than not, there has been a good part of the programme that was entirely new to me. In this case, all but three pieces were. What a varied conspectus of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century keyboard music this was, both as works and in their performance.

Pachelbel’s Fantasia ex dis offered a bejewelled portal. Clear where it was heading but always with time to admire the view, to make a telling agogic point, Esfahani’s performance offered the ideal introduction. A similar balance was struck in Georg Bohm’s Partita on ‘Wer nun den lieben Gott lässt walten’. Sparing, typically intelligent use of two manuals, in tandem with imaginative, meaningful changes of registration furthered character and progression. Rhetoric was stronger, more fantastical in one variation, in which registration altered after (almost) every phrase. Pachelbel’s D major Chaconne is more virtuosic, perhaps a little lighter in style. (Bach’s example can mislead.) Esfahani relished its potentialities, the piece’s seeds growing into a fine tree indeed. 

For the next set, we moved to Samuel Scheidt’s Allemande, ‘Also gehts also stehts’. Hearing such variation in variation writing, as it were, proved both illuminating and frankly enjoyable, Esfahani teasing out and communicating the music’s secrets. Sweelinck’s Fantasia cromatica, chronological distance notwithstanding, seemed to me to come closest of all the works to that of Bach—though I suspect that says at least as much about my own conception of Bach as the composer’s own self-understanding and practice. At any rate, its darkly chromatic world, unmistakeably of the North, and dazzling instrumental drama in an almost Brahmsian sense (again betraying my own prejudices!) proved richly satisfying. The same composer’s Variations on ‘Mein junges Leben hat ein End’ offered yet another varied variational journey, Esfahani ever the enlightened guide. The nice sense of return at the close here was echoed in the last of the five movements of Johann Kuhnau’s B-flat Sonata. Bach’s predecessor as Thomaskantor offered music that was catchy, exuberant, and much more besides. Architecture was keenly communicated, as was detail, the two clearly linked and mutually reinforcing. 

The second half of the programme took us beyond Bach, or rather beyond Johann Sebastian. Two of his sons and one of his grand-pupils were heard, each with pleasure (certainly by me). Carl Philip Emanuel Bach’s 1746 G minor Sonata opened in declamatory fashion, with a heightened sense of musical theatrics and well-nigh kinetic energy. Wild yet ultimately coherent and disciplined, this first movement only underlined the composer’s reputation for avant-gardism. A true Adagio, albeit with typically clever complications, led to a finale that both mediated and concluded. Many, I know, are sceptical about CPE Bach’s modernity, but it remains real and admirable to me. Johann Wilhelm Hässler’s piece offered enjoyable light relief as well as opportunity for virtuosic display. Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’s 1745 D major Sonata was for me a fascinating discovery. A first movement imbued, not unlike the music of his brother, with nervous energy prepared the way for an Adagio just as restless in its way, prior to a lovely, galant ‘au revoir’ in its finale, Esfahani a compelling advocate throughout. For an encore, we headed south, to Domenico Scarlatti’s B minor Sonata, K.87, in an Apollonian reading that acknowledged yet never exaggerated discord beneath the surface.

Die ägyptische Helena, Fulham Opera, 19 October 2021

St John’s Church, Fulham

Helena – Justine Viani
Menelas – Brian Smith Walters
Aithra – Luci Briginshaw
Altair – Oliver Gibbs
Da-Ud – Dominic J Walsh
Omniscient Mussel – Ingeborg Børch
Hermione – Liz Stock
Servants – Christine Buras, Natasha Elliott
Elves – Maggie Cooper, Donya Rafati Rosalind O’Dowd, Rebecca Moulton, Corinne Hart
Slaves – Kester Guy-Briscoe, Jack Stone, Robin Whitehouse, Graham Wheeler

Guido Martin-Brandis (director)
Johan Ribbing (assistant director)
Sarah Heenan (producer)
Alexander McPherson (designs)
Mitch Broomhead (lighting)

Instrumental Ensemble
Ben Woodward (conductor)

A splendid evening from Fulham Opera, making an excellent case for the bizarrely, well-nigh criminally neglected (at least on Plague Island) Ägyptische Helena. That a major Strauss-Hofmannsthal opera was here receiving its staged London premiere beggars belief; such, alas, is our lot in Das Land ohne Musik. Sunlit uplands and German car manufacturers will doubtless one day come to our rescue, perhaps with a spot of ‘innovative jam’. In the meantime, hats off to this ever-enterprising company, not only for putting on the opera but for visibly and audibly winning a host of new converts. This seems actually to have been the British premiere of the so-called Vienna version of the work, first performed at the 1933 Salzburg Festival. 

Reduced orchestrations have necessarily been in vogue for opera over the past year. This, however, was a far more radical arrangement from Paul Plummer, also at the piano, for small chamber ensemble (violin, cello, clarinet, horn, percussion, with piano and organ). The myriad phantasmagorical inflections of gold, azure, deep crimson, and other orchestral hues were of course largely absent, though often skilfully hinted at. What was remarkable, though, was how little one missed the full Straussian orchestra and, as with, say, the London Opera Company’s Tristan a year ago, where one’s ears were led in novel appreciation and understanding. Hearing the piano so often in quasi-continuo role led me, for instance, to release quite how much harmonic common ground there was with Ariadne auf Naxos—and thereby to muse on dramaturgical connections too. The general acuity of Ben Woodward’s direction of the score—well paced, well balanced, welcome ebb and flow—furthered that more generally, of course. It was a fascinating musical evening, even before we consider the singers. 

With resourceful staging, exemplary in its narrative clarity, from Guido Martin-Brandis and the rest of his production team, that sense of belonging to the greater Straussian corpus was stronger than ever. The space of St Paul’s, Fulham and its altar too were used to frame a production, whose detailed Personenregie and costumed suggestiveness—essentially, antiquity mediated by 1920s exoticism and its new technologies—permitted one to draw one’s own conclusions without abdication of its own responsibility. The business of potions, inevitably leading one to think of Tristan parody was handled with commendable directness and clarity, enhancing rather than detracting from Hofmannsthal’s heavy, post-Frau ohne Schatten symbolism. To take another example, Hofmannsthal wrote of the notorious Omniscient Mussel to Strauss: ‘When I mention “gurgling”, I have in mind the noise of water “speaking” in a pipe. It is not absolutely vital that one should understand what it says; it might in fact be amusing’ if the Mussel ‘were to sound distorted like a voice on the telephone when one stands beside the receiver.’ There was, wisely, no such distortion here in performance, but that sense of the early age of the telephone and, more strongly, the wireless announcer were to be seen, framing the opera’s multiple historicisms and Freudian remythologisation, whilst also retaining a welcome sense of fun: Nietzsche’s ‘the Greeks were superficial—out of profundity!’ 

There was no superficiality, save in that very particular Nietzschean-Straussian anti-metaphysical sense, to the singing—and even in that respect, a fine balance was generally maintained with the more metaphysical requirements of Hofmannsthal and of Strauss’s Wagnerian inheritance. One could read, watch, and above all listen in different ways, which is just as it should be; one could hardly, though, fail to think the vocal artistry on show here fit to grace more glamorous stages. Justine Viani’s gleaming, glistening, forthright soprano seemed to me well-nigh ideal for Helena. This was not only a beautiful sound; the words were clear and meaningful too. Together, words, music, and gesture made more than the sum of their parts. Much the same could be said for the rest of the cast. Brian Smith Walters’s Menelas had unmistakeable roots in Siegmund. Every inch a Heldentenor, with that historic semi-baritonal hue so characteristic of Wagner roles, Smith Walters offered a moving, vulnerable portrayal very much in that Volsung line, though certainly not to be reduced to it. Luci Briginshaw’s Aithra enthralled and entranced, coloratura despatched not only with apparent ease but with definite yet properly ambiguous meaning. Ingeborg Børch brought welcome contrast of tone as the Mussel, yet similar clarity of words. The elf-chorus’s sound as a Nibelung parody was richly suggestive. All contributed to the evening’s success, but I must make final mention of Dominic J Walsh’s lovelorn, ineffably human Da-Ud. 

Looking back in 1945 over his entire operatic career—give or take a tantalising hint of a Donkey’s Shadow—Strauss saw himself not only as having closed a chapter, even a book, but as having presented an ongoing dialogue, as much with himself as with ancient mythology: ‘Particularly in scenes such as Klyämnestra’s dream, the sister’s [Elektra’s] recognition, [Elektra’s] redemption through dance, the spiritual transformation of Menelas, Apollo’s kiss (from Daphne), and Jupiter’s farewell to the human world, my Greek operas have created musical symbols that may be taken for the last  fulfilment of Greek longing.’ Such was what we saw and heard here.

Quatuor Ebène - Haydn, Janáček, and Schumann, 15 October 2021

Wigmore Hall

Haydn: String Quartet in D major, op.20 no.4
Janáček: String Quartet no.1, ‘Kreutzer Sonata’
Schumann: String Quartet no.2 in F major, op.41 no.2

Pierre Colombet, Gabriel Le Magadure (violins)

Marie Chilemme (viola)

Raphaël Merlin (cello)

You will struggle to find—no, you will not find—quartet playing finer than this. Audience response to the Quatuor Ebène’s performance of Janáček’s Kreutzer Sonata Quartet bore an enthusiasm that registered somewhere between elation and shell-shock, heightened by the presence of a large number of young string players, identified not only by the palpable intent of their listening, but also by their instrument cases. 

From the outset of Janáček’s first movement, one had—as in the preceding Haydn quartet—of life- and, in this case, perhaps death-giving potentiality in every theme, motif, and cell. ‘I was imagining,’ Janáček told Kamila Stösslová, ‘a poor woman, tormented, beaten, battered to death, as the Russian writer Tolstoy described in his Kreutzer Sonata.’ Here were a pain and longing familiar, even sublimated, from Katya Kabanova and a highly developed sense of instrumental drama. One might or might not know Tolstoy—or Katya—but it did not matter; this was enough. The players’ mastery seemed almost to extend Janáček’s soundworld further than it goes already—or perhaps it is better to think in terms of responding more deeply than ever to potentiality, for there was no question of anything failing to sound as written, as conceived. The second movement, likewise characterised by intense drama of the imagination, foresaw, so it seemed, the world of the still-later From the House of the Dead. Sharply etched, coruscating, it breathed an unquenchable spirit that prepared the way for a successor that was, if anything, still more intense and extreme in its polarities. Janáček’s warm irascibility, perhaps also irascible warmth, spoke as ever of ineffable humanity. Here was a tone poem in itself, save of course that it acquired meaning as part of a greater whole. In the final movement, a sense of tragic revisitation, like a final act bringing the drama to a head, hung over music, both as work and performance, which necessarily had some way yet to travel; until, that is, it was over, shatteringly. 

Not entirely dissimilar in its still-shocking experimentalism, motivic development in Haydn’s Quartet op.20 no.4 was also relished by all concerned. The first movement introduction was set up as a set of questions and answers, which grew into something more, imbued with almost infinite energy and potential. Its strange eruptions, weirdly yet aptly prophetic of Janáček, likewise always felt dramatically necessary—and let us never forget what a drama, in the proper sense, sonata form is. When Haydn plays with our expectations, as he does here, he needs players to respond in kind; this they certainly did. The sad dignity of the second movement’s opening theme was at times more astringent in tone than I had previously heard from this quartet, but there was nothing dogmatic to that; their palette was broad, wisely drawn from, and coherent in context and expressive purpose. The ensuing variations showed, yet again, what nonsense is the claim we sometimes hear that variation form in Haydn and Mozart somehow has a lesser status than in preceding and succeeding eras. (Goodness knows where people get this idea from; presumably they copy it from one another. All they need do is read, play, or listen.) Raphaël Merlin’s cello, sensitive and commanding, proved as eloquent a principal narrator in the second variation as one could hope for; his colleagues responded as equals, invited and incited. Throughout, this was Haydn at both his most tragic and his most varied in tragic impulse, immanent in the Ebène’s intensity of conception. Rustic tone combined with post-Baroque complexity in the Allegretto alla zingarese, the concision of the first movement further intensified. Haydn’s experimental mastery in the finale, high-spirited, obstinate, helter-skelter, and above all consequent, was conveyed with equal drama and understanding. 

In some ways, Schumann’s F major Quartet sounded more Classical than Haydn—let alone Janáček. Not that it is without Romanticism, of course, but the tone of late Classicism we heard, especially in its first movement, was both appealing and apposite. There were new paths in the development, though in general a sense of subtle restraint. The second movement, another set of variations, unfolded patiently, permitted to reveal its secrets in its own time. And when it blossomed, it truly blossomed; one was rewarded—handsomely—for listening. There was a sense of Beethoven reimagined: not our Beethoven, nor perhaps Beethoven’s, but naturally Schumann’s. Beethoven and Mendelssohn haunted the scherzo, though it was certainly not to be reduced to any matter of ‘influence’. Its trio proved notably good-humoured. Schumann’s Romantic confidences and digressions form the very path of the finale; so it was in this case, a feeling somehow only heightened by a decision to stop, quickly re-tune, and resume, urgency not so much regained as redoubled. As a lovely encore, we were treated to the Quatuor Ebène’s own arrangement of the first piece from Schumann’s Bunte Blätter.

Happy 150th Birthday to Alexander Zemlinsky

 

Please click here for past posts on the composer, ranging from an essay on Die Seejungfrau to a reflection on Writing German History that opens with the Lyric Symphony. (When you reach the bottom, you can continue by clicking 'Older posts').

Gansch/Martineau - Zemlinsky, Berg, and Mahler, 10 October 2021

Wigmore Hall

Zemlinsky: Walzer-Gesänge nach toskanischen Volksliedern, op.6
Berg: Sieben frühe Lieder
Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn: ‘Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?’, ‘Das irdische Leben’, ‘Ablösung im Sommer’, ‘Scheiden und Meiden’, ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’, ‘Rheinlegendchen’, ‘Die himmlische Leben’

Christina Gansch (soprano)
Malcolm Martineau (piano)

Song in particular and vocal music more generally were of great importance to Zemlinsky, Berg, and Mahler. In Zemlinsky’s case, more than half of his songs were composed in a short period from 1898 to 1901, these Walzer-Gesänger (1898) after Tuscan folksongs (translated by Ferdinand Gregorovius) included. One falls, perhaps as much out of habit as conviction, upon the word ‘Brahmsian’, but are they really, the obvious Liebeslieder precedent notwithstanding? There are certainly elements that look so on the page; perhaps they would sound more so in certain performances. Here—only here—I felt at times a mismatch between vocal performance and material. Perhaps it was more a matter of warming up, of a larger scale of performance than might have been ideal. Christina Gansch was certainly communicative, though, not only in diction but also in meaning. Or perhaps it was my expectations that were at fault, since I responded more keenly to the darker (within bounds) ‘Ich gehe des Nachts’, not least to its piano writing as vividly conveyed by Malcolm Martineau. The sense of mystery and ultimate communion in ‘Blaues Sternlein’ hinted at more, at a world to come both for Zemlinsky and ‘Austrian’ music more generally. 

Until he took composition lessons with Schoenberg, Berg was above all a composer of Lieder. It is not quite true to say that he was exclusively so, though in 1910 Schoenberg told his publisher that, ‘extraordinarily gifted’ though Berg was when he came to him, ‘his imagination apparently could not work on anything but songs. Even the piano accompaniments to them were songlike. He was absolutely incapable of writing an instrumental movement or inventing an instrumental theme.’ We should be grateful indeed to Schoenberg for his instruction. What would Wozzeck, let alone the Three Orchestral Pieces, op.6, be without the instrumental forms in which Schoenberg had compelled Berg to write? Given the quality of the Seven Early Songs (1905-8)—written during Berg’s studies with Schoenberg, albeit first in harmony, counterpoint, and music theory, only from 1907 in composition—one can well understand why Berg might simply have wished to carry on in that vein, though here already the piano writing is quite different from that in his truly ‘early’ songs. 

Whatever one’s thoughts on the Zemlinsky songs—I was grateful above all for the opportunity to hear them—Berg immediately took us into a different world, darker, more complex, more alluring. The harmonies of ‘Nacht’, voice almost as crucial to their sounding as piano, form and shape the song itself. Whatever the truth of Schoenberg’s retrospective criticism, it cannot have been intended for this song. A message both Tristan-esque and Nietzschean in words and music both warned and enticed: ‘Trinke Seele! trinke Einsamkeit! O gib acht! gib acht!’ Gansch seemed liberated by the greater musical possibilities, each song conceived in collaboration with Martineau with remarkable attention to detail, out of which was formed a singular whole. ‘Die Nachtigall’ took shape and indeed flight from its immanent growth in expressive range, reaching an ecstatic vocal conclusion such as to have Martineau’s piano epilogue bathed in Bergian afterglow.  The little red fire (‘Feuerlein rot’) of ‘Im Zimmer’ fairly crackled before our ears, vocal and piano parts alike subtly suggestive of image and import. A richly voluptuous ‘Liebesode’ became breathless in more than one sense, serving aptly as prelude to ‘Sommertage’, whose ‘image after image comes to you and quite fills you’. 

A short break of a minute or two was just the thing to prepare for the different world again of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, its naïveté never without a suspicion of knowing, alienation its lot, its tragedy, but also its attraction. Gansch captured to a tee the humour of Mahler’s absurdist neo-Bachian melismata in ‘Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?’ Mahler should never, arguably can never, be read on one level. ‘Das irdische Leben’ was well characterised, its horror all the truer for the lack of hysteria. Kindertotenlieder already seemed close. A sardonic account of ‘Ablösung im Sommer’, the piano properly played straight, prepared the way for the ambiguities of ‘Scheiden und Meiden’ and a dream-like, hallucinatory ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’, its wan, deathly piano prelude as Mahlerian as any orchestra. After that, ‘Rheinlegendchen’ offered necessary relief prior to the epiphanic mysteries of ‘Das himmlische Leben’, heard far more frequently in its orchestral guise as final movement to the Fourth Symphony. Already in its opening stanza, the subtle range of Gansch’s vocal colours suggested nothing was quite so simple as it might seem. Childhood, after all, is always an adult idea. ‘Sankt Martha die Köchin muss sein!’ seemed as strange a revelation as ever, yet one could not but nod assent, both to the claim and to Mahler’s path to transcendence. For an encore, we heard ‘Hans und Grete’, again apparently simple, yet with much beneath the surface. Gansch’s closing smile, very much part of the performance, encapsulated what we had just heard.

'Musick's Monument' - Crowe/Fretwork - Byrd, Gibbons, and Purcell, 7 October 2021

Wigmore Hall

Byrd: Prelude and Ground a 5: ‘The Queen’s Goodnight’
O Lord, how vain
Fantasia a 5: ‘Two parts in one the fourth above’
O that most rare breast
Gibbons: Two Fantasias of 3 parts
Now each flowery bank of May
Byrd: My mistress had a little dog

Purcell: Two Fantazias in 4 parts
O solitude, my sweetest choice, Z406
Gibbons: Two In Nomines
Faire is the rose
Purcell: Two Fantazias in 4 parts
Oedipus, King of Thebes: ‘Music for a while’
The Fairy Queen: ‘When I have often heard young maids complaining’

Lucy Crowe (soprano)
Fretwork (Richard Boothby, Asako Morikawa, Sam Stadlen, Emily Ashton, Joanna Levine)

Thomas Mace’s Musick’s Monument, or, A remembrance of the best practical musick, both divine and civil, that has ever been known to have been in the world divided into three parts, looked back wistfully at an age of English music almost passed. Conservative, even reactionary, Mace detested new-fangled French influences on the musical culture of his own time. He disliked ‘Squaling-Scoulding-Fiddles’, to be used only if balanced by ‘Lusty Full-Sciz’d Theorbos’, and, as favoured sacred music from the age of William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons, elevated music for viol consort, consort songs included, over newer styles and genres. If most of Henry Purcell’s music stood very much in the latter vein, Purcell, in his celebrated Fantazias of 1780, also paid tribute to the golden age of the consort, showing beyond doubt that a composer could be master of both. It was a farewell, though, however masterly—and probably ignored. They went unpublished until 1927, by Peter Warlock, and there is no evidence of performance in Purcell’s lifetime. This concert from Fretwork and Lucy Crowe, then, also looked back at English music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, less from the standpoint of Mace than from that of Purcell. It proved enjoyable and instructive in equal measure. 

Byrd opened the programme and occupied much of the first half, shared with Gibbons, split between both halves, the younger composer a mediator between Byrd and Purcell. The Queen’s Goodnight, like so much of what was to come, flowed and gently danced: not reduced to merely ‘being’ a dance, but rather partaking its spirit, remembrance, and rejuvenation. The fascination of its harmonies spoke for itself without underlining, whether of false relations or other dissonances. This was a golden age of instrumental variations too, and it showed. Here was a lovely curtain-raiser, also enabling Byrd’s 1588 consort song tributes to Sir Philip Sidney, one to a text by Sidney himself, the other an explicit tribute by Sir Edward Dyer, to emerge as much as companion pieces as contrasts. Crowe’s floating of her melodic line atop the viol music proved undeniably affecting, perhaps especially in the Dyer setting, O that most rare breast. Undimmed in courtliness and affect, it negotiated and combined confessional traditions and boundaries as skilfully as Byrd himself, finally sublimated with quiet ecstasy on ‘thy friend here living dieth’. In between, for instruments only, Two parts in one the fourth above, gently suggested both affinity and variety within the family of consort music, much as one might with later instrumental music of Haydn. Pleasure derived both from occasional grit in the oyster, as well as the oyster itself, was the thing. Closing the first half, owing to a fine ballad-like performance by Crowe and her supporting musicians. 

Gibbons provided another voice, less expansive in the first of his two Fantasias than the second, and perhaps even another world in whose counterpoint one could readily, pleasurably lose oneself. In Fretwork’s performances, both of those Fantasias and two In nomines, it sounded lighter, perhaps more aristocratic, though not necessarily less ingenuous. If I find it less moving, on the whole, than Byrd or Purcell, that may just be me. Now each flowery bank of May had a different flavour, with a nice ambiguity in performance as to any ultimate message, should there be one: ‘… whose love is life, whose hate is death’. In the second half, Faire is the rose was short, sweet, and subtle. 

We lost a Duo in G for two bass viols by Christopher Simpson, Asako Morikawa having sprained her thumb—one would never have known from other performances—but heard four of Purcell’s four-part Fantazias. If there were times when I felt Purcell’s well-nigh Mozartian combination of seemingly effortless mastery and fathomless depth might have been served better by a touch of Romanticism, these were fluent, comprehending performances with their own agenda that had no need to be mine. At their best, they showed a splendid inevitability in unfolding and had me wanting more. Many counsel us against importing modern conceptions of sadness, melancholia, and so on into this music, but so much the worse for them. Purcell’s modernity remains as striking as his historicity; as with any great art, of which this is certainly an instance, the one encourages the other.

O solitude, my sweetest choice, as with all these songs realised by Richard Boothby for his own consort, likewise spoke with almost modern unity of words, music, and underlying sentiment in performance. At any rate, one could hear why Purcell’s word-setting continues to inspire Anglophone composers. Music certainly did our cares beguile ‘for a while’ in the celebrated, loveliest song from Oedipus, King of Thebes. ‘When I have often heard young maids complaining’, from The Fairy Queen, spoke with readier humour, perhaps, than Byrd’s mistress and her dog. It was an animated, captivating performance, as was the surprise encore, as you are unlikely to have heard it before: Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’.

Philharmonia/Rouvali - Strauss, 30 September 2021

Royal Festival Hall

Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra, op.30
Eine Alpensinfonie, op.64

Philharmonia Orchestra

Santtu-Matias Rouvali (conductor)

It had been quite a while since I had heard an orchestra of the size of the Philharmonia assembled for this Alpine Symphony; not that the Zarathustra band was small either. Esa-Pekka Salonen’s farewell to the Philharmonia had necessarily involved a smaller orchestra. His successor Sanntu-Matias Rouvali picked up the reins in very different style and repertoire. The scale, not only size but ‘depth’ in all its manifestations, of an orchestra in Strauss or Wagner was something I had found myself longing for on several occasions during lockdown. Now, at last, it was here, and if this double helping of Nietzschean Strauss was not on the face of it ideal programming, there were revelations to be had from hearing these two tone poems side by side.

Whatever its renown, Also sprach Zarathustra does not pop up in concert programmes that often. I think this may actually have been the first time I heard it live. Its renown is, in any case, limited largely to its opening, especially in combination with a certain film. It is what it is. I am not sure it lends itself especially to interpretation, but orchestra and conductor projected it with strength, if not entirely without fallibility in the difficult Festival Hall acoustic. It was wonderful to hear the hall’s organ again too, here and later played by Richard Pearce. But then what? The darkness that follows immediately and attempts to emerge therefrom are perhaps more interesting, or at least more interpretable. The richness of the Philharmonia’s solo strings, gradually joined by more, was something to savour. Points of detail told throughout. What I missed in Rouvali’s reading was a greater sense of the whole: admittedly difficult to achieve in this work. His soundworld and the orchestra’s seemed more Wagnerian, even Brahmsian, than modernist. That said, the fugue’s beginning offered a hint of Bartók: unexpected yet welcome. Salutary reminders issued that much of what we think of as the world of Die Frau ohne Schatten or even Der Rosenkavalier is here already. Harmonies began to acquire a more sinister edge. If not exactly flat-footed, waltzing was only intermittently able to suggest something lighter, fleeter. Rouvali ultimately seemed excitable in the mode of a Solti, albeit without the precision, than comprehending as, say, a Haitink. Either way, the performance never really caught fire. These, however, are early days; this remained a welcome and surprisingly rare opportunity to hear the work.

The sepulchral, frankly Wagnerian opening of Eine Alpensinfonie sounded more idiomatic. Much teemed under the surface, though what was it? Posing that question cut to the heart, as it were, of Strauss’s materialism. Rouvali was certainly more flexible in transition and transformation. Perhaps surprisingly, this performance seemed less episodic, if without quite the symphonic achievement of conductors from Mravinsky to Haitink. And of course it was a treat simply to hear the Philharmonia in this music, massed horns—oddly, from a balcony, rather than offstage—included. The waterfall was a glistening orchestral delight, crucially paving the way for all manner of further phantasmagorical hallucinations—or realities. Despite himself, despite Nietzsche too, Strauss the ‘Antichrist’—so much pointless debate would have been averted had he used that title instead—could not resist hints and more of metaphysical meaning. Dissonances ground as we made our way to the summit, and the music as well as the orchestra unleashed at the top spoke of something we had all been waiting for. The uncertainties and sadness of descent proved powerfully moving, heard through a storm built on harmony and counterpoint as much as colour. Rouvali paced the performance well, an Epilogue neither rushed nor milked a case in point. There was Straussian integrity here that extended beyond the ‘merely musical’ to the human. As Night once more fell, one sensed a sleep that extended beyond closing one’s eyes.