Opéra Bastille
Cardillac – Franz Grundheber
The Daughter – Angela Denoke
The Officer – Christopher Ventris
The Lady – Hannah Esther Minutillo
The Cavalier – Charles Workman
The Gold Dealer – Roland Bracht
Leader of the Prévôté – David Bizic
Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris
Kazushi Ono (conductor)
Winfried Maczewski (chorus master)
André Engel (producer)
Nicky Rieti (designer)
Chantel de La Coste Messelière (costumes)
André Diot (lighting)
Frédérique Chauveaux and Françoise Grès (choreographers)
Perhaps only Paris could turn in so stylish a production of the terminally unfashionable Hindemith. When I saw this in 2006, I thought that the Opéra National de Paris had a hit on its hands, and I have no reason to revise my judgement upon its revival. Cardillac, based on Das Fräulein von Scuderi, a short story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, is a work imbued with Neue Sachlichkeit. It nevertheless looks forward to the chief preoccupation of works such as Mathis der Maler and Die Harmonie der Welt, namely the artist’s role in society. The musical style, however, remains very much of the 1920s: for the most part resolutely anti-sentimental and with a duly ‘objective’ instrumental polyphony characteristic, perhaps misconceived but genuinely held, of that age’s conception of Bach.
Kazushi Ono seemed very much on Hindemith’s wavelength in this respect. Anxious to relieve music of its subservience to the text Hindemith – somewhat like Busoni and even Berg in this respect – insisted upon small closed instrumental forms, following their own musical imperatives. Whilst not dissociated from what was going on onstage, Ono ensured that the motorised rhythms and the manifold polyphonic strands were possessed of their own motivation. His reading may not have evinced throughout quite the rhythmic drive – there were a few occasions when the tension sagged ever so slightly – brought to the score by Kent Nagano during the original production, but this is a minor criticism. The orchestra responded superbly: incisive and possessed of just the right wind- and percussion-dominated sound. (The strings, especially violins, are very few in number, to impart an almost Weill-like quality to the music.) A sure command of idiom was unfailingly apparent.
Franz Grundheber proved a charismatic Cardillac. His tone, his attention to the text, and equally importantly, bearing on stage were all exemplary. For the drama to be of consequence, one needs to believe in his tortured, Jekyll-and-Hyde conflict between his work and everything else, his daughter included. One certainly did in this case. Angela Denoke was every bit as impressive as his daughter; it is difficult to imagine her command of line and tone in this role bettered. As her suitor, Christopher Ventris also impressed – more so in the second than in the third act – although he was arguably outshone by Charles Workman in the smaller tenor role of the dashing Cavalier. The stage and vocal chemistry between the latter and the alluring Hannah Esther Minutillo as the Lady was an object lesson in such matters. One could all too well understand why he felt compelled to follow her fateful entreaty to procure for her ‘the finest object Cardillac ever produced,’ and why she in her turn was only too eager to await him in her bedroom. The chorus, attentively directed and choreographed, was every bit as impressive in its vocal blend and diction. It plays a crucial role – partly a homage to Bach’s Passions and Handel’s oratorios? – both at the opening and during the final scene, thus framing the action within a broader social context. It was no mean achievement for almost every word to be distinguishable, all the more impressive given the fullness of choral tone and the quantity of stage business.
The production was, as I have already mentioned, extremely stylish. The updating – to roughly the time of composition – worked well enough, although there were occasions, such as the beginning of the third act, when it became a little confusing. Nevertheless, the general impression of gold-fuelled opulence was most persuasive, as were all aspects of the Personenregie. The sets and costumes were lavish, which seemed not an extravagance but a necessary attribute of the action. A welcome aspect of the production was that it helped to remove any lingering prejudices one might have entertained about dryness or worthiness on the composer’s part. This was splendid musical theatre and must be accounted a triumph for Gérard Mortier’s house and company.
Thursday, 31 January 2008
Die Frau ohne Schatten, Opéra National de Paris, 28 January 2008
Opéra Bastille
The Emperor – Jon Villars
The Empress – Eva-Maria Westbroek
The Nurse – Jane Henschel
Barak – Franz Hawlata
Barak’s Wife – Christine Brewer
The Spirit-Messenger – Ralf Lukas
Voice of the Apparition of Youth – Ryan MacPherson
Voice of the Falcon, Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple – Elena Tsallagova
Voice from Above – Jane Henschel
The One-Eyed – Yuri Kissin
The One-Armed – Gregory Reinhart
The Hunchback – John Easterlin
Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris
Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine
Children’s Choir of the Opéra National de Paris
Alessandro di Stefano (chorus master)
Gustav Kuhn (conductor)
Robert Wilson (producer and designer)
Giuseppe Fregeni (co-producer)
Christope Martin (co-designer)
Moidele Bickel (costumes)
Andreas Fuchs (lighting)
Strauss’s operas broadly tend to be either Wagnerian or Mozartian. One of the many extraordinary things about Die Frau ohne Schatten – or La femme sans ombre, as it was generally called at the Paris Opéra – is that it manages to be both. It certainly qualifies as post-Wagnerian music drama in terms of the leitmotivic writing that both spans and in large part constitutes the work’s structure. The descent of the Empress and Nurse from the spirit world to that of humanity is surely a conscious homage to Das Rheingold’s descent to Nibelheim and the night-watchmen (choral rather than solo) at the end of Act I cannot but recall Die Meistersinger, whilst the trials of the opera’s two couples are a clear and acknowledge reference to The Magic Flute. Wagner and Mozart combine in the musico-dramatic opposition between spirit and human world and in the clear progression from the former to the latter: a homage to and development of the stories both of Brünnhilde and of Tamino and Pamina. The epic Wagnerian element is most to the fore during the first two acts, with the Mozartian trials reserved for the third. However, this in no sense prevents Strauss from continuing that quasi-expressionistic writing which may surprise the listener aware that Der Rosenkavalier and Ariadne auf Naxos (in part) precede Die Frau. The polytonalism on offer here, although more sparing than that of Elektra, is every bit as ‘advanced’. This may seem less odd when we also consider the almost contemporary, all-too-readily underestimated Nietzschean (Anti-Christian) tone-poem, An Alpine Symphony¸ which ought already to have brought into question Strauss’s alleged ‘reversion’ in and after Rosenkavalier. In any case, Strauss – and to some extent, Hofmannsthal – is so often found to be playing with the history of music and of musical drama, ever more explicitly until its ultimate treatment in Capriccio.
The musical forces required in Strauss’s opera are huge too: the various choirs, the violas and ‘cellos split as well as the violins, the wind- and thunder-machines, quadruple winds and so forth. Like the Schoenberg of the Gurrelieder or the Op.8 Orchestral Songs, however, Strauss draws from a vast orchestral palette with chamber-music restraint as well as overpowering near-bombast. The colouristic variegation of the score remind us that he is a contemporary of Debussy and Bartók. Then, of course, there are the heavy demands placed upon the solo voices, not least the typically merciless writing for the tenor Emperor. Moreover, the manifold ambiguities in Hofmannsthal’s libretto – how should one weight the post-Wagner and Magic Flute elements respectively? – provide all sorts of pitfalls for directors. This, then, is not an easy work to perform, and resounding successes have not been so many.
During the first half of the first act, I had my doubts, and feared that we might be in for a prolonged evening. Gustav Kuhn revealed a myriad of colours from the orchestra, but his conducting otherwise came across as rather stiff. This seemed to match all too well the predictably static nature of Robert Wilson’s Japanese-influenced production, although already this exerted an undeniable theatrical fascination. Not long after reaching Barak’s hut, however, Kuhn appeared better able to think in long phrases and periods, and this transmitted itself to the orchestra and thence to the audience (or at least to this member thereof). Wilson’s production truly came into its own from this point onwards, both doing something quite different from the music and yet in tune with its demands. Indeed, one of the most impressive aspects of the production – and so lamentably rare in opera – was the attention Wilson and his team paid to the score. Movement, colour, and transformation were clearly, if sometimes surprisingly, connected to the orchestra in particular. If the production was not merely the obedient servant of the music – and why should it be? – nor did it ever jar. The designs were generally simple but powerful, not least in the striking use of different colours and their interactions both within and between scenes. There was much that I could not claim to ‘understand’, but to attempt this rather seemed to be missing the point, for I could tell that there was something purposeful, intelligent, and often quite magical going on: something which need not necessarily be translated into words. (After all, the same is often said, and not without reason, of music.) The choreographic direction of the falcon in particular impressed: here was beguiling and perhaps threatening mystery. Humour was present too, in the guise of Barak’s ghastly ne’er-do-well brothers, here portrayed as clowns. Their vocalisation was as impressive as their staged portrayal, indicating commendable attention to detail in depth as well as breadth of casting.
I do not think there was a weak link in the cast – which, in this of all operas, is a signal achievement. It was notable, moreover, that the improvement during the first act I mentioned in terms of the conducting was reflected, if perhaps less dramatically, in terms of the singing. For instance, Eva-Maria Westbroek’s pitching was initially somewhat approximate, but this problem seemed to disappear. Henceforth, she proved a ravishing Empress, thoughtful too in her transition from spirit to woman; her tone developed in tandem with her character. In the thankless role of the Emperor, Jon Villars was heroic if not exciting. I could have imagined a reading with greater variety of shading but, given the orchestral torrents raging against him, that is far easier said than done. Villars’s tone was strong and secure, and there was never any question of him failing to sustain his line. Franz Hawlata was a wonderful Barak. True, there were moments when his tone sounded just a little threadbare, but they were but moments and in a sense they enabled his humanity to shine through all the more. What a difference there is between such grateful writing for the baritone and that for the tenor! Christine Brewer was fully equal to the demands of Barak’s Wife. It was quite an achievement of the production, given her usual cheerful nature, to render her so severe of aspect earlier on; it was also quite an achievement on her part for her to portray this musically. Her tone blossomed like that of the Empress, for we should remember that Barak’s Wife gains immeasurably in humanity through her eventual appreciation of how close she comes to losing it through the near-sale of her shadow.
And then there was Jane Henschel, in the extraordinary role of the Nurse. After seeing her in Elektra at the Deutsche Oper in December, I wrote: ‘Jane Henschel is not the sort of artist to give so searingly nasty a reading of Klytämnestra as, say, Felicity Palmer.’ I confess that I misjudged her – or the production, which might have been urging her to accomplish something different; for here, as the Nurse, she positively oozed expressionistic, other-worldly malevolence. How clever Strauss’s writing is in this respect, since the part barely boasts a melody yet sears itself nevertheless into the memory as something quite different, allied to the darker, nocturnal realm otherwise only heard orchestrally. Henschel was every inch the vocal manifestation of this dangerous, perhaps evil presence, perfectly underlined by her menacing though never unduly exaggerated stage demeanour. The choral parts were all splendidly taken too, with a special mention due to the young singers, who sounded as children without ever tending towards the jejune or, as can often be the case, the verbally incomprehensible. Chorus-master Alessandro di Stefano had clearly done his preparatory work very well indeed.
For the orchestra, I have nothing but praise. The kaleidoscopic turns of Strauss’s extravagant orchestration held no fears whatsoever for the Parisian players. They sounded like a first-class international orchestra, which is of course what they are, although opera orchestras can often be underestimated in this respect. (Not for nothing is Pierre Boulez to conduct one of their symphonic concerts this season.) I should stress ‘international’, because, the concern for colour aside – and in any case this is probably more to be attributed to Kuhn – there was nothing especially ‘French’ about their sound. This may be regretted, but there is to be no going back to the days of those old Désormière and Ingelbrecht recordings; to attempt to do so would indeed represent an especially perverse form of historicism (which probably means that someone will soon inflict it upon us). If the orchestra lacked the quintessentially old German sound of the most natural of Straussian orchestras, such as, in their different ways, the Staatskapelle Dresden or the Vienna Philharmonic, it boasted far more than its undeniable and at times staggering virtuosity. The strings glowed yet were duly incisive. The production nicely highlighted the second – after Don Quixote – of Strauss’s almost-cello-concerti by having the soloist quite mesmerisingly hold our visual as well as aural attention on stage. Woodwind colour both complemented and sang out solistically in a variety of combinations. The brass and percussion did everything that could have been asked of them. However extreme the orchestral demands, the ensemble never lost a cultured sound, never sounded brash, which is as it should be. If Kuhn’s concern for colour was sometimes at the expense of a stronger feeling of line, this should not be exaggerated, at least not from the second half of the first act onwards. Die Frau was better conducted as a whole by Christoph von Dohnányi the last time it appeared at Covent Garden (in David Hockney’s wonderful production), but Kuhn certainly did not deserve the scattered booing he received at his curtain call.
One thing that is unusual, though not unique, about Die Frau in terms of the Strauss canon is that, in Wagnerian and often Mozartian style, it does appear to have a ‘message’ to impart. It would, I think, be ludicrous to claim this of Elektra or Salome – moral homilies concerning familial breakdown?! – but equally to do so of Rosenkavalier, Arabella, or Daphne. This is where the work could easily fall down, for on the face of it, the imperative to procreate is not the most promising of dramatic territory and could start to sound more than a little ridiculous; it might even end up enlisting Strauss and Hofmannsthal in the service of the more reactionary elements of the Roman Catholic Church. This is not the whole story, of course, for, especially earlier on, much attention is granted to the more promising subject matter of a woman’s longing for progeny. Yet what the production managed as a whole to accomplish was to give due attention to both, by imparting a sense of wonder at the mystery of life, rather than by dwelling unduly on the detail. In this, we could all share – and did.
The Emperor – Jon Villars
The Empress – Eva-Maria Westbroek
The Nurse – Jane Henschel
Barak – Franz Hawlata
Barak’s Wife – Christine Brewer
The Spirit-Messenger – Ralf Lukas
Voice of the Apparition of Youth – Ryan MacPherson
Voice of the Falcon, Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple – Elena Tsallagova
Voice from Above – Jane Henschel
The One-Eyed – Yuri Kissin
The One-Armed – Gregory Reinhart
The Hunchback – John Easterlin
Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris
Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine
Children’s Choir of the Opéra National de Paris
Alessandro di Stefano (chorus master)
Gustav Kuhn (conductor)
Robert Wilson (producer and designer)
Giuseppe Fregeni (co-producer)
Christope Martin (co-designer)
Moidele Bickel (costumes)
Andreas Fuchs (lighting)
Strauss’s operas broadly tend to be either Wagnerian or Mozartian. One of the many extraordinary things about Die Frau ohne Schatten – or La femme sans ombre, as it was generally called at the Paris Opéra – is that it manages to be both. It certainly qualifies as post-Wagnerian music drama in terms of the leitmotivic writing that both spans and in large part constitutes the work’s structure. The descent of the Empress and Nurse from the spirit world to that of humanity is surely a conscious homage to Das Rheingold’s descent to Nibelheim and the night-watchmen (choral rather than solo) at the end of Act I cannot but recall Die Meistersinger, whilst the trials of the opera’s two couples are a clear and acknowledge reference to The Magic Flute. Wagner and Mozart combine in the musico-dramatic opposition between spirit and human world and in the clear progression from the former to the latter: a homage to and development of the stories both of Brünnhilde and of Tamino and Pamina. The epic Wagnerian element is most to the fore during the first two acts, with the Mozartian trials reserved for the third. However, this in no sense prevents Strauss from continuing that quasi-expressionistic writing which may surprise the listener aware that Der Rosenkavalier and Ariadne auf Naxos (in part) precede Die Frau. The polytonalism on offer here, although more sparing than that of Elektra, is every bit as ‘advanced’. This may seem less odd when we also consider the almost contemporary, all-too-readily underestimated Nietzschean (Anti-Christian) tone-poem, An Alpine Symphony¸ which ought already to have brought into question Strauss’s alleged ‘reversion’ in and after Rosenkavalier. In any case, Strauss – and to some extent, Hofmannsthal – is so often found to be playing with the history of music and of musical drama, ever more explicitly until its ultimate treatment in Capriccio.
The musical forces required in Strauss’s opera are huge too: the various choirs, the violas and ‘cellos split as well as the violins, the wind- and thunder-machines, quadruple winds and so forth. Like the Schoenberg of the Gurrelieder or the Op.8 Orchestral Songs, however, Strauss draws from a vast orchestral palette with chamber-music restraint as well as overpowering near-bombast. The colouristic variegation of the score remind us that he is a contemporary of Debussy and Bartók. Then, of course, there are the heavy demands placed upon the solo voices, not least the typically merciless writing for the tenor Emperor. Moreover, the manifold ambiguities in Hofmannsthal’s libretto – how should one weight the post-Wagner and Magic Flute elements respectively? – provide all sorts of pitfalls for directors. This, then, is not an easy work to perform, and resounding successes have not been so many.
During the first half of the first act, I had my doubts, and feared that we might be in for a prolonged evening. Gustav Kuhn revealed a myriad of colours from the orchestra, but his conducting otherwise came across as rather stiff. This seemed to match all too well the predictably static nature of Robert Wilson’s Japanese-influenced production, although already this exerted an undeniable theatrical fascination. Not long after reaching Barak’s hut, however, Kuhn appeared better able to think in long phrases and periods, and this transmitted itself to the orchestra and thence to the audience (or at least to this member thereof). Wilson’s production truly came into its own from this point onwards, both doing something quite different from the music and yet in tune with its demands. Indeed, one of the most impressive aspects of the production – and so lamentably rare in opera – was the attention Wilson and his team paid to the score. Movement, colour, and transformation were clearly, if sometimes surprisingly, connected to the orchestra in particular. If the production was not merely the obedient servant of the music – and why should it be? – nor did it ever jar. The designs were generally simple but powerful, not least in the striking use of different colours and their interactions both within and between scenes. There was much that I could not claim to ‘understand’, but to attempt this rather seemed to be missing the point, for I could tell that there was something purposeful, intelligent, and often quite magical going on: something which need not necessarily be translated into words. (After all, the same is often said, and not without reason, of music.) The choreographic direction of the falcon in particular impressed: here was beguiling and perhaps threatening mystery. Humour was present too, in the guise of Barak’s ghastly ne’er-do-well brothers, here portrayed as clowns. Their vocalisation was as impressive as their staged portrayal, indicating commendable attention to detail in depth as well as breadth of casting.
I do not think there was a weak link in the cast – which, in this of all operas, is a signal achievement. It was notable, moreover, that the improvement during the first act I mentioned in terms of the conducting was reflected, if perhaps less dramatically, in terms of the singing. For instance, Eva-Maria Westbroek’s pitching was initially somewhat approximate, but this problem seemed to disappear. Henceforth, she proved a ravishing Empress, thoughtful too in her transition from spirit to woman; her tone developed in tandem with her character. In the thankless role of the Emperor, Jon Villars was heroic if not exciting. I could have imagined a reading with greater variety of shading but, given the orchestral torrents raging against him, that is far easier said than done. Villars’s tone was strong and secure, and there was never any question of him failing to sustain his line. Franz Hawlata was a wonderful Barak. True, there were moments when his tone sounded just a little threadbare, but they were but moments and in a sense they enabled his humanity to shine through all the more. What a difference there is between such grateful writing for the baritone and that for the tenor! Christine Brewer was fully equal to the demands of Barak’s Wife. It was quite an achievement of the production, given her usual cheerful nature, to render her so severe of aspect earlier on; it was also quite an achievement on her part for her to portray this musically. Her tone blossomed like that of the Empress, for we should remember that Barak’s Wife gains immeasurably in humanity through her eventual appreciation of how close she comes to losing it through the near-sale of her shadow.
And then there was Jane Henschel, in the extraordinary role of the Nurse. After seeing her in Elektra at the Deutsche Oper in December, I wrote: ‘Jane Henschel is not the sort of artist to give so searingly nasty a reading of Klytämnestra as, say, Felicity Palmer.’ I confess that I misjudged her – or the production, which might have been urging her to accomplish something different; for here, as the Nurse, she positively oozed expressionistic, other-worldly malevolence. How clever Strauss’s writing is in this respect, since the part barely boasts a melody yet sears itself nevertheless into the memory as something quite different, allied to the darker, nocturnal realm otherwise only heard orchestrally. Henschel was every inch the vocal manifestation of this dangerous, perhaps evil presence, perfectly underlined by her menacing though never unduly exaggerated stage demeanour. The choral parts were all splendidly taken too, with a special mention due to the young singers, who sounded as children without ever tending towards the jejune or, as can often be the case, the verbally incomprehensible. Chorus-master Alessandro di Stefano had clearly done his preparatory work very well indeed.
For the orchestra, I have nothing but praise. The kaleidoscopic turns of Strauss’s extravagant orchestration held no fears whatsoever for the Parisian players. They sounded like a first-class international orchestra, which is of course what they are, although opera orchestras can often be underestimated in this respect. (Not for nothing is Pierre Boulez to conduct one of their symphonic concerts this season.) I should stress ‘international’, because, the concern for colour aside – and in any case this is probably more to be attributed to Kuhn – there was nothing especially ‘French’ about their sound. This may be regretted, but there is to be no going back to the days of those old Désormière and Ingelbrecht recordings; to attempt to do so would indeed represent an especially perverse form of historicism (which probably means that someone will soon inflict it upon us). If the orchestra lacked the quintessentially old German sound of the most natural of Straussian orchestras, such as, in their different ways, the Staatskapelle Dresden or the Vienna Philharmonic, it boasted far more than its undeniable and at times staggering virtuosity. The strings glowed yet were duly incisive. The production nicely highlighted the second – after Don Quixote – of Strauss’s almost-cello-concerti by having the soloist quite mesmerisingly hold our visual as well as aural attention on stage. Woodwind colour both complemented and sang out solistically in a variety of combinations. The brass and percussion did everything that could have been asked of them. However extreme the orchestral demands, the ensemble never lost a cultured sound, never sounded brash, which is as it should be. If Kuhn’s concern for colour was sometimes at the expense of a stronger feeling of line, this should not be exaggerated, at least not from the second half of the first act onwards. Die Frau was better conducted as a whole by Christoph von Dohnányi the last time it appeared at Covent Garden (in David Hockney’s wonderful production), but Kuhn certainly did not deserve the scattered booing he received at his curtain call.
One thing that is unusual, though not unique, about Die Frau in terms of the Strauss canon is that, in Wagnerian and often Mozartian style, it does appear to have a ‘message’ to impart. It would, I think, be ludicrous to claim this of Elektra or Salome – moral homilies concerning familial breakdown?! – but equally to do so of Rosenkavalier, Arabella, or Daphne. This is where the work could easily fall down, for on the face of it, the imperative to procreate is not the most promising of dramatic territory and could start to sound more than a little ridiculous; it might even end up enlisting Strauss and Hofmannsthal in the service of the more reactionary elements of the Roman Catholic Church. This is not the whole story, of course, for, especially earlier on, much attention is granted to the more promising subject matter of a woman’s longing for progeny. Yet what the production managed as a whole to accomplish was to give due attention to both, by imparting a sense of wonder at the mystery of life, rather than by dwelling unduly on the detail. In this, we could all share – and did.
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Prokofiev and Roussel, Kissin/Philharmonia/Ashkenazy, 24 January 2008
Royal Festival Hall
Roussel – Bacchus et Ariane: Suite no.1
Prokofiev – Piano Concerto no.3 in C major, Op.26
Prokofiev – Symphony no.6 in E flat minor, Op.111
Evgeny Kissin (piano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor)
Prokofiev greatly admired the music of Albert Roussel, and one could hear why in this first suite from the ballet Bacchus et Ariane. Roussel exhibits a splendid command of the orchestra, a sharp ear for rhythm, and a typically Gallic lack of sentimentality. Indeed, there were passages one might have been forgiven for attributing to the Parisian Prokofiev of the 1920s. The Fiery Angel and Le pas d’acier sprang to mind. Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia gave a good account of this suite. There was always a clear sense of the music’s direction and the dances were well characterised. The Stravinskian influence from The Rite of Spring was apparent at the moment when Theseus’s men rush at Bacchus, although Roussel never sounds quite so primitivist. A greater variety of orchestral colour would have benefited the performance; this is not Ravel, but there is some gorgeous orchestration nevertheless. However, the audience would still have had a good sense of the music and its character.
Evgeny Kissin joined the orchestra for Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. His was a towering reading of what is probably the most popular of Prokofiev’s five piano concertos. The music suits Kissin perfectly, providing a great opportunity not only to showcase his phenomenal technique, but also for the various aspects of his individual sonority to shine through. His tone can melt as well as stab, and never loses its strikingly mature roundedness. Especially noteworthy was the careful weighting of each chord, however frenetic the context, so that even when Prokofiev is at his most percussive, every note is still made to tell. This is a far rarer gift than one might imagine. It clearly helped to have a conductor with intimate knowledge of the score under his fingers. Ashkenazy’s direction was always sure and was estimably synchronised with the soloist. An especially noteworthy instance was the third movement’s perfect alignment between the piano, percussion, and con legno strings. Elsewhere, the strings sometimes sounded a little thin, overshadowed by the fine contributions of the duly grotesque – where necessary – woodwind and the powerful brass.
Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony is a more sombre work than its immediate predecessor, the Fifth, and arguably the greater of these two great ‘war symphonies’. Ashkenazy, however, made it sound closer to the more triumphal Fifth than I can previously recall. The strange combination of darkness and other-worldliness that characterises the first movement was never made quite to tell as it should, nor was the driving sense of purpose that should once and for all give the lie to claims that Prokofiev was not a true symphonist. Songfulness replaced threnody in the second movement Largo: not unattractive in itself, but by the same token mistaking what seems to me to be the predominant quality of the movement. Ashkenazy’s direction here sometimes had a tendency to meander, where clarity and implacability of purpose should be all. Indeed, the brooding quality of dark tragedy was short-changed throughout, with the consequence that the masterly handled – at least in isolation – final explosion at the end of the otherwise almost carefree third movement seemed to come almost from nowhere, and lost its cyclical sense.
Ashkenazy’s reading sounded oddly like a work very much in progress, as if the symphony were new to him, which of course it is not. Once again, the woodwind and brass – trumpets and horns with wonderfully ‘Russian’ vibrato on occasion – outshone the strings. The 'cellos in particular sounded surprisingly thin, worlds apart from Mravinsky’s Leningrad Philharmonic, who premiered the work in 1947. Such weakness was not evenly spread throughout the section, for the violins on occasion at least captured an authentic Prokofiev bitter-sweetness, and the double basses impressed throughout. The latter, however, only served to highlight what was lacking above.
Roussel – Bacchus et Ariane: Suite no.1
Prokofiev – Piano Concerto no.3 in C major, Op.26
Prokofiev – Symphony no.6 in E flat minor, Op.111
Evgeny Kissin (piano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor)
Prokofiev greatly admired the music of Albert Roussel, and one could hear why in this first suite from the ballet Bacchus et Ariane. Roussel exhibits a splendid command of the orchestra, a sharp ear for rhythm, and a typically Gallic lack of sentimentality. Indeed, there were passages one might have been forgiven for attributing to the Parisian Prokofiev of the 1920s. The Fiery Angel and Le pas d’acier sprang to mind. Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia gave a good account of this suite. There was always a clear sense of the music’s direction and the dances were well characterised. The Stravinskian influence from The Rite of Spring was apparent at the moment when Theseus’s men rush at Bacchus, although Roussel never sounds quite so primitivist. A greater variety of orchestral colour would have benefited the performance; this is not Ravel, but there is some gorgeous orchestration nevertheless. However, the audience would still have had a good sense of the music and its character.
Evgeny Kissin joined the orchestra for Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. His was a towering reading of what is probably the most popular of Prokofiev’s five piano concertos. The music suits Kissin perfectly, providing a great opportunity not only to showcase his phenomenal technique, but also for the various aspects of his individual sonority to shine through. His tone can melt as well as stab, and never loses its strikingly mature roundedness. Especially noteworthy was the careful weighting of each chord, however frenetic the context, so that even when Prokofiev is at his most percussive, every note is still made to tell. This is a far rarer gift than one might imagine. It clearly helped to have a conductor with intimate knowledge of the score under his fingers. Ashkenazy’s direction was always sure and was estimably synchronised with the soloist. An especially noteworthy instance was the third movement’s perfect alignment between the piano, percussion, and con legno strings. Elsewhere, the strings sometimes sounded a little thin, overshadowed by the fine contributions of the duly grotesque – where necessary – woodwind and the powerful brass.
Prokofiev’s Sixth Symphony is a more sombre work than its immediate predecessor, the Fifth, and arguably the greater of these two great ‘war symphonies’. Ashkenazy, however, made it sound closer to the more triumphal Fifth than I can previously recall. The strange combination of darkness and other-worldliness that characterises the first movement was never made quite to tell as it should, nor was the driving sense of purpose that should once and for all give the lie to claims that Prokofiev was not a true symphonist. Songfulness replaced threnody in the second movement Largo: not unattractive in itself, but by the same token mistaking what seems to me to be the predominant quality of the movement. Ashkenazy’s direction here sometimes had a tendency to meander, where clarity and implacability of purpose should be all. Indeed, the brooding quality of dark tragedy was short-changed throughout, with the consequence that the masterly handled – at least in isolation – final explosion at the end of the otherwise almost carefree third movement seemed to come almost from nowhere, and lost its cyclical sense.
Ashkenazy’s reading sounded oddly like a work very much in progress, as if the symphony were new to him, which of course it is not. Once again, the woodwind and brass – trumpets and horns with wonderfully ‘Russian’ vibrato on occasion – outshone the strings. The 'cellos in particular sounded surprisingly thin, worlds apart from Mravinsky’s Leningrad Philharmonic, who premiered the work in 1947. Such weakness was not evenly spread throughout the section, for the violins on occasion at least captured an authentic Prokofiev bitter-sweetness, and the double basses impressed throughout. The latter, however, only served to highlight what was lacking above.
Sunday, 20 January 2008
Angela Hewitt, The Well-tempered Clavier, Book I, 20 January 2008
Royal Festival Hall
Angela Hewitt (piano)
All the clichés concerning the ‘48’ are true: the Old Testament of the piano repertoire (Hans von Bülow, though I have also seen the quotation attributed to Liszt), and so forth. Speaking as a pianist, there is a great deal of music without which I should feel bereft but, were everything else somehow to be lost, I think I could just about cope so long as I were able to play the Well-tempered Clavier. One would be hard put, to put it mildly, to perform both books in a single sitting, although I can imagine Daniel Barenboim pulling it off one of these days, perhaps to preface a St Matthew Passion. Even performances of a whole book at a time are not all that common, which, given the challenges involved, is just as well; indeed, it is a good thing that such a performance should be a special occasion. And a special occasion this was. I was enormously moved by how visibly moved Angela Hewitt was at the end of the recital. It would be a scandal if to perform this music meant little to a performer, but one could see that Bach meant almost everything to her. Whatever qualifications I may voice below – and they generally relate to matters of taste rather than of judgement – this was a tremendous achievement from a fine pianist, a fine musician, and a fine Bachian.
Perhaps through nerves, the first Prelude and Fugue, in C major, was a little below par. Pianists are understandably eager to avoid sentimentalising the Prelude, given Gounod’s dreadful bowdlerisation, but I found Hewitt’s reading disappointingly plain, over-restricted in dynamic contrasts and crying out for a touch of pedal. Bach’s homage to the style brisé of the clavecinistes can bear a little romanticism at least. (Hewitt has shown herself unafraid to draw from a wider palette in Couperin.) The fugue had a couple of stumbles, though nothing about which to worry unduly. Thereafter, however, there was barely a weak link in the progression.
To begin with, I worried that Hewitt might be treating the music with kid-gloves. The C minor and D major Prelude and Fugues, for example, were beautifully performed, but might have been considered a little precious. The brightness of Hewitt’s Fazioli piano did not help, I thought, but she doubtless has her reasons for preferring this instrument. However, there were already exceptions: the stile antico C sharp minor Fugue evinced real gravity without ever becoming ponderous. And the sarabande E flat minor Prelude was gravely beautiful, the weighting of the second beat perfectly judged and varied so as to lilt without the slightest hint of period pedantry. I was put in mind of Busoni’s masterful Sarabande und Cortège.
Hewitt certainly had the measure of the E flat major Prelude and Fugue. Its tremendous Prelude – a toccata and double fugue in itself – was very well-judged, the toccata possessing enough of a sense of quasi-improvisatory freedom to contrast with the strictness of the fugue. Her voicing of its double counterpoint was a splendid example of variation in light and shade, of shifting perspectives, whilst remaining relatively ‘Classical’ in outlook. There are other, more ‘Romantic’ ways of accomplishing this, but Hewitt’s worked just as well. After the Prelude, the relative lightness of the Fugue proper came as a refreshing though far from insubstantial sorbet: Hewitt’s touch aptly had something of the Mendelssohn scherzo about it. The extraordinary variety of Bach’s imagination was well served by this inversion of what would usually be considered ‘typical’, namely a Prelude leading onto a more searching, ‘substantial’ Fugue. In fact, as Hewitt showed, there is nothing ‘typical’ in Bach’s wisdom: systematic in a positive rather than bureaucratic fashion. Classification in the sense of nineteenth-century theorisers such as Cherubini (Tovey’s bête noire) has no place here.
The F major Fugue flowed beautifully, thanks to Hewitt’s exquisite voicing (the and her finely judged sense of rhythmic momentum – which only seemed to desert her in the somewhat awkward-sounding G minor Fugue. (Nobody, bar perhaps Edwin Fischer, is perfect!) From the F minor Prelude and Fugue onwards, a new gravity was apparent. Initially, I put this down to the involved chromaticism of the fugue, but there was a sense thereafter of new metaphysical horizons. This is speculation, but I wondered whether Hewitt was attempting to impart more of a sense of progression within the ‘work’ as a whole, intending to climax in the extraordinary B minor Fugue (of which more below). There are many things one could say about this, both pro and contra, but I do not think we need bother ourselves here with the composer’s spurious intention, since the ‘work’, such as it is, was never ‘intended’ to be performed whole in any case. I think Hewitt’s approach, if I am correct in divining it, is a perfectly reasonably one, although it might slightly have undersold the earlier Preludes and Fugues.
I do not wish to imply that this necessarily involved romanticisation – or even Romanticisation – of the second half of the book, although there was more of a sense of the Gothic to the fugues, especially those in minor keys. However, it revealed Hewitt as a more Romantically-inclined Bach pianist than I had previously considered to be the case. There was still a great difference between her and, say, Fischer, let alone Barenboim or Richter (Sviatoslav, not Karl), but I was pleased to have my misconception corrected. Nor did this development preclude a declamatory, more ‘Baroque’ style where appropriate, as for instance at the opening of the A flat major Prelude. However, I was a little surprised – and not at all unpleasantly – to hear the B flat minor Prelude taken quite so slowly and its accompanying fugue achieving quite so pianist a climax. The bass of the B minor Prelude was taken non legato, as often seems to be the case. (Even Barenboim does this.) I tend to prefer it otherwise, but have to admit that I was convinced by the contrast between right hand and left hand, which somehow – I am not quite sure why – put me in mind of the texture of Mozart’s Bach homage in the Magic Flute’s choral prelude for the Two Armoured Men. The B minor Fugue was given quite a Romantic reading, not afraid to use the full resources of the modern instrument. Here, I prefer a more extreme, labyrinthine, almost Bergian approach to this extraordinary harmonic counterpoint, which is really not so far from the Second Viennese School; not for nothing did Schoenberg, pointing to this very fugue, call Bach ‘the first composer with twelve tones’. However, on its own terms, Hewitt’s account worked very well and brought the recital to an exciting climax. She thoroughly deserved her extended ovation.
Angela Hewitt (piano)
All the clichés concerning the ‘48’ are true: the Old Testament of the piano repertoire (Hans von Bülow, though I have also seen the quotation attributed to Liszt), and so forth. Speaking as a pianist, there is a great deal of music without which I should feel bereft but, were everything else somehow to be lost, I think I could just about cope so long as I were able to play the Well-tempered Clavier. One would be hard put, to put it mildly, to perform both books in a single sitting, although I can imagine Daniel Barenboim pulling it off one of these days, perhaps to preface a St Matthew Passion. Even performances of a whole book at a time are not all that common, which, given the challenges involved, is just as well; indeed, it is a good thing that such a performance should be a special occasion. And a special occasion this was. I was enormously moved by how visibly moved Angela Hewitt was at the end of the recital. It would be a scandal if to perform this music meant little to a performer, but one could see that Bach meant almost everything to her. Whatever qualifications I may voice below – and they generally relate to matters of taste rather than of judgement – this was a tremendous achievement from a fine pianist, a fine musician, and a fine Bachian.
Perhaps through nerves, the first Prelude and Fugue, in C major, was a little below par. Pianists are understandably eager to avoid sentimentalising the Prelude, given Gounod’s dreadful bowdlerisation, but I found Hewitt’s reading disappointingly plain, over-restricted in dynamic contrasts and crying out for a touch of pedal. Bach’s homage to the style brisé of the clavecinistes can bear a little romanticism at least. (Hewitt has shown herself unafraid to draw from a wider palette in Couperin.) The fugue had a couple of stumbles, though nothing about which to worry unduly. Thereafter, however, there was barely a weak link in the progression.
To begin with, I worried that Hewitt might be treating the music with kid-gloves. The C minor and D major Prelude and Fugues, for example, were beautifully performed, but might have been considered a little precious. The brightness of Hewitt’s Fazioli piano did not help, I thought, but she doubtless has her reasons for preferring this instrument. However, there were already exceptions: the stile antico C sharp minor Fugue evinced real gravity without ever becoming ponderous. And the sarabande E flat minor Prelude was gravely beautiful, the weighting of the second beat perfectly judged and varied so as to lilt without the slightest hint of period pedantry. I was put in mind of Busoni’s masterful Sarabande und Cortège.
Hewitt certainly had the measure of the E flat major Prelude and Fugue. Its tremendous Prelude – a toccata and double fugue in itself – was very well-judged, the toccata possessing enough of a sense of quasi-improvisatory freedom to contrast with the strictness of the fugue. Her voicing of its double counterpoint was a splendid example of variation in light and shade, of shifting perspectives, whilst remaining relatively ‘Classical’ in outlook. There are other, more ‘Romantic’ ways of accomplishing this, but Hewitt’s worked just as well. After the Prelude, the relative lightness of the Fugue proper came as a refreshing though far from insubstantial sorbet: Hewitt’s touch aptly had something of the Mendelssohn scherzo about it. The extraordinary variety of Bach’s imagination was well served by this inversion of what would usually be considered ‘typical’, namely a Prelude leading onto a more searching, ‘substantial’ Fugue. In fact, as Hewitt showed, there is nothing ‘typical’ in Bach’s wisdom: systematic in a positive rather than bureaucratic fashion. Classification in the sense of nineteenth-century theorisers such as Cherubini (Tovey’s bête noire) has no place here.
The F major Fugue flowed beautifully, thanks to Hewitt’s exquisite voicing (the and her finely judged sense of rhythmic momentum – which only seemed to desert her in the somewhat awkward-sounding G minor Fugue. (Nobody, bar perhaps Edwin Fischer, is perfect!) From the F minor Prelude and Fugue onwards, a new gravity was apparent. Initially, I put this down to the involved chromaticism of the fugue, but there was a sense thereafter of new metaphysical horizons. This is speculation, but I wondered whether Hewitt was attempting to impart more of a sense of progression within the ‘work’ as a whole, intending to climax in the extraordinary B minor Fugue (of which more below). There are many things one could say about this, both pro and contra, but I do not think we need bother ourselves here with the composer’s spurious intention, since the ‘work’, such as it is, was never ‘intended’ to be performed whole in any case. I think Hewitt’s approach, if I am correct in divining it, is a perfectly reasonably one, although it might slightly have undersold the earlier Preludes and Fugues.
I do not wish to imply that this necessarily involved romanticisation – or even Romanticisation – of the second half of the book, although there was more of a sense of the Gothic to the fugues, especially those in minor keys. However, it revealed Hewitt as a more Romantically-inclined Bach pianist than I had previously considered to be the case. There was still a great difference between her and, say, Fischer, let alone Barenboim or Richter (Sviatoslav, not Karl), but I was pleased to have my misconception corrected. Nor did this development preclude a declamatory, more ‘Baroque’ style where appropriate, as for instance at the opening of the A flat major Prelude. However, I was a little surprised – and not at all unpleasantly – to hear the B flat minor Prelude taken quite so slowly and its accompanying fugue achieving quite so pianist a climax. The bass of the B minor Prelude was taken non legato, as often seems to be the case. (Even Barenboim does this.) I tend to prefer it otherwise, but have to admit that I was convinced by the contrast between right hand and left hand, which somehow – I am not quite sure why – put me in mind of the texture of Mozart’s Bach homage in the Magic Flute’s choral prelude for the Two Armoured Men. The B minor Fugue was given quite a Romantic reading, not afraid to use the full resources of the modern instrument. Here, I prefer a more extreme, labyrinthine, almost Bergian approach to this extraordinary harmonic counterpoint, which is really not so far from the Second Viennese School; not for nothing did Schoenberg, pointing to this very fugue, call Bach ‘the first composer with twelve tones’. However, on its own terms, Hewitt’s account worked very well and brought the recital to an exciting climax. She thoroughly deserved her extended ovation.
Friday, 18 January 2008
Stephen Hough, Wigmore Hall, 17 January 2008
Wigmore Hall
Mendelssohn – Variations sérieuses in D minor, Op.54
Webern – Variations, Op.27
Beethoven – Piano Sonata in C minor, Op.111
Weber – Invitation to the Dance, Op.65
Chopin – Waltz in C sharp minor, Op.64 no.2
Chopin – Waltz in A flat major, Op.34 no.1
Saint-Saëns – Valse nonchalante, Op.110
Chabrier – Feuillet d’album
Debussy – La plus que lente
Liszt – Valse oubliée no.1
Liszt – Mephisto Waltz no.1
Stephen Hough (piano)
This recital fell clearly into two halves. The first focused upon variation form, the second upon the waltz. A packed Wigmore Hall was understandably eager to hear Stephen Hough, as was I. However, I came away feeling a little disappointed. Flashes of brilliance – sometimes, especially in the second half, rather more than that – were accompanied by some perfectly respectable yet surprisingly workmanlike pianism.
The Mendelssohn Variations sérieuses have had a number of advocates over the years, but I do not find an especially strong work here. The theme is a little dull, which need not betoken dull development; yet, despite some interesting moments, Mendelssohn does not seem particularly inspired for many of the variations. That said, the Variations found an able advocate in Hough. His touch was beautiful and there was a real sense of cumulative development as the variations gathered pace. The syncopations of the fifth variation were tellingly presented and the part-writing of the tenth variation’s fugato was projected with an admirable balance between contrapuntal clarity and harmonic progression. Hough hastened towards a dazzling peroration in the coda.
Webern fared less well. Hough’s was very much a horizontal rather than vertical reading, whereas the music requires an equilibrium and a dialectic between the two. The notes were very clear, crystal-clear even, but without the crystalline perfection – let alone the meaning – that, for example, Maurizio Pollini brings to this miraculous score. The second movement, marked Sehr schnell, sounded relentlessly loud, despite the acknowledged dynamic contrasts. Its notes sounded stabbed at, rather than sculpted. Usually this work is over in the twinkling of an eye; here, it threatened to overstay its welcome.
Beethoven’s final piano sonata received a reading somewhere in between. There was little about which one could justifiably complain, although, on the other hand, this was not a performance one will be likely to recall several years hence. An unusual aspect was the forthrightness of the opening Maestoso. One lost something in terms of harmonic ambiguity, but one sensed a kinship with Beethoven’s earlier masterpieces in C minor. Indeed, much of the first movement sounded closer to ‘middle-period’ Beethoven than to the more typically rarefied sublimity of ‘late’ Beethoven. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that: holy ground does not always necessitate removal of one’s shoes. Yet something of this noble work’s secondary simplicity was lacking. Initial presentations of the first subject, in both the development and the recapitulation, sounded a little matter of fact and hard-driven, but there were also passages of considerable beauty, more in tune with the extraordinary metaphysical vistas Beethoven reveals. With the second-movement Arietta, we returned, of course, to variation form. There were once again some beautiful things here, not least those all-important trills, preparing their breathtaking modulatory way (all the more breathtaking for the movement’s general lack of modulation). Hough remained utterly secure in his technical command. He exhibited a clear understanding of the music’s structure, without ever quite appearing to be breathing its air of another planet.
It seemed a little cruel to position Weber’s rather trivial Invitation to the Dance – which sounds better in Berlioz’s orchestration – next to two of Chopin’s Waltzes. Despite a little haziness at one point in the passagework, Hough proved an able advocate for the Weber, but he could not entirely obscure its sectional writing and sometimes rather threadbare invention. To think that this was the work of the composer of Der Freischütz! The Chopin waltzes received generally fine readings, especially the C sharp minor work. Hough exhibited a sound command of idiom and style: not the most overtly ‘Polish’ of readings, but there are many ways to perform Chopin. Inner voices, of which there are fewer in the waltzes than in many other Chopin works, were made to tell where they did appear, but never at the expense of the longer line, nor indeed of a dancing grace. I retained a nagging doubt, however, that there remained unplumbed emotional depths.
Saint-Saëns’s Valse nonchalante did what it said on the tin. It was mildly interesting to make its acquaintance, but I doubt I should rush to hear it again. Chabrier’s Feuillet d’album, whilst hardly a profound work, exhibited more charm, both in itself and in Hough’s account. The pianist also had the measure of Debussy’s slyly ironic, yet far from un-affectionate La plus que lente. Debussy’s accomplishment, however, rather forcefully consigned his compatriots into the shade.
The one serious disappointment in terms of performance from the second half was the first Liszt Valse oubliée. Its technical challenges posed no problem to Hough, but he rather glided over the musical content. Liszt of all composers needs to be treated as more than an opportunity for pianistic display. Perhaps Hough was holding something in reserve for the first Mephisto Waltz, for this received an outstanding performance. The astonishing opening accretions of fifths underlined that we are but a stone’s throw, if that, from Bartók. Mephistopheles’s music was dangerous and enticing, though never in a flashy sense. Faust was dangerous, exciting – and beguiling. Hough played like a man – indeed a Faustian figure – possessed, and received a deservedly rapturous innovation at the end. It was worth having attended the performance simply for this final piece. The recital was being recorded for release by Hyperion.
Mendelssohn – Variations sérieuses in D minor, Op.54
Webern – Variations, Op.27
Beethoven – Piano Sonata in C minor, Op.111
Weber – Invitation to the Dance, Op.65
Chopin – Waltz in C sharp minor, Op.64 no.2
Chopin – Waltz in A flat major, Op.34 no.1
Saint-Saëns – Valse nonchalante, Op.110
Chabrier – Feuillet d’album
Debussy – La plus que lente
Liszt – Valse oubliée no.1
Liszt – Mephisto Waltz no.1
Stephen Hough (piano)
This recital fell clearly into two halves. The first focused upon variation form, the second upon the waltz. A packed Wigmore Hall was understandably eager to hear Stephen Hough, as was I. However, I came away feeling a little disappointed. Flashes of brilliance – sometimes, especially in the second half, rather more than that – were accompanied by some perfectly respectable yet surprisingly workmanlike pianism.
The Mendelssohn Variations sérieuses have had a number of advocates over the years, but I do not find an especially strong work here. The theme is a little dull, which need not betoken dull development; yet, despite some interesting moments, Mendelssohn does not seem particularly inspired for many of the variations. That said, the Variations found an able advocate in Hough. His touch was beautiful and there was a real sense of cumulative development as the variations gathered pace. The syncopations of the fifth variation were tellingly presented and the part-writing of the tenth variation’s fugato was projected with an admirable balance between contrapuntal clarity and harmonic progression. Hough hastened towards a dazzling peroration in the coda.
Webern fared less well. Hough’s was very much a horizontal rather than vertical reading, whereas the music requires an equilibrium and a dialectic between the two. The notes were very clear, crystal-clear even, but without the crystalline perfection – let alone the meaning – that, for example, Maurizio Pollini brings to this miraculous score. The second movement, marked Sehr schnell, sounded relentlessly loud, despite the acknowledged dynamic contrasts. Its notes sounded stabbed at, rather than sculpted. Usually this work is over in the twinkling of an eye; here, it threatened to overstay its welcome.
Beethoven’s final piano sonata received a reading somewhere in between. There was little about which one could justifiably complain, although, on the other hand, this was not a performance one will be likely to recall several years hence. An unusual aspect was the forthrightness of the opening Maestoso. One lost something in terms of harmonic ambiguity, but one sensed a kinship with Beethoven’s earlier masterpieces in C minor. Indeed, much of the first movement sounded closer to ‘middle-period’ Beethoven than to the more typically rarefied sublimity of ‘late’ Beethoven. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that: holy ground does not always necessitate removal of one’s shoes. Yet something of this noble work’s secondary simplicity was lacking. Initial presentations of the first subject, in both the development and the recapitulation, sounded a little matter of fact and hard-driven, but there were also passages of considerable beauty, more in tune with the extraordinary metaphysical vistas Beethoven reveals. With the second-movement Arietta, we returned, of course, to variation form. There were once again some beautiful things here, not least those all-important trills, preparing their breathtaking modulatory way (all the more breathtaking for the movement’s general lack of modulation). Hough remained utterly secure in his technical command. He exhibited a clear understanding of the music’s structure, without ever quite appearing to be breathing its air of another planet.
It seemed a little cruel to position Weber’s rather trivial Invitation to the Dance – which sounds better in Berlioz’s orchestration – next to two of Chopin’s Waltzes. Despite a little haziness at one point in the passagework, Hough proved an able advocate for the Weber, but he could not entirely obscure its sectional writing and sometimes rather threadbare invention. To think that this was the work of the composer of Der Freischütz! The Chopin waltzes received generally fine readings, especially the C sharp minor work. Hough exhibited a sound command of idiom and style: not the most overtly ‘Polish’ of readings, but there are many ways to perform Chopin. Inner voices, of which there are fewer in the waltzes than in many other Chopin works, were made to tell where they did appear, but never at the expense of the longer line, nor indeed of a dancing grace. I retained a nagging doubt, however, that there remained unplumbed emotional depths.
Saint-Saëns’s Valse nonchalante did what it said on the tin. It was mildly interesting to make its acquaintance, but I doubt I should rush to hear it again. Chabrier’s Feuillet d’album, whilst hardly a profound work, exhibited more charm, both in itself and in Hough’s account. The pianist also had the measure of Debussy’s slyly ironic, yet far from un-affectionate La plus que lente. Debussy’s accomplishment, however, rather forcefully consigned his compatriots into the shade.
The one serious disappointment in terms of performance from the second half was the first Liszt Valse oubliée. Its technical challenges posed no problem to Hough, but he rather glided over the musical content. Liszt of all composers needs to be treated as more than an opportunity for pianistic display. Perhaps Hough was holding something in reserve for the first Mephisto Waltz, for this received an outstanding performance. The astonishing opening accretions of fifths underlined that we are but a stone’s throw, if that, from Bartók. Mephistopheles’s music was dangerous and enticing, though never in a flashy sense. Faust was dangerous, exciting – and beguiling. Hough played like a man – indeed a Faustian figure – possessed, and received a deservedly rapturous innovation at the end. It was worth having attended the performance simply for this final piece. The recital was being recorded for release by Hyperion.
Monday, 7 January 2008
Strauss (and other) Lieder, Wigmore Hall, 6 January 2007
Wigmore Hall
Strauss: Ständchen; Seitdem dein Aug’; Nur mut!; Das Geheimnis; Sehnsucht; Liebeshymnus; O süsser Mai; Himmelsboten
Ivor Gurney: On Wenlock Edge; Ha’nacker Mill; The Salley Gardens; Snow; Hawk and Buckle
Strauss: Freundliche Vision; Ich schwebe; Kling!
Strauss: Amor; Einkehr; Mit deinen blauen Augen; Ein Obdach gegen Sturm; Rote Rosen; Die erwachter Rose; Die heiligen drei Könige
Frank Bridge: Adoration; Go not, happy day; Berceuse; Come to me in my dreams; O that it were so!
Strauss: Mein Herz ist stumm; Wozu noch, Mädchen; Wie sollten wir geheim sie halten
Rebecca Bottone (soprano)
Nathan Vale (tenor)
Paul Plummer (piano)
This was the last of three Wigmore Hall concerts devoted to the Lieder of Richard Strauss. Common to all was the pianist and deviser of the programmes, Paul Plummer. Each programme had included songs by other composers: from France in the first, Russia in the second, and England in the third. I assume that these works were chosen with the evening’s singers in mind, since there did not seem to be an obvious connection between Ivor Gurney and Frank Bridge on the one hand, and Strauss on the other. No matter: if there were no especial connection, nor did the combination jar unduly, and the English songs certainly showed off the vocal soloists to advantage.
Paul Plummer’s contribution as pianist merits enthusiastic praise. Strauss’s piano parts can be treacherous indeed, though one would hardly have known it, such was Plummer’s finely-judged virtuosity: never drawing attention to itself for attention’s sake, but never unduly reticent either. The young singers could hardly have wished for a better guide. The pearly tones required in the opening Ständchen set a standard which Plummer continued to meet. The piano bells in Liebeshymnus were set in beautiful counterpoint with the underlying chords; this is not at all easy to accomplish. Sehnsucht’s almost Lisztian interlude between the third and fourth stanza resolved perfectly into the Tristan-esque harmony that opens the fourth. Strauss’s musical antecedents were pointed up without scoring points; the composer was situated in a tradition that goes beyond what is conventionally considered to be at the heart of Lieder-writing. I greatly appreciated this, since there can occasionally be a tendency from Lieder enthusiasts to cordon off their province from other musical realms, not least from that of opera. Song and opera are different of course, rather as chamber and orchestral music are different, but there is a great deal of interplay, and a songwriter such as Strauss can have more in common with Wagner than might necessarily be the case with another songwriter. And Plummer passed an especially stern test when it came to that wonderful Heine setting, Die heiligen drei Könige. The piano part is actually a transcription, the orchestral song being the original. When I heard Roger Vignoles at Edinburgh in August, even he seemed unable to rid one of the impression of loss. With Plummer, the music was taken more soberly, less overtly pictorially: one would never have guessed its orchestral origin. The horns of Mein Herz ist stumm’s ‘Hörnerklang’ were beautifully characterised, again without being overdone and making one wish there were a real orchestra present.
Rebecca Bottone’s contribution was more problematical. One does not have to be Jessye Norman to sing Strauss – although it certainly helps. However, I am not at all convinced that Bottone’s voice was appropriate. It reminded me immediately of Reri Grist; my next thought was that this sounded very much the sort of chirpy, rather shrill voice conductors seem fond of allotting to roles such as Mozart’s Blonde. (I am not quite sure why, but that is a different matter.) When I consulted Bottone’s biography, sure and enough Blonde was given pride of place. The voice, in any case, lacked richness of tone and adequate differentiation of colours. Her bearing, visual as well as vocal, could be excessively winsome, especially in Amor, Strauss’s Cupid song. That said, she coped very well in that setting with Strauss’ cruel demands in terms of coloratura. There were some distinctly odd German vowel sounds, and she rarely sounded as if she were singing from ‘within’ the language. Tuning, moreover, was not always as precise as it might have been. On the other hand, Bottone sounded far more at home with the Bridge settings, both vocally and linguistically. Rather surprisingly, her voice appeared to acquire greater colour than it had in Strauss. There was a lovely ending to the Tennyson setting, Go not, happy day: spot on in intonation and with an apt smile in the voice to complement ‘Roses are her cheeks,/And a rose her mouth.’ If some of Bridge’s music, especially the piano part, reminded one a little too much of the salon, or the Palm Court, that is hardly the singer’s fault. Following the Bridge settings, her remaining Strauss song, Wie sollten wir geheim sie halten, appeared to benefit. There was more colour, although it still did not really seem her thing.
Nathan Vale was a considerable improvement. I am not entirely sure that his was the most suitable voice for Strauss either, but there was certainly less of a mismatch. His voice is rather an ‘English’ tenor, albeit without the mannerisms that so often infect that vocal type. There were times when Strauss’s writing appeared to sit uncomfortably high, but then Strauss’s tenor writing is notorious, and the odd faltering aside, Vale put up a good fight. He was good at posing questions, for instance ‘Du fragst mich, Mädchen, was flüsternd der West/Vertraue den Blütenglocken?’ (Das Geheimnis). He imparted an aptly Schubertian chill to the openings of Sehnsucht and Mein Herz ist stumm. When the opening line of the latter song return at the end, there was truly something of the sepulchre or Winterreise to the revisiting. Die erwachter Rose brought a real sense of erwachen (awakening) as Friedrich von Sallet’s verse told of the nightingale’s sweet song and the bud blossoming into a rose. At times, I thought Vale could have sung out more freely. When he did, as in Die heiligen drei Könige, the results impressed. However, if the disparity were less great, he too sounded more at home in the English settings, in his case those by Gurney. Indeed, here he sang as if to the manor born. (It transpires that he and Plummer have recently recorded a disc of English song.) The poignancy of fading away in Edward Thomas setting, Snow, was rather special. And there was plenty of vigour to Robert Graves’s Hawk and Buckle. Indeed, this combination of youthful vigour and imploring, though never mawkish vulnerability seemed just right for the music of one whose career was so cruelly cut short by the First World War.
So if not always an ideal appreciation of Strauss, there was much to enjoy here. Many of these songs are not often encountered, which gave the recital extra value. Vale’s voice is still very young, and will doubtless open out more, but he was far from unequal to many of Strauss’s demands. Plummer was excellent, though I am not convinced that his programming matches his pianism. The encores, a group of five ‘very small’ (mercifully) songs by Sterndale Bennett were ‘humorous’ though not – at least to this listener – amusing. They seemed an odd conclusion to this recital, but would surely have seemed odder still had one attended the series of three Strauss recitals.
Strauss: Ständchen; Seitdem dein Aug’; Nur mut!; Das Geheimnis; Sehnsucht; Liebeshymnus; O süsser Mai; Himmelsboten
Ivor Gurney: On Wenlock Edge; Ha’nacker Mill; The Salley Gardens; Snow; Hawk and Buckle
Strauss: Freundliche Vision; Ich schwebe; Kling!
Strauss: Amor; Einkehr; Mit deinen blauen Augen; Ein Obdach gegen Sturm; Rote Rosen; Die erwachter Rose; Die heiligen drei Könige
Frank Bridge: Adoration; Go not, happy day; Berceuse; Come to me in my dreams; O that it were so!
Strauss: Mein Herz ist stumm; Wozu noch, Mädchen; Wie sollten wir geheim sie halten
Rebecca Bottone (soprano)
Nathan Vale (tenor)
Paul Plummer (piano)
This was the last of three Wigmore Hall concerts devoted to the Lieder of Richard Strauss. Common to all was the pianist and deviser of the programmes, Paul Plummer. Each programme had included songs by other composers: from France in the first, Russia in the second, and England in the third. I assume that these works were chosen with the evening’s singers in mind, since there did not seem to be an obvious connection between Ivor Gurney and Frank Bridge on the one hand, and Strauss on the other. No matter: if there were no especial connection, nor did the combination jar unduly, and the English songs certainly showed off the vocal soloists to advantage.
Paul Plummer’s contribution as pianist merits enthusiastic praise. Strauss’s piano parts can be treacherous indeed, though one would hardly have known it, such was Plummer’s finely-judged virtuosity: never drawing attention to itself for attention’s sake, but never unduly reticent either. The young singers could hardly have wished for a better guide. The pearly tones required in the opening Ständchen set a standard which Plummer continued to meet. The piano bells in Liebeshymnus were set in beautiful counterpoint with the underlying chords; this is not at all easy to accomplish. Sehnsucht’s almost Lisztian interlude between the third and fourth stanza resolved perfectly into the Tristan-esque harmony that opens the fourth. Strauss’s musical antecedents were pointed up without scoring points; the composer was situated in a tradition that goes beyond what is conventionally considered to be at the heart of Lieder-writing. I greatly appreciated this, since there can occasionally be a tendency from Lieder enthusiasts to cordon off their province from other musical realms, not least from that of opera. Song and opera are different of course, rather as chamber and orchestral music are different, but there is a great deal of interplay, and a songwriter such as Strauss can have more in common with Wagner than might necessarily be the case with another songwriter. And Plummer passed an especially stern test when it came to that wonderful Heine setting, Die heiligen drei Könige. The piano part is actually a transcription, the orchestral song being the original. When I heard Roger Vignoles at Edinburgh in August, even he seemed unable to rid one of the impression of loss. With Plummer, the music was taken more soberly, less overtly pictorially: one would never have guessed its orchestral origin. The horns of Mein Herz ist stumm’s ‘Hörnerklang’ were beautifully characterised, again without being overdone and making one wish there were a real orchestra present.
Rebecca Bottone’s contribution was more problematical. One does not have to be Jessye Norman to sing Strauss – although it certainly helps. However, I am not at all convinced that Bottone’s voice was appropriate. It reminded me immediately of Reri Grist; my next thought was that this sounded very much the sort of chirpy, rather shrill voice conductors seem fond of allotting to roles such as Mozart’s Blonde. (I am not quite sure why, but that is a different matter.) When I consulted Bottone’s biography, sure and enough Blonde was given pride of place. The voice, in any case, lacked richness of tone and adequate differentiation of colours. Her bearing, visual as well as vocal, could be excessively winsome, especially in Amor, Strauss’s Cupid song. That said, she coped very well in that setting with Strauss’ cruel demands in terms of coloratura. There were some distinctly odd German vowel sounds, and she rarely sounded as if she were singing from ‘within’ the language. Tuning, moreover, was not always as precise as it might have been. On the other hand, Bottone sounded far more at home with the Bridge settings, both vocally and linguistically. Rather surprisingly, her voice appeared to acquire greater colour than it had in Strauss. There was a lovely ending to the Tennyson setting, Go not, happy day: spot on in intonation and with an apt smile in the voice to complement ‘Roses are her cheeks,/And a rose her mouth.’ If some of Bridge’s music, especially the piano part, reminded one a little too much of the salon, or the Palm Court, that is hardly the singer’s fault. Following the Bridge settings, her remaining Strauss song, Wie sollten wir geheim sie halten, appeared to benefit. There was more colour, although it still did not really seem her thing.
Nathan Vale was a considerable improvement. I am not entirely sure that his was the most suitable voice for Strauss either, but there was certainly less of a mismatch. His voice is rather an ‘English’ tenor, albeit without the mannerisms that so often infect that vocal type. There were times when Strauss’s writing appeared to sit uncomfortably high, but then Strauss’s tenor writing is notorious, and the odd faltering aside, Vale put up a good fight. He was good at posing questions, for instance ‘Du fragst mich, Mädchen, was flüsternd der West/Vertraue den Blütenglocken?’ (Das Geheimnis). He imparted an aptly Schubertian chill to the openings of Sehnsucht and Mein Herz ist stumm. When the opening line of the latter song return at the end, there was truly something of the sepulchre or Winterreise to the revisiting. Die erwachter Rose brought a real sense of erwachen (awakening) as Friedrich von Sallet’s verse told of the nightingale’s sweet song and the bud blossoming into a rose. At times, I thought Vale could have sung out more freely. When he did, as in Die heiligen drei Könige, the results impressed. However, if the disparity were less great, he too sounded more at home in the English settings, in his case those by Gurney. Indeed, here he sang as if to the manor born. (It transpires that he and Plummer have recently recorded a disc of English song.) The poignancy of fading away in Edward Thomas setting, Snow, was rather special. And there was plenty of vigour to Robert Graves’s Hawk and Buckle. Indeed, this combination of youthful vigour and imploring, though never mawkish vulnerability seemed just right for the music of one whose career was so cruelly cut short by the First World War.
So if not always an ideal appreciation of Strauss, there was much to enjoy here. Many of these songs are not often encountered, which gave the recital extra value. Vale’s voice is still very young, and will doubtless open out more, but he was far from unequal to many of Strauss’s demands. Plummer was excellent, though I am not convinced that his programming matches his pianism. The encores, a group of five ‘very small’ (mercifully) songs by Sterndale Bennett were ‘humorous’ though not – at least to this listener – amusing. They seemed an odd conclusion to this recital, but would surely have seemed odder still had one attended the series of three Strauss recitals.
Friday, 21 December 2007
Parsifal, Royal Opera, 21 December 2007
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Gurnemanz – Sir John Tomlinson
Kundry – Petra Lang
Amfortas – Falk Struckmann
Parsifal – Christopher Ventris
Titurel – Gwynne Howell
Klingsor – Sir Willard White
First Knight – Nikola Matišic
Second Knight – Krysztof Szumanski
Esquires – Ji-Min Park, Harriet Williams, Haoyin Xue, Rebecca de Pont Davies
Flowermaidens – Pumeza Matshikza, Elizabeth Cragg, Malin Christensson, Ana James, Kishani Jayasinghe, Anita Watson
Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House
Bernard Haitink (conductor)
Klaus Michael Grüber (director)
Ellen Hammer (revival director)
Vera Dobroschke and Giles Aillaud (designers)
Bernard Haitink’s return to Covent Garden was always going to be special. This, after all, was the man who saved the orchestra from New Labour’s attempts to disband it, and therefore saved the company as we know it. No one present at the Royal Albert Hall’s concert performances of the Ring will ever forget those performances or Haitink’s well-timed intervention when he asked the public for help. During his time at the Royal Opera, Haitink excelled in a wide range of repertoire, from Mozart to Tippett, but it is for his conducting of Wagner above all others that he will be remembered. We were fortunate indeed, then, that he chose to make his return with Parsifal – or, indeed, that he chose to make his return at all, given his understandable feelings concerning the political manœuvring at the Royal Opera House.
I am delighted to report that however high our expectations may have been, Haitink amply fulfilled them. Just occasionally, I had wondered whether I had been romanticising his tenure; if anything, I realised that I had underestimated what we have lost. Whilst I have been most fortunate to hear some very fine Wagner conducting in the theatre, including performances by Barenboim, Rattle, and Thielemann, this Parsifal confirmed once again why Haitink must rank as the greatest living Wagner conductor. He has the ability not only to hear Parsifal as one great span, but to convey this organically to the audience as if it were the easiest thing in the world. This is the directional hearing of music in the distance that Furtwängler termed Fernhören. It works at a more microscopic level too. Never do I recall hearing the Prelude to Act I evolving so seamlessly into the opening bars of that act proper. Yet variation within overarching unity in no way loses out. The ‘break’ came, as it should, yet so rarely does, when, after morning prayer, Gurnemanz instructs the squires to rise and to attend to Amfortas’s bath. Perhaps more impressive still was the opening of the second act. Haitink pulled off – seemingly effortlessly – the trick of introducing the contrast of a new world, that of Klingsor and a ‘different’ Kundry – whilst relating it to what had gone before. There was drive, fury even, but never brashness, and the melos resumed almost as if the interval had never occurred. A true sign of greatness, moreover, in Wagner conducting is economy with climaxes, an economy shared with the composer himself. There are few things worse than the climax-every-other-bar, deaf-and-blind-to-structure conducting of a Solti; Haitink could not be further removed from this.
I also noticed how careful Haitink was to delineate the very particular sound world of Parsifal. The music sounded truly ‘lit from behind’, in Debussy’s celebrated formulation and in many sense also sounded closer to Pelléas than I can recall hearing before. It would come as no surprise to anybody that this most ‘unshowy’ of operas is one in which Haitink has excelled, and the sense of more than one might initially realise bubbling beneath the surface is common to both. Wagner’s art of transition is all the more powerful for its magic being only just perceptible. This is not to say that there is no muscle, no rhythmic impetus, far from it, but the development is never four-square. It is all too easy to underline motifs in the Ring; here it would be truly deadly, since their meaning and status within the whole is all the more malleable. The long line and the slow burn are everything – and they certainly were in this performance.
Haitink was royally served by his old orchestra, whose joy in having a seasoned Wagnerian back at its helm was palpable. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House does not have the great ‘German’ sound of, say, the state orchestras of Berlin or Dresden, nor the magical sweetness of Vienna, yet this perhaps enabled it more readily to sound closer to Debussy. The strings were silky smooth, at times almost Karajanesque, albeit without the Austrian conductor’s occasional – and sometimes more than occasional – chrome plating. They exhibited a wonderful ability to play softly yet with richness of tone, and when the great climaxes came, the swell was beautifully rounded. The brass section was equally impressive, not least those crucial liturgical trombones. Not even under Karajan or Knappertsbusch, moreover, have I heard the dramatic role of the kettledrums so perfectly realised: punctuating, inciting, remarking. The end of the second act was a case in point, recalling what had gone before but also looking forward from this ‘drama’ to the return of ‘liturgy’ in the final act.
John Tomlinson, fresh from his triumph as Wotan, proved every bit as memorable as Gurnemanz. The old man’s narrations were crystal clear and ineffably moving through the depth of their experience: experience belonging to the character, the actor-singer, the orchestra and conductor, and of course to Wagner. The agony of Monsalvat, the community in crisis, was here personified in the stoic Gurnemanz as much as the wounded Amfortas, without ever tending towards facile hysteria. Falk Struckmann, almost incredibly making his Covent Garden debut, was a noble Amfortas, agonised but far from the Nietzschean caricature. Since there are more difficult Heldentenor roles than that of Parsifal, it is easy to underestimate the achievement of a well-sung, well-acted Parsifal, but this was what Christopher Ventris presented, within the confines of the production (on which more below). To begin with, the character seemed a little nondescript, but I soon realised that there was development at work, a development that the work if not the production ascribes to grace. It was quite right that the Parsifal of the third act should be more heroic than that of the callow, ignorant youth of the first. As Kundry, Petra Lang performed a similar service. There have been more searingly dramatic portrayals of this most extraordinary of Wagnerian roles, but there was no cause for complaint and much cause for rejoicing in this deeply musical assumption. Her acting skills, such as could be deployed, were very much of a piece with her singing. And Willard White, another deep-voiced musical knight, treated us to an excellent Klingsor, secure of line and full-bodied of tone. As Kundry appreciates early on, Klingsor is malevolent yet so utterly vulnerable; both qualities were dialectically apparent in White’s reading. The choral singing was well handled too, not just in its musical qualities but in its layered positioning, aptly suggesting the spatial qualities of a great basilica. There was admittedly something of a trade-off between atmosphere and verbal comprehensibility, but this should not be exaggerated.
It pains me then to say this but, as I have already implied, the production helped no one. It seemed a waste of time when the Royal Opera bought it in for Simon Rattle. If anything, the revival director (and previously ‘associate director’), Ellen Hammer appeared to have made things worse. And for the Royal Opera to have failed to have come up with its own production the second time around was insulting to the performers and to the audience. If absolutely necessary, another production on loan would have been preferable: pretty much any other production on loan. The first act was bearable, with one reasonably striking image – that echoing Leonardo’s Last Supper, albeit to no particular dramatic effect. For some reason the Grail was a smallish piece of rock. To describe the direction of the second act as amateurish would be charitable. Quite apart from the garish designs, Personenregie was almost entirely absent: the characters were casually and unforgivably abandoned by the direction. Poor Kundry had to spend most of the time standing in the same position of the stage, not even looking at Parsifal and merely singing to the audience: a quasi-concert performance without any of the real thing’s virtues. Nor did this appear to be saying anything about the characters’ separation, alienation, etc., etc. Herbert Wernicke’s Covent Garden Tristan made a point of doing so and worked very well, at a fascinating level of colour-symbolic abstraction. Klaus Michael Grüber and his team from the Berlin Schaubühne merely seemed to have no idea whatsoever what to do. As for the third act, the banality of the strange spotlit moving rock during the Transformation Music pretty much summed it up.
It would be in vain to pretend that this did not matter at all. Wagner’s theatrical vision is all-encompassing; his work deserves nothing less than the best in every department. Yet somehow, despite the hapless stage direction, the greatness of Haitink’s musical direction shone through. This was never more the case than in the transcendence of the closing bars, which reached a perfection such as I do not ever recall hearing before in Parsifal, not even in the awe-inspiring Zen of late Karajan. Schopenhauer’s Will seemed finally to have been pacified, which would have been achievement enough in more propitious circumstances. Inevitability and wholesale transformation were as one. Wagner conducting does not, indeed could not, get better than this.
Gurnemanz – Sir John Tomlinson
Kundry – Petra Lang
Amfortas – Falk Struckmann
Parsifal – Christopher Ventris
Titurel – Gwynne Howell
Klingsor – Sir Willard White
First Knight – Nikola Matišic
Second Knight – Krysztof Szumanski
Esquires – Ji-Min Park, Harriet Williams, Haoyin Xue, Rebecca de Pont Davies
Flowermaidens – Pumeza Matshikza, Elizabeth Cragg, Malin Christensson, Ana James, Kishani Jayasinghe, Anita Watson
Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House
Bernard Haitink (conductor)
Klaus Michael Grüber (director)
Ellen Hammer (revival director)
Vera Dobroschke and Giles Aillaud (designers)
Bernard Haitink’s return to Covent Garden was always going to be special. This, after all, was the man who saved the orchestra from New Labour’s attempts to disband it, and therefore saved the company as we know it. No one present at the Royal Albert Hall’s concert performances of the Ring will ever forget those performances or Haitink’s well-timed intervention when he asked the public for help. During his time at the Royal Opera, Haitink excelled in a wide range of repertoire, from Mozart to Tippett, but it is for his conducting of Wagner above all others that he will be remembered. We were fortunate indeed, then, that he chose to make his return with Parsifal – or, indeed, that he chose to make his return at all, given his understandable feelings concerning the political manœuvring at the Royal Opera House.
I am delighted to report that however high our expectations may have been, Haitink amply fulfilled them. Just occasionally, I had wondered whether I had been romanticising his tenure; if anything, I realised that I had underestimated what we have lost. Whilst I have been most fortunate to hear some very fine Wagner conducting in the theatre, including performances by Barenboim, Rattle, and Thielemann, this Parsifal confirmed once again why Haitink must rank as the greatest living Wagner conductor. He has the ability not only to hear Parsifal as one great span, but to convey this organically to the audience as if it were the easiest thing in the world. This is the directional hearing of music in the distance that Furtwängler termed Fernhören. It works at a more microscopic level too. Never do I recall hearing the Prelude to Act I evolving so seamlessly into the opening bars of that act proper. Yet variation within overarching unity in no way loses out. The ‘break’ came, as it should, yet so rarely does, when, after morning prayer, Gurnemanz instructs the squires to rise and to attend to Amfortas’s bath. Perhaps more impressive still was the opening of the second act. Haitink pulled off – seemingly effortlessly – the trick of introducing the contrast of a new world, that of Klingsor and a ‘different’ Kundry – whilst relating it to what had gone before. There was drive, fury even, but never brashness, and the melos resumed almost as if the interval had never occurred. A true sign of greatness, moreover, in Wagner conducting is economy with climaxes, an economy shared with the composer himself. There are few things worse than the climax-every-other-bar, deaf-and-blind-to-structure conducting of a Solti; Haitink could not be further removed from this.
I also noticed how careful Haitink was to delineate the very particular sound world of Parsifal. The music sounded truly ‘lit from behind’, in Debussy’s celebrated formulation and in many sense also sounded closer to Pelléas than I can recall hearing before. It would come as no surprise to anybody that this most ‘unshowy’ of operas is one in which Haitink has excelled, and the sense of more than one might initially realise bubbling beneath the surface is common to both. Wagner’s art of transition is all the more powerful for its magic being only just perceptible. This is not to say that there is no muscle, no rhythmic impetus, far from it, but the development is never four-square. It is all too easy to underline motifs in the Ring; here it would be truly deadly, since their meaning and status within the whole is all the more malleable. The long line and the slow burn are everything – and they certainly were in this performance.
Haitink was royally served by his old orchestra, whose joy in having a seasoned Wagnerian back at its helm was palpable. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House does not have the great ‘German’ sound of, say, the state orchestras of Berlin or Dresden, nor the magical sweetness of Vienna, yet this perhaps enabled it more readily to sound closer to Debussy. The strings were silky smooth, at times almost Karajanesque, albeit without the Austrian conductor’s occasional – and sometimes more than occasional – chrome plating. They exhibited a wonderful ability to play softly yet with richness of tone, and when the great climaxes came, the swell was beautifully rounded. The brass section was equally impressive, not least those crucial liturgical trombones. Not even under Karajan or Knappertsbusch, moreover, have I heard the dramatic role of the kettledrums so perfectly realised: punctuating, inciting, remarking. The end of the second act was a case in point, recalling what had gone before but also looking forward from this ‘drama’ to the return of ‘liturgy’ in the final act.
John Tomlinson, fresh from his triumph as Wotan, proved every bit as memorable as Gurnemanz. The old man’s narrations were crystal clear and ineffably moving through the depth of their experience: experience belonging to the character, the actor-singer, the orchestra and conductor, and of course to Wagner. The agony of Monsalvat, the community in crisis, was here personified in the stoic Gurnemanz as much as the wounded Amfortas, without ever tending towards facile hysteria. Falk Struckmann, almost incredibly making his Covent Garden debut, was a noble Amfortas, agonised but far from the Nietzschean caricature. Since there are more difficult Heldentenor roles than that of Parsifal, it is easy to underestimate the achievement of a well-sung, well-acted Parsifal, but this was what Christopher Ventris presented, within the confines of the production (on which more below). To begin with, the character seemed a little nondescript, but I soon realised that there was development at work, a development that the work if not the production ascribes to grace. It was quite right that the Parsifal of the third act should be more heroic than that of the callow, ignorant youth of the first. As Kundry, Petra Lang performed a similar service. There have been more searingly dramatic portrayals of this most extraordinary of Wagnerian roles, but there was no cause for complaint and much cause for rejoicing in this deeply musical assumption. Her acting skills, such as could be deployed, were very much of a piece with her singing. And Willard White, another deep-voiced musical knight, treated us to an excellent Klingsor, secure of line and full-bodied of tone. As Kundry appreciates early on, Klingsor is malevolent yet so utterly vulnerable; both qualities were dialectically apparent in White’s reading. The choral singing was well handled too, not just in its musical qualities but in its layered positioning, aptly suggesting the spatial qualities of a great basilica. There was admittedly something of a trade-off between atmosphere and verbal comprehensibility, but this should not be exaggerated.
It pains me then to say this but, as I have already implied, the production helped no one. It seemed a waste of time when the Royal Opera bought it in for Simon Rattle. If anything, the revival director (and previously ‘associate director’), Ellen Hammer appeared to have made things worse. And for the Royal Opera to have failed to have come up with its own production the second time around was insulting to the performers and to the audience. If absolutely necessary, another production on loan would have been preferable: pretty much any other production on loan. The first act was bearable, with one reasonably striking image – that echoing Leonardo’s Last Supper, albeit to no particular dramatic effect. For some reason the Grail was a smallish piece of rock. To describe the direction of the second act as amateurish would be charitable. Quite apart from the garish designs, Personenregie was almost entirely absent: the characters were casually and unforgivably abandoned by the direction. Poor Kundry had to spend most of the time standing in the same position of the stage, not even looking at Parsifal and merely singing to the audience: a quasi-concert performance without any of the real thing’s virtues. Nor did this appear to be saying anything about the characters’ separation, alienation, etc., etc. Herbert Wernicke’s Covent Garden Tristan made a point of doing so and worked very well, at a fascinating level of colour-symbolic abstraction. Klaus Michael Grüber and his team from the Berlin Schaubühne merely seemed to have no idea whatsoever what to do. As for the third act, the banality of the strange spotlit moving rock during the Transformation Music pretty much summed it up.
It would be in vain to pretend that this did not matter at all. Wagner’s theatrical vision is all-encompassing; his work deserves nothing less than the best in every department. Yet somehow, despite the hapless stage direction, the greatness of Haitink’s musical direction shone through. This was never more the case than in the transcendence of the closing bars, which reached a perfection such as I do not ever recall hearing before in Parsifal, not even in the awe-inspiring Zen of late Karajan. Schopenhauer’s Will seemed finally to have been pacified, which would have been achievement enough in more propitious circumstances. Inevitability and wholesale transformation were as one. Wagner conducting does not, indeed could not, get better than this.
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
Der Silbersee, 16 December 2007
Philharmonie, Berlin
Simon Pauly – Erster Bursche
Yorck Felix Speer – Zweiter Bursche
Torsten Kerl – Severin
Thomas Thieme – Olim
Mojca Erdmann – Erste Verkäuferin
Vanessa Barkowski – Zweite Verkäuferin
Burkhard Ulrich – Lotterieagent
Hanna Schwarz – Frau Luber
Christiane Oelze – Fennimore
Stephan Rügamer – Baron Laur
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Rundfunkchor Berlin
Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)
This concert performance of Der Silbersee by Kurt Weill and Georg Kaiser was part of the Deutsches Symphonie Orchestra’s series, ‘Von deutscher Seele’, initiated by its new principal conductor, Ingo Metzmacher. For the ‘German’ Symphony Orchestra, an exploration of various aspects of what it feels and is to be German seems apt. The range of the series, named after Hans Pfitzner’s cantata, has been commendably wide-ranging. This is anything but a nationalistic exercise such as would have appealed to Pfitzner. The full title of the play with music, Der Silbersee: Ein Wintermärchen echoes Heine’s ironical and bitingly satirical Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, a cri de coeur against the reactionary policies and attitudes the poet saw pursued and enthroned in his homeland. Weill and Kaiser likewise maintained an ambivalent – and in that, profoundly German – attitude towards their country. How could they not in 1933, the year of its first performances, just before the Nazi seizure of power? Heine had been writing from Parisian exile, which Weill was soon to experience for himself. This concert performance did not present the play, which would have made for a very long evening indeed, but rather introduced a linking commentary with some dialogue, which worked well. There were very minor cuts and occasional, again very minor, reordering.
Metzmacher led a splendid performance. Rhythmic impetus was balanced with relaxation where necessary, which told the more for its lack of indulgence. The orchestra seemed at home with Weill’s idiom, shining corporately and in terms of solos, not least in terms of the fine principal trumpet. What might in other circumstances have sounded hard-driven in the opening here seemed well considered: a sonic depiction of the hustle and bustle of inter-war Germany. The flip side, equally well handled, was the sleazier side of that world. Symphony orchestras can sometimes seem too refined in Weill. That was not the case here; nor was it the case that all refinement was thrown to the wind, in vain emulation of a ‘jazz’ style that is certainly not Weill’s either.
The vocal soloists were also of a high standard and equally idiomatic in their varied ways. Thomas Thieme’s role of Olim, the policeman who repents of his shooting of Severin, is largely a spoken role. Thieme did well enough in the little he had to sing; the discrepancy between his and the trained voices did not matter too much. And he spoke his other lines with clarity and feeling. He seemed genuinely to be enjoying taking part in a musical performance: sometimes one could see his foot tapping to Weill’s rhythms. Torsten Kerl gave a very fine performance as Severin, equally alert to the twists and turns of Kaiser’s text and Weill’s response. Such was the dramatic truth of his portrayal that one barely missed conventional staging. Christiane Oelze sang beautifully as Fennimore, which is the principal requirement of this slightly vacant siren role. Her final, distanced vocal entreaties as Severin and Olim reached the Silbersee were aptly moving. Save for one unfortunate slip, Burkhard Ulrich gave a splendid account of the sleazy lottery agent, all too ready to dispense financial advice to Olim, serendipitously come into an inheritance. And Hanna Schwarz stole the show with her wonderfully vampish Frau Luber. Although it seemed a pity that so experienced a singer had so little to sing, the acting of the rest of her part suggested that she could readily pursue a career in the spoken theatre. The twenty-nine strong chorus’s performance of Weill’s deceptively ‘straightforward’ music was of a very high standard throughout. It provided commentary, incitement, and response rather like an updated version of the chorus from a Bach passion – surely a model here, as in Mahagonny.
If Weill’s inspiration varies a little throughout the score, much of the music is of a high quality indeed, and none is dull. This was an extremely valuable performance of a neglected work, which ought to point the way to further performances both inside and outside Germany. The German soul of Pfitzner’s title, if not his intention, should be duly gratified and enriched. It would have taken a harsh soul indeed not to respond to this fine successor to Heine’s satirical yet far from hopeless vision. To reach and to cross the Silbersee did not seem totally out of reach.
Simon Pauly – Erster Bursche
Yorck Felix Speer – Zweiter Bursche
Torsten Kerl – Severin
Thomas Thieme – Olim
Mojca Erdmann – Erste Verkäuferin
Vanessa Barkowski – Zweite Verkäuferin
Burkhard Ulrich – Lotterieagent
Hanna Schwarz – Frau Luber
Christiane Oelze – Fennimore
Stephan Rügamer – Baron Laur
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Rundfunkchor Berlin
Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)
This concert performance of Der Silbersee by Kurt Weill and Georg Kaiser was part of the Deutsches Symphonie Orchestra’s series, ‘Von deutscher Seele’, initiated by its new principal conductor, Ingo Metzmacher. For the ‘German’ Symphony Orchestra, an exploration of various aspects of what it feels and is to be German seems apt. The range of the series, named after Hans Pfitzner’s cantata, has been commendably wide-ranging. This is anything but a nationalistic exercise such as would have appealed to Pfitzner. The full title of the play with music, Der Silbersee: Ein Wintermärchen echoes Heine’s ironical and bitingly satirical Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen, a cri de coeur against the reactionary policies and attitudes the poet saw pursued and enthroned in his homeland. Weill and Kaiser likewise maintained an ambivalent – and in that, profoundly German – attitude towards their country. How could they not in 1933, the year of its first performances, just before the Nazi seizure of power? Heine had been writing from Parisian exile, which Weill was soon to experience for himself. This concert performance did not present the play, which would have made for a very long evening indeed, but rather introduced a linking commentary with some dialogue, which worked well. There were very minor cuts and occasional, again very minor, reordering.
Metzmacher led a splendid performance. Rhythmic impetus was balanced with relaxation where necessary, which told the more for its lack of indulgence. The orchestra seemed at home with Weill’s idiom, shining corporately and in terms of solos, not least in terms of the fine principal trumpet. What might in other circumstances have sounded hard-driven in the opening here seemed well considered: a sonic depiction of the hustle and bustle of inter-war Germany. The flip side, equally well handled, was the sleazier side of that world. Symphony orchestras can sometimes seem too refined in Weill. That was not the case here; nor was it the case that all refinement was thrown to the wind, in vain emulation of a ‘jazz’ style that is certainly not Weill’s either.
The vocal soloists were also of a high standard and equally idiomatic in their varied ways. Thomas Thieme’s role of Olim, the policeman who repents of his shooting of Severin, is largely a spoken role. Thieme did well enough in the little he had to sing; the discrepancy between his and the trained voices did not matter too much. And he spoke his other lines with clarity and feeling. He seemed genuinely to be enjoying taking part in a musical performance: sometimes one could see his foot tapping to Weill’s rhythms. Torsten Kerl gave a very fine performance as Severin, equally alert to the twists and turns of Kaiser’s text and Weill’s response. Such was the dramatic truth of his portrayal that one barely missed conventional staging. Christiane Oelze sang beautifully as Fennimore, which is the principal requirement of this slightly vacant siren role. Her final, distanced vocal entreaties as Severin and Olim reached the Silbersee were aptly moving. Save for one unfortunate slip, Burkhard Ulrich gave a splendid account of the sleazy lottery agent, all too ready to dispense financial advice to Olim, serendipitously come into an inheritance. And Hanna Schwarz stole the show with her wonderfully vampish Frau Luber. Although it seemed a pity that so experienced a singer had so little to sing, the acting of the rest of her part suggested that she could readily pursue a career in the spoken theatre. The twenty-nine strong chorus’s performance of Weill’s deceptively ‘straightforward’ music was of a very high standard throughout. It provided commentary, incitement, and response rather like an updated version of the chorus from a Bach passion – surely a model here, as in Mahagonny.
If Weill’s inspiration varies a little throughout the score, much of the music is of a high quality indeed, and none is dull. This was an extremely valuable performance of a neglected work, which ought to point the way to further performances both inside and outside Germany. The German soul of Pfitzner’s title, if not his intention, should be duly gratified and enriched. It would have taken a harsh soul indeed not to respond to this fine successor to Heine’s satirical yet far from hopeless vision. To reach and to cross the Silbersee did not seem totally out of reach.
Sunday, 16 December 2007
Don Giovanni, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 15 December 2007
Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Don Giovanni – René Pape
Donna Anna – Anna Samuil
Don Ottavio – Pavol Breslik
Commendatore – Christof Fischesser
Donna Elvira – Annette Dasch
Leporello – Hanno Müller-Brachmann
Masetto – Arttu Kataja
Zerlina – Sylvia Schwartz
Staatskapelle Berlin
Staatsopernchor Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
Peter Mussbach (director)
Don Giovanni was the first opera Daniel Barenboim conducted, with the English Chamber Orchestra at the 1973 Edinburgh Festival. He has lived with the score for more than thirty years, returning to it on several occasions. The results on this occasion were nothing less than magnificent so far as he and the Staatskapelle Berlin were concerned. I have never heard a better orchestral performance in the opera house. The burnished strings played with vigour, with tenderness, with clarity, with a richness of blend, with the occasional delicious and perfectly judged portamento, in short with every quality one could reasonably ask of the section and a few more besides. Even Ingo Kroll’s mandolin playing sounded more beautiful and more perfectly matched with the string section proper than I can recall hearing in any other performance. The beauty of the woodwind would have made Vienna look to its laurels. Woodwind solos were achingly beautiful; the sense of chamber music when section members combined inevitably put one in mind of Mozart’s great wind serenades. Some of the flute playing tempted one to suspect a pact with the Devil. Indeed, do not recall ever hearing such an array of orchestral colours, whether in terms of soli or ensembles, in a performance of Don Giovanni. The brass and timpani too were more impressive than one could ever have hoped. The trombones did not merely thrill, did not merely instill a sense of dread, during the Stone Guest scene; they imparted an almost noumenal presence of another world. They recalled not only the equali for trombone quartet of Habsburg state funerals, not only Handel’s Saul and Israel in Egypt, but above all the ancient – at least in eighteenth-century terms – association of the instrument with death and the supernatural.
Moreover, I was truly unprepared for the grand style of Barenboim’s interpretation, which harked back to Furtwängler without the slightest sense of restoration or preciousness. There was no question here of reductionism, no question of failing to put his great orchestra fully at the service of the drama. In this of all Mozart’s operas, such is not merely a luxury, but an absolute necessity, yet a necessity which in most performances counts for almost nothing. As Julian Rushton, whose Cambridge Opera Handbook is an invaluable if sober study of the work, has nevertheless been moved to write: ‘Mozart is … the catalyst whose influence changed the subject [of Don Juan] from the proper interest of Latin Europe and Catholic morality, and from the status of both vulgar and enlightened entertainment, to the proper interest of Northern Faustian philosophy.’ For at the very time at which Mozart, at the very height of his musico-dramatical powers, faced the task of setting and modifying Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto, was also, far from coincidentally, the time at which the Don Juan myth, more than a century and a half old, was most ripe to look backward and forward, if only it could attract a dramatist or dramatists fit for the task. Worlds old and new are treated in terms social, political, cultural, and æsthetic – and in terms that combine various or all of these headings in different measure. The canvas then is vast, profound, and eclectic, as Barenboim and his orchestra succeeded supremely in bringing to the audience’s realisation. At the same time, and equally importantly, there was in Barenboim’s reading no want of tenderness, of heart-rending pianissimi, of willingness and indeed ability to relax the reins where required. Tempi were flexible, yet never at the expense of an all-encompassing structural control. The leaps of style, for instance Elvira’s neo-Handelian ‘Fuggi il traditor’ were navigated with aplomb, and without making them seem greater leaps than they actually are. Mozart knew precisely what he was doing here.
However, the soloists did not quite live up to the nigh impossible task of matching Barenboim and the Staatskapelle. One who may have done and certainly came very close was Hanno Müller-Brachmann. His Leporello was lively, attentive to the text, and unfailingly musical. Müller-Brachmann was impressively attuned to the social characteristics of his role. For instance, Leporello’s opening music, which immediately follows the Overture, has already been characterised by its rhythm. Upon expressing to his master the wish that he might become a gentleman, a socio-musical ascent occurs, slightly wild and certainly vigorous melodic leaps being replaced by conjunct melodic motion, characteristic of the aristocratic minuet. This was not lost upon Müller-Brachmann, whose quicksilver response was an object lesson in style.
As Don Giovanni, René Pape sang perfectly well, but ultimately seemed a little out of sorts, given the expectations one might have had of him in the role. There were even a couple of brief moments of disjunction with the orchestra, although it was impossible to know who was at fault there. Whilst there was no question of a lack of musicality, nor of depth of tone, the incessant energy lying at the heart of the role, epitomised by the fizz of the Champagne Aria, was not quite as it should be. That said, Pape’s heroic defiance in his final scene, refusing the Commendatore’s entreaties to repent, was breathtaking. Pavol Breslik impressed greatly in the thankless role of Don Ottavio. Breslik’s singing evinced great beauty and nobility, and somehow he avoided seeming unduly impressed by the bizarrely hideous costume and make-up he was compelled to wear. The Masetto and Commendatore despatched their parts without leaving any profound impression. Likewise, the female characters lacked any real sense of star quality. Sylvia Schwartz’s Zerlina came to life for a beautiful ‘Batti, batti, o bel Masetto’, but otherwise remained somewhat anonyomous. Anna Samuil and Annette Dasch did nothing wrong, but again there was little presented that ultimately seared itself upon the memory.
And then, sadly, there was the production. Whatever was Peter Mussbach thinking of? The apparent answer would be very little, since there was almost nothing to the production and ‘designs’ – he is accredited with responsibility for both – other than an endlessly revolving wall and the occasional, irritating appearance of a motorcycle. Costumes, the work of Andrea Schmidt-Futterer, were dreadful and to no particular reason that I could discern. Pavel Breslik had the worst of it, but René Pape was hardly flattered either. The only other aspect worth mentioning (perhaps) is the inability of any of the characters to keep their hands off one another, sometimes at the most inappropriate of times. This was not daring; there was no sense of the terrifying sexual imperative that Calixto Bieto’s direction brought to Don Giovanni; it seemed rather to betoken a desperation from the aimless direction for the characters to ‘do’ something, indeed anything. This Don Giovanni, despite my reservations concerning some of the singing, would almost certainly have been one of my ‘Seen and Heard’ performances of the year, had it not been for the total dearth of theatrical engagement from the production.
However, I should reiterate the undeniable, indeed almost incredible, greatness of the contribution from Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin. For them and for Müller-Brachmann this Don Giovanni demands to be seen, or at least to be heard.
Don Giovanni – René Pape
Donna Anna – Anna Samuil
Don Ottavio – Pavol Breslik
Commendatore – Christof Fischesser
Donna Elvira – Annette Dasch
Leporello – Hanno Müller-Brachmann
Masetto – Arttu Kataja
Zerlina – Sylvia Schwartz
Staatskapelle Berlin
Staatsopernchor Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
Peter Mussbach (director)
Don Giovanni was the first opera Daniel Barenboim conducted, with the English Chamber Orchestra at the 1973 Edinburgh Festival. He has lived with the score for more than thirty years, returning to it on several occasions. The results on this occasion were nothing less than magnificent so far as he and the Staatskapelle Berlin were concerned. I have never heard a better orchestral performance in the opera house. The burnished strings played with vigour, with tenderness, with clarity, with a richness of blend, with the occasional delicious and perfectly judged portamento, in short with every quality one could reasonably ask of the section and a few more besides. Even Ingo Kroll’s mandolin playing sounded more beautiful and more perfectly matched with the string section proper than I can recall hearing in any other performance. The beauty of the woodwind would have made Vienna look to its laurels. Woodwind solos were achingly beautiful; the sense of chamber music when section members combined inevitably put one in mind of Mozart’s great wind serenades. Some of the flute playing tempted one to suspect a pact with the Devil. Indeed, do not recall ever hearing such an array of orchestral colours, whether in terms of soli or ensembles, in a performance of Don Giovanni. The brass and timpani too were more impressive than one could ever have hoped. The trombones did not merely thrill, did not merely instill a sense of dread, during the Stone Guest scene; they imparted an almost noumenal presence of another world. They recalled not only the equali for trombone quartet of Habsburg state funerals, not only Handel’s Saul and Israel in Egypt, but above all the ancient – at least in eighteenth-century terms – association of the instrument with death and the supernatural.
Moreover, I was truly unprepared for the grand style of Barenboim’s interpretation, which harked back to Furtwängler without the slightest sense of restoration or preciousness. There was no question here of reductionism, no question of failing to put his great orchestra fully at the service of the drama. In this of all Mozart’s operas, such is not merely a luxury, but an absolute necessity, yet a necessity which in most performances counts for almost nothing. As Julian Rushton, whose Cambridge Opera Handbook is an invaluable if sober study of the work, has nevertheless been moved to write: ‘Mozart is … the catalyst whose influence changed the subject [of Don Juan] from the proper interest of Latin Europe and Catholic morality, and from the status of both vulgar and enlightened entertainment, to the proper interest of Northern Faustian philosophy.’ For at the very time at which Mozart, at the very height of his musico-dramatical powers, faced the task of setting and modifying Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto, was also, far from coincidentally, the time at which the Don Juan myth, more than a century and a half old, was most ripe to look backward and forward, if only it could attract a dramatist or dramatists fit for the task. Worlds old and new are treated in terms social, political, cultural, and æsthetic – and in terms that combine various or all of these headings in different measure. The canvas then is vast, profound, and eclectic, as Barenboim and his orchestra succeeded supremely in bringing to the audience’s realisation. At the same time, and equally importantly, there was in Barenboim’s reading no want of tenderness, of heart-rending pianissimi, of willingness and indeed ability to relax the reins where required. Tempi were flexible, yet never at the expense of an all-encompassing structural control. The leaps of style, for instance Elvira’s neo-Handelian ‘Fuggi il traditor’ were navigated with aplomb, and without making them seem greater leaps than they actually are. Mozart knew precisely what he was doing here.
However, the soloists did not quite live up to the nigh impossible task of matching Barenboim and the Staatskapelle. One who may have done and certainly came very close was Hanno Müller-Brachmann. His Leporello was lively, attentive to the text, and unfailingly musical. Müller-Brachmann was impressively attuned to the social characteristics of his role. For instance, Leporello’s opening music, which immediately follows the Overture, has already been characterised by its rhythm. Upon expressing to his master the wish that he might become a gentleman, a socio-musical ascent occurs, slightly wild and certainly vigorous melodic leaps being replaced by conjunct melodic motion, characteristic of the aristocratic minuet. This was not lost upon Müller-Brachmann, whose quicksilver response was an object lesson in style.
As Don Giovanni, René Pape sang perfectly well, but ultimately seemed a little out of sorts, given the expectations one might have had of him in the role. There were even a couple of brief moments of disjunction with the orchestra, although it was impossible to know who was at fault there. Whilst there was no question of a lack of musicality, nor of depth of tone, the incessant energy lying at the heart of the role, epitomised by the fizz of the Champagne Aria, was not quite as it should be. That said, Pape’s heroic defiance in his final scene, refusing the Commendatore’s entreaties to repent, was breathtaking. Pavol Breslik impressed greatly in the thankless role of Don Ottavio. Breslik’s singing evinced great beauty and nobility, and somehow he avoided seeming unduly impressed by the bizarrely hideous costume and make-up he was compelled to wear. The Masetto and Commendatore despatched their parts without leaving any profound impression. Likewise, the female characters lacked any real sense of star quality. Sylvia Schwartz’s Zerlina came to life for a beautiful ‘Batti, batti, o bel Masetto’, but otherwise remained somewhat anonyomous. Anna Samuil and Annette Dasch did nothing wrong, but again there was little presented that ultimately seared itself upon the memory.
And then, sadly, there was the production. Whatever was Peter Mussbach thinking of? The apparent answer would be very little, since there was almost nothing to the production and ‘designs’ – he is accredited with responsibility for both – other than an endlessly revolving wall and the occasional, irritating appearance of a motorcycle. Costumes, the work of Andrea Schmidt-Futterer, were dreadful and to no particular reason that I could discern. Pavel Breslik had the worst of it, but René Pape was hardly flattered either. The only other aspect worth mentioning (perhaps) is the inability of any of the characters to keep their hands off one another, sometimes at the most inappropriate of times. This was not daring; there was no sense of the terrifying sexual imperative that Calixto Bieto’s direction brought to Don Giovanni; it seemed rather to betoken a desperation from the aimless direction for the characters to ‘do’ something, indeed anything. This Don Giovanni, despite my reservations concerning some of the singing, would almost certainly have been one of my ‘Seen and Heard’ performances of the year, had it not been for the total dearth of theatrical engagement from the production.
However, I should reiterate the undeniable, indeed almost incredible, greatness of the contribution from Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin. For them and for Müller-Brachmann this Don Giovanni demands to be seen, or at least to be heard.
Saturday, 15 December 2007
Elektra, Deutsche Oper, 14 December 2007
Deutsche Oper Berlin
Klytämnestra – Jane Henschel
Elektra – Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet
Chrysothemis – Claudia Iten
Aegisth – Burkhard Ulrich
Orest – Alfred Walker
Der Pfleger des Orest – Tomislav Lucic
Die Vertraute – Sarah Ferede
Die Schleppträgerin – Anna Fleischer
Ein junger Diener – Paul Kaufmann
Ein alter Diener – Jörn Schümann
Die Aufseherin – Stephanie Weiss
Erste Magd – Nicole Piccolomini
Zweite Magd – Julia Benzinger
Dritte Magd – Ulrike Helzel
Vierte Magd – Andion Fernandez
Fünfte Magd – Jacquelyn Wagner
Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
Dancers from the Ballet of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
Leopold Hager (conductor)
Kirsten Harms (director)
Bernd Damovsky (stage design and costumes)
For earlier performances, the Deutsche Oper had hit upon the fascinating idea of preceding Elektra with Vittorio Gnecchi’s Cassandra, known to Strauss and premiered four years earlier in 1905 under Toscanini. Cassandra deals with a preceding section of the myth of the accursed house of Atreus, focusing upon Klytemnestra’s murderous revenge upon Agamemnon for the sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia, as foretold by the ever-unheeded prophetess Cassandra. Sadly, the performance I could attend was solely of Elektra, yet I tried nevertheless to bear in mind the mythological context, with the result that the characters’ hysterical derangement seemed slightly less arbitrary than otherwise might have been the case. The curse of Pelops upon his sons, Atreus and Thyestes, for the murder of Chrysippos, their half-brother, reaches down to yet another generation.
Bernd Damovsky’s set, simple but not abstract, focused attention upon the bestial existence Elektra has led since the murder of Agamemnon. Banished from what passes for human society in the palace of Mycenae, she crawls around upon the ground, a waste land of broken images, awaiting vengeance from her brother, Orest. Others looked in upon her, whether from above or on her level, whether to mock or to fear, but this was definitely her space. The jeering maids, all very well sung, surrounded and yet could not break her, likewise the grotesque Klytämnestra. For Kirsten Harms’s excellent Personenregie focused our attention ever more keenly upon the extraordinary dynamics of this family and its supporting cast. The situation had become so desperate, as much for Klytämnestra and Aegisth as anyone else, that something had to happen. And of course it did.
Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet summoned up a tremendous performance in the title-role, a role as cruelly relentless as the opera itself. The very occasional moment of tiredness could easily be forgiven in the context of a portrayal encompassing such violent and yet never quite un-musical swings. It was certainly not all presented at full-throttle: despite the ominous presence of Strauss’s huge orchestra, there was considerable subtlety of vocal shading to this Elektra. Dancers from the opera’s ballet acted out her dance for her, albeit with her interaction, suggesting a projection of her dreams and nightmares even unto death.
Leopold Hager’s excellent conducting assisted greatly in permitting Charbonnet to accomplish this. A conductor who never quite seems to have gained the regard his due, and perhaps best known for his Mozart, Hager was quite at home with the exigencies of the score. Whilst in the final reckoning this reading may have lacked the razor-sharp attention to line and to colouristic extravagance of a Christoph von Dohnányi, I have rarely heard the crucial dance element to so much of the music brought out so tellingly, especially in the run up to Elektra’s final, wild dance itself. We are not nearly so far from Der Rosenkavalier as might be imagined. In this, of course, Hager was dependent upon the strength of his orchestra, whose strings and brass in particular impressed. The brass contribution to the coming of Orest was crucial not only in identifying the mysterious stranger, but also in underlying the Wagnerian sound of Fate, without which the drama would seem merely sensational.
Jane Henschel is not the sort of artist to give so searingly nasty a reading of Klytämnestra as, say, Felicity Palmer (whom I have seen in London and Amsterdam), but the grotesquerie of this mother on her very last legs provided compensation. This never tipped into caricature, but her hysterical laughter duly horrified, upon momentarily regaining the upper hand, having taunted her daughter with news of Orest’s death. It focused more sharply what her words and vocal line had already told us, proceeding from her dreams rather than seeming a gratuitous addition to an already over-heated atmosphere. Burkhard Ulrich’s Aegisth was suitably sinister, oozing malevolent decay, yet once again without edging into caricature, as so often happens in this small but crucial part. Alfred Walker presented a fine Orest, absolutely secure in the role that Fate has allotted him, beautiful and implacably strong of tone, and truly moving during the revelation of his identity to Elektra. The orchestra’s role in the Recognition Scene – essentially, following Wagner, as Chorus to the protagonists – assisted them greatly, as did Hager’s astute musical direction. So much that could not be said in words followed the moment of recognition. Also deeply moving was Claudia Iten’s heartfelt Chrysothemis, unconditional in her love for her afflicted sister, yet appropriately horrified by Elektra’s plans.
Viewed as a whole, the performance took a little while to scale the heights, or perhaps to plumb the depths, although it was never less than very good. If I found myself desperately wishing for Orest to arrive, even if only to introduce a male voice into the world of sometimes shrill female hysteria, then that is doubtless as it should be. From the moment of Orest’s arrival, everything appeared to move up a gear; the working out of Fate was made absolutely clear. The last half hour or so was almost unbearably powerful. In this strange tragedy without catharsis, one cannot but feel browbeaten by the end, but it would be unbearable in the wrong sense, were this to have resulted from a bad or mediocre performance. There was no question of that here, in what must be accounted a considerable triumph for Berlin’s Deutsche Oper.
Klytämnestra – Jane Henschel
Elektra – Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet
Chrysothemis – Claudia Iten
Aegisth – Burkhard Ulrich
Orest – Alfred Walker
Der Pfleger des Orest – Tomislav Lucic
Die Vertraute – Sarah Ferede
Die Schleppträgerin – Anna Fleischer
Ein junger Diener – Paul Kaufmann
Ein alter Diener – Jörn Schümann
Die Aufseherin – Stephanie Weiss
Erste Magd – Nicole Piccolomini
Zweite Magd – Julia Benzinger
Dritte Magd – Ulrike Helzel
Vierte Magd – Andion Fernandez
Fünfte Magd – Jacquelyn Wagner
Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
Dancers from the Ballet of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
Leopold Hager (conductor)
Kirsten Harms (director)
Bernd Damovsky (stage design and costumes)
For earlier performances, the Deutsche Oper had hit upon the fascinating idea of preceding Elektra with Vittorio Gnecchi’s Cassandra, known to Strauss and premiered four years earlier in 1905 under Toscanini. Cassandra deals with a preceding section of the myth of the accursed house of Atreus, focusing upon Klytemnestra’s murderous revenge upon Agamemnon for the sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia, as foretold by the ever-unheeded prophetess Cassandra. Sadly, the performance I could attend was solely of Elektra, yet I tried nevertheless to bear in mind the mythological context, with the result that the characters’ hysterical derangement seemed slightly less arbitrary than otherwise might have been the case. The curse of Pelops upon his sons, Atreus and Thyestes, for the murder of Chrysippos, their half-brother, reaches down to yet another generation.
Bernd Damovsky’s set, simple but not abstract, focused attention upon the bestial existence Elektra has led since the murder of Agamemnon. Banished from what passes for human society in the palace of Mycenae, she crawls around upon the ground, a waste land of broken images, awaiting vengeance from her brother, Orest. Others looked in upon her, whether from above or on her level, whether to mock or to fear, but this was definitely her space. The jeering maids, all very well sung, surrounded and yet could not break her, likewise the grotesque Klytämnestra. For Kirsten Harms’s excellent Personenregie focused our attention ever more keenly upon the extraordinary dynamics of this family and its supporting cast. The situation had become so desperate, as much for Klytämnestra and Aegisth as anyone else, that something had to happen. And of course it did.
Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet summoned up a tremendous performance in the title-role, a role as cruelly relentless as the opera itself. The very occasional moment of tiredness could easily be forgiven in the context of a portrayal encompassing such violent and yet never quite un-musical swings. It was certainly not all presented at full-throttle: despite the ominous presence of Strauss’s huge orchestra, there was considerable subtlety of vocal shading to this Elektra. Dancers from the opera’s ballet acted out her dance for her, albeit with her interaction, suggesting a projection of her dreams and nightmares even unto death.
Leopold Hager’s excellent conducting assisted greatly in permitting Charbonnet to accomplish this. A conductor who never quite seems to have gained the regard his due, and perhaps best known for his Mozart, Hager was quite at home with the exigencies of the score. Whilst in the final reckoning this reading may have lacked the razor-sharp attention to line and to colouristic extravagance of a Christoph von Dohnányi, I have rarely heard the crucial dance element to so much of the music brought out so tellingly, especially in the run up to Elektra’s final, wild dance itself. We are not nearly so far from Der Rosenkavalier as might be imagined. In this, of course, Hager was dependent upon the strength of his orchestra, whose strings and brass in particular impressed. The brass contribution to the coming of Orest was crucial not only in identifying the mysterious stranger, but also in underlying the Wagnerian sound of Fate, without which the drama would seem merely sensational.
Jane Henschel is not the sort of artist to give so searingly nasty a reading of Klytämnestra as, say, Felicity Palmer (whom I have seen in London and Amsterdam), but the grotesquerie of this mother on her very last legs provided compensation. This never tipped into caricature, but her hysterical laughter duly horrified, upon momentarily regaining the upper hand, having taunted her daughter with news of Orest’s death. It focused more sharply what her words and vocal line had already told us, proceeding from her dreams rather than seeming a gratuitous addition to an already over-heated atmosphere. Burkhard Ulrich’s Aegisth was suitably sinister, oozing malevolent decay, yet once again without edging into caricature, as so often happens in this small but crucial part. Alfred Walker presented a fine Orest, absolutely secure in the role that Fate has allotted him, beautiful and implacably strong of tone, and truly moving during the revelation of his identity to Elektra. The orchestra’s role in the Recognition Scene – essentially, following Wagner, as Chorus to the protagonists – assisted them greatly, as did Hager’s astute musical direction. So much that could not be said in words followed the moment of recognition. Also deeply moving was Claudia Iten’s heartfelt Chrysothemis, unconditional in her love for her afflicted sister, yet appropriately horrified by Elektra’s plans.
Viewed as a whole, the performance took a little while to scale the heights, or perhaps to plumb the depths, although it was never less than very good. If I found myself desperately wishing for Orest to arrive, even if only to introduce a male voice into the world of sometimes shrill female hysteria, then that is doubtless as it should be. From the moment of Orest’s arrival, everything appeared to move up a gear; the working out of Fate was made absolutely clear. The last half hour or so was almost unbearably powerful. In this strange tragedy without catharsis, one cannot but feel browbeaten by the end, but it would be unbearable in the wrong sense, were this to have resulted from a bad or mediocre performance. There was no question of that here, in what must be accounted a considerable triumph for Berlin’s Deutsche Oper.
Wednesday, 12 December 2007
Dessau/Brecht - Die Verurteiling des Lukullus, Komische Oper, 12 December 2007
Komische Oper, Berlin
12 December 2007
Kor-Jan Dusseljee – Lukullus
Markus John – Commentator
Jens Larsen – Judge of the Dead
Hans-Peter Scheidegger – The King
Erika Roos – The Queen
Gabriela Maria Schmeide – The Fishwife
Christiane Oertel – The Courtesan
Christoph Späth – The Teacher
Peter Renz – The Baker
Karen Rettinghaus, Miriam Meyer, Karolina Andersson – Women’s Voices
Anna Kokhanov – First Child
Sophia Duwensee – Second Child
Choir, Children’s Choir, and Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin
Eberhard Kloke (conductor)
Katja Czellnik (producer)
Hartmut Meyer (designer)
Nicole Timm und Sebastian Figal (costumes)
Franck Evin (lighting)
The Komische Oper has been named Opera House of the Year by German critics. It certainly proved worthy of that title by mounting Paul Dessau’s Die Verurteilung des Lukullus, ‘The Condemnation of Lucullus’. The text is by Brecht, closely following his radio play, Das Verhör des Lukullus, ‘The Trial of Lucullus’, also the title of the opera in its first version. At the time of its premiere at the Staatsoper, the opera became embroiled in a dispute over its alleged formalism, for failing to conform to the dictates of socialist realism, yet would soon be acknowledged in East Germany as a canonical work, receiving four new productions in East Berlin alone. It also gained considerable recognition in the West, although has rather fallen out of favour since reunification. To hear Brecht (and indeed Dessau) in Berlin, and in what was East Berlin, is of course an opportunity in itself.
At this remove, it is perhaps difficult to understand why the work proved so initially controversial, although it seems that Dessau made some concessions in the second, definitive version. Musically, it will scare off no one acquainted with Kurt Weill, hints of Stravinsky and perhaps Hindemith notwithstanding. The omission of upper strings gives a Weill-like edge to the orchestral band, replete with prepared piano and trautonium (an early synthesiser). And its political message, its abhorrence of dictatorship – this was composed and received very much in the shadow of the Nuremberg trials – could hardly be stronger. The dictator Lucullus, having died, must reckon for his deeds if he is to enter the after-life. Various witness-interrogators establish beyond reasonable doubt that his sole humanitarian achievement, introducing the cherry tree to Rome, is hardly enough to erase the loss of 80,000 lives. He must instead be consigned to eternal nothingness, as the plebeian jury gains its redress.
Falschfilm’s video clips of dictators past and present accompanied the political leader’s obsequies, making its point very clearly and yet without hysteria. Beyond that, Katja Czellnik’s production and Hartmut Meyer’s designs did not always make things easy for the innocent viewer. There was always a great deal going on, often to good effect, although the profusion of what was sometimes rather bizarre imagery, not least in terms of Nicole Timm und Sebastian Figal’s garish costumes, could grow a little wearing. Less would undoubtedly have been more, at least at times. Fortunately, the cast’s diction was generally excellent, so that I could understand most of what was being said or sung, even without titles. This was doubly important given that the text was by Brecht no less.
For if I had some misgivings concerning the production, the performances themselves could not fail to win one over. Kor-Jan Dusseljee put his considerable tenor voice to good use as the anti-hero. Like the rest of the cast, he could act too. Markus John, in the spoken role of the Commentator, ensured that we had little doubt understanding what was going on, or at least what should have been going on. The world of more conventional operatic beauty made a welcome cameo with Erika Roos’s Queen, and Jens Larsen impressed with his powerful deep voice as the Judge. Perhaps the most moving portrayal was that of Gabriela Maria Schmeide’s wronged Fishwife, struggling to come to terms with the loss of her son. She seemed to me to strike just the right balance between musical and dramatic demands, a tricky business in Brechtian works.
The orchestra sounded excellent throughout. Rhythmic power and precision were married to an impressive ear for Dessau’s palette in Eberhard Kloke’s fine interpretation. Moreover, the choral singing, from children and adults, was uniformly excellent. Once again, diction was not a problem, but this was never at the expense of warmth of tone, at least where required. The jury’s final consignment of Lukullus to nothingness presented a due sense of catharsis, even though Dessau’s ultimate resolution sounded a bit too much like a socialist realist cop-out: a little more Verfremdung would not have gone amiss.
12 December 2007
Kor-Jan Dusseljee – Lukullus
Markus John – Commentator
Jens Larsen – Judge of the Dead
Hans-Peter Scheidegger – The King
Erika Roos – The Queen
Gabriela Maria Schmeide – The Fishwife
Christiane Oertel – The Courtesan
Christoph Späth – The Teacher
Peter Renz – The Baker
Karen Rettinghaus, Miriam Meyer, Karolina Andersson – Women’s Voices
Anna Kokhanov – First Child
Sophia Duwensee – Second Child
Choir, Children’s Choir, and Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin
Eberhard Kloke (conductor)
Katja Czellnik (producer)
Hartmut Meyer (designer)
Nicole Timm und Sebastian Figal (costumes)
Franck Evin (lighting)
The Komische Oper has been named Opera House of the Year by German critics. It certainly proved worthy of that title by mounting Paul Dessau’s Die Verurteilung des Lukullus, ‘The Condemnation of Lucullus’. The text is by Brecht, closely following his radio play, Das Verhör des Lukullus, ‘The Trial of Lucullus’, also the title of the opera in its first version. At the time of its premiere at the Staatsoper, the opera became embroiled in a dispute over its alleged formalism, for failing to conform to the dictates of socialist realism, yet would soon be acknowledged in East Germany as a canonical work, receiving four new productions in East Berlin alone. It also gained considerable recognition in the West, although has rather fallen out of favour since reunification. To hear Brecht (and indeed Dessau) in Berlin, and in what was East Berlin, is of course an opportunity in itself.
At this remove, it is perhaps difficult to understand why the work proved so initially controversial, although it seems that Dessau made some concessions in the second, definitive version. Musically, it will scare off no one acquainted with Kurt Weill, hints of Stravinsky and perhaps Hindemith notwithstanding. The omission of upper strings gives a Weill-like edge to the orchestral band, replete with prepared piano and trautonium (an early synthesiser). And its political message, its abhorrence of dictatorship – this was composed and received very much in the shadow of the Nuremberg trials – could hardly be stronger. The dictator Lucullus, having died, must reckon for his deeds if he is to enter the after-life. Various witness-interrogators establish beyond reasonable doubt that his sole humanitarian achievement, introducing the cherry tree to Rome, is hardly enough to erase the loss of 80,000 lives. He must instead be consigned to eternal nothingness, as the plebeian jury gains its redress.
Falschfilm’s video clips of dictators past and present accompanied the political leader’s obsequies, making its point very clearly and yet without hysteria. Beyond that, Katja Czellnik’s production and Hartmut Meyer’s designs did not always make things easy for the innocent viewer. There was always a great deal going on, often to good effect, although the profusion of what was sometimes rather bizarre imagery, not least in terms of Nicole Timm und Sebastian Figal’s garish costumes, could grow a little wearing. Less would undoubtedly have been more, at least at times. Fortunately, the cast’s diction was generally excellent, so that I could understand most of what was being said or sung, even without titles. This was doubly important given that the text was by Brecht no less.
For if I had some misgivings concerning the production, the performances themselves could not fail to win one over. Kor-Jan Dusseljee put his considerable tenor voice to good use as the anti-hero. Like the rest of the cast, he could act too. Markus John, in the spoken role of the Commentator, ensured that we had little doubt understanding what was going on, or at least what should have been going on. The world of more conventional operatic beauty made a welcome cameo with Erika Roos’s Queen, and Jens Larsen impressed with his powerful deep voice as the Judge. Perhaps the most moving portrayal was that of Gabriela Maria Schmeide’s wronged Fishwife, struggling to come to terms with the loss of her son. She seemed to me to strike just the right balance between musical and dramatic demands, a tricky business in Brechtian works.
The orchestra sounded excellent throughout. Rhythmic power and precision were married to an impressive ear for Dessau’s palette in Eberhard Kloke’s fine interpretation. Moreover, the choral singing, from children and adults, was uniformly excellent. Once again, diction was not a problem, but this was never at the expense of warmth of tone, at least where required. The jury’s final consignment of Lukullus to nothingness presented a due sense of catharsis, even though Dessau’s ultimate resolution sounded a bit too much like a socialist realist cop-out: a little more Verfremdung would not have gone amiss.
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
Stravinsky, Haydn, Hindemith: Staatskapelle Berlin/Zukerman, 11 December 2007
Philharmonie, Berlin
Stravinsky – Concerto in D for string orchestra
Haydn – Violin Concerto no.1 in C major, Hob VIIa:I
Hindemith – Trauermusik for viola and string orchestra
Haydn – Symphony no.99 in E flat major
Staatskapelle Berlin
Pinchas Zukerman (violin, viola, conductor)
The Stravinsky Concerto in D began promisingly. That inhuman implacability of Stravinsky’s motor rhythms, the essence of his neo-classicism and yet utterly removed from ‘real’ Austro-German Classical-Romantic music, registered with considerable power. After that, however, the orchestra sounded out of sorts and simply miscast. The Staatskapelle Berlin is, after all, one of the great standard-bearers of the traditional German orchestral sound, far more so than the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The second-movement Arioso sounded sweet enough, but the sound was more appropriate to watered-down Tchaikovsky than to Stravinskian aggression.
The outer movements brought instances of incisive rhythm, but all too often the music simply chugged along, putting one in mind – perhaps not entirely unfairly – of an updated run-of-the-mill eighteenth-century composer. This work hardly represents Stravinsky at his greatest and needs a Karajan to convince one otherwise. Perhaps Pinchas Zukerman’s mind was distracted by his forthcoming instrumental duties, since he did little to impart the urgency requisite to this music.
Haydn’s first violin concerto fared much better. The strings were slightly reduced (from twelve first violins to ten, and so forth), which maybe was not strictly necessary but nor did it do any harm. A harpsichord continuo was introduced. Again, I am not convinced of the necessity of its tinkling, but again it did no harm. Although there is a limit to what one can accomplish directing from the violin, Zukerman here proved in command of the performance. He shaped phrases nicely and imparted a measured flexibility that does not always result from such situations, especially in the hands of less experienced directors, who might be happy simply to keep the show on the road. (They would undoubtedly benefit from a conductor, although this seems increasingly unfashionable.) Zukerman’s violin tone was as beautiful as ever, which is certainly not something one should take for granted in a soloist. The absolute surety of his technique and, more importantly, the utterly musical ends to which it was put, provided a master-class in violin performance. Phrases were perfectly rounded, and there was no question of unduly dominating his orchestra. Instead, he emerged as if the senior member of one of the most distinguished string sections in the world. Each movement was appropriately characterised, without resorting to the caricatures that many performers, especially of the ‘authentic’ variety, appear to believe appropriate to eighteenth-century music. Thus the Presto finale veritably sparkled, without ever sounding hard-driven, and – a rarity these days! – the Adagio actually was an Adagio, rather than a hurried, choppily-phrased Andante. Zukerman and his players truly captured the essence, not so easily distilled, of what is in many senses a Baroque concerto in Classical style. C.P.E. Bach more than once came to mind, and not without good reason. This is not Mozart, nor is it later Haydn; there was no attempt to force this sunny work into a more ‘developed’ mould than it could take.
Hindemith’s Trauermusik also convinced, even if the level of musical invention can hardly be said to represent the composer at his most inspired, let alone to approach Haydn. The players and conductor, however, sounded convinced, which is what matters. Once again, their sonority sounded just right for the music, although here I felt that the distinct character of the work’s four movements might have been more sharply characterised. As an opportunity for Zukerman to display the equal beauty of his viola tone, however, this was an undoubted success. Not only was there an almost incredible richness to his sound; the subtleties of shading were just as impressive. Once again, Zukerman achieved the right balance between leading where necessary but also sounding as though drawn from the ensemble under his direction.
Haydn’s Symphony no.99 is, of course, music on quite a different level. It received a good performance, without ever searing itself upon one’s memory as a great rendition should. The strings were now at last joined by woodwind, brass, and timpani, which made the logic of the programme somewhat difficult to follow. It might have made more sense had this been a purely string orchestral programme, but never mind. The clarinets sometimes sounded unduly forceful, so much so that I was momentarily in doubt whether they should have been there at all. There were also a couple of surprising blemishes from the otherwise beautiful horns. The orchestra in other respects despatched the music with considerable aplomb, but there was slightly a sense of it being despatched rather than of anything more profound. The strings’ burnished tone was a joy in itself, and certainly not something to be taken for granted, but I felt a slight lack of digging deeper than the notes. For instance, the Adagio flowed without ever sounding rushed, and its harmonies ravished, yet there was little sense of how close to the mysteries of Beethoven one really is with the London symphonies. Likewise, the minuet and trio danced along merrily – and musically. But there is more at stake, not least with Haydn’s cross rhythms, than registered here. Haydn’s fabled sense of humour counted for little at the end of the finale, flawlessly etched as it was by correctly antiphonal violins and their colleagues. That said, Zukerman once again turned phrases elegantly and his chosen tempi once again seemed just right. Given some of the horrors perpetuated in the name of ‘authenticity’ – does anyone seriously think that eighteenth-century musicians were quite that unmusical? – I was not unduly worried, although I could not help thinking of the altogether more arresting experience of Mariss Jansons’s Haydn, which I reviewed in November.
Monday, 3 December 2007
Lupu/Philharmonia/Muti: Beethoven, Schumann, Mussorgsky, 2 December 2007
Royal Festival Hall
Beethoven - Overture: Die Weihe des Hauses, Op.124
Schumann - Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.54
Mussorgsky (orch. Ravel) - Pictures from an Exhibition
Radu Lupu (piano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Riccardo Muti (conductor)
This celebratory concert, long sold out, marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of Riccardo Muti's first engagement with the (New) Philharmonia Orchestra, which also culminated in Pictures from an Exhibition. After the great success of that concert, Muti was immediately signed up as Principal Conductor. Thirty-five years might not be the most significant of anniversaries, but as a pretext it serves well enough.
The Beethoven overture was well performed, though not unforgettable. At times the orchestra was driven quite hard, but never breathlessly, and there was greater flexibility in Muti's reading than his Toscanini caricature would have one believe. The brass was probably the strongest part of the orchestra, with the strings sounding at times a little watery in tone.
Radu Lupu is a far from frequent visitor to London concert halls, rendering the prospect of hearing him in the Schumann concerto rather mouth-watering, not least since his self-imposed exile from the recording studio. For a concert mounted in Muti's honour, this was very much the soloist's show, with Muti and the Philharmonia largely relegated to an accompanying role, following the sometimes extreme variations in Lupu's account. Some passages were truly magical, never more so than when, defiantly un-score-bound, Lupu pulled the tempo right back to what seemed akin to half of what would be expected, in sections of the first movement. Such rêveries were truly heart-stopping, although at other times phrases seemed almost casually tossed aside. Some of the orchestral detail was beautifully etched, the quieter passages having the virtue of truly making one listen. The lower strings sounded wonderfully German during the second movement. This was an interesting if not utterly coherent performance.
However, the second half presented what sounded like a different orchestra. The marriage of precision and colour was staggering, as was the sharpness of characterisation. Sometimes I have entertained doubts as to whether Ravel's orchestration adds anything to the piano original; here such questions never occurred. I have never heard a superior account of Pictures from an Exhibition and offhand, can only think of Carlo Maria Giulini as matching this. The sheen of the strings and the variety of woodwind coloration might have taken one's breath away had that honour not already been granted to the astonishingly assured Philharmonia brass. This exhibited all the prowess of Chicago, yet without the slightest hint of brashness. Muti imparted a true sense of progression and unity to the work, though this never clashed with the individuality of each movement, in which great instrumental virtuosity was exhibited. 'The Market at Limoges' was a veritable Babel of activity, whilst the mysteries of the Paris catacombs duly chilled. The 'Great Gate of Kiev', pealing bells and all, seemed an inevitable culmination rather than a final distinct picture. Ravel returned with interest the crucial Russian influence upon early twentieth-century French music. The dividends accrued from Muti and the Philharmonia's performance were, if anything, greater still.
Beethoven - Overture: Die Weihe des Hauses, Op.124
Schumann - Piano Concerto in A minor, Op.54
Mussorgsky (orch. Ravel) - Pictures from an Exhibition
Radu Lupu (piano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Riccardo Muti (conductor)
This celebratory concert, long sold out, marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of Riccardo Muti's first engagement with the (New) Philharmonia Orchestra, which also culminated in Pictures from an Exhibition. After the great success of that concert, Muti was immediately signed up as Principal Conductor. Thirty-five years might not be the most significant of anniversaries, but as a pretext it serves well enough.
The Beethoven overture was well performed, though not unforgettable. At times the orchestra was driven quite hard, but never breathlessly, and there was greater flexibility in Muti's reading than his Toscanini caricature would have one believe. The brass was probably the strongest part of the orchestra, with the strings sounding at times a little watery in tone.
Radu Lupu is a far from frequent visitor to London concert halls, rendering the prospect of hearing him in the Schumann concerto rather mouth-watering, not least since his self-imposed exile from the recording studio. For a concert mounted in Muti's honour, this was very much the soloist's show, with Muti and the Philharmonia largely relegated to an accompanying role, following the sometimes extreme variations in Lupu's account. Some passages were truly magical, never more so than when, defiantly un-score-bound, Lupu pulled the tempo right back to what seemed akin to half of what would be expected, in sections of the first movement. Such rêveries were truly heart-stopping, although at other times phrases seemed almost casually tossed aside. Some of the orchestral detail was beautifully etched, the quieter passages having the virtue of truly making one listen. The lower strings sounded wonderfully German during the second movement. This was an interesting if not utterly coherent performance.
However, the second half presented what sounded like a different orchestra. The marriage of precision and colour was staggering, as was the sharpness of characterisation. Sometimes I have entertained doubts as to whether Ravel's orchestration adds anything to the piano original; here such questions never occurred. I have never heard a superior account of Pictures from an Exhibition and offhand, can only think of Carlo Maria Giulini as matching this. The sheen of the strings and the variety of woodwind coloration might have taken one's breath away had that honour not already been granted to the astonishingly assured Philharmonia brass. This exhibited all the prowess of Chicago, yet without the slightest hint of brashness. Muti imparted a true sense of progression and unity to the work, though this never clashed with the individuality of each movement, in which great instrumental virtuosity was exhibited. 'The Market at Limoges' was a veritable Babel of activity, whilst the mysteries of the Paris catacombs duly chilled. The 'Great Gate of Kiev', pealing bells and all, seemed an inevitable culmination rather than a final distinct picture. Ravel returned with interest the crucial Russian influence upon early twentieth-century French music. The dividends accrued from Muti and the Philharmonia's performance were, if anything, greater still.
The Rake's Progress, Royal College of Music, 1 December 2007
Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music
Tyler Clarke – Sellem, auctioneer
Lukas Jakobczyk – Trulove
Sadhbh Dennedy – Anne Trulove
Sigríđur Ósk Kristjánsdóttir – Mother Goose
Stephanie Lewis – Baba the Turk
Aaron McAuley – Nick Shadow
Jonathan Stoughton – Tom Rakewell
Philip Tebb – Keeper of the madhouse
Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra and Chorus
Michael Roswell (conductor)
Tim Carroll (director)
Soutra Gilmour (designer)
Giuseppe di Iorio (lighting)
Siân Williams (choreographer)
This was a wonderful evening in a wonderful theatre. (For those who do not know the Britten Theatre, it is a marvellously intimate space, with superb acoustics.) To hear a performance of this standard from student musicians of such a tricky work as The Rake’s Progress was a heartening experience indeed.
All of the voices showed great promise, and generally rather more than that. After a slightly wobbly start, Jonathan Stoughton’s Tom impressed, not least through his avoidance of too ‘English tenor’ a sound for the role. His acting convinced mightily, as did that of all the cast. By the time of the graveyard scene, we were truly moved by his plight, which was testament to his fine voice as well as to the production. Lukas Jakobczyk presented a virile bass, sensitively shaded where necessary, in the role of Trulove, whilst Sadhbh Dennedy carried off the difficult balancing act of beauty and blandness demanded by Anne. Her coloratura impressed, not least in her Act I cabaletta. Aaron McAuley’s Nick Shadow was not always quite so sure in his diction, but he presented an amusingly camp reading of the part, doubtless aided by the production. Sigríđur Ósk Kristjánsdóttir proved a worthy temptress as Mother Goose, clearly first amongst equals in her brothel. Stephanie Lewis navigated a steady course for Baba between caricature and undue sentimentality. The moment at which she revealed her bearded face shocked the London crowd and much of the audience too. Philip Tebb did not have much to do as Keeper of the madhouse but did it well, whilst Tyler Clarke was an excellent auctioneer, suave and sinister, yet full of humour too.
The chorus in its various roles, as whores and roaring boys, servants, citizens, and madmen, was excellent throughout. The antiphonal exchanges between men and women were especially well handled, crucial in allowing Auden’s clever rhymes to tell. Not only diction, but pitch and tone were also most impressive. Their choreography was very well conceived and executed too. Indeed, the production, with its stylish colouring of black, white, and red – handy for the role that playing cards play in the tale – told its story very well, without ever unduly drawing attention to itself. Stravinsky wrote that the work was ‘simple to perform musically,’ a claim I should contest in the extreme, ‘but difficult to realise on the stage’. This was certainly accomplished.
The Benjamin Britten International Opera School’s director, Michael Rosewell, was authoritative in his handling of the score: punchy and yet not without tenderness, and always sure of its treacherous twists and turns, from the opening bars’ homage to Monteverdi to the post-Don Giovanni non-moral after the curtain had gone down. The relentless ostinati propelled the action along in exemplary fashion, but the various soli also registered faultlessly and proved unfailingly willing in their decorative capacity. In this, the conductor was of course indebted to his superlative small orchestra, which could have put many professional counterparts to shame. Every section gave of its all. If special word there must be, then it should be awarded to James Southall on the harpsichord. What a weird and wonderful role Stravinsky allots to this alienated continuo, and how splendidly this was projected.
It is difficult, though not impossible, not to admire The Rake’s Progress, almost in spite of its polemical ultra-neo-classicism. Stravinsky was being more than usually disingenuous when he claimed that he wished to ‘release people from the argument and bring them to the music’. He wanted to do the latter, I am sure, but he was very well aware of how many would react and relished that prospect. But it has equally often been difficult to love, or even to like, the work. The performers’ evident success in doing so themselves must have proved infectious for a great part of their audience.
Tyler Clarke – Sellem, auctioneer
Lukas Jakobczyk – Trulove
Sadhbh Dennedy – Anne Trulove
Sigríđur Ósk Kristjánsdóttir – Mother Goose
Stephanie Lewis – Baba the Turk
Aaron McAuley – Nick Shadow
Jonathan Stoughton – Tom Rakewell
Philip Tebb – Keeper of the madhouse
Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra and Chorus
Michael Roswell (conductor)
Tim Carroll (director)
Soutra Gilmour (designer)
Giuseppe di Iorio (lighting)
Siân Williams (choreographer)
This was a wonderful evening in a wonderful theatre. (For those who do not know the Britten Theatre, it is a marvellously intimate space, with superb acoustics.) To hear a performance of this standard from student musicians of such a tricky work as The Rake’s Progress was a heartening experience indeed.
All of the voices showed great promise, and generally rather more than that. After a slightly wobbly start, Jonathan Stoughton’s Tom impressed, not least through his avoidance of too ‘English tenor’ a sound for the role. His acting convinced mightily, as did that of all the cast. By the time of the graveyard scene, we were truly moved by his plight, which was testament to his fine voice as well as to the production. Lukas Jakobczyk presented a virile bass, sensitively shaded where necessary, in the role of Trulove, whilst Sadhbh Dennedy carried off the difficult balancing act of beauty and blandness demanded by Anne. Her coloratura impressed, not least in her Act I cabaletta. Aaron McAuley’s Nick Shadow was not always quite so sure in his diction, but he presented an amusingly camp reading of the part, doubtless aided by the production. Sigríđur Ósk Kristjánsdóttir proved a worthy temptress as Mother Goose, clearly first amongst equals in her brothel. Stephanie Lewis navigated a steady course for Baba between caricature and undue sentimentality. The moment at which she revealed her bearded face shocked the London crowd and much of the audience too. Philip Tebb did not have much to do as Keeper of the madhouse but did it well, whilst Tyler Clarke was an excellent auctioneer, suave and sinister, yet full of humour too.
The chorus in its various roles, as whores and roaring boys, servants, citizens, and madmen, was excellent throughout. The antiphonal exchanges between men and women were especially well handled, crucial in allowing Auden’s clever rhymes to tell. Not only diction, but pitch and tone were also most impressive. Their choreography was very well conceived and executed too. Indeed, the production, with its stylish colouring of black, white, and red – handy for the role that playing cards play in the tale – told its story very well, without ever unduly drawing attention to itself. Stravinsky wrote that the work was ‘simple to perform musically,’ a claim I should contest in the extreme, ‘but difficult to realise on the stage’. This was certainly accomplished.
The Benjamin Britten International Opera School’s director, Michael Rosewell, was authoritative in his handling of the score: punchy and yet not without tenderness, and always sure of its treacherous twists and turns, from the opening bars’ homage to Monteverdi to the post-Don Giovanni non-moral after the curtain had gone down. The relentless ostinati propelled the action along in exemplary fashion, but the various soli also registered faultlessly and proved unfailingly willing in their decorative capacity. In this, the conductor was of course indebted to his superlative small orchestra, which could have put many professional counterparts to shame. Every section gave of its all. If special word there must be, then it should be awarded to James Southall on the harpsichord. What a weird and wonderful role Stravinsky allots to this alienated continuo, and how splendidly this was projected.
It is difficult, though not impossible, not to admire The Rake’s Progress, almost in spite of its polemical ultra-neo-classicism. Stravinsky was being more than usually disingenuous when he claimed that he wished to ‘release people from the argument and bring them to the music’. He wanted to do the latter, I am sure, but he was very well aware of how many would react and relished that prospect. But it has equally often been difficult to love, or even to like, the work. The performers’ evident success in doing so themselves must have proved infectious for a great part of their audience.
Friday, 23 November 2007
Korngold, Das Wunder der Heliane, 21 November 2007
Royal Festival Hall
Patricia Racette - Heliane
Michael Hendrick - Stranger
Andreas Schmidt - Ruler
Ursula Hesse von den Steinen - Messenger
Sir Willard White - Porter
Robert Tear - Blind Judge
Andrew Kennedy - Young Man
EuropaChorAkademie
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)
This concert performance was the British premiere of Das Wunder der Heliane. As such, it was to be welcomed, but frankly I cannot say that I am flabbergasted at the work's absence from British stages. My reaction was that it was a still more unfocused sibling to Korngold's Die tote Stadt. The latter work has its cultish admirers, and it has some interesting sections; yet, as a whole, it seems somewhat ridiculous. For Heliane, delete the 'somewhat'. I am not sure that I can bear to delineate its absurd plot: merely absurd, not surrealist in any sense that I should understand. Various people - I hesitate to use the word characters, for there appeared to be no musical characterisation whatsoever - persist in killing each other and bringing themselves or others back to life, to no particular end. Or sometimes they just come close to doing this, or consider doing it. In between they have sex, come close to having sex, or consider having sex. It is not at all clear, or even interesting, whether these things are symbolic or real. The programme notes made a stab at proclaiming a long-running Korngold interest in 'resurrection'; 'clutching at straws' was the most charitable phrase that came to mind.
Everything seemed bathed in all-purpose film music, irrespective of what was supposed to be going on dramatically. This may have been middle-ranking Hollywood avant la lettre, but middle-ranking Hollywood it remained. Such structure as there was seemed superbly delineated by Vladimir Jurowski, but this was a thankless task. Everything was overheated from the word go, and little changed. The second act was perhaps a little more successful than the first, but the bar had been set low indeed. The relentless use of the xylophone irritated, since it seemed to be to no particular end. (Think, by way of contrast, of Jenůfa.) Granted, Korngold had a certain facility with the orchestra, but Strauss even at his most overblown is infinitely more subtle, not to mention easy on the ears. Much of the work sounded closer to Puccini, or rather to a Turandot that consisted of nothing but massed repetitions of sub-'Nessun dorma' music from all concerned. The great difference, of course, is that, whatever his shallowness, Puccini could write a tune.
The orchestra sounded good, if somewhat generalised in its approach, but I suspect this was as much to do with the music itself as anything else. Jurowski was duly fired up, and clearly had the score's measure: he gave the work his all, intellectually and emotionally. I only wish this effort had been better directed. The soloists were not an impressive bunch and had been misguidedly placed on a platform behind the orchestra. Andreas Schmidt displayed some serious tuning problems, whilst Patricia Racette seemed to veer in and out of focus. There was perhaps more of the latter, but who could entirely blame her? Michael Hendrick, in the principal tenor role, was profoundly disappointing, struggling to make himself heard over the orchestra. What we heard from the text of his great beauty was sharply at odds with what we heard from him. Even Robert Tear sounded lacklustre. On the other hand, the German choir produced rounded yet precise tone throughout. Its diction was decidedly superior to that of many of the soloists.
This was doubtless worth mounting - once. But there are many neglected works from this period which might merit attention before a resurrection. How long, for instance, is it since Busoni's Doktor Faust was performed in London? Where is Dukas's Ariane et Barbe-Bleue? There is also, most shamefully of all, the glaring absence from London, even in concert, of Moses und Aron. I could go on, but shall desist. The programme notes quoted an anonymous 'well-known German musicologist' as having declared Das Wunder der Heliane to be 'the most important operatic score of the 20th century'. More important than Wozzeck?! I am not at all sure that it was more important than Hugh the Drover.
Patricia Racette - Heliane
Michael Hendrick - Stranger
Andreas Schmidt - Ruler
Ursula Hesse von den Steinen - Messenger
Sir Willard White - Porter
Robert Tear - Blind Judge
Andrew Kennedy - Young Man
EuropaChorAkademie
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)
This concert performance was the British premiere of Das Wunder der Heliane. As such, it was to be welcomed, but frankly I cannot say that I am flabbergasted at the work's absence from British stages. My reaction was that it was a still more unfocused sibling to Korngold's Die tote Stadt. The latter work has its cultish admirers, and it has some interesting sections; yet, as a whole, it seems somewhat ridiculous. For Heliane, delete the 'somewhat'. I am not sure that I can bear to delineate its absurd plot: merely absurd, not surrealist in any sense that I should understand. Various people - I hesitate to use the word characters, for there appeared to be no musical characterisation whatsoever - persist in killing each other and bringing themselves or others back to life, to no particular end. Or sometimes they just come close to doing this, or consider doing it. In between they have sex, come close to having sex, or consider having sex. It is not at all clear, or even interesting, whether these things are symbolic or real. The programme notes made a stab at proclaiming a long-running Korngold interest in 'resurrection'; 'clutching at straws' was the most charitable phrase that came to mind.
Everything seemed bathed in all-purpose film music, irrespective of what was supposed to be going on dramatically. This may have been middle-ranking Hollywood avant la lettre, but middle-ranking Hollywood it remained. Such structure as there was seemed superbly delineated by Vladimir Jurowski, but this was a thankless task. Everything was overheated from the word go, and little changed. The second act was perhaps a little more successful than the first, but the bar had been set low indeed. The relentless use of the xylophone irritated, since it seemed to be to no particular end. (Think, by way of contrast, of Jenůfa.) Granted, Korngold had a certain facility with the orchestra, but Strauss even at his most overblown is infinitely more subtle, not to mention easy on the ears. Much of the work sounded closer to Puccini, or rather to a Turandot that consisted of nothing but massed repetitions of sub-'Nessun dorma' music from all concerned. The great difference, of course, is that, whatever his shallowness, Puccini could write a tune.
The orchestra sounded good, if somewhat generalised in its approach, but I suspect this was as much to do with the music itself as anything else. Jurowski was duly fired up, and clearly had the score's measure: he gave the work his all, intellectually and emotionally. I only wish this effort had been better directed. The soloists were not an impressive bunch and had been misguidedly placed on a platform behind the orchestra. Andreas Schmidt displayed some serious tuning problems, whilst Patricia Racette seemed to veer in and out of focus. There was perhaps more of the latter, but who could entirely blame her? Michael Hendrick, in the principal tenor role, was profoundly disappointing, struggling to make himself heard over the orchestra. What we heard from the text of his great beauty was sharply at odds with what we heard from him. Even Robert Tear sounded lacklustre. On the other hand, the German choir produced rounded yet precise tone throughout. Its diction was decidedly superior to that of many of the soloists.
This was doubtless worth mounting - once. But there are many neglected works from this period which might merit attention before a resurrection. How long, for instance, is it since Busoni's Doktor Faust was performed in London? Where is Dukas's Ariane et Barbe-Bleue? There is also, most shamefully of all, the glaring absence from London, even in concert, of Moses und Aron. I could go on, but shall desist. The programme notes quoted an anonymous 'well-known German musicologist' as having declared Das Wunder der Heliane to be 'the most important operatic score of the 20th century'. More important than Wozzeck?! I am not at all sure that it was more important than Hugh the Drover.
Monday, 12 November 2007
BRSO/Jansons: Haydn and Mahler, 11 November 2007
Royal Festival Hall
Haydn – Symphony no.104 in D, ‘London’
Mahler – Symphony no.5
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Mariss Jansons (conductor)
The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra remains a very fine ensemble indeed. Under its principal conductor, Mariss Jansons, it offered one of the best performances of a Haydn symphony I have heard in some time – not that we are overwhelmed with choice in that respect. Articulation was exemplary: musical rather than indulging in distorting point-scoring. That sort of thing is irritating enough when it comes from Nikolaus Harnoncourt, but still worse when perpetrated by his imitators. Rhythms were spruce; they were pointed up by Jansons where necessary, but for the most part, he was happy to let the orchestra do what it could itself. The strings were allowed to play to their strengths, exhibiting sweetness and richness of tone without ever cloying or clogging up the arteries. The woodwind sounded delightful, adding to the string-based sonority rather than competing with it, and providing piquant soloistic colour. And the trumpets, horns, and kettledrum played their parts to perfection. There was once again no undue exhibitionism, simply fine musicianship, attentive to the rest of the orchestra and to the conductor, and marvellously pure in tone (the horns in particular).
The slow introduction to the first movement was relatively fleet, but was directed in such a way as to make this seem perfectly natural, its rhythmic and harmonic contours leading up to the outbreak of the exposition proper. Likewise, the second movement, admittedly an Andante rather than an Adagio, was taken at quite a flowing pace. Such was the care taken in phrasing and in the characterisation of every line, such was the attention paid to the combination of those lines, harmonically and contrapuntally, that again this felt just right, even if the timing on paper might have led one to suspect hurrying. The minuet was taken, as is now the fashion, one-to-a-bar. This generally leads to a loss of the stately character of the dance, but the technique and musicianship of conductor and players ensured that there was no loss of aristocratic grace. The cross rhythms were made to tell and there was none of the tedious short-breathed phrasing that disfigures so many contemporary performances: a longer line was always palpable. A slight relaxation of tempo for the trio was well judged. The celebrated drone finale swept all in its wake: fast but never rushed. Every instrumental line sang freely and joyfully, yet never merely for itself. Here especially, the antiphonal division of first and second violins paid dividends, Haydn’s imitative playfulness registering in delightful fashion.
Mahler’s Fifth Symphony received for the most part a duly thrilling performance. There could again be no quarrel with the standard of orchestral playing, which impressed in every department, apart from a brief passage at the beginning of the final movement when some sections sounded a little tired. (One can certainly sympathise with their predicament.) Special mention should be made of the first horn and first trumpeter, whose solos were not only faultless but profoundly moving; there was no doubt that they understood the meaning behind the notes. The opening tattoo and its recurrences were ominous indeed. Moreover, the statements of the chorale, which at various points threatens to triumph but never quite does, were noble and thrilling: a tribute to all of the brass in particular. The ghostly pizzicati from the strings in the third movement were superbly managed, as was the Viennese Schwung of the final trio section of that movement. Thinking of the orchestra as a whole, and its direction from Jansons, an especially notable aspect of this performance was the bustling counterpoint , partly born of Mahler’s renewed interest in the music of Bach, and yet so utterly characteristic of the composer and his language. Not only the balance between various lines but also the impetus the sometimes frenetic activity gives to the symphony’s dramatic arch were as impressive as I can recall hearing them.
And yet, the interpretation did not seem to be quite settled. A noteworthy and commendable aspect was the clear division into Mahler’s three parts; the second and fifth movements were attacked immediately, so as to underline this. However, there were quite a few passages, which, if they did not quite meander, did not sound quite so necessary as they might. This was less the case in the first movement, whose funeral tread mightily impressed, but the complex Scherzo and the finale seemed – as so often it can, in all but the greatest performances – a little over-extended. There is a very difficult balance to strike in the finale, between the abundance of orchestral and contrapuntal virtuosity and the overall line, in terms of the movement itself and, even more trickily, its place in the symphonic whole. Leonard Bernstein, in his truly great Vienna recording, succeeded triumphantly in this as few have done before or since. Jansons is not there yet, but I have heard far more uncertain, prolix traversals. The Adagietto was beautiful, but a little earth-bound. Bernstein shows how it might be both æthereal and carnal, whilst also serving as an introduction to the boisterous high spirits of the fifth movement. Here it seemed somewhat static, the string tone slightly unleavened. The final characteristic I felt lacking was a sense of modernist adventure. One of the most enduringly fascinating aspects of Mahler is his position on the cusp of late Romanticism and the Second Viennese School. Different interpretations may choose to dwell more on one or the other, and may vary even within a single interpretation. However, the knife-edge experience of standing so close to the expressionist abyss should not be neglected entirely. There were times when the music sounded more like a presentiment of Shostakovich, and Mahler is far more ambiguous, far richer than that.
Whilst it would be an exaggeration to speak of the work being treated as a concerto for orchestra, this was on occasion the impression one might have gleaned, owing to the mismatch – which should not be exaggerated, but which likewise should not be ignored – between the overall conception and the execution. There seems to me every reason to believe that Jansons will deepen his understanding of the work, so that before too long it will rank with the towering performance I heard of the Sixth Symphony with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Salzburg in 2005. But the Fifth is an extremely treacherous work; I recall hearing Sir Simon Rattle say that he had left it alone for quite a while, having had his fingers burned early on. Earlier this year, I heard Daniel Barenboim fall much further short than Jansons, notwithstanding the fact that Barenboim went on to give extremely fine performances of the Seventh and Ninth. So there is no shame whatsoever in there being a longer journey to travel; this, after all, is part of the challenge and devotion Mahler inspires.
Haydn – Symphony no.104 in D, ‘London’
Mahler – Symphony no.5
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Mariss Jansons (conductor)
The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra remains a very fine ensemble indeed. Under its principal conductor, Mariss Jansons, it offered one of the best performances of a Haydn symphony I have heard in some time – not that we are overwhelmed with choice in that respect. Articulation was exemplary: musical rather than indulging in distorting point-scoring. That sort of thing is irritating enough when it comes from Nikolaus Harnoncourt, but still worse when perpetrated by his imitators. Rhythms were spruce; they were pointed up by Jansons where necessary, but for the most part, he was happy to let the orchestra do what it could itself. The strings were allowed to play to their strengths, exhibiting sweetness and richness of tone without ever cloying or clogging up the arteries. The woodwind sounded delightful, adding to the string-based sonority rather than competing with it, and providing piquant soloistic colour. And the trumpets, horns, and kettledrum played their parts to perfection. There was once again no undue exhibitionism, simply fine musicianship, attentive to the rest of the orchestra and to the conductor, and marvellously pure in tone (the horns in particular).
The slow introduction to the first movement was relatively fleet, but was directed in such a way as to make this seem perfectly natural, its rhythmic and harmonic contours leading up to the outbreak of the exposition proper. Likewise, the second movement, admittedly an Andante rather than an Adagio, was taken at quite a flowing pace. Such was the care taken in phrasing and in the characterisation of every line, such was the attention paid to the combination of those lines, harmonically and contrapuntally, that again this felt just right, even if the timing on paper might have led one to suspect hurrying. The minuet was taken, as is now the fashion, one-to-a-bar. This generally leads to a loss of the stately character of the dance, but the technique and musicianship of conductor and players ensured that there was no loss of aristocratic grace. The cross rhythms were made to tell and there was none of the tedious short-breathed phrasing that disfigures so many contemporary performances: a longer line was always palpable. A slight relaxation of tempo for the trio was well judged. The celebrated drone finale swept all in its wake: fast but never rushed. Every instrumental line sang freely and joyfully, yet never merely for itself. Here especially, the antiphonal division of first and second violins paid dividends, Haydn’s imitative playfulness registering in delightful fashion.
Mahler’s Fifth Symphony received for the most part a duly thrilling performance. There could again be no quarrel with the standard of orchestral playing, which impressed in every department, apart from a brief passage at the beginning of the final movement when some sections sounded a little tired. (One can certainly sympathise with their predicament.) Special mention should be made of the first horn and first trumpeter, whose solos were not only faultless but profoundly moving; there was no doubt that they understood the meaning behind the notes. The opening tattoo and its recurrences were ominous indeed. Moreover, the statements of the chorale, which at various points threatens to triumph but never quite does, were noble and thrilling: a tribute to all of the brass in particular. The ghostly pizzicati from the strings in the third movement were superbly managed, as was the Viennese Schwung of the final trio section of that movement. Thinking of the orchestra as a whole, and its direction from Jansons, an especially notable aspect of this performance was the bustling counterpoint , partly born of Mahler’s renewed interest in the music of Bach, and yet so utterly characteristic of the composer and his language. Not only the balance between various lines but also the impetus the sometimes frenetic activity gives to the symphony’s dramatic arch were as impressive as I can recall hearing them.
And yet, the interpretation did not seem to be quite settled. A noteworthy and commendable aspect was the clear division into Mahler’s three parts; the second and fifth movements were attacked immediately, so as to underline this. However, there were quite a few passages, which, if they did not quite meander, did not sound quite so necessary as they might. This was less the case in the first movement, whose funeral tread mightily impressed, but the complex Scherzo and the finale seemed – as so often it can, in all but the greatest performances – a little over-extended. There is a very difficult balance to strike in the finale, between the abundance of orchestral and contrapuntal virtuosity and the overall line, in terms of the movement itself and, even more trickily, its place in the symphonic whole. Leonard Bernstein, in his truly great Vienna recording, succeeded triumphantly in this as few have done before or since. Jansons is not there yet, but I have heard far more uncertain, prolix traversals. The Adagietto was beautiful, but a little earth-bound. Bernstein shows how it might be both æthereal and carnal, whilst also serving as an introduction to the boisterous high spirits of the fifth movement. Here it seemed somewhat static, the string tone slightly unleavened. The final characteristic I felt lacking was a sense of modernist adventure. One of the most enduringly fascinating aspects of Mahler is his position on the cusp of late Romanticism and the Second Viennese School. Different interpretations may choose to dwell more on one or the other, and may vary even within a single interpretation. However, the knife-edge experience of standing so close to the expressionist abyss should not be neglected entirely. There were times when the music sounded more like a presentiment of Shostakovich, and Mahler is far more ambiguous, far richer than that.
Whilst it would be an exaggeration to speak of the work being treated as a concerto for orchestra, this was on occasion the impression one might have gleaned, owing to the mismatch – which should not be exaggerated, but which likewise should not be ignored – between the overall conception and the execution. There seems to me every reason to believe that Jansons will deepen his understanding of the work, so that before too long it will rank with the towering performance I heard of the Sixth Symphony with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Salzburg in 2005. But the Fifth is an extremely treacherous work; I recall hearing Sir Simon Rattle say that he had left it alone for quite a while, having had his fingers burned early on. Earlier this year, I heard Daniel Barenboim fall much further short than Jansons, notwithstanding the fact that Barenboim went on to give extremely fine performances of the Seventh and Ninth. So there is no shame whatsoever in there being a longer journey to travel; this, after all, is part of the challenge and devotion Mahler inspires.
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