Betrothal in a Monastery, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 13 April 2019

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Images: Ruth and Martin Walz
Bogdan Volkov (Don Antonio), Goran Jurić (Mendoza), Aida Garifullina (Luisa), Anna Goryachova (Clara d’Almanza), Violeta Urmana (Die Duenna), Maxim Paster (Moderator), Stephan Rügamer (Don Jerome) und Lauri Vasar (Don Carlos)

Don Jerome – Stephan Rügamer

Don Ferdinand – Andrey Zhilikovsky

Luisa – Aida Garifullina

The Duenna – Violeta Urmana

Don Antonio – Bogdan Volkov

Clara d’Almanza – Anna Goryachova

Mendoza – Goran Jurić

Don Carlos – Lauri Vasar

Moderator – Maxim Paster

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director)
Elena Zaytseva (costumes)

Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)

Alexey Poluboryarinov (video)

Jana Beckmann, Detlef Giese (dramaturgy)

Prokofiev and Sheridan might not immediately sound the most obvious match. When one thinks about it a little, however, it is not incongruous – even if it remains surprising. The collaboration stands at a distance, of course, of more than a century-and-a-half: a distance that brings its owns challenges and opportunities. Mediating ‘in real life’ was Prokofiev’s partner, Mira Mendelson, who was translating into Russian the libretto Sheridan had written for Thomas Linley the Elder and Younger. As ever, things are lost and gained in translation, perhaps itself a form of performance or at least akin to performance. Dmitri Tcherniakov’s new production of Betrothal in a Monastery plays with these and other ideas, creating and recreating – and inviting us to do likewise.

There is already parody in the text: that of ideas of honour in Spanish drama, that of opera, that of pasticcio, and so on. What remains? Many such questions are open; it is, to a certain extent, up to us. For it is the ‘opera community’, or rather some from its more extreme wing, ripe for parody or perhaps incapable for further parody, that lies at the heart of the production. We find ourselves at a meeting of a group for recovering opera obsessives: an aspirant singer; a burned out opera critic; a young woman whose affection for Jonas Kaufmann was sadly unrequited; a man who lives his life via ‘classic’ recordings; a star diva, whose attempts at a comeback have not proved successful, and who wishes to rid herself of this world; and so on. These people need help. But will they receive it from this course, which, in having them come to collaborate in consideration of an opera, might liberate them? And what would such liberation entail? We follow them through their breathing exercises, their quarrels, their bringing to life stock characters and more, the (necessary?) cruelties inflicted on them by the Moderator (or is he just a fraud?) As they put together an ‘opera’ of sorts, something that may or may not fit the bill, depending on who we are, when we are, where we are, so do we (or not).

Goran Jurić (Mendoza), Aida Garifullina (Luisa), Anna Goryachova (Clara d’Almanza), Andrey Zhilikhovsky (Don Ferdinand) und Maxim Paster (Moderator)

Choruses are heard - by them, not by us! - through headphones, guiding excerpts from a ‘real’ work. There is no difficulty in apportioning further, incidental roles to the same singers (for instance, drinking monks in the fourth acts). It is a virtue or rather dramatic necessity, given that the number of group members remains the same. Once again, therefore, the process of dramatic creation returns to the foreground; once again, we consider possible connections between characters, perhaps (or perhaps not) in a new light. Our human caricatures build, it seems a community of their own, one that no one could or would have built for them. (Untrue, I suppose, given that director, cast, other musicians, and the audience do just that – but in a way, the untruth remains true.) Ultimately, they seem reconciled to the absurd(ist) glories of an operatic past to be plundered at will: represented on stage by a colourful, jolly, yet ridiculous pageant of characters and assumptions from past and present – just as Prokofiev was doing in something that both was and was not an opera buffa. How we judge that is up to us, but we know that some magic, something beyond mere construction, has taken place; the conceit has broadened out into a ‘real’ drama, a ‘real’ performance, whatever they might mean.

Lauri Vasar (Don Carlos), Goran Jurić (Mendoza), Violeta Urmana (Die Duenna), Aida Garifullina (Luisa) und Bogdan Volkov (Don Antonio)

The opera is not often heard outside Russia. Here, wisely, there were a good number of Russian singers in the cast. There was much to enjoy from all of them, whatever their nationality, Moderator Tcherniakov having guided their dramatic progress with his customary skill. At the centre of machinations stood the magnificent Violeta Urmana, seemingly having a whale of a time sending up her very own star ‘role’, whilst retaining something poignant beneath. Aida Garifullina and Anna Goryachova both revealed strikingly rich voices, complementary yet contrasted, as if woodwind instruments that spoke. Stephan Rügamer and Goran Jurić offered finely judged parodies of parodies – again, without that being their sum total. Andrey Zhilikovsky’s touching Don Ferdinand left one wanting more. The whole was definitely greater than the sum of the parts: just as it should be.

If Daniel Barenboim’s leadership of the Staatskapelle Berlin – and the musical forces more broadly – sometimes sounded as if it might have benefited from a couple more performances truly to come into focus, there remained much to savour, especially after the interval. Conductor and orchestra relished Prokofiev’s quicksilver changes of mood, not only mirroring but commenting on, even contradicting what we saw and heard onstage. The composer’s extraordinary gifts as a melodist were reconfirmed and contextualised. Again, there was work for us to do – as there surely always will be in this enigmatic work. Some, booing at the close, clearly resented that; they always will. For the rest of us, it was an intriguing, challenging, and amusing evening.

Der Zwerg, Deutsche Oper, 12 April 2019

Deutsche Oper

DER ZWERG von Alexander von Zemlinsky, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Premiere am 24. März 2019, copyright: Monika Ritterhaus
The Dwarf: Mick Morris Mehnert and David Butt Philip

Donna Clara – Elena Tsallagova

Ghita – Emily Magee

The Dwarf – David Butt Philip, Mick Morris Mehnert

Don Estoban – Philipp Jekal

Maids – Flurina Stucki, Amber Fasquelle, Maiju Vaahtoluoto

Companions – Carolina Dawabe Valle, Margarita Greiner

Alma Schindler – Adelle Eslinger

Alexander von Zemlinsky – Evgeny Nikiforov

Tobias Kratzer (director)

Rainer Sellmaier (designs)

Stefan Woinke (lighting)

Sebastian Hanusa (dramaturgy)

Ladies of the Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: Jeremy Bines)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

Donna Clara (Elena Tsallagova) and her guests

‘I have always thought and still believe that he was a great composer. Maybe his time will come earlier than we think.’ Arnold Schoenberg was not always given to exaggerated enthusiasm for the music of his contemporaries; he could hardly, though, have been more emphatic in the case of his friend, brother-in-law, mentor, advocate, interpreter, and, of course, fellow composer, Alexander Zemlinsky.

I had told myself that I ought not to begin another piece on Zemlinsky with a reference to Schoenberg. In this case, however, the Deutsche Oper more or less made my decision for me, by prefacing this excellent new production of Zemlinsky’s one-act opera, Der Zwerg, with Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Film Scene, op.34. Zemlinsky’s one-act opera dates from 1919-21, Schoenberg’s from the close of the 20s. Much separates them: not least, though certainly not only, Schoenberg’s adoption of the dodecaphonic method. Yet they have common roots as well as kinship; the opening, additional scene to Tobias Kratzer’s staging makes that clear, despatching us – and Zemlinsky – back two decades, to a fashionable drawing room, in which the hapless, lovelorn Zemlinsky attempts to teach Mahler at the piano. Alma Mahler, that is, or rather Alma Schindler, whose rejection of Zemlinsky, depicted or rather imagined here, hit Zemlinsky hard. Alex finds Alma irresistible – many did – yet she finds him repellent, ridiculous; she pushes him away, mocks him. Kratzer makes clear that this is a way in, as much for the composer and work as for us: in no sense an explanation or reduction. I had worried that Schoenberg’s music might overshadow what came afterwards – and perhaps it did, ever so slightly – but no harm was done, and there was wit in the over-emphasis on the already prominent piano part as ‘learned’ and ‘performed’ by the figures at the piano. Anticipations of Schoenberg’s actual Piano Concerto, both from the Brahmsian and Wagnerian wings – gross oversimplification, I know – intrigued.

But back to Zemlinsky and Der Zwerg. We then move to the court of the Spanish Infanta: a theatre of cruelty, wonder, superficiality, and, of course, riches. It was difficult not to think a little of Salome here, not only on account of Oscar Wilde (whose short story this is). The dwarf given as the Infanta’s eighteenth-birthday present is not Zemlinsky – although Alma, with typical charity, would refer to him in her memoirs as a ‘horrible dwarf’ – but the trauma of his rejection feeds character and drama, as it had in works such as Eine florentinische Tragödie and Die Seejungfrau. Here, we see him in two different ways: as an actual ‘dwarf’, finely acted by Mick Morris Mehnert, and as he sees – and hears – himself, a musician (which he is, far from coincidentally), sung in parallel concert dress and increasingly acted by David Butt Philip. Singing is the dwarf’s act: without that, he would, as an ‘ugly’ person, be nothing. It enables him to be ‘merely’ ridiculous, in the eyes of the court. It is the crushing realisation that the child – no more than Salome is she capable of empathy, of love – does not, could not love him that has him confront his actual image, the singer at last seeing the dwarf in the mirror. Such is the central tragedy of recognition, of despair, of revulsion, of death.

Yet, as in Salome, we also sense the tragedy of the Infanta, Donna Clara. The ladies of the court egg her on; is there any way, in this stifling, stylish, ‘aestheticised’ atmosphere, that she could have become more human? (What chance, after all, did Alma have in her world of being taken seriously as a musician, as a woman, as a human being?) Images or potential images abound. For the arrival of the gift itself, sorry himself, mobile telephones are taken from the guests. How keen they would have been to relay their amusement to a wider amusement; they doubtless still will, long after the unfortunate object of their derision has been forgotten. So too do ideas of music and musicians, of art and artists. An orchestra is assembled, and quickly dissembled. Busts of artists – of men – surround the stage and even – rightly, we feel – are smashed, like some of those instruments. Is it perhaps too hopeful to install Zemlinsky’s bust centre-stage at the close, as is accomplished here? Yes – and no. That is surely the point. Zemlinsky’s time may or may not have come.

It certainly has done in terms of musical performance. Butt Philip, in surely the finest, most commanding performance I have yet heard from him, enticed and engaged. Elena Tsallagova captured to a tee the difficult balancing act in a direction that was somehow both the same and different, likewise as impressive in song as in demeanour. Emily Magee and Philipp Jekal both impressed as Ghita, the lady-in-waiting who must tell the Dwarf who he is – the Infanta lacks courage or even inclination – and Don Estoban, supposedly master of ceremonies, yet quite out of his depth. They helped us understand why, to appreciate failings that perhaps fell short of tragedy, but which certainly helped prepare the way for it. Smaller roles were all well taken, the chorus well prepared both vocally and on stage.

This was above all, though, an achievement for Donald Runnicles and the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper – pointing us, perhaps, to the truth that it is in the orchestra that Zemlinsky is most at home. It is easy to point to what he and his music are not – Schoenberg, Mahler, Strauss… – and many would doubtless have done so again on this occasion. Here, at least, the score never quite blooms as it might have done with those composers; and, to be fair, as it does in Zemlinsky’s own Lyric Symphony. But one heard the kinship with that score in particular, melodic and harmonic characteristics never to be reduced to ‘influence’, but of a nature that we may well recognise better when the composer’s time truly has come. Runnicles conducted as if this were a repertoire work, its harmonic structure and meaning as clear, its colours as specifically delineated and blended, as if he were conducting Wagner or Strauss (or Schoenberg, etc.) There was more here, one felt, than could possibly be discerned in a single hearing. The opera’s close in the ‘wrong’ key, Mahlerian ‘progressive’ tonality turned regressive, made its own tragic point. Zemlinsky and his opera were given a voice – if, but only if, we listen.

In 1959, another modernist critic, perhaps still more exacting than Schoenberg, Theodor Adorno, wrote of Zemlinsky in surprisingly glowing terms. He had ‘made more of the compromises characteristic of an eclectic than any other first-rate composer of his generation. Yet his eclecticism demonstrated genius in its truly seismographic sensitivity to the stimuli by which he allowed himself to be overwhelmed.’ We often look more warily than Adorno or Schoenberg upon Romantic notions of genius, even as our concert halls, opera houses, and much popular discourse cling to them. Once more: has Zemlinsky’s time come? What of Alma’s too? Will those questions ever be beside the point? Should they ever?

Semenchuk/Skigin - Glinka and Tchaikovsky, 1 April 2019

Wigmore Hall

Glinka: A Farewell to St Petersburg

Tchaikovsky: A tear trembles; To forget so soon; The fires in the rooms were already out; None but the lonely heart; It was in early spring; The fearful moment; Frenzied nights; Death; We sat together; Whether the day reigns

Ekaterina Semenchuk (mezzo-soprano)

Semyon Skigin (piano)

To the Wigmore Hall for an evening of magnificently old-school vocal performance from Ekaterina Semenchuk. It was very much her evening, rather than that of her pianist, Semyon Skigin, though he had his moments, especially earlier on. Anna Netrebko and her husband, Yusif Eyvazov, were amongst the enthusiastic audience for songs by Glinka and Tchaikovsky, with a series of encores that unleashed operatic tendencies never much veiled, Offenbach’s ‘Ah! quel diner je viens de faire’ (La périchole) and Carmen’s Habanera both revealing excellent French (also heard recently in Paris’s new Troyens), a soulful rendition of one of Dvořák’s Gypsy Songs in between.

That this was to be a recital in the grand manner was apparent from the very first of the twelve songs that make up Glinka’s collection, A Farewell to St Petersburg, ‘Romance from David Riccioi’. Semenchuk’s performance smiled without fashionable lightness, not so far from Verdi – though I find this unpretentious salon music considerably more to my taste. There was stage delivery too, the assumption if not of character than of persona. Skigin conveyed well the dance rhythms of songs such as ‘Bolero’ and ‘Barcarole’, leaving the way clear for Semenchuk’s star quality to engage beyond that. In the former, there were some splendidly darkened colours in her lower range, indicative of what might be achieved on a larger stage, without merely being of it here. A simple yet touching ‘Cavatina’ likewise hinted at that other musical world, whilst the contrasting stanzas of ‘Lullaby’ made almost for a scena in themselves; likewise, in different yet related fashion, the high drama of the ‘Fantasia’. The motoric humour of the preceding ‘Travelling song’ (‘Poputnaya pesnya’) even went so far as to receive an encore. Three songs in succession, ‘A knight’s song’, ‘The lark’, and ‘To Molly’, seemed almost to summarise the collection as a whole: respectively, aptly martial, and on a grand scale; delicate, yet spotlit; and beautifully shaped, with touching sincerity. The final ‘Song of farewell’ rounded things off with a resolve as un-Mahlerian as could be imagined: ‘Der Abschied’ this is not – and was not. This may not be ‘great’ music, but Semenchuk more than held our attention, drawing out of it more than one might ever have expected, without turning it into something that it was not.

‘A tear trembles’, the fourth song from Tchaikovsky’s op.6 collection, registered a different compositional voice entirely – which yet had roots in what had gone before. Semenchuk’s change of gown during the interval suggested something graver, less of the salon – and that is what we heard, her velvet tone and legato just the ticket. A richly wistful ‘To forget so soon’ offered both continuation and individuality, at times once again hinting at the operatic world of Eugene Onegin. The succeeding song, ‘The fires in the rooms were already out’, offered a fine example of building from hushed tones to climax, whilst the well-known ‘None but the lonely heart’, again from Tchaikovsky’s op.6, was relished as if an old favourite brought out by popular demand from the piano stool. (From the stool, though, certainly not off the peg.) ‘It was in early spring’ sounded duly vernal, ‘The fearful moment’ another fine example of opening in the salon and broadening out. Each of these songs brought something different to an enjoyable and revealing reictal, ‘Whether the day reigns’, op.47 no.6, an exultant, even grandiloquent finale.

LSO/Roth and others - Lang, Manoury, Shin, and Scriabin, 24 March 2019

Barbican foyers and Barbican Hall

David Lang: the public domain (UK premiere)

Philippe Manoury: Ring (UK premiere)

Donghoon Shin: Kafka’s Dream (world premiere)

Scriabin: The Poem of Ecstasy, op.54

London Symphony Chorus

LSO Community Choir

500 Voices Participants

Simon Halsey (chorus director)

Esmerelda Conde-Ruiz, Emily Dickens, Lucy Griffiths, David Lawrence, Jack Apperley (conductors)

London Symphony Orchestra

François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

An excellent concert from the LSO and François-Xavier Roth, prefaced by a more aesthetically dubious enterprise: the UK premiere of David Lang’s the public domain. Let us get that out of the way first. The work, if we can call it that, is designed, according to the composer, ‘for the entire community we live in, so it doesn’t require music professionals, although they are welcome. Performers and audience should be indistinguishable from each other.’ And so on and so forth. Immersive music theatre, however, this was not. What ensued consisted of choruses stationed across the Barbican foyers, shouting and sometimes singing platitudes to music that was, if anything, still more banal. Lang ‘crowdsourced the texts’; they are ‘internet search engine auto-completions of the sentence, “One thing we all have is our…”.’ Alas, he did not use all of them, removing ‘those that referred to specific people, that insulted or praised a person or group, that said anything – good or bad – about a particular religion or nationality or gender … that were pornographic.’ So pretty much anything that might have been of interest, then. Still, even ‘our design/our need/our capacity to choose how we will view the world around us,’ etc., etc., etc. seemed like Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit when compared to the banal chords of Lang’s score. One might point to a spatial element, I suppose, but that would be rather like saying Stockhausen’s Gruppen is like a car park, because people park their cars in different places in that car park. Perhaps there is something more to be said of it, but I shall leave it there. I am sure many of those involved in singing enjoyed the three-quarters of an hour or so it took to get through the twelve parts of whatever it was that was alleged to be going on, and that that was doubtless much of the point. For the audience, though, the motivation to ‘be indistinguishable from each other’ could hardly have stood further from realisation. At least there was opportunity to repair to the bar and continue to try to make something of it with a gin and tonic in hand.

What a relief, then, to enter the Barbican Hall, suitably refreshed, and to hear a performance underway: a performance underway that may or may not have been a ‘real’ performance, depending on one’s standpoint. Here, in another UK premiere, that of Philippe Manoury’s 2013 Ring, there was genuine play both with space and with the bounds of a work and performance, genuine play within a work that enticed and, in an intriguing sense, left one wondering whether this, despite its scale, had been a mere fragment of a greater whole. Music, whatever we mean by that, had certainly begun when we entered the hall. The idea of a notated tuning-up is not new, but what is? This welcomed us not only into the hall, but into the work and its realisation, musicians encircling the audience, forming that ‘ring’ of the title, music coalescing as it had never done in the previous work. When the conductor arrived and began, there was no discernible difference to start with, but rather a visual staging post in still liminal transition, in which occasional strands sounded not unlike snatches of Boulez’s Répons, without ever being reduced to them or displaying undue – or even due – ‘influence’. Was spatial differentiation in itself a form of melody, analogous to timbre in Klangfarbenmelodie? It seemed to be; or rather, might well have been understood as such. Listening and interpretation were open, without being arbitrary. Sounds – music – swirled around us, leading to climaxes as one might traditionally have understood them, and indeed as we should later hear in Scriabin. Material was ever transforming, though never, so it seemed, complete as the aspirant ‘ring’. Sometimes one, or at least I, heard the same figure as more concerned with its repeated pitch, sometimes with rhythm, sometimes with timbre – whilst still, apparently, being the same. Structure was abundantly clear, again not entirely unlike a symphonic work, yet dynamic as form, not entirely unlike a comprehending performance of a symphonic work. For this was a performance from the LSO and Roth in a strong sense. Whatever the theatre, this was music ultimately concerned with ‘itself’.

The world premiere of Donghoon Shin’s Kafka’s Dream followed, its inspiration Jorge Luis Borge’s 1975 poem, Ein Traum, providing a clue even in its title of dreamlike blurring of lines between the imaginary and reality: in itself a connection of sorts between Manoury and Scriabin. For there was a nice doubling of tripartite structure, the two previous parts combined in unexpected, surprising ways, a dream within a dream. Throughout, we heard a keen air for orchestration and for memory, lively rhythms, for instance, ‘remembered’, yet not quite. Thematic development, or something akin to it, was, again as in both preceding and succeeding works, both clearly and dramatically communicated, a solitary unease at its heart, without that necessarily being its point. Shin clearly enjoyed writing for a large orchestra; I enjoyed hearing him do so.

Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy benefited from admirable clarity and a fine balance between the vertical and horizontal. That balance, after all, is surely integral to the work itself; it does not necessarily follow, however, that that is how we always hear it. As in the preceding orchestral works, Roth and the LSO realised structure dynamically as form, here perhaps informed by a Debussyan ear, not least for Allemondian malevolence. A performance that evaded the hothouse entirely would miss the point. This certainly did not, yet there was far more to it than that: a variegation one may well have considered botanical. Climaxes drew lines together: Strauss or Mahler, rather than a Bruckner monolith. I am not a synaesthete, but I fancied that I moved a little closer here, however illusory that sentiment.

De Villiers/LMP/Ludford-Thomas - Brahms, Schumann, and Mozart, 22 March 2019

Royal Festival Hall

Brahms: Schicksalslied, op.54

Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor, op.54

Mozart: Mass in C minor, KV 427/417a

Nico de Villiers (piano)

Elin Manahan Thomas, Helen Meyerhoff (sopranos)

Peter Davoren (tenor)

Philip Tebb (bass)

Hackney Singers

Lewisham Choral Society

London Mozart Players

Dan Ludford-Thomas (conductor)

A strange concert, this, in that, although chorally conceived, it proved strongest in the performance of Schumann’s Piano Concerto: not so much a comment on the choral singing as on the conducting of Dan Ludford-Thomas. That might seem odd, given that he proved himself very much a choral rather than an orchestral conductor, but the concerto came off best precisely because control of its direction was for the most part in the more than capable hands of pianist, Nico de Villiers. There was no doubt whatsoever that he was the real thing, offering playing both pellucid and, where required, weighty (making me keen to hear his Brahms). Insofar as he was able to lead the London Mozart Players, he did, with all the give and take of chamber music. The shaping of the first-movement cadenza offered a conspectus of that movement, even the work, as a whole. A lovely blend of ‘Classical’ and ‘Romantic’ was similarly achieved in the Intermezzo, also benefiting from fine cello playing (though a few more cellos and indeed strings more generally would have been welcome). Finely sprung rhythms characterised a finale both buoyant and directed, the LMP on noticeably better form throughout the concerto than in the choral works by Brahms and Mozart that surrounded it.

First of those was Brahms’s Schicksalslied, or ‘Song of Destiny’. Again, one would ideally have had a larger orchestra, not least given the presence of two very large choruses, the Hackney Singers and Lewisham Choral Society, but there were doubtless financial reasons for that. Ludford-Thomas certainly handled those gigantic, Gurrelieder-like choral forces well here. They offered a pleasing sound and excellent diction, clearly well trained, with convincing dynamic contrasts. The final stanza proved hard driven, though, and the orchestra was largely left to fend for itself – sometimes with more convincing results than others.

The second half of the concert was given over to Mozart’s Mass in C minor. The ‘Kyrie’ offered a largely promising start. Swift, if not unreasonably so, and well balanced – again, given the mismatch in size between choruses and orchestras – it once again offered fine choral singing, and a nice change to hear so many voices in Mozart. Alas, soprano, Elin Manahan Thomas proved parted here and elsewhere, also contributing decidedly peculiar Latin pronunciation and ornamentation. If there was nothing especially insightful to Ludford-Thomas’s conducting of the ‘Gloria’, it enabled the chorus, which was a good part of the point of such a concert. Helen Meyerhoff, in its ‘Laudamus’ section proved a more convincing soloist, a bizarrely fast tempo notwithstanding. Subsequent sections sounded more like rushes to the bus stop than moments of Rococo wonder and suffered from poor blend between soloists. By the time we reached the ‘Qui tollis’, choral intonation left a good deal to be desired. However, the teenor, Peter Davoren had some good moments.

Maybe the novelty of such large choral forces had simply worn off, or maybe they were growing tired: either way, the ‘Credo’ seemed more affected by roughness around the edges than had been the case earlier. The ‘Et incarnatus est’, which should be one of the most wondrous movements in all Mozart’s sacred music, suffered from uneven singing, plain strings, and serious disjuncture in pitch between the two; only the woodwind redeemed it. A plain ‘Sanctus’, lumbering ‘Osanna’ and perfunctory ‘Benedictus’ made for dispiriting listening.

Iolanta and L’Enfant et les sortilèges, Royal Academy of Music, 18 March 2019

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Images: Robert Workman

Iolanta – Samantha Quillish

Brigitta – Emilie Cavallo

Laura – Yuki Akimoto

Marta – Leila Zanette

Vaudémont – Shengzhi Ren

Alméric – Joseph Buckmaster

Robert – Sung Kyu Choi

Ibn-Hakia – Darwin Leonard Prakash

Bertrand – Niall Anderson

King René – Thomas Bennett

L’enfant – Olivia Warburton

La princesse, La chauve-souris – Alexandra Oomens

Le feu, Le rossignol – Lina Dambrauskaitė

La théière, Le rainette, Le petit vieillard – Ryan Williams

Maman – Tabitha Reyonolds

La tasse chinoise, La libellulue – Hannah Poulsom

La bergère, Une pastourelle, La chouette – Aimée Fisk

La chatte, L’écureuil – Gabrielė Kupšytė

L’horloge comtoise, Le chat – James Geidt

Le fauteuil, L’arbre – Will Pate

Oliver Platt (director)
Alison Cummins (designs)

Jake Wiltshire (lighting)

Emma Brunton (movement and puppetry)

Royal Academy Opera Chorus and Sinfonia

Gareth Hancock (conductor)

Tchaikovsky’s one-act Iolanta seems to have gained in popularity recently. London, at any rate, has two different productions this year: this, at the Royal Academy of Music, and at Holland Park this summer. As ever, the question with a one-act opera is what, if anything, to pair it with. (That hardly applies with Salome or Elektra, though couplings have been known, but it will generally do so with shorter works.) Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges is a popular choice, and rightly so, from the one-act stable. Without much – although not without any – in the way of overt connection being made, the two operas complemented each other nicely, both proving excellent showcases for their young singers, both proving substantially more than that too.

Oliver Platt, one of our most accomplished young directors – last year, I saw two (!) fine productions of Così fan tutte (here and here) – once again offers us stagings both intelligent and involving. Like their hero(ine)s, they take their own paths, yet where those paths intersect, the results are thoughtful and intriguing. Iolanta seems to me greatly misunderstood – or at least too often mostly understood in a way that limits rather than sets it free. The subtext seems obvious – a blind girl, kept safe by her father, eventually freed from her imprisonment by a stranger – and yet, too often ignored. Here, it certainly is not, a greenhouse, a place of hothouse care and incarceration, placed firmly on stage, its flourishing yet stifled plants both inspiring and warning, could Iolanta but see them. Likewise the surgical gloves of her companions, weirdly static in aestheticised presentiment of Maeterlinck and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. But when, finally she can see, finally she can become – in the eyes of men, in the eyes of society more generally – a ‘woman’, Iolanta turns suddenly away from the sun’s blinding rays, from adulthood. It is too late: orchestra and chorus have rejoiced, she gives out a cry of anguish, but no one cares – other, perhaps than us, in the audience. Now she is on her own, awakened, seeing; or rather, captive once again, this time without the alleged protection and solace of childhood.

The boy in L’Enfant et les sortilèges – a trouser role, naturally, in this most elegantly queer of operas – is on his own too; or is he? This is certainly an opera very much about childhood, an irredeemably adult idea, rather than a children’s opera. And so there is, or should be, always something enticing and yet disturbing about that penetration of an imagined child’s lair, here very much centred upon the imaginings of his bedroom. Here, the constructivism of our imagination, that of the work’s creators, most likely that of the ‘child’ too, is put centre stage. We see, lightly worn, the workings: puppetry, other short-trouser children, books, fabrics, a tent from his – our? – own life, creating a world that is, yes, imagined, but also equally his, Ravel’s, Colette’s, our own. It is never predictable, always with an element of the dream, of the unconscious, yet one can hazard a guess where it has come from, at least in retrospect. We are all psychoanalysts now, are we not? And when the Princess emerges, from the tent in the garden – here, as in Iolanta, a place of magical enticement, which may or may not be quite what it seems – she is dressed as Iolanta was. Will the boy do to her what the earlier princess’s prince charming was set to do to her? Most probably: not, however, quite yet, for childhood, whatever that might be, and its enchantments, its gifts, still reign. Light and dark take a related, yet different path. At least, we believe so…

These are not in any way easy operas for students, however accomplished, to perform. The young musicians of the Royal Academy acquitted themselves very well indeed. Without repeating the cast list, I should like to mention a handful of singers who stood out for me. All, however, performed creditably, whether individually or as a company. Samantha Quillish’s Iolanta was heartfelt, moving, possessed both of heft and subtlety: everything, at least, anyone could reasonably have asked. Shengzhi Ren’s Vaudémont proved honest, ardent, again moving: just what the Tchaikovsky brothers wanted, allowing us, should we wish, to question their assumptions whilst affording them the dignity of being taken seriously. Thomas Bennett’s King René grew in strength and compassion as the evening progressed, whilst Sung Kyu Choi’s Robert offered quite a taste of what might have been, had characters’ choices been different. Olivia Warburton’s Child (L’Enfant) impressed in every possible way: her French, her demeanour, her elegance of line. This was a character, both ‘real’ and constructed, in whom one could believe, ably supported and abetted by a near faultless cast.

It was perhaps inevitable that the orchestra, conducted by Gareth Hancock, would sometimes fall a little short. Orchestras twice its size will find these tough nuts to crack, let alone together. There was much to savour, though, and if I sometimes missed the flexibility of the finest Tchaikovsky performances, that was hardly the point here. Hancock supported his singers with skill and care, permitting them, like those flowers in the greenhouse and the garden, to bloom as they would. As to what happens next, we shall see – and hear.

LSO/Hannigan - Ligeti, Haydn. Berg, and Gershwin, 17 March 2019

Barbican Hall

Ligeti: Concert Românesc

Haydn: Symphony no.86 in D major

Berg: Lulu Suite

Gershwin, arr. Barbara Hannigan and Bill Elliott: Girl Crazy: Suite

London Symphony Orchestra

Barbara Hannigan (soprano, conductor)

I first heard Barbara Hannigan in 2008. She was singing songs by Berg and Webern with Pierre Boulez and immediately made a great impression. Since then, she has been one of those artists I should make an extra effort to hear; not once have I been even slightly disappointed. Hannigan is, of course, most widely known as a singer, but she has been building a parallel, or rather complementary, career as a conductor in the meantime too. I heard her conduct the Britten Sinfonia in 2013, in works by Mozart, Stravinsky, and Haydn, for some of which she sang too – and once again proved enthusiastic. This concert, her LSO debut, offered a worthy successor in that line, now performing works by Ligeti, Haydn again, Berg, and Gershwin.

Ligeti’s Concert Românesc is one of those pieces we hear more than we probably ought: not in the sense that there is anything wrong with them, but rather that they seem to offer an early, unrepresentative piece by a composer who might otherwise be ignored. Webern’s Passacaglia or even Im Sommerwind would be obvious examples, even Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. Hannigan is certainly not one to neglect Ligeti; one of her most celebrated performances, not least on YouTube, is of his Mysteries of the Macabre (also with the LSO). I could not help, however, but feel that this was a performance-in-progress – although it may simply have been a matter of nerves, of having come first in the programme. Even when it lacked ‘traditional’ incisiveness, as in the first section, there were gains, though, not least a sense of how close the music might sound to early Bartók, even to Strauss. Bartókian ‘night music’ of a later vintage certainly sang forth in the third section, even if the final ‘Presto’ came off somewhat hard-driven. In any case, there was much to relish from the solo work of LSO principals.

Haydn’s Symphony no.86 furthered Hanningan’s growing reputation in Haydn’s music: always a fine indicator of other strengths. The first movement’s introduction offered a grandeur and expectation that Colin Davis (thinking of the LSO) would surely have appreciated, with none of the irritations that, alas, often accompany Simon Rattle’s way with this composer. If its principal tempo were on the fast side, it was not unreasonably so. The music largely spoke here ‘for itself’, however much of an illusion that may be, the development especially well handled, the final coda a joy. Constructivism and lyricism were kept in a fruitful, generative relationship throughout in the second movement, founded, as it must be, in harmony and harmonic movement. This is music to rival Schoenberg in complexity – something most ‘period’ voices, alas, seem entirely to ignore. So too is the minuet – as soon as one listens, which Hannigan ensured that we did. Its trio relaxed harmonically and offered in tandem a winning sense of relative metrical freedom. Delightful, then, as was the finale, one of my very favourites: heard as if Leonard Bernstein had returned, albeit with greater dynamic variegation. It was as witty as it was thrilling, as convincing vertically as horizontally. More please!

Hannigan’s way with Berg’s Lulu-Suite was surprising. It took me a while to get used to, and there were unquestionably aspects of the music that went a little uncared for. That said, to hear it performed with such attention to the multifarious melodic strands – heard, I suspect, very much from a singer’s standpoint – was fascinating. So too was the relative lightness, almost Mendelssohnian, with which the first movement ‘Rondo’ was despatched. The big moments certainly told, but they were not everything. I am not sure I should always want to hear the music like this – indeed, I am sure that I should not – but to hear the classic Romantic/modernist dichotomy not so much evaded as avoided brought plenty of its own interest. Transparency is necessary no matter what the interpretative standpoint, of course; here, Hannigan and the LSO excelled. One might have taken dictation, vocal and verbal, from Hannigan’s sung contribution to the ‘Lied der Lulu’, which was ‘concert-acted’ too. Coloratura held no fear for her, but crucially, it was employed dramatically, just as in Mozart. If there were a few rough orchestral edges to the fourth movement, it is difficult to imagine them having bothered anyone but pedants. The final ‘Adagio’ emerged properly de profundis, as eloquent as if its lines were being sung. Hannigan’s melisma on ‘Engel’ truly told. Quite a performance, then, in so many ways.

The Gershwin suite with which the concert concluded proved equally fascinating – and perhaps still more thrilling. Conceived by Hannigan with the express purpose of accompanying the Lulu-Suite, its ingenious orchestration for identical forces was commissioned from Bill Elliott. As a Bergian, at times Mahlerian, soundworld unfolded, it did not jar. Quite the contrary: t drew one in, not only harmonically but also motivically, to the material of the three songs, ‘But not for me’, ‘Embraceable you’, and ‘I got rhythm’. Then, of course, there was Hannigan’s own star quality as a singer: different, perhaps, from the stars one often associates with this music, but in no sense less bright. It was sung as carefully as Berg had been, without ever sounding ‘careful’. The orchestra joined in with some vocal harmony too, but this was in every sense Hannigan’s show, ‘I got rhythm’ straightforwardly sensational.

Heath Quartet - Haydn, Ligeti, and Beethoven, 16 March 2019

Wigmore Hall

Haydn: String Quartet in D major, op.20 no.4

Ligeti: String Quartet no.2

Beethoven: String Quartet in E-flat major, op.127

Oliver Heath, Sara Wolstenholme (violins)

Gary Pomeroy (viola)

Christopher Murray (cello)

To the Wigmore Hall for a highly rewarding programme of Haydn, Ligeti, and Beethoven from the excellent Heath Quartet: all standing, save the cellist. Whilst it would be banal in the extreme to attribute such alert, illuminating performances to the lack of seating, it doubtless did no harm. Who knows? At any rate, those of us who were sedentary doubtless found ourselves on the edge of our seats, such was the electricity of the music-making we heard.

Haydn always seems to be on the cusp; most great composers do when considered historically. (A good few lesser composers too, come to think of it.) He is surely nowhere more so, however, than in his op.20 quartets, of which he heard the fourth, in D major. ‘Baroque’ and ‘Classical’ are little more than labels, really, often highly misleading labels at that, but perhaps that cusp had said something to tell us – at least until the sudden eruptions of the first movement, which, if not quite Beethovenian, were not exactly un-Beethovenian either. Cultivated tone, conversation, and keen dramatic sense conspired to make play with a thoroughly dialectical relationship between material and its performance. And so, it continued, throughout the development and recapitulation, not least between counterpoint and harmony. Relative – only relative, for this was no no-vibrato freak-show – astringency of tone in the slow movement proved highly apt for the numerous suspensions and general Affekt. The variations’ unfolding proved unquestionably Haydnesque, quite different from, say, that of Mozart or Beethoven – without ever feeling the need to trumpet individuality or, God help us, ‘quirkiness’. There was much fun, both ‘rustic’ and ‘intellectual’, to be had in the ‘Menuet alla zingarese’, with respect to metre and its relationship to harmony. The trio properly relaxed, going its own way: not less but differently challenging. The Heaths’ finale captured the essence of Haydn’s marking (‘Presto e scherzando’) and, beyond it, a sheer brilliance that seemed to extend from the minuet and trio rather than merely contrast with it. It had all the hallmarks of one of Haydn’s free-wheeling symphonic finales, whilst retaining the individual and conversational voices of his quartet writing. Best of all, it put a smile on my face.

Ligeti’s Second Quartet (1968) opened with an éclat from which, it seemed, both all and nothing derived: testament to a decidedly un-, even anti-Haydn-and-Beethoven, denial of motivic development in a ‘conventional’ sense. Scurrying sounds, eruptions, a primacy of texture, and much else besides pointed to kinship instead with a work such as Ramifications, also heard in a Wigmore Hall concert earlier this month (albeit onlocation at the Roundhouse). And that was only in the first few bars! As with George Benjamin and the Ensemble Modern in that concert, the Heath Quartet made us listen – as, of course, did Ligeti. Indeed, it was the composer’s sheer invention, rather than any particular manifestion thereof, that proved most suggestive of kinship with the Classical masters who were his companions on the programme. The second movement, ‘Sostenuto, molto calmo’, sang in and through the uncertainity of an overarching drama that was underway, yet nowhere near resolution, be it on a micro- or macro-level. Technique, both in work and performance, truly proved the liberator of the imagination – just as in Haydn.

The central, third movement, ‘Come un meccanismo di precisione’, certainly spoke of its marking, a multiplicity of ghosts making themselves felt in this machine or mechanism – or should it have been machines in this uncanny, ghostly world? Clocks ticked and malfunctioned, if only figuratively, yet for that reason perhaps all the more tellingly, for they struck as if heartbeats: heartbeats, perhaps, of insanity. Truly pivotal, then, prefacing a wonderful sense of fourth movement play between apparent unanimity and harmony. But was it play? Everything felt both strongly purposive and called into question. The final movement brought delicacy and apparent continuity, at least at first. Yet again, the more one listened, the more one doubted, Ligeti’s notes both binding together and dissolving their very material: ever changing and yet ever similar. It was a finale, yes, just as much as Haydn’s had been, but one was left in no doubt that a finale by now meant something quite different.

The opening of Beethoven’s op.127 Quartet offered so much in the way of E-flat resonance (in more than one sense). The so-called Emperor Concerto, Mozart in all manner of guises: such were the ghosts briefly summoned, prior to a decidedly late, different path on which Beethoven and his interpreters led us: exploratory, yet in the surest of hands. It may be a cliché – what is not, when writing of this music? – but the Heaths truly imparted a sense, however illusory, of the music being composed on the spot: nothing taken for granted, everything ‘new’. Once again, the first movement from its outset made us listen to, indeed participate in, a drama of dialectics, and a specifically tonal drama in this case, a drama of E-flat major. Motivic method reasserted itself in the wake of Ligeti: no mere reversion, perhaps even a progression. Concision, however, was not the least of the qualities held in common, at least in context.

How does one speak of a late Beethoven slow movement? Maybe one should not even try. This, at any rate, unfolded with a rapt sublimity – another cliché, I know – that was anything but generic, bathed, it seemed, in the glow of the Missa solemnis. And how we were compelled to listen to Beethoven’s harmony! In a concert offering us startling original third movements, Beethoven’s scherzo had nothing to fear. Tension and relaxation proved both co-dependent and perfectly judged. Metrical dislocations may have recalled Haydn, but they were very much the composer’s, the work’s, the performance’s own. Modernist and neoclassical impulses were held and encouraged in dialogue for the finale. By what? By many things, but not least a gruff humour that spoke of a humanity it is difficult not to think of as ‘Beethovenian’. Such, once again, proved just the right note for a finale, moreover for this finale.