LSO/Gergiev - Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet, 23 November 2008

Barbican Hall

Prokofiev – Romeo and Juliet, op.64

London Symphony Orchestra
Valery Gergiev (conductor)

Following a wonderful Proms performance of Tchaikovsky’s greatest ballet score, The Sleeping Beauty, the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev have now turned to what is Prokofiev’s greatest ballet, Romeo and Juliet. What a luxury it had been not only to hear The Sleeping Beauty complete, but also for it to have been performed by a great symphony orchestra and a conductor to whom this repertoire is so central. The same could be said of the present performance: characteristic of what Gergiev does best and yet also reminding us of the LSO’s longstanding form in such music, not least under André Previn during the 1970s.

The orchestral tone sounded just right from the very opening bars. Rhythms were always pointed so that we could hear that this was music to be danced to. The imaginary curtain rose upon a vividly characterised Romeo, as yet jejune in his feelings for Rosaline. Andrew Marriner’s clarinet solo was, however, so beguilingly set against flawless pizzicato strings that we might almost have believed that the story would turn out differently. Prokofiev’s ever-resourceful, ever-changing orchestration would grant almost every instrument in the orchestra a chance to shine; Rachel Gough certainly grasped this opportunity in her bassoon solo as the street awakened. As the rivalry between Montagues and Capulets came fully into focus, razor-sharp yet never merely brash orchestral motor-rhythms looked forward to the scherzo of the Fifth Symphony, Gergiev’s wide-ranging knowledge of Prokofiev’s œuvre readily apparent. The militarism of the warring families’ clash was terrifyingly portrayed, reminding me of the quasi-futurism of the Third Symphony and even Alexander Mosolov’s The Iron Foundry. Gergiev and his brass players conveyed an apposite sense both of implacability and of hollowness to the descending scales of the ensuing interlude, brass vibrato here and elsewhere sounding impeccably Russian. Juliet’s music, upon her appearance, provided a welcome sense of contrast: playful and tender by turns. That she would soon be something other than a girl was made abundantly clear by a magnificently Romantic ’cello solo (Floris Mjinders, I think), laden with a telling vibrato. The festal arrival of the guests put me in mind of that in Tannhäuser: not a connection I recall having made before. When, in Masks, we heard the return of those magical ‘Romeo chords’, I was struck not only by the silvery, Cinderella-like tone of the violins but also by Gergiev’s command of the thematic interrelationships in this, surely the most Wagnerian of Prokofiev’s scores. The conductor’s command of his orchestra was visibly and audibly apparent when, at the very opening of the balcony scene, the violins responded immediately to his hand gesture for more fulsome vibrato. Indeed, impassioned, soaring violins were crucial in conveying a Romantic ardour in full flow during the final numbers of the first act.

I was taken by the contrast during the second act between the lovers’ intimacy and the bustling, uncomprehending social world outside. The Dance of the five couples was suave, sardonic in the melodic and harmonic side-slipping so characteristic of the composer, whilst the choir of horns attending the secret wedding was an object lesson in the art of tenderness. Prokofiev’s originality in scoring was highlighted, albeit without undue exaggeration, in the combination of mandolins and trumpets during the Dance with mandolins. Mercutio’s death emerged as duly haunting, not least on account of such fine playing from bassoon and ’cellos. The parallel death of Tybalt packed an enormous dramatic punch: rhythmically and sonically implacable, indeed almost deafening at its climax.

The contrast between the forces of order (the Duke) and convention (Juliet’s father) and the young lovers continued to characterise the third act. We heard the brief, tender domesticity of Romeo and Juliet in soft tones, which yielded as much as the act’s opening music had refused to do so. During the lengthy sequence stretching from Juliet alone in her bedroom to her taking the potion acquired from Friar Laurence, Gergiev showed that, however hapless he might have proved in Mahler, in this, the most symphonic music of the ballet, he need fear no rivals in conveying the symphonic sweep of Prokofiev’s score. The short fourth act, or epilogue, presented a truly tragic and indeed defiant portrayal of the lovers’ death. The brass section rightly bludgeoned our ears, whilst strings and woodwind tugged at our heartstrings, the LSO’s percussion – and, of course, the conductor – mediating between these two related impulses. Gergiev proved himself a master narrator.

Elektra, Royal Opera, 15 November 2008

This should be read as an appendix to my principal review. I was fortunate enough to attend Elektra again and found that a very good performance had become a great one. Each of the singers was at least as good and most were even better, especially Johan Reuter, who sounded almost Wanderer-like upon his mysterious arrival. (We truly heard things through Elektra's ears here.) Susan Bullock was outstanding in the title role. Where, on the first night, her dance - and her accompanying words - did not quite come off, here they did, in a shocking yet inevitable ecstasy. Anne Schwanewilms's excellent performance - her diction was better this time around - reminds me that I did not mention Chrysothemis's weird, twisted, Frau-ohne-Schatten-ish obsession with marriage and children, played upon by Elektra in extremely nasty yet credible fashion. For this, Schwanewilms and director, Charles Edwards should be credited. Rarely can 'normality' have seemed so abnormal; Chrysothemis's transformation by the final scene thereby seems all the more credible.

Most transformed was Sir Mark Elder's conducting. Never having conducted Elektra before, it is now clear that he still had a little way to go on the first night. The Wagnerian inheritance was now clearer than ever. Everything now sounded 'right'; the Recognition Scene no longer dragged and balances appeared to have been reconsidered. (I wonder whether sitting in the amphitheatre rather than in the stalls made a difference too. The sound may be more distanced but the blend may be enhanced.) Indeed, there was a far stronger modernistic bent to the sounds and blends being produced - almost Boulezian at times. (What we lost when Wieland Wagner died prematurely, not least since he and Boulez had plans to perform Salome, Elektra, and Ariadne auf Naxos!) Yet there was also a lightness of touch that no longer seemed underplayed, but part of a long-term strategic, symphonic plan. The oft-quoted line from Strauss as to how one should hear Mendelssohnian fairy-music made as much sense as I can recall. This was a truly marvellous performance!

DVD Review: Die Walküre, Festival d'Aix en Provence, BPO/Rattle

Bel Air Classiques BAC034. Filmed live in high definition at the Festival d'Aix en Provence, July 2007.

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Siegmund – Robert Gambill

Hunding – Mikhail Petrenko

Wotan – Sir Willard White

Sieglinde – Eva-Maria Westbroek

Brünnhilde – Eva Johansson

Fricka – Lilli Paasikivi

Gerhilde – Joanna Porackova

Ortlinde – Elaine McKrill

Waltraute – Julianne Young

Schwertleite – Andrea Baker

Helmwige – Erika Sunnegårdh

Siegrune – Heike Grötzinger

Grimgerde – Eva Vogel

Rossweisse – Anette Bod

Stéphane Braunschweig (director and designer)

Thibault Vancranenbroeck (costumes)

Marion Hewlett (lighting)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

The star of this Walküre is, without a shadow of doubt, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. I doubt that the music can ever have been played better than it is here. Every section of the orchestra has an opportunity to shine and takes it; the blend is equally impressive. Astonishing immediacy of sound in the storm-Prelude to Act One, for which Bel Air's recording must take credit, enables us to hear and to feel bows flying off 'cello strings and the richness of tone really must be heard to be believed. The same may be said of the celebrated 'cello solo at the beginning of the act: full of hope, promise, potential. In much of this act there is a sense of chamber music, albeit on a grand scale, recalling Karajan’s Wagner. This does not preclude weight of orchestral tone, for instance at Siegmund’s cries of ‘Wälse, Wälse,’ yet such tone was differentiated, never monolithic. Kettledrums punctuate ominously whilst the woodwind are simply delectable. When Wotan tells Brünnhilde of the Nibelung host threatening Valhalla, it is in the orchestra – Wagner’s modern-day Greek chorus – that terror truly registers. The orchestral thunder as Wotan arrives in Act Three is not only splendid on its own terms; it ensures that even a Ride of the Valkyries as spirited as we have just heard does not overshadow what is to come: keen strategy on the part of Sir Simon Rattle. And by far the most moving parts of the final scene were those in which the orchestra truly spoke, unhindered by voices.

Rattle’s direction is generally reliable and often more than that. He certainly knows how to secure the sounds he desires from his orchestra and rarely indulges in the micromanagement that characterised some of his earlier work in Berlin. (Conductor and orchestra’s triumphant Tristan-excerpts and Turangalîla-Symphonie at this year’s Proms were indicative of a greater naturalness than had sometimes previously been the case.) If the long line does not sound quite so inevitable, quite so symphonically conceived, as in the work of the greatest Wagner conductors, they have all benefited from greater experience with the Ring. Rattle’s reading remains worlds away from the unstructured choppiness that has so bedevilled Antonio Pappano’s London Ring. My only real reservation lies with the conclusion to the first act. For all the extraordinary beauty of the Berlin Philharmonic’s playing, the direction during this scene sometimes wants greater forward propulsion. At times, it sounds oddly held back: almost defensible when we thereby revel in ravishing woodwind detail, not so otherwise, when it merely sounds arbitrary. There is no competition here for the all-consuming passion of the Boulez-Chéreau Ring on DVD – having Peter Hofmann and Jeannine Altmeyer enhances visual credibility, of course – nor indeed for many audio recordings. Karajan, with Jon Vickers and Gundula Janowitz, remains a favourite of mine in this respect. Furtwängler naturally remains in a class of his own.

The cast is generally of a high, if not overwhelming standard. Mikhail Petrenko and Eva-Maria Westbroek seemed to me strongest. Petrenko’s Hunding arrives looking and sounding every inch the brutal bourgeois: black of tone, yet never unmodulated. This Hunding is no mere caricature, however; he is possessed of a dark, gangsterish attraction. Despite the odd instance of spread at the top of her range earlier on, Westbroek’s Sieglinde develops into a stronger character than we often see and hear. If I remain wedded to the silvery beauty of Gundula Janowitz as the examplar for how this part should sound, that is no reason to dismiss other approaches, especially when conceived so intelligently as here. In the third act, ‘O hehrstes Wunder! Herrlichster Maid’ sounds as expectantly radiant as I can recall, quite outshining Eva Johannson’s Brünnhilde, the weakest link in the cast. Johansson can ‘do’ youthfully impetuous, although camera close-ups do her no favours. More seriously, her diction and intonation leave a great deal to be desired. Much of her third act music is sharp, shrill, and wobbly. Moreover, she comes to sound and look somewhat deranged; it is difficult to ascertain whether this were intended.

Robert Gambill’s Siegmund is ardent if occasionally a little strained – ‘Winterstürme’ would be a case in point. It may be unfair but one inevitably compares him with his predecessors and the voice is not always at the level of the best of them. Still, he can act well – which cannot truthfully be said of all of them – and he looks the part of an outlaw. His tenor is often baritonal in heft yet remains unmistakeably a tenor. Sir Willard White is a good Wotan, although once again, when one considers his predecessors, one realises that this is no John Tomlinson, let alone Hans Hotter. One can see the anguish in White’s face and often hear it in his voice. His second act monologue was commanding, if some way short of unforgettable.

Rattle, according to a booklet interview, entertains a strange conception of Fricka. It is fair enough to recoil from portraying her as a shrew but ‘the most sympathetic and reasonable figure in the entire opera’? As ‘the orchestra makes ... clear’? What of the rapturous evocation of the Volsungs’ mutual love as Wotan speaks of them? Wagner, in a letter to Theodor Uhlig, refers to Wotan’s ‘struggle with his own inclination and with custom (Fricka)’. The incestuous union of Siegmund and Sieglinde entails no crime against nature; like that of Œdipus and Jocasta, it produces healthy offspring. Such unions merely offend against what Wagner, in Opera and Drama, called the ‘wonted relations’ of familial society, a society whose revenge was without mercy. ‘The old storm, the old trouble,’ is Wotan’s weary remark upon Fricka’s furious approach, indicating not merely a hen-pecked husband but also a clash between the new, developmental side to his ‘inclination’ and ‘custom’, set in stone as hard and unalterable as the Law of the Medes and the Persians. Thankfully, there is little in Lilli Paasikivi’s Fricka that bears witness to Rattle’s idea, other perhaps than the twinge of sympathy one feels as she laments her marital neglect. This is movingly accomplished and all the better for it.

What of Stéphane Braunschweig’s production? There is not much to obect to in it, although some aspects may irritate. However, I cannot discern any guiding principle behind it; there is little to suggest that we should have lost out by hearing a concert performance. ‘Little’, but perhaps not nothing, for there are a few nice touches. I liked the opening of the second act, in which we witness Wotan playing a chess-like war-game. He puts the pieces away as Fricka arrives and she tosses them aside when she sees them. There is an interesting likeness to an Ibsen family-drama during this confrontation, followed as it is by having Brünnhilde sit at Wotan’s feet as an obedient daughter in the nursery. The bodysnatching Valkyries impressed too. It is confusing, however, to have Siegmund and Sieglinde appear in the very same location in which the earlier parts of the second act have taken place, a confusion that put me in mind of similar loose ends in Keith Warner’s Royal Opera production. If relative location does not matter, then it is better to give no sense of location at all. How very different are Chéreau and indeed Harry Kupfer in this respect. Moreover, whilst we are treated to a grave Todesverkündigung, especially from the orchestra but also from Gambill’s well-acted response, it is not at all clear why Brünnhilde should kiss Siegmund as she does. This was not a hint in any sense prefigured or followed up. I was also confused by Marion Hewlett’s lighting in the first act. The orange lighting to accompany the glistening of the sword seems wildly excessive, more suggestive of fire. Spring’s entrance thereafter resembles a return of winter moonlight. Having said that, I welcomed the video-projection of fire in the third act, even as I puzzled at the point of the chairs – familiar from Act Two’s Valhalla – on which Brünnhilde is put to sleep. She would hardly awake refreshed.

There is, then, certainly no production challenge to Chéreau or Kupfer, though it is not difficult to imagine, or indeed to witness, worse: far better this than the prettified non-drama of Otto Schenk’s would-be exhumation for the Metropolitan Opera. The most pressing reason to acquaint oneself with the present Walküre remains the superlative performance from the orchestra. However, it is unforgivably philistine to have placed a disc-break during the second act.

Tristan und Isolde, Opéra national de Paris, 3 November 2008

Opéra Bastille

Tristan – Clinton Forbis
King Marke – Franz-Josef Selig
Isolde – Waltraud Meier
Kurwenal – Alexander Marco-Buhrmester
Brangäne – Ekaterina Gubanova
Melot – Ralf Lukas
Shepherd/Steersman – Bernard Richter
Young sailor – Robert Gleadow

Peter Sellars (director)
Bill Viola (video)
Martin Pakledinaz (costumes)
James F. Ingalls (lighting)

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Alessandro di Stefano)

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

The third outing for Peter Sellars’s Paris production of Tristan und Isolde is billed as its last. This collaboration with video artist Bill Viola has attracted a great deal of attention, so I was more than a little curious to catch it before it expired – Süß in Duften, or otherwise. Most of that attention has centred upon the production rather than upon the music, and understandably so. Therein lies the problem, for it is Viola’s video images that dominate everything else. This, I suppose, is fine if you are not a devotee of Tristan, of Wagner, nor indeed of great musical drama. As one who, by contrast, would place Tristan second only to Bach’s St Matthew Passion in the musico-dramatic pantheon, I found the result to be fatally compromised.

Distraction is greatest during the first act – and I do not think that this is simply the consequence of greater habituation later on. ‘Act I,’ in Viola’s words, ‘presents the theme of Purification, the universal act of the individual’s preparation for the symbolic sacrifice and death required for the transformation and rebirth of the self.’ As the reader may have guessed, we are in the world of Orientalism – or, as Viola puts it, ‘the Hindu and Buddhist traditions of Tantra that lie submerged in the Western cultural consciousness’. Sellars made him aware of ‘this connection to Eastern sources,’ but the outcome was hardly a drawing into ‘Wagner’s 19th-century work’. For the first act of Tristan is anything but a process of purification; it is a reawakening and a headlong rush into catastrophe. The death that approaches, as understood at this point – and at least to a certain extent throughout – is not sacrificial but the selfish bidding of what Schopenhauer called the Will. Now one can sometimes get away with contradicting the essence of a work – ‘reading against the grain’ as it has tediously become known – but as this act progresses, the video projections of ceremonial purification seem disconnected rather than daringly contradictory. They have the deleterious consequence of distracting from the drama: both that presented, relatively conventionally, by Sellars in almost ‘semi-staged’ fashion, and, most importantly, by the singers and orchestra. There is more congruence in parts at least of the portentously titled second and third acts, ‘The Awakening of the Body of Light,’ and ‘The Dissolution of the Self’. I was rather taken with the forest imagery of the opening scene of the second act, not least since it put me in mind of a genuine ‘connection’, that with Novalis’s Hymnen an die Nacht. And the fire at the end fits well enough with Isolde’s transfiguration – if a little obviously.

Yet there remains too much that was simply superimposition. By all means create a video installation after sources of allegedly ‘Eastern’ inspiration – or perhaps, better, a very occidental fantasy; yet it does not necessarily follow that one should inflict that upon an existing masterwork. A telling phrase in the programme is Viola’s statement that ‘I did not want the images to illustrate or represent the story directly’. As a statement of method this is fair enough up to a point, yet the crucial word there is ‘want’. Should this really be a situation in which one does what one ‘wants’, rather than primarily responding – and one can do this in a myriad of ways – to the work? For in a sense the subject matter of the imagery is the stuff of Californian self-fulfilment. It would be familiar to any observer of ‘New Age’ fads that have reduced the word ‘spirituality’ to a penchant for scented candles. What I suspect many of Viola’s ilk do not appreciate is that the Age of Aquarius is now just as ‘period’ to many of us as the world of Jane Austen. There may be good reason to evoke either; however, evocation itself does not confer instant contemporary validity. There is a self-indulgence here typical of those unwilling to cede the stage to another generation, a generation left with a good number of social, economic, and environmental disasters to address. They must rehearse an old story ‘just one more time’.

I mentioned above the St Matthew Passion, a work with which, as Michael Tanner has observed, Tristan has so much in common. For many of us, a production that treated Tristan as the ‘passion of passion’, in Tanner’s formulation, would potentially have more to tell us than a presentation of superannuated clichés concerning self-fulfilment. The greatness of Tristan is manifold but a crucial aspect is its achievement in representing and involving us in both the ultimate celebration and the ultimate indictment of romantic – or indeed Romantic – love. As ever with Wagner and indeed the German tradition from Schütz to Stockhausen, dialectics are everything, which is part of the reason he could never have done more than take an interest in the very different tradition of Buddhism. His projected drama, Der Sieger, would be subsumed into Parsifal, the remaining Buddhistic-Schopenhauerian themes transmuted into heterodox Christian legend. Development rather than stasis: this is the way Wagner’s mind worked, a working far more complex and rewarding than this production of Tristan would allow.

Semyon Bychkov conducted a fine account of this treacherous score. Notwithstanding the occasional overly-audible gear-change, Bychkov’s reading was characterised by a true understanding of the Wagnerian melos. The orchestral music flowed and surged as the Schopenhauerian Will of which Wagner believed music to be the representation. Bychkov was aided by excellent and on occasion superlative playing from a much underrated orchestra, enabling an uncovering of detailed riches that one is far from always sure to hear. Shimmering strings, magical woodwind, and resounding brass all played their part; so did Bychkov’s ear for balance and subtle highlighting. There were times when I might have wanted a little more muscle but this should not be exaggerated.

Waltraud Meier bade fair to be the performance’s trump card. The odd instance of wild tuning aside, she delivered an eminently musical portrayal. However, the production had the extremely unfortunate consequence of neutralising her abilities as a true stage-animal. I well remember seeing her as Ortrud at Covent Garden. Even during the first act, during which she had almost nothing to sing, so compelling was her stage presence been that I was unable to take my eyes off her. Semi-staged and dominated by video projections, this was not the Tristan for her. Clinton Forbis started unpromisingly, sounding like an old man during the first act. However, in this most impossible of roles, he gained strength and gave a decent account of Tristan’s monologue. Perhaps he had been anxious to conserve his resources. I was disappointed by Franz-Josef Selig’s Marke. This is usually a role in which to excel; although Selig was not bad, he alternated a little too frequently between the emotingly tremulous and the slightly hoarse. I was far more impressed by Alexander Marco-Buhrmester’s subtly ardent Kurwenal, shaping words and music to considerable effect. Ekaterina Gubanova was not always the strongest of Brangänes but at her best, she impressed in a similar fashion to Marco-Buhrmeister. The choral singing, coming from behind rather than on-stage, sounded a little coarse to begin with, when there were worrying lapses in coordination, yet the chorus packed quite a punch by the end of the first act. However, my most unalloyed praise should be given to Bernard Richter and Robert Gleadow in their ‘minor’ roles. I do not think I have ever heard them better taken in the theatre. These artists were distinguished by their verbal acuity and diction, their musical line, and their sweetness of tone. It speaks well of the Opéra National de Paris that effort has been expended on casting these roles; Richter and Gleadow (recently an excellent Masetto at Covent Garden) will clearly go far.

Andreas Haefliger piano recital, 12 November 2008

Wigmore Hall

Janáček – Piano sonata 1.x.1905, ‘From the street’
Beethoven – Piano sonata no.21 in C major, op.53, ‘Waldstein’
Beethoven – Piano sonata no.24 in F sharp major, op.78
Brahms – Piano sonata no.2 in F sharp minor, op.2

Andreas Haefliger (piano)

Andreas Haefliger is a musician I have long admired, his intelligence in terms of programming and performance an example to many others. This recital, however, part of the London Pianoforte Series, was profoundly disappointing, the only estimable performance being the first, that of Janáček’s piano sonata.

As it stands, the sonata is in two movements, the composer having destroyed the third prior to the premiere. (He also attempted to destroy the other two shortly after, but the pages thrown into the Vltava failed to sink.) Like so many ‘unfinished’ works, however, the sonata works perfectly well as it stands; I have never felt the lack of a finale, intriguing though the prospect may be. The balance and development Haefliger posited between the Presentiment – Con moto and Death – Adagio seemed beyond reproach, reminiscent of Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony. Janáček’s soundworld was captured from the outset, as was the characteristic tension between fluidity and stubbornness of repetition, especially during the first movement. Haefliger evinced an almost Ravelian delight in sonority but the dark Moravian soul could only be Janáček’s. The adagio proceeded as a sung lament for, in the composer’s words, ‘a humble worker František Paclík, stained with blook. He came only to plead for a university, and was struck down by murderers.’ The reality of the demonstrations of 1905 was a good deal more complex than that but for the duration of the sonata, we could all sympathise with Janáček’s Czech nationalism. There was a calm inner strength to this movement, possessed of the same inner obstinacy as the first, which grew in strength until reaching a truly Romantic climax. Haefliger’s tone was full but never forced, subsiding as if to return us to everyday life, leaving behind a memorial that triumphantly vindicated words from the composer quoted in the programme: ‘A fellow was holding forth to me about how only the notes themselves meant anything in music. And I say they mean nothing at all unless they are steeped in life, blood, and nature, Otherwise they are like playthings, quite worthless.’ Take that, Stravinsky.

After the Janáček, Haefliger’s Beethoven proved quite a shock. The first movement of the Waldstein sonata was taken ruinously fast, leading to more than one notable slip in the semiquaver runs. I doubt that such a tempo could ever have worked, but the pianist should certainly then have slowed considerably for the second group, which utterly failed to melt hearts. It actually was slower on repetition of the exposition, but this sounded merely arbitrary. The development section was impassioned but also generalised – and still too fast. The harmonic surprises that mark its conclusion and the dawn of the recapitulation were masterfully presented, opening up a whole new world. These were breathtaking but it was more than a little too late. The coda sounded more like a series of finger exercises than middle-period Beethoven. There was a nicely mysterious opening to the Introduzione, whose rests were really made to tell. Sung, sustained: there was a true sense of the ineffable. Moreover, the rondo emerged from these shadows with profound inevitability. Thereafter, however, much was heavy-handed and plodding. I am usually the last person to complain of excessive Romanticism, but there is something awry when this music sounds more like a Liszt transcription. (I was put in mind of the Schubert-Liszt Erlkönig.) The prestissimo coda sounded utterly unprepared, merely tacked on. It was headlong but not exultant. The F sharp major sonata, which followed after the interval, was better but far from startling. The extraordinary four-bar introduction sounded soft-focussed rather than poetic. Whilst the rest of the movement continued amiably enough, it lacked distinctiveness. And the Allegro vivace lacked the economical humour that points forward to the Eighth Symphony. It was fluently dispatched but little more.

We do not hear Brahms’s piano sonatas so very often. I suspect that anyone coming to the F sharp minor sonata ‘cold’ would, from this performance, have struggled to ascertain the identity of the composer. This may be early Brahms but I have never heard it sound so utterly unlike him. Haefliger’s technique was certainly up to the notes. There was some splendid virtuosity here – at least on its own terms, especially in the second movement variations. However, there was a curiously – I am tempted even to say bizarrely – rhapsodic sense to all four movements and to the whole. I do not mean that in a sense akin to Brahms’s own later rhapsodies, which are anything but sprawling or undirected. Much of this sounded like minor Liszt. There was a series of fleeting impressions, sometimes impressive as episodes, but with little sense of connection to an overarching structure. And if we know anything of Brahms, it is his iron-clad command of formal structure. Another, at least in terms of the piano music, would be his utterly characteristic sonority. Again, Haefliger suggested Liszt or perhaps Chopin, but rarely Brahms; dazzling brightness replaced mahogany. Most perplexing.

Stockhausen, RNCM Wind Orchestra/Rundell, et al., 9 November 2008

Royal Festival Hall

Stockhausen – Gesang der Jünglinge
Stockhausen – Lucifers Tanz (SAMSTAG from LICHT, London premiere)
Stockhausen – Michaels-Abschied (DONNERSTAG from LICHT)

Marco Blaauw (trumpet)
Karin de Fleyt (piccolo)
Nicholas Isherwood (bass)
Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra
Clark Rundell (conductor)

With this concert, the Southbank Centre’s KLANG festival, curated by Oliver Knussen, drew to a close. Gesang der Jünglinge is generally acknowledged to represent a milestone in electronic music. In the wake of the year-long Messiaen celebrations, I was put in mind of the correspondence between Stockhausen’s electronic chorus, founded upon a single treble voice, and Messiaen’s birdsong. That liturgical sense ever-present in Stockhausen’s œuvre shone through, as did the alleluias of the refrain ‘Preiset den Herrn’. Another correspondence I made was with the Leipzig Bach recordings of the early 1950s from Gunther Ramin and the Thomanerchor, for Stockhausen’s heterodox Catholicism was always inviting enough to encompass other traditions. The recording naturally sounds a little dated nowadays, as had that of Varèse’s Poème électronique at the Proms. Far more important, however, was the sense of the Royal Festival Hall being transformed into a cathedral of sound.

The musicians of the Royal Northern College of Music brought us the London premiere of Lucifers Tanz (‘Lucifer’s Dance’). It is of course a pity that we were unable to experience a staged performance, but this was certainly not a gift-horse to be looked in the mouth. Having ‘resurrected’ himself following apparent death, Lucifer’s project here is once again to enslave mankind, on this occasion through facial gestures, the material of the dance. If staged, the orchestra would be presented in the shape of a human face; here, there was of necessity some compromise, but the musicians were still compelled to move in their seats, as well as to play, in order to convey some impression of the facial gestures commanded by Lucifer. We also missed the stilt dancer who would have represented Lucifer onstage; instead, though, we had the compelling visible presence of the bass, Nicholas Isherwood, himself. Magician-like in aspect and in sonorous deep voice, he acted as guide to and initiator of the sequence of Left-Eyebrow Dance, Right-Eyebrow Dance, Left-Eye Dance, Right-Eye Dance, Left-Cheek Dance, Right-Cheek Dance, Wings-of-the-Nose Dance, Upper-Lip Dance, Tear Dance, Tip-of-the-Tongue Dance, Ribbon Dance, and Chin-Dance. The straightforward word-setting – one could hardly be more distant from Nono or indeed from many of Stockhausen’s contemporaries – is fitted to the liturgical intonation.

As Jerome Kohl explained in his excellent programme notes, the music ‘is scored in the Dionysian “section style” of the big-band jazz’ Stockhausen remembered from his youth. I recalled the echoes of such style in Henze’s Boulevard Solitude, although here the influence was more structural than stylistic. The pulsating opening, which to some extent provided the underpinning for the rest of the scene, gave a fine sense of the ritualistic, continued in and heightened by the physical nature of the performances. Although some, though by no means all, of the music is frankly tonal, it sounds primæval – this is, after all, a creation myth – and in no sense suggests compositional exhaustion. Whatever else Stockhausen may have been, he was no neo-classicist, nor neo-anything-else.

Ably conducted by Clark Rundell, the musicians of the RNCM wind-band proved superb advocates for Stockhausen’s score, fully at home with his requirements. The three instrumental soloists, Marco Blauuw (familiar from this year’s Stockhausen Prom), Karin de Fleyt, and an unnamed percussionist (a pity, since he deserved recognition) from the RNCM, were equally excellent. Blauuw’s alternation between unmated and muted trumpet, to which certain extended techniques were added, was as flawless as one would expect, yet nevertheless deserving of comment. This is a worthy successor to Markus Stockhausen in the role of Michael. His unsuccessful – dramatically, that is – yet impressive soliloquy marked an especial highpoint, as did the splendidly despatched percussive Wing-of-the-Nose Dance, echoing yet transcending any popular origins. De Fleyt conveyed in her line – which would have accompanied a solo Totentanz (dance of death) on stage – memories of Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, her piccolo as sinuous and sensuous as I can recall hearing the instrument.

Following the concert, we were treated outside to a rendition of Michaels Abschied (Michael’s Farewell), from RNCM trumpeters. Standing on the Festival Terrace, surrounded by the sights and sounds of contemporary London, I was given to an uncharacteristically Cageian thought. The experience of hearing here Stockhausen’s music for the audience departing the theatre had the almost paradoxical consequence of making me truly listen to the sounds of the city and how they too might constitute musical sounds and progressions. The trumpet calls, once again excellently despatched, also recalled to me the brass leitmotif calls from Bayreuth, ushering the audience back into the Festspielhaus as intervals come to a close. What we really need, of course, is for LICHT to be fully staged. And where could be more appropriate than Bayreuth, out of season? If the new regime wishes to be serious about expanding its remit whilst remaining loyal to the spirit of Wagner’s principles, this would be a perfect statement of intent – and far more than that. Like Stockhausen, we can dream...

Elektra, Royal Opera, 8 November 2008

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Elektra – Susan Bullock
Chrysothemis – Anne Schwanewilms
Klytemnestra – Jane Henschel
Orest – Johan Reuter
First Maid – Frances McCafferty
Second Maid – Monika-Evelin Liiv
Third Maid – Kathleen Wilkinson
Fourth Maid – Elizabeth Woolett
Fifth Maid – Eri Nakamura
Overseer – Miriam Murphy
Young Servant – Alfie Boe
Confidante – Louise Armit
Trainbearer – Dervla Ramsy
Orest’s tutor – Vuyani Mlinde
Aegisth – Frank von Aken
Old servant – Jeremy White

Charles Edwards (director, set designer, and lighting)
Brigitte Reiffenstuel (costumes)
Leah Hausman (choreography)

The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renata Balsadonna)
Sir Mark Elder (conductor)

This is my third Elektra within a year, having also seen productions in Berlin and in Munich. To think that I once worried about the effect that too much Mahler might have upon me! As with Mahler, albeit unnervingly without the catharsis, deepening knowledge of the work has served only to heighten my fascination and admiration. The Royal Opera’s revisiting of Charles Edwards’s production – Edwards rightly dislikes the term ‘revival’, although in some cases, it can sadly be all too appropriate – has much to commend it, as did the two German performances.

Edwards’s sets give an excellent impression of the corruption and depravity of Mycenae. It is not excessive, which must be a temptation, and is therefore all the more powerful. Antiquity and the early twentieth century – a little after the time of composition – are both suggested without being fetishised. Whatever Elektra is ‘about’, it is certainly not about historical ‘accuracy’; indeed, given how closely Hofmannsthal follows Sophocles, it is remarkable how little of the latter’s politics remain. And although the activity of archaeology is perhaps suggested by the bust of Agamemnon – chillingly kissed by Elektra – and by signs of digging, there is no dry archaeological positivism to the scene, which stands dialectically related to the dancing on a volcano of the 1920s. Had they not learned from the War (whether Trojan or Great)? Of course not. Violence is endemic though not unduly exaggerated. (David McVicar could have learned a great deal from this before his sensationalist Salome, as he could have done from Edwards’s intelligent rather than arbitrary suggestions of the interwar years.) The treatment of the Fifth Maid – a fine portrayal from Eri Nakamura, a Jette Parker Young Artist – by the other maids and Miriam Murphy’s splendidly horrifying Overseer really sets the scene for what is to come. The degrading – fatal? – punishment that follows horrifies still more. What helps to make this so powerful is the partial restoration of the political that Edwards so successfully achieves. He reminds us throughout that this is not simply a madhouse but the palace of Mycenae. We see from time to time other members of the household and the effect that the degeneration of the ruling house has upon the ruled, most crucially of all in the final bloodbath, in which the palace wall is lifted to reveal the carnage that has been unleashed, the latest – and, we must hope, the last – instalment of Thyestes’s curse upon the house of Atreus. This is not of course the only way to present Elektra but it is an interesting and valid route to take.

Sir Mark Elder’s reading stood distant from the blood-and-gore, priapism-a-minute approach of Sir Georg Solti. We heard a great deal of detail in the score, including some delectable woodwind lines, impeccably played by an orchestra on top form. The baleful Wagnerian brass sounded, rightly, as if it had originated in Fafner’s lair. Dance rhythms surfaced throughout, reminding us that Elektra is not only the high watermark of Strauss’s expressionism but also paves the way for Der Rosenkavalier (which is, in turn, a far nastier opera than nostalgics could ever understand.) There were times, however, when I thought that a little more menace, violence even, would not have gone amiss. One can tend towards the analytical without the occasional loss to the dramatic that we heard here. In Strauss, Christoph von Dohnányi is an example in this and so many respects, although Semyon Bychkov also impressed during the production’s initial run. In a generally well-paced account, the crucial Recognition Scene dragged somewhat, lessening the dramatic release upon the realisation of Orest and Elektra that they have finally been reunited. That said, it was a treat to hear the final scene develop rather than scream throughout. Even necrophiliac orgies of destruction need to gather pace. Moreover, the musical echoes here of the final scene of Tristan can rarely have registered so clearly.

The cast was impressive, not least in the smaller roles, all of which were well characterised, as well as well directed. Johan Reuter started somewhat anonymously as Orest – although, I suppose, he is anonymous to Elektra at this point – but his portrayal acquired greater strength. Frank von Aken was no Siegfried Jerusalem, to whose cameo we were treated last time; by the same token, he was no mere caricature in the role of Aegisth and he acted well, disturbingly well. Jane Henschel not only spitted malevolence and terrifying, jubilant hysteria, the latter upon the news of Orest’s death. She also imparted a sense of vulnerability, of the humanity that must at one time have existed in Klytämnestra. This made the sheer evil displayed at her last both shocking and credible. Anne Schwanewilms made a sympathetic Chrysothemis, as she had previously. One could forgive the occasional occlusion of the words – inevitable to some extent – given her beauty of tone and security of line. And Susan Bullock was a fine Elektra. She fully inhabited the role musically and dramatically, her fine diction and intonation permitting a more sophisticated portrayal than the screaming harpy of caricature. Desperation and damage, resilience and revenge: one understood how all of these feelings and more arose from the murder of her father, and beyond that from the terrible feud between the two sons of Pelops. In this, as in so much else, Bullock’s Elektra and Edwards’s Elektra were at one: at the service of Strauss and Hofmannsthal, yet nevertheless, and indeed consequently, engaged in imaginative recreation.

The Cunning Little Vixen, Opéra national de Paris, 4 November 2008

(Images copyright: B. Uhlig/ Opéra national de Paris)

Opéra Bastille

Forester – Jukka Rasilainen
Forester’s wife – Michèle Lagrange
Schoolmaster – David Kuebler
Parson – Roland Bracht
Harašta – Paul Gay
Vixen – Elena Tsallagova
Fox – Hannah Esther Minutillo

André Engel (director)
Nicky Rieti (designer)
Elizabeth Neumuller (costumes)
André Diot (lighting)

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris
Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra national de Paris
Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine
Children’s chorus of the Opéra national de Paris
Alessandro di Stefano (chorus master)
Dennis Russell Davies (conductor)

This is, perhaps surprisingly, the Paris Opéra’s first production of The cunning little vixen. But then Janáček’s greatness has not been widely recognised for so long as one might expect. Early performances tended to be the preserve of Czech performers, with a few German exceptions. To take the standard-bearer of later twentieth-century modernism, it is not quite true to say that Pierre Boulez has only come now to the music of Janáček. As early as 1973, he conducted the Lachian Dances in New York. (The concert also featured music by Handel, Mozart, and Copland; recordings can readily mislead as to the breadth or otherwise of an artist’s repertoire.) This nevertheless proved an exception and it is only much later that Janáček has come to feature more regularly, if hardly frequently, in his programmes. A Prom this year marked, I think, the first opportunity – and I shall be pleased to be corrected – for a British audience to experience his Janáček. Moreover, it was only in 1978 that a collected edition was begun. Sir Charles Mackerras has of course proved an indefatigable champion from his Sadler’s Wells days onwards and Bernard Haitink conducted more than one might have expected whilst at Covent Garden. Gérard Mortier has certainly done his bit for the cause whilst at the helm in Paris, as he did in Salzburg too. This production must be accounted another success for his régime as it enters its final year.

The production comes from more or less the same team that brought us the estimable Paris Cardillac. André Engel, Nicky Rieti, and Andre Diot are common to both. This is clearly a team that has a sense of theatre. (What should be a given is far from always so.) It is, moreover, evidently willing to consider its approach according to the work and the circumstances rather than to impose a ‘house style’, irrespective of requirements. (Achim Freyer’s Eugene Onegin, anyone?) I say that, since a sense of theatre apart, the two productions did not have anything startlingly obvious in common. Where Cardillac had been highly stylish, there was something winningly homespun here, to appeal – in that tedious cliché – to children of all ages, but not only to do that. Amidst the apparent wide-eyed naïveté of the bright sets and delightful, anthropomorphic-but-not-too-anthropomorphic animals, serious and apposite points were made concerning the cycle of life and the somewhat fraught relationship between man and the natural world. (In the case of this opera, one might say vice versa too.) We saw the turning of the seasons – and almost felt them, the music helping very much here, of course. And the turning of the seasons, as in Haydn’s oratorio of that name, is also a metaphor for the stages of life, the first intimations of spring at the end moving as they should. The railway line running through each scene was not, as it might sound in abstracto, a merely fashionable device, but visible evidence of the impact of man upon Nature. It was not taken any further than that, turning a delightful work into a self-righteously environmentalist tract, but it nevertheless made us think.

The orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris sounded at least as good as it had for Tristan the previous evening, if anything even better. An especial delight was the vernally fresh woodwind, with the brass boasting an impressive night too. Early on, we heard fanfares that looked forward to the Sinfonietta, whilst the fine quartet of horns in the third act approached perfection. Dennis Russell Davies proved a steady hand at the helm. To start with, I missed a little of the lingering Romanticism that one can often hear in Janáček. However, as the evening progressed, I heard more, not a bad metaphor for the blossoming of the vixen herself. Rhythms, with the very occasional exception, were taut and the structure was admirably clear. Elena Tsallagova showed herself as agile of voice as she was on stage, in the title role. Her rapport with Hannah Esther Minutillo’s Fox was genuinely moving, whatever reservations one might entertain in principle about a couple of foxes falling in love. All of the other parts were taken with gusto; character acting and character singing were quite rightly to the fore. And the multifarious choral and silent movement parts were equally impressive: a tribute to a genuine company achievement.

God in the nineteenth century: Wagner (Parsifal)

A sermon delivered at Evensong, at Trinity College, Cambridge on Sunday 26 October: https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/show.php?dowid=627. The series, God in the nineteenth century, will culminate with Terry Eagleton on Nietzsche on Sunday 23 November. Other sermons may be found at: https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=459.

Jean-Bernard Pommier, Beethoven sonatas, 24 October 2008

Hall One, Kings Place

Beethoven – Piano sonata no.1 in F minor, Op.2 no.1
Beethoven – Piano sonata no.2 in A major, Op.2 no.2
Beethoven – Piano sonata no.3 in C major, Op.2 no.3
Beethoven – Piano sonata no.4 in E-flat major, Op.7

Jean-Bernard Pommier (piano)

Daniel Barenboim’s selection of piano sonatas from throughout Beethoven’s œuvre to form a series of varied programmes is not Jean-Bernard Pommier’s way. His Kings Place cycle, of which this recital was the first instalment, will be strictly chronological, although, like Barenboim’s, it will be limited to the thirty-two ‘canonical’ works. There is something to be said for either approach and little, it seems to me, to be gained by lamenting that the other one has not been chosen – although this did not prevent low-level carping from the odd sour critic determined to knock Barenboim from his pedestal. Pommier’s cycle is to be taken at a slower rate than Barenboim’s, a recital a month. I make this initial comparison not out of an obsessive regard for Barenboim, but because they will naturally be in many listeners’ minds, following the great ‘event’ of Barenboim’s cycle.

And, of course, the venue is different: Kings Place, newly opened, rather than the Royal Festival Hall. I can say that the acoustic of the shoe-box-shaped Hall One, completely soundproof and lined with the wood of a single, five-hundred-year-old German oak, is excellent, if unsparing. There is nowhere for the musicians to hide, likewise for the audience, although this did mean that the sound of incessant fidgeting was magnified. Why were so many people shuffling, dropping, and picking up papers, or engaging in mysterious rubbing or goodness knows what? This is not a criticism of the hall in any sense but it is certainly a criticism of certain members of the audience.

The first half of the programme, consisting of the first two Op.2 sonatas, was in many respects disappointing. In an introductory note, Pommier cautioned us: ‘The important thing to remember is that these works do not start off in a “minor” way.’ Very true, but that is not necessarily the impression gained here. The first reading of the F minor sonata received a classical, neo-Mozartian reading, perhaps inspired by the opening ‘Mannheim rocket’, but also, it seemed, by Mozart’s great C minor sonata, KV 457. Whereas Mozart is straining at the bounds of what his material allows, Beethoven here sounded a touch reticent, which is hardly a Beethovenian quality. The Adagio displayed a commendable control of line and clarity but lacked magic. Pommier caught nicely the metrical ambiguities of the Menuetto, though his reading lacked mystery; a dash more pedal would not have done any harm. On the other hand, the contours of the trio were clearly felt and communicated. The Prestissimo finale was over-pedalled, some of its furious triplet figuration obscured. I wondered whether Pommier was taking the movement too fast, or at least too fast for him; the music sometimes seemed to run away with him, slowing sounding motivated by technical rather than musical considerations. This was not a problem later on and the movement concluded with real fire, but it was all a little late.

At the outset of the A major sonata, Pommier sounded more at home, attuned to the quirkiness of Beethoven’s writing. Yet his reading soon stiffened, lacking the flexibility that many players have brought to this work. The openings of the development and recapitulation brought a welcome sense of rejuvenation, although this was not altogether successfully sustained. Structure, however, was eminently clear. If the pianist brought a gruff nobility to the Largo appassionato, he was sometimes simply plain and charmless. Likewise, the line between pressing onwards and sheer relentlessness was crossed more than once. I liked the reappearance of a quirky mood in the scherzo; Pommier displayed a good rhythmic sense throughout. The rondo’s theme should sound melting, heart-rending even; here it sounded disconcertingly matter-of-fact. Beethoven marks it – unusually – grazioso. I found myself longing for a little mannerism, some sign of personality, even if it were imported from without. It was not to be. Pommier’s reading also lacked dynamic differentiation, although this became more pronounced as the movement progressed. Again, however, it was rather too late.

I do not know what was put into Pommier’s half-time oranges but the third of the Op.2 sonatas sounded as if the music had been brought sharply into focus. There was real Beethovenian character here: humour and vehemence from the opening bars. The music-making was more differentiated, more yielding. I still often missed a greater lightness of touch in the first movement, but it was not entirely lacking. There was certainly a greater sense of mystery than had previously been communicated, not least in the great cadenza and the approach thereto. The Adagio flowed but was not too fast. Pommier displayed a fine sense of harmonic and rhythmic momentum, aided by far more sensitive dynamic contrasts than had been heard during the first half. Lines sang more freely; there was even the odd presentiment of Schubert. With the scherzo came a greater lightness of touch than we had heard hitherto; I even thought once or twice of Mendelssohn. The whole was built upon a clear rhythmic security, without stiffness. Such attributes also shone through in the closing Allegro assai, joined by a sense of fun, especially at the opening statement of the principal theme. Pommier could still be a little heavy-handed but this was much less of a problem than before. His trills were excellent.

The Op.7 sonata marked something, I am afraid, of a retreat, though not entirely. The first movement started well, with a splendid sense of life. However, the syncopations at the end of the exposition – and their reiterations – could have told more, sounding rather limp. There was nevertheless considerable virtuosity on show here, virtuosity that never sounded as if it were being applied for its own sake. The slow movement was dignified but earthbound. I could not discern those great metaphysical vistas opening up, such as is the case in great performances of this work. The scherzo dragged at times, partly on account of a lack of lightness where required. However, the trio exhibited a winning Romantic vehemence, presaging Schubert and Schumann. It was very good; the rest of the movement was somewhat plain. Unfortunately, the magic that can sound from the very opening of the rondo – it certainly did in Barenboim’s performance – was simply not there. Forthrightness is all to the good, but it is far from the only quality the music demands. The C minor episode was splendidly dispatched but there was not nearly enough contrast when we needed repose. Too much of this movement sounded as though it wanted to be the opening of the Emperor concerto but could not. I shall pass over the frankly inappropriate encores.

'Night music': Britten Sinfonia/Rysanov/Padmore, 23 October 2008

West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge

Stravinsky – Fanfare for a new theatre (1964)
Birtwistle – Prologue (1971)
Britten – Lachrymae: reflections on a song of John Dowland, op.48a (1950/1976)
Handel – Samson: ‘Total eclipse’ and ‘Thus when the sun’ (1743)
Woolrich – Ulysses awakes (1989)
Britten – Nocturne, op.60 (1958)

Mark Padmore (tenor/director for Nocturne)
Maxim Rysanov (viola)
Jacqueline Shave (leader/director)
Britten Sinfonia

This was an excellent concert, constructed around Mark Padmore’s choice of Britten’s Nocturne as a work with which to inaugurate a new collaboration with the Britten Sinfonia. The connections between the works were genuine and interesting but never merely didactic. It seemed generous of Padmore to share the limelight with violist Maxim Rysanov, soloist in two of the works presented, but that generosity was repaid with fine performances indeed.

Stravinsky’s brief fanfare – almost beating Webern at his own game – made for a splendid opening gambit. Two trumpeters, Paul Archibald and Tom Rainer, brought precision and tonal warmth, the echoes of the Toccata to Orfeo setting down a marker for John Woolrich’s Monteverdi explorations, as well as leading almost seamlessly into the world of Birtwistle’s Prologue. The baleful quality of Birtwistle’s writing was captured by Padmore and members of the Sinfonia, the reappearance of the trumpet underlining the connection between the two pieces. Padmore’s diction was not always beyond reproach but it was interesting to hear a somewhat Brittenesque tonal quality applied to Birtwistle; I thought it worked rather well.

This led us to Britten himself: his final work, Lachrymae, in the version for viola and orchestra. Rysanov sported a strange, somewhat vampirish outfit. There could be no doubts, however, concerning his performance, nor as to his direction of the other players. The first bars were played vibrato-less, allowing the music then to blossom, as if bringing distant music from Dowland’s time more sharply into focus in our own. I liked the occasional hint of contrast between Rysanov’s ‘Russian’ string sound and the more ‘English’ quality of his colleagues. This was not overdone and was far from ever-present, but it put me in mind of Britten’s friendships with Rostropovich and Shostakovich. I liked even more the occasional hints of Berg, stronger as time went on, the appearance of Dowland’s music reminiscent of – though it could hardly be expected quite to match – the appearance of the Bach chorale in the Berg Violin Concerto. The young Britten, it may be recalled, had greatly desired to study with Berg in Vienna, a desire frustrated by the parochialism of his teachers at the Royal College of Music. Rysanov brought the music to considerable heights of passion, underpinned by a finely judged balance between rhythmic freedom and security. Britten’s musical transformations were lain bare, but never clinically so; there was a true sense of the cumulative power of musico-dramatic progression.

Two arias from Samson followed. I was rather surprised, given Padmore’s lengthy association with ‘authenticke’ conductors, at the wideness of his vibrato here. Indeed, it seemed excessive and was toned down considerably upon the return to Britten. I also wondered whether less might have been more when it came to employment of the head voice. Diction was much better in the first aria, ‘Total eclipse’, Samson’s lament for his lost sight, though it was more variable in ‘Thus when the sun’. Padmore’s melismata here were perfectly handled: each note crystal clear, yet never at the expense of phrasing. I was much taken with the reassuringly old-fashioned sturdiness – though never heaviness – to the playing of the Britten Sinfonia. Handel, who nowadays suffers some truly appalling perversities in the name of ‘authenticity’, had his dignity restored at last.

The second half opened with Woolrich’s Ulysses awakes, for me perhaps the highlight of the programme. The opening double-bass line led perfectly into Rysanov’s viola line, permitting Monteverdi’s music truly to blossom in its new surroundings. This was a passionately ‘inauthentic’ treatment, though it never succumbed to all-purpose Romanticism. Almost Purcellian in its melancholy, the reminder of the English Orpheus presented a bridge not only between Woolrich and Monteverdi but also between Woolrich, Britten, and Monteverdi. I could not help but think of Britten’s superlative recorded account of Purcell’s great Chacony in G minor. Harmonic horizons broadened yet Woolrich always remained faithful to the spirit of Monteverdi. A modernist halo was provided by the players of the Britten Sinfonia, a powerful reimagining – and here I thought of Henze’s realisation of Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria – of Monteverdi’s continuo ensemble. I wondered whether one or two vocal phrase-endings were ever so slightly tossed away but, in the face of such a magnificent performance from Rysanov, this must be the most minor of criticisms. Far more to the point was the apt vocal flexibility to his reading, heightened by the faultless interplay between soloist – first among equals – and ensemble. This performance was, quite simply, outstanding.

We came finally to Britten’s Nocturne. Once again, the ever-flexible Britten Sinfonia was on excellent form, both as an ensemble and as soloists. There were certainly many opportunities for soloists to shine, all of them well taken: bassoon, harp, horn, timpani, oboe, flute, clarinet, and strings. The interludes between songs were all extremely fine. Britten’s sound-world announced itself from the very first bar, the strings’ sense of uneasy undulation during the setting of Shelley’s Prometheus unbound unerringly caught. Padmore had mastered the trickiness of the Peter Pears-inspired vocal writing, accomplishing what Pears himself defined as the role of technique: the liberation of the imagination. There was a real sense of the magic and menace of Coleridge’s moonlight in The wanderings of Cain, not least thanks to the opening harp sounds and the gradual darkening of Padmore’s voice. Word-painting was attentive, for instance in the setting from Thomas Middleton’s Blurt, Master Constable. Here Padmore led us through the hopping of the cricket to the ‘peep, peep, peep, peep,’ of the goat, the latter with the able collaboration of Stephen Bell on French horn. Oboe and pizzicato strings made their mark in Owen’s The kind ghosts, followed by wonderfully flighty flute and clarinet in Keats’s Sleep and poetry. The scherzando quality those instruments imparted contrasted powerfully with the English stillness of the strings, Padmore not only connecting the two moods but leading and adapting to them. I thought, however, that his tone sounded bleached, even threadbare by the end of this movement: a pity, especially given the words: ‘... all the cheerful eyes that glance so brightly at the new sun-rise’. But there was compensation in the final Shakespeare sonnet (no.43) from the warm, ardent strings, and the sense of return at the end was impressively caught by all musicians.

It is worth saying a few words on presentation. Katie Mitchell and Lyndsey Turner were credited as ‘staging consultants’. There was, however, no ‘staging’ as would commonly be understood, save for the unavoidable fact of the performances taking place on a stage. It is not clear to me what can have been involved other than deciding where the musicians would be placed on stage and whether they stood or were seated. Such a task hardly seems to require two consultants but there was nothing objectionable to whatever it was they had done. To start with, I wondered whether having the musicians stand for Lachrymae was a deliberate evocation of the practice of earlier ‘players’ – as opposed to a modern orchestra – but in that case, it was far from clear why this should not have been applied to Ulysses awakes. No harm was done; perhaps I was missing something. On the other hand, the programme notes, were excellent: both the commentary to all but one of the pieces by Jo Kirkbride and the short essays from Padmore and Kate Kennedy. Woolrich wrote his own note, which deserves to be quoted in full, should that be the right phrase:

There are two great arias at the beginning of Monteverdi’s opera Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria: one for Penelope, and this one for Ulysses, waking on the shore of his homeland. In this retelling, the viola sings Ulysses.

Talk about letting the music speak for itself! Intentionally or otherwise, this seemed to me a clever strategy: without any more of a guide, one had to listen all the more closely. Perhaps, after the manner of Debussy giving titles to his piano Préludes at the end rather than the beginning, we could be treated to additional commentary following the performance...

Philharmonia/Benjamin, 21 October 2008

Royal Festival Hall

Xenakis – Pithoprakta
Benjamin – Sudden Time
Ligeti – Atmosphères
Messiaen – Chronochromie

Philharmonia Orchestra
George Benjamin (conductor)

This was in many respects a fine concert. It had an intelligent programme, based upon the idea of ‘Sensations in Time’, presenting ‘four different views of time passing’. Four excellent composers, connected but with highly individual modernist voices, were featured. The Philharmonia Orchestra played under the baton of one of them, George Benjamin, himself the favourite pupil of another, Olivier Messiaen. Moreover, the performances were technically precise – no mean feat in such technically challenging repertoire – and displayed an impressively wide variety of orchestral colour.

Xenakis’s Pithoprakta (‘actions though probabilities’) is written for forty-six strings, two trombones (used only once but with great impact), xylophone, and woodblock. The sound-world is startlingly original, although the Bartók of the Music for strings, percussion, and celesta actually sprang to my mind. One can imagine – and I did on this occasion – the glissandi in the score and performance as flickerings upon a radar screen or as figures of fractal geometry. There is also a sense of the natural world, intentionally or otherwise, of the swarming of bees. I even fancied that in the sweepings of the strings I heard a recollection of Messiaen’s beloved ondes martenot. Punctuating these sounds were the interventions from the regular sounding of the woodblock: implacable and somehow both disturbing and reassuring. The musicians of the Philharmonia could hardly be faulted in their execution of the score, directed by Benjamin with precision and understanding. And yet, I missed the last ounce – and perhaps the last few ounces – of aggression, of that raw power that complements Xenakis’s intellectual achievement. One may differ from Boulez’s fastidious judgement that Xenakis had a fantastic brain but absolutely no ear, but one wishes to hear the quality that led a fellow Messiaen pupil to speak thus.

Many would find the sound-world of Benjamin’s Sudden Time more ingratiating. There is certainly more of a sense of landscape, perhaps both temporal and visual. A French heritage, especially that of Debussy, is apparent, especially in the sonorous woodwind – here performed with aplomb – and in the work’s harmony. A duet between harp and English horn was especially haunting in this performance, reminiscent of or perhaps even prefiguring the antique evocations of Birtwistle. The whole orchestra was on fine form but particular mention should also go to leader Maya Iwabuchi, the muted trumpets, and guest principal viola, Jane Atkins, with whose closing solo time finally becomes passed – or past. Benjamin’s ‘sense of elasticity, of stretching, warping, and coming back together,’ born of a dream in which a split-second thunderclap sounded stretched out to a minute or longer, was powerfully conveyed by the composer and his musicians. So was the line from Wallace Stevens’s Martial Cadenza, from which Benjamin acquired the work’s title: ‘It was like sudden time in a world without time.’

Ligeti’s Atmosphères received a splendid performance, wanting nothing in the mystery that is almost its trademark. There was an almost organ-like quality to the brass close to the beginning. Piccolos were properly piercing and the double-basses thundered as they should. Under the once-again swarming surface, the constantly moving and changing harmonic structures made their presence felt. Although Ligeti said that he had not known of Xenakis’s precedent, it was an excellent idea to perform this 1961 classic of note clusters and polyrhythms with Pithoprakta from five years earlier.

In Chronochromie, Messiaen explores the relationship between sound and colour, making this a most apt work with which to conclude, if not quite to climax. There was much to commend in this performance. Messiaen’s voice was as unmistakeable from the outset as that of his birds. The tuned percussionists who provided such a riot of birdsong were truly outstanding. Benjamin imparted an unerring sense of harmonic direction and the distinction to which Messiaen himself referred, between implacable rigour (modes of duration) and freedom (birdsong) was readily apparent. I thought the violins a little lacking in vibrancy when playing en masse, but they truly came into their own in the exhilarating if fatiguing Epode: free counterpoint of eighteen independent (bird) voices, connecting with the Xenakis and Ligeti works. The coda came, as it should, as a relief, after such mania, disorder, or ‘freedom’, however one wishes to understand it.

What, then, was the source of my nagging doubts? I do not think it was a matter of Messiaen fatigue at this stage in the anniversary year. (His piece, though the longest, was only one of four.) I think ultimately it lay in Benjamin’s direction and certainly not in the Philharmonia’s execution. Chronochromie in particular lacked the final sense of awe, that quality again of raw power, of Messiaen’s music being ‘about’ something other than itself. It was almost prettified. Perhaps the same could be said about Pithoprakta. I am all for new music – although none of this is actually so new anymore – being treated in classical fashion, just as classical music can profitably be treated as new. Yet the sense of trail-blazing discovery – and the music featured in this programme is surely as trail-blazing as music comes – was somewhat blunted. There was a commendable attention to detail throughout. Detail, however, should heighten the impact of the greater picture; this was not always the case here. An audition on returning home of Boulez’s superlative Cleveland recording of Chronochromie reassured me that precision and expression are far from antithetical in such repertoire. For all the nonsense that is spoken of Boulez’s alleged ‘objectivity’ – itself by now almost a meaningless word in such a context – that Messiaen pupil imparted a greater sense of the subject, of conflict, of drama.

The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Mariinsky Opera, 17 October 2008

Sadler’s Wells Theatre

Tsar Saltan – Alexey Tannovitsky
Tsaritsa Militrisa – Ekaterina Solovieva
Tkachikha, Weaver – Natalia Evstafieva
Povarikha, Cook – Tatiana Kravtsova
Matchmaker-Crone Babarikha – Nadezhka Vasilieva
Tsarevich Guidon – Sergey Semishkur
Swan-Princess – Olga Trifonova
Old Grandpa – Vassily Gorshkov
Messenger – Andrey Spekhov
Jester – Eduard Tsanga
First Shipmaster – Vladimir Zhivopistsev
Second Shipmaster – Alexander Gerasimov
Third Shipmaster – Mikhail Kolelishvili
Prince Guidon as a child – Rudi Goodman
Prince Guidon as a boy – Misha Goodman

Alexander Petrov (director)
Vladimir Firer (designs)
Vladimir Lukasevich (lighting)

Orchestra, Chorus, and Dancers of the Mariinksy Opera
Leonid Teplyakov (chorus master)
Tughan Sokhiev (conductor)

It cannot be claimed that Rimsky-Korsakov has had a good anniversary year. Messiaen certainly has, which is fair enough; it continues to be a remarkable opportunity to encounter or to re-encounter so many of his works. In England at least, it has perhaps been even more difficult to avoid Vaughan Williams, though some of us have tried our best. By contrast, one would barely have noticed that Rimsky died one hundred years ago. We need not slavishly follow anniversaries, of course, but when a figure is as neglected and frankly unfashionable as Rimsky, we might take a cue to investigate whether such neglect be deserved. Messiaen of course had his awe-inspiring legion of pupils, but Rimsky had Stravinsky and Prokofiev, amongst others. Full marks, then to the Kirov or Mariinsky – and to Sadler’s Wells – for presenting The Tale of Tsar Saltan or, to grant the work its full title, The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of his Son, the Renowned and Mighty Bogatyr, Prince Guidon Saltanovich, and of the Beautiful Swan-princess (Skazka o Tsare Saltane o sïne ego slavnom i moguchem bogatïre knyaze Gvidone Saltanoviche i o prekrasnoy Tsarevne Lebedi). It was Rimsky’s contribution to the 1899 centenary of Pushkin’s birth, first performed the following year. Sadler’s Wells, incidentally, would mount the British première in 1933.

I do not wish to exaggerate. The Tale of Tsar Saltan is no unacknowledged masterpiece. It does not approach Tchaikovsky, let alone Mussorgsky; indeed, it is many respects what one would expect it to be. The standard of craftsmanship is high, both in terms of form and – unsurprisingly – orchestration. When one considers the sheer ineptitude of some works that continue to hold the operatic stage – Verdi in particular springs to mind – that is worth remarking upon. Nor does the work overstay its welcome: the four acts plus a prologue do what they need to do and that is that. Such self-control is rare and laudable.

Yet there remains a certain emptiness at the heart – should there be one – of the work, such as one has equally come to expect from this composer. Some of the tunes are catchy; others are curiously unmemorable. Even the plentiful use of children’s songs and lullabies and fairground music – surely recalled by Stravinsky in Petrushka – seems to be simply a matter of ‘colour’. For all the jibes of the ‘Mighty Handful’ at Tchaikovsky’s supposed cosmopolitanism, his music exhibits far more Russian ‘soul’ than theirs, Mussorgsky as always excepted. Wagner sometimes seemed a little too obvious a model, mostly the Wagner of the Ring: the ‘Magic Fire Music’, the ‘Forest Murmurs’, and odd bits of processional or ceremonial music from Götterdämmerung. This was very much surface Wagner, though, for there was no motivic complexity to be found here. Perhaps the one real concession to modernity or at least instance thereof, although even this would seem more to be dictated by the tradition of storytelling in the Russian skazka, is furnished by the actors shedding their roles at the end to point out, if not quite a moral, then at least a happy ending: ‘Well, that’s the whole skazka; there’s no more to tell!’ Did Stravinsky have this as well as Don Giovanni in mind when composing the ‘moral’ to The Rake’s Progress?

Yet Rimsky’s very limitations perhaps add something to Tsar Saltan’s viability as a fairy-tale. It is no more than that, despite the oft-encountered mistranslation of it as a ‘legend’ rather than a ‘tale’. The lack of realism and of any attempt to penetrate beneath the surface – not that one cannot do this, as we have known at least from the Romantics onwards – enables something enjoyably fantastical to emerge. Doubtless one could psychoanalyse – and fruitfully – but perhaps one does not actually need to do so.

Certainly the production saw no such need. Apparently based upon Ivan Bilibin’s original sketches for the first performances, the designs were straightforwardly ‘colourful fairy-tale Russian’. Whilst there is plenty of room for other approaches, it is not necessarily a bad thing once in a while to have an opera set where it is ‘supposed’ to be – and there are real gains, such as the congruence between the visual and the musical. I did wonder whether more might nevertheless have been done in terms of digging a little deeper, perhaps presenting a more ‘modern’ slant lacking in the work itself, but for the most part I was content with what was given. The audience, however, seemed to find humour in what was not necessarily intended as such, ruining the all-too-celebrated ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee’ with laughter and even applause. At least it stopped two women in front of me from pursuing their clearly riveting conversation and from reading their text messages.

Tugan Sokhiev generally seemed at home with the idiom. There were occasions when the music sounded a little too four-square, but for the most part he provided a sure hand on the tiller and conjured up a fine palette of colours from the predictably, yet nevertheless laudably, fine Mariinsky orchestra. The brass sounded splendid when given their head, not least when this coincided with a riot of percussion. At one point, the Rimskyfied coronation scene from Boris Godunov did not sound far away at all. Woodwind solos were especially well taken and there could be no complaint regarding the warmth and brightness of the strings. Rimsky as storyteller in the colourful entr’actes could hardly have wished for more help in shining through.

Moreover, this was a good ‘company’ performance in terms of the singing. There was no one special ‘star’ to the performance, but that is not really the point here. Instead, we could once again marvel at the ability of the Mariinsky to cast from depth. Perhaps most affecting was Ekaterina Solovieva’s beautiful Militrisa, utterly credible as the honest girl who becomes Tsaritsa, the almost archetypal target of her sisters’ envy. Alexey Tannovitsky made a fine Tsar, assuming a gravity that belied his years. Sergey Semishkur nailed the role of the youthful Tsarevich, displaying just the right degree of ardent naïveté. I am not sure that there is much more for the Swan-princess to do than to sound – and to look – beautiful, but Olga Trifonova did that well. Natalia Evstafieva and Tatiana Kravtsova did well enough as Militrisa’s sisters, although their thunder was somewhat stolen by the malevolence of Nadezhka Vasilieva’s Babarikha. Eduard Tsanga showed that he could act as well as sing in the role of the Jester, whilst Vassily Gorshkov pretty much stole the show as Old Grandpa: character-acting at its best, with no sacrifice to vocal quality. So there you have it: an enjoyable and highly musical account of an opera neither trivial nor profound, but worth hearing every now and then.

Fidelio, Hungarian State Opera, 10 October 2008

Budapest Opera House

Don Fernando – Gábor Bretz
Don Pizarro – Béla Perencz
Florestan – Thomas Moser
Leonore - Tünde Szabóki
Fidelio – Virgil Horváth
Rocco – Friedemann Kunder
Marzelline – Zita Váradi
Jaquino – Fekete Attila
Two prisoners – Gergely Boncsér and Kázmér Sárkány

Orchestra and Chorus of the Hungarian State Opera (chorus master: Máté Szabó Sipos)
Ádám Fischer (conductor)

Balázs Kovalik (director)
Balázs Kovalik and Angelika Höckner (designs)
Mari Benedek (costumes)

Things aren't what they used to be at the Hungarian State Opera – at least, so I am told, given that this was my first visit. What had remained a bastion of 'traditional' opera production has now felt the sweep of a new broom from its ambitious new leadership, more internationally inclined, headed by Ádám Fischer and Balázs Kovalik. Certainly no one could accuse this Fidelio of hidebound traditionalism.

Sadly, what we had instead was an ill-thought through mishmash, which piled layer of symbolism upon layer of symbolism, with apparently little regard for coherence or even comprehensibility. Yes, the work is concerned with sacrifice, but that does not necessarily mean that it is a good idea to portray the Passion of Christ in confusing tandem with the narrative. (It is also in questionable taste at best to present a Christ with tacky electronic 'bleeding heart' at one point.) Nor is at at all clear how this tallies with presenting what would seem to be Leonore's dream, by having her stand at the bottom level of the stage, in vaguely 'operatic' garb, whilst having a male 'Fidelio' act out her moves on another - until, of course, she reveals her true self, although even then she remains down below. And the garish colour-coding did not seem to mean anything in particular, although it was preferable to the multicoloured 'celebration' of the final scene, in which we seemed for no particular reason to have entered the world of Flower Power. Embarrassed and embarrassing clapping from the chorus disrupted the music then too. And what was the point of the strange Angela Merkel look-alike, who strolled along the stage at the end? Kovalik and his team needed to go back to the drawing board.

Musically, the story was more mixed. The orchestra played superbly throughout, its strings glowing with warmth and the woodwind especially characterful. The horns, bar the very odd cracked note - an almost unavoidable hazard - were beautiful indeed, crucial in this work. I thought the all-important off-stage trumpet a little too distant, but never mind. Ádám Fischer's reading did not quite seem to have settled down. There were some good things in it, although it never really acheived the symphonic stature that characterises great performances of Fidelio. On occasion, there was a distinct Italianate tintá; the music might have been by Rossini. This, however, merely stood out rather than giving the impression of a particular idea. Some might have found such an idea refreshing; I suspect that I should still have thought it quite inappropriate.

There were also some odd decisions regarding the version of the work used. This was not straight 1814, since the 1805 ordering of the opening was employed. I am not sure that anything is really gained by this; tonal development tends rather strongly to suggest that the later ordering is better. Far more questionable was the reversion to the ‘tradition’ of performing the Leonore III overture prior to the final scene. I am quite aware of the distinguished pedigree for such a practice, yet here as ever the music overpowered what came after - not least given the deflating tendencies of the production. What could work under Furtwängler and doubtless under Mahler simply did not here, although the performance considered on its own terms was good, if somewhat removed from the outstanding performance the audience thought it had heard. Could there be a worse point at which to applaud?! The situation was rendered far worse by Fischer having the orchestra stand twice (!) to acknowledge the applause.

Tünde Szabóki was not a great Leonore; nor was she a particular disappointment. She sang for the most part musically but without truly making her mark upon the role as many great artists have done. The competition is terrifyingly fierce, of course, but such is life. Thomas Moser was adequate, though little more than that, as Florestan. (I have heard worse but then one nearly always has in such roles.) Smaller roles were once again generally adequately taken, with three exceptions. Zita Váradi was simply terrible as Marzelline, her tuning all over the place. Friedemann Kunde could act as Rocco but no longer appeared to possess a voice, as was painfully evident in his duet with Béla Perencz's lightweight yet musical Pizarro. It was a relief, then, to hear in Gábor Bretz a Fernando as handsome of voice as of face; nevertheless, a Fernando can hardly a Fidelio make.

Marc-André Hamelin piano recital, Wigmore Hall, 5 October 2008

Wigmore Hall

Haydn – Piano sonata in B minor, Hob.XVI:32
Chopin – Piano sonata no.3 in B minor, op.58
Debussy – Préludes: Book II

Marc-André Hamelin (piano)

The name of C.P.E. Bach occurred to me more than once during Marc-André Hamelin’s performance of Haydn’s marvellous B minor sonata. I subsequently discovered a guarded comparison between Emanuel Bach and Haydn in Misha Donat’s programme notes, so it seems that he, the pianist, and even your humble reviewer were thinking along similar lines – in my case, it must be said, as a result of Hamelin’s performance. Hamelin presented the sonata with some of the exaggerations that characterise the boundary between the Baroque and the Classical. The dynamic contrasts and use of the sustaining pedal were unashamedly Romantic but there were also numerous instances of late Baroque mannerism, not least in terms of the crushed ornamentation. It was rather as if Glenn Gould were being crossed with Mikhail Pletnev or even, given the sometimes chocolate-like tone, with Evgeny Kissin. I wondered whether the agogic exaggeration in statements of the first movement’s first subject would become merely irritating but it did not; instead, it heightened the sense of characterisation. This movement was taken quite fast for an Allegro moderato yet the tempo worked. Hamelin took the second repeat, adding to the distancing from the Classical period proper. The following major-mode minuet sounded duly Classical, almost Mozartian, yet also perhaps just the slightest touch empty, as if Hamelin were eager to return to the Sturm und Drang of B minor, which he did in the vehement trio. I wondered whether the Presto finale was a shade too fast, but Haydn’s marking is after all presto. Hamelin took it as a moto perpetuo, which swept all before it – all, that is, save for the slightly heavy-handed repeated notes at the outset, a problem that soon righted itself. His octaves were an object lesson in style and projection.

We remained in B minor for Chopin’s third piano sonata. I was not sure that Hamelin quite had the measure of this work as a whole, although his performance certainly boasted splendid aspects. It was almost as if the music were too easy (!) for such a super-virtuoso. In the first movement, we were treated to a melting second subject, on its first and subsequent appearances, but its predecessor was just a little straightforward. That said, there was a fine sense of musical transformation when it came to the recapitulation. Needless to say, any technical challenges were readily surmounted. The scherzo was a definite instance in which the music sounded a little too ‘easy’ for the pianist. There was a sense of him gliding over its musical substance. The trio appeared to benefit through its lack of virtuosity. Hamelin presented a ruminative yet nevertheless developmental Largo, with a fine sense of the barcarolle later on, although some of the earlier material sounded a touch matter of fact. The finale was impressively virtuosic, which is not to say emptily so, although, like sections of the third movement, it sometimes veered dangerously close to Rachmaninov. I wondered whether Hamelin would have been happier more at home performing Alkan.

Debussy seemed to speak more readily to this pianist, as we heard in the second book of Préludes. The veiled quality of Brouillards sounded spot on, followed by exquisite voicing in Feuilles mortes – that in a piece one would not necessarily have thought most lent itself to such ‘Romantic’ treatment. Its music was certainly heard ‘without hammers’ – likewise in Canape – and with fine use of the sustaining pedal. La puerta del vino suffered from a heavy-handed opening – repeated upon re-visitation of the opening material – but the piece was characterised more generally by a fine sense of insistent rhythm and exotic danger. La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune benefited from a nicely mysterious opening, the mood continuing throughout Hamelin’s performance. There was an interesting hint of an almost Brahmsian waltz rhythm at times. Not every prelude was equally successful. Bruyères, for instance, was well executed but a little plain. ‘General Lavine’ – excentric captured the eccentric aspect well but primary colours were a little too much to the fore elsewhere. Les Tierces alternées sounded a little too close to the parodic style Debussy had employed in Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum; again, I wondered if its technical challenges were not great enough. But in the final Feux d’artifice, post-Lisztian pyrotechnics were undoubtedly appropriate; Hamelin’s glissando was simply jaw-dropping. Despite certain reservations, then, this was in many respects an estimable account. I suspect that the audience would have been treated to an encore or two but this must remain mere suspicion on my part since, unfortunately, I had to leave immediately.

Eugene Onegin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 1 October 2008

(Images copyright: Monika Rittershaus)

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Madame Larina – Katharina Kammerloher
Tatyana – Anna Samuil
Olga – Maria Gortsevskaya
Filipievna – Margarita Nekrasova
Eugene Onegin – Roman Trekel
Lensky – Rolando Villazón
Prince Gremin – Christoph Fischesser

M. Triquet – Stephan Rügamer
Zaretsky – Viktor Rud
Captain – Fernando Javier Radó

Achim Freyer (director and designer)
Tilman Hecker (assistant director)
Lena Lukjanova and Amanda Freyer (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Where to begin? The production or the musical performance? They could hardly have been more different. I shall start with the musical performance, since it is far more cheering to do so. Rarely can Eugene Onegin have been conducted better than it was here under Daniel Barenboim. He conceived the work in one span, yet with impeccable attention to the needs of the moment. There was a flexibility in his account that harked back to Furtwängler – although I am not sure that Furtwängler ever conducted Onegin – with tempo variations often pronounced yet never abrupt. Prince Gremin’s aria, for instance, was taken at a daringly slow tempo but with such masterly control that it worked, and the mood swings of Tatyana’s Letter Scene registered both with almost psychoanalytical clarity and with heartfelt emotion. Rhythmic security was not sacrificed but enhanced by this. (Instructive is the contrast with the inhibited stiffness that sometimes characterised a far from inconsiderable Covent Garden performance under Jiří Bělohlávek earlier this year.) The Staatskapelle Berlin followed his every move, displaying an utterly gorgeous, truly burnished tone. I should chance my arm and say that Onegin can never have been played better than it was by this orchestra. A wonderful old-world depth of tone throughout the string section and magical woodwind were complemented by a brass section by turns soothing and assertive, according to the demands of the score. The way in which solo horn and harp registered during the Letter Scene was not only ravishingly beautiful but also indicative of the Romantic possession with which Tatyana was seized.

Anna Samuil of course contributed to the success of this scene. Hers was not a portrayal with quite the star quality of some of the great singers of the past – perhaps this will be come – but it was intensely musical and often rather more than that. The Letter Scene and her final confrontation with Onegin were the highpoints of her performance. I thought less of Maria Gortevskaya’s Olga; there was nothing especially wrong with her performance but it remained somewhat anonymous. The production did not help, to put it mildly, but there were some singers who miraculously managed to rise above it. Likewise the stiffness that characterised some of Roman Trekel’s assumption of the title role cannot simply be ascribed to Achim Freyer, sorely tempted though one might be. The notes were sung – and sung musically – but there was little charisma here. Gerald Finley had shown how it should be done at Covent Garden; by contrast, Trekel, a fine Doktor Faust here in Berlin last year, seemed miscast. The undoubted star was Rolando Villazón as Lensky. It is a wonderful role but Villazón surpassed any reasonable expectations. He proved as ardent and as attentive to the text – both verbal and musical – as the splendid Piotr Beczala had done in London. Perhaps still more admirable was the way Villazón managed to transform a lifeless production to his advantage, investing his every move with great moment, however misconceived the general premised may have been. I mean it as a compliment when I say that, should, God forbid, Villazón ever lose his voice, he could doubtless pursue a second career as a clown or even a mime artist. Gremins, like King Markes, rarely disappoint. That Christoph Fischesser was no exception does not lessen the achievement of his rich-toned bass aria. Margarita Nekrasova made a wonderful, Babushka-like nurse. Stephan Rügamer and Viktor Rud both shone in their smaller roles. Whilst there was the odd occasion when the chorus was not quite together with the orchestra – and I am not at all sure that this was not Barenboim’s fault – the singing of the Staatsopenchor Berlin was of the high standard we have come to expect. Diction was excellent, as indeed it was with the entire cast.

Then, however, there is the small matter of the production. I cannot – may the Almighty be thanked – imagine how a production of Eugene Onegin could be more wilfully perverse than that presented by Achim Freyer. It was certainly not so atrociously inept as, for instance, Katharina Wagner’s Bayreuth Meistersinger, which, the angel voice of Klaus Florian Vogt notwithstanding, will surely prove to be the theatrical nadir of my operatic year: an unanswerable refutation of the hereditary principle. In terms of a director who knew what he was doing and was able to accomplish it, Freyer’s misconception may rank with that of Peter Sellars’s Zaide, although, clutching at straws somewhat, Freyer’s production was certainly more tightly disciplined. There could be no doubt that singers and actors alike were doing precisely what Freyer desired; the precision of their movements was highly creditable were one to consider it as a thing-in-itself. What this production lacked in terms of the inept, it handsomely made up for with the inapt. Throughout we had a scene of alienated, disengaged circus performers, unable to relate to each other, indeed in no real sense of the word characters at all. That was it: no development, no story even, certainly no connection with the words, let alone with Tchaikovsky’s music. Freyer’s point is clear enough, that the ‘characters’ are mere stereotypes – which they are certainly not, should one bother to engage with the work – and that the love about which they sing is illusory, non-existent. Everything goes round in circles; no one can do anything about it. I do not exclude the possibility that such a point might be made in a production but this was the only point, hammered home with an insensitive insistency that might make a sledgehammer appear to be a tool of woolly-minded consensus. The fact is that one could do precisely the same thing to any work of one’s choice; without even the slightest attempt to connect Konzept and work, let alone to permit the former to grow out of the latter, it is difficult to see how this was a production of Eugene Onegin at all. It was a relief to have chairs appear suspended in mid-air, simply in order to see something different. I could not even say that of the sudden appearance of red ping-pong balls, which merely irritated. Other than that, there was almost no relief from the monochrome all-purpose set and the pointless moving around from the Freyer Ensemble – which seems to appears in all of Freyer’s productions, whether called for or not – and from the other, incredibly patient performers. Yes, we got the point a few hours earlier. For some reason, Lensky appeared to be the focal point, which might well have been the nub of an interesting production, but this was once again merely insisted upon rather than developed, let alone explained. Had he been permitted to become a flesh-and-blood character, then it might well have worked. The contrast with the musical performance could not have been greater. Yet, despite Freyer’s relationship to Brecht, this did not qualify as Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt. It was not even just a betrayal of the work; it was plain boring.