New Rawsthorne for old

March 30 in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, had the first performance of Edward Harper’s re-orchestration of Alan Rawsthorne’s cantata Kubla Khan and first concert performance of the work. The poem is, of course, one of the best known in the language, frequently anthologised and full of familiar lines. It has an exotic flavour that one might think unlikely material for Rawsthorne, a composer more urban than one for the countryside or the orient, but it brings him to Coleridge’s dreamland with a hint of spice. Harper helps to invoke the atmosphere with some subtle but simple flavouring, mostly flute and xylophone.

If the man from Porlock interrupted Coleridge, it was a bomb from Germany that interrupted Rawsthorne. On the night that the work was given a studio performance at BBC Bristol, Rawsthorne’s flat together with the score and parts from Kubla Khan were destroyed. Despite friends who thought the work one of Alan’s best, he never got around to rewriting the score, All that remained was a vocal score which formed the basis for Harper’s reorchestration. The work lasts sixteen minutes and all but the spicy bits are typical Rawsthorne, from the very opening chords (C major triad anchored by an A flat in the bass). The words ‘a stately pleasure dome’ brings on another fingerprint, a seven-note phrase lifted from the Mathis der Maler symphony by Hindemith that Rawsthorne used again and again as the chief tune of the Street Corner overture.

I once asked Alan why he had set so few poems and he said ‘because I love poetry so much. Music so often drowns it’. Well it doesn’t here in this short cantata: ‘the tumult…prophesying war’ brings the middle section to a climax which dies down into the ‘caves of ice’. ‘Fast thick pants’ avoids bathos and the work ends shortly after ‘the Abyssinian maid’ singing her ‘symphony and song’

The work is a delight, well written for the chorus, with a few pages for solo alto and tenor (sung in Manchester by members of the chamber choir). Harper’s orchestration has style and imagination. But a short choral piece is not easy to programme. Perhaps it might be paired with his friend Constant Lambert’s Rio Grande to make a first half?

Incidentally Lambert was staying with Rawsthorne and his first wife Jessie Hinchcliffe at the time of the Bristol bombings and was seen helping to quell the flames… with small watering can. It was also in a review of Rawsthorne’s enchanting Theme and Variations for two unaccompanied violins that he write “If one wondered at the many passages of double-stopping in this work one had to remember that, as well as studying music the composer had taken a course in dentistry.

After the cantata and the interval came the huge Resurrection Second Symphony of Mahler. Who but Mahler would have dared take on such a subject? And make it work? Positively cosmic. Doom and gloom, then breathtaking beauty, renewal and love.

The Amadeus Orchestra is, I understand, a training organisation But it was equal to Mahler’s demands and spirit. Philip Mackenzie was thoroughly in control conducting a convincing performance with several local choirs and two excellent soloists in Elizabeth Atherton and Jeanette Ager. The performance did not do justice to the pianissimo choral section but after some sagging about ¾ way through, the tension returned for the final climax.

Colin Davis celebrates with New Passion

Sir Colin Davis has been celebrating his 80th birthday in style, conducting Berlioz with the French National Orchestra, Gerontius in Boston, the Fauré Requiem in Dresden, Messiaen in London plus Cosi Fan Tutte at Covent Garden, recordings of the Beethoven Piano Concertos (with Kissin), Creation and the Mozart Requiem, a Matthew Passion in Amsterdam and concerts with the New York Philharmonic. Quite a year for him. He was born in September 1927.

The culmination of this anniversary year was the world premiere in the London Barbican of a St. John Passion by the Scottish composer James MacMillan. Sir Colin has played quite a few works by this composer and asked him to write something for this occasion, the work to be repeated in Amsterdam, Boston and Berlin; quite a send-off for MacMillan, born 1959, the more so because the Passion was recorded last Sunday, 27 March.

MacMillan is a committed Catholic and that faith shines in the musicthat he has composed whose performance forms part of the LSO Belief series. This John passion lasts about 100 minutes, has a baritone soloistwho sings words from the gospel and other sources, presumably by the com-poser. The text is sung by a chamber choir for narration, a large chorusfor comment and some portions in Latin of a more reflective and objectivenature. The composer writes, "The instrumental approach was to make a sparse and lean texture (so there is limited percussion, no harps or the usual keyboards)"

This statement is baffling because the orchestral part is anything but sparse and I think it must be the loudest oratorio ever written. The brass and percussion, the big guns, are brought into prominence for 80% of the piece. Overkill. The trombones snarl continually, drummers whack away ear-splittingly and the big tam-tam gong sounds altogether too much. For contrast three solo violins provide a sort of overhanging filigree. There are quieter moments for the chorus (beautiful writing) towards the end of part one and similar moments in the second part, which contains a setting of the Stabat Mater poem. There are ten separate sections, the final one Sanctus immortalies, miserere nobis, being for the orchestra alone, mainly for strings, putting one in mind of the third act prelude to Parsifal. Curiously enough, in this movement the cellos quote the first four notes, unaccompanied, of the prelude to Tristan (but without the chord).

Each time Christus sings - a masterly performance by Christopher Maltman - the first vowel has many notes, rather like the incipit in an illuminated manuscript. The choral writing is fine and at times a wailing portamenti is used. Whenever Pilate speaks wood blocks sound, for all the world like popping corks. The texture is usually very dense; behind a layer of sound, an almost alien other instrument is heard, as if in another room. Despite the extreme loudness the music is basically geared to tonality, give or take an occasional Charles Ives-like use of two keys at once. One section that puzzled me and sent me to check with my Bible to see if it appeared there (no, it doesn’t) was entitled The Reproaches: Christ bitterly asking "My people, what have I done to you?" and listing all the wrongs done to Him. This struck me as alien, un-Christ like.
This music has a soul, sincerity fairly batters the senses. But it impresses, rather than moving the emotions. No doubt it is useless these days to expect melodies that stick in the memory or even melodic fragments that are memorable; MacMillan doesn’t beguile the listener or strike the heart as, say, Britten's War Requiem does. Sir Colin did a marvellous job: chorus, soloist, orchestra; all sounded totally prepared and absolutely committed.

Arabella hits Australia

Which opera by Richard Strauss has a text by Hoffmannsthal, a big soprano monologue to end act one, an important transvestite role and waltzes galore? Trick question, but the answer is not Der Rosenkavalier but Arabella, 16 years younger, premiere in 1955 in troubled times. The Nazis interfered with the production and Strauss's choice of conductor. The crits were mostly anti, pointing out the obvious similarities. However, there are many choice moments even though Act Two is not a bad time to have dinner. You would then miss the pallid waltzes that lack the charm and memorability of the earlier opera. Though it would be a pity to miss the duet at the beginng of the act, between Arabella and Mandryka, der richtige mann (Mr Right). But the first and third acts contain the best music: the fortune teller's at the very beginning where the orchestra fizzes about and Mandryka's aria where the Croatian country-man talks about his life and forests in the backwoods.. .and his wealth, offering his wallet to Arabella's father, Count Waldemer, who is a bad gambler and has come to Vienna to try to restore his fortune by a good marriage for his elder daughter, Arabella (to save money ? her sister has to pretend to be a man); Mandryka memorably says to the Count: "Teschek, bedien dich" - help yourself, mate. The best music, as so in often with Strauss, comes in the closing scene when Arabella descends the staircase of the hotel (where the family is lodging) holding out a glass of water to Mandryka (an old Croatian betrothal custom).

Admittedly there are many passages where the composer scores too busily and the tunes are mostly not vintage Strauss, Hoffmansthal (the poor man died before the premiere) was taking a risk with a second Viennese comedy. It needs a really good production to paper over the cracks. And this it had in the Sydney Opera where I was present at the first night, March 7. In charge of the stage was John Cox, veteran master-Strauss director with many successful productions at Glyndebourne. This Arabella was as near perfect a production as you will ever see. Overall and in detail it was the tops.

And sharing the honours was Robert Perdziola, once again aiding by creating wonderful costumes and settings. How Richard Hickox manages to produce such wonderful sounds and playing from his orchestra is a bit of a wonder when his technique seems to be what orchestral players term 'a box of down beats'. One cannot help thinking that a more fluid and linear style might produce even better results. Still, he has just celebrated his 60th birthday and signed up for another five years with Opera Australia, so let's just say "Bravo and Happy Birthday" and leave it at that. The casting was good if not 100% ideal. Best was Peter Coleman-Wright, a natural for Mandryka. He has the range, a fine voice, acts superbly and copes with any extremes that Strauss chucks at him. His real-life wife Cheryl Barker makes a pleasing Arabella, looks fine , sings well and only lacks a little cream in the voice (that cream that Lisa della Casa had a'plenty, the Arabella one could dream about when she sang the role in 1953 in Covent Garden).

Emma Matthews made a fetching Zdenka , the sister in drag, although she is deficient in the rich middle voice that the part calls for, but she has musicality in spades. (Isn't it curious that the chorus, prominent in the ballroom scene Act Two, keeps mum. Might not singing improve the shining hour?). All in all it was an enjoyable evening and made one remember Neville Cardus writing that the 1955 revival at Covent Garden "proved that Strauss was the best person to write a Strauss opera".

The rumour is that the Sydney Opera House is going to close for the whole of 2010 to re-jig the interior according to the architect's original plans. For years now opera has been staged in the smaller of the two halls, the disadvantage being that the acoustic which is bad is not improved by the pit being open, with the result that the orchestra sounds too loud, forcing the singers to bellow to make themselves neard. If the rumour is true, roll on, 2010!

The wizard in Oz

Enter a scruffy maestro, Nigel Kennedy himself, him wiv the bovver left boots, tassels a-dangling. He carries his violin in the left hand, the right hand making footie stadium gestures, punching the air and knuckle-greeting members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, all very with it (and slightly bogus?). He picks up a mike and does some stand-up comic, complete with some naughty Billy Connolly words. At last he relinquishes his mike for his bow and...hey presto, all is forgiven as he launches into the Prelude from Bach's E major Partita. The playing is faultless, likewise the musicianship. A Nigel Kennedy evening has begun. The date is mid-March (15th), the place is the Hamer Hall Melbourne's concert hail, seating over 2500 but with a perfect accoustic, every note clearly heard, good overall balance.

Bach over more chat leading up to Nige announcing "Mozart's Concerto in D, K.218, for violin, orchestra and harpsichord." Ello, ello, did he say harpsichord ? Well, that's not in the score, but don't let's fuss, because it can't be heard. Nige occupies quite a large space in the middle of the strings so that he can direct the concert without the use of a conductor (he doesn't think much of the breed as we have heard). The opening tutti is virile and sinewy, no 18th century lace-making. Not too tough but good style. Nige moves around, now encouraging, almost daring them to play their best and beyond. The orchestra obliges, entering into the spirit of the fifty-one year old Maestro's direction, the concert is more of a show than the usual programme. The advertised items are just the Mozart and the Beethoven, just 75 minutes music but the evening lasts very nearly 3 hours.

One unusual feature of the Mozart is that the strings play during parts of the cadenza, sustained chords over which the violin hovers, now in virtuoso style, now rhapsodizing beguilingly in almost Romany style. It was a shock that soon became a pleasure, a fine performance.

To find anything like an equal one, my memory went back a long way; to hearing Szigeti with Sir Thomas Beecham. Mozart over, Nigel chats up the leader of the orchestra, Wilma Smith and they join forces for three enchanting duets of the 44 composed by Bartok. Interval and straight into the Beethoven, fastish tempi, drum taps underplayed. The slow movement was ecstatic, a truly rapt experience - is it not Beethoven's most dreamy piece ? A dithyramb.

Much applause, the audience is enthusiastic and it seems that an encore is in the offing and when it comes it seems the most unlikely of numbers; Monti's Czardas. Stone the crows, mate!Sacrilege ? As much as on the occasion of the Concerto's premiere when between the first and second movements a double-bass did a turn with the instrument played upside down.
I went afterwards backstage and asked some of the orchestra if they enjoyed the evening, had Nige gone too far with his fooling around interludes ? No, they all said, it was great fun and they respected Kennedy because they knew that he played his instrument better than any player in the band. And they were amused when I told them that I knew Nigel before he acquired his cockney accent. Mind you, he was only three months old.

So...good on you, Nige!

The Goon Show of Lammermoor (English National Opera, 16 February)

It was probably Donizetti's librettist who made Lord Henry Ashton the villain who wrongs Lucia di Lammermoor, instead of Walter Scott's villainess in the novel who was Lucy's mother, thus depriving us of what might have been a great mezzo or contralto role. But in Donizetti's otto cento in Italy one female major role was usually considered the norm. However, we must not complain, because ever since the overwhelmingly successful premiere in Naples in 1835 Lucia di Lammermoor has been hailed as the Italian Romantic Opera par excellence with Lucia's Dotty Scene as the perfect hurdle for coloratura sopranos to jump to fame with, like our Dame Joanie di Sutherland back in 1959 at Covent Garden.

English National Opera premiered a new production of Lucia on Saturday 16 February. Musically it is ten out of ten. every note in place, with quite a few on an instrument rarely heard. Mozart, wrote a Rondo for it, K.617. Old Willi Gluck gave concerts on it and, of all people, Benjamin Franklin became a virtuoso and perfected it, the glass harmonica, a set of glasses tuned so that you produce the notes by running your hand around the rim (a modern parallel would be if George Bush were to play the ondes martenot) - it makes a noise as if the notes were wrapped in tinsel but with upper partials so strong that the sound actually hurts some ears (mine. for one; and, indeed, at one time as a result,the instrument was banned in certain towns in Germany.

So, musically the performance of Donizetti's opera was a treat. But what did we see on stage? Scene one gave a clue to what was going to happen; a Scottish castle with walls that sprouted radiators; now who has ever heard of a Scottish castle with radiators - or one that even nowadays has any heat ? The walls moved and the male chorus entered through the windows; period photographs littered the stage, as they did in most scenes. Lucia soon appears, perched four feet above stage level, so that she has to jump if she wants to move, which she does, wearing a little girl outfit with pantaloons that are on show as she picks herself up after her jump, is this Alice in Lammermoor? The tenor appears and as if to emphasise the fact that he is vertically challenged, he appears on his knees.

The villainous brother is seen on a short bed that features in many scenes; he gropes his sister, Lucia, and ties her wrists to the bedposts. Ah, ha. not only villainy but incest too (Incest - the game the whole family can play). And so it goes on, until you wonder whether Donald Alden, the producer of all this madness, should himself be sectioned. Myself, I know Lucia quite well so that soon I began to tolerate, even enjoy, the mad things that happened. But my companion was seeing the opera for the first time and she was very confused by all the goings on. Oh, yes, and there was also an extra going-on that the producer had not arranged. Bidebent the parson came on and opened his mouth; but he was kidding us, poor chap; he had lost his voice and another bloke stood at the side of the stage and sang his notes. Now there is usually a confidante in operas of this period (early nineteenth century, the otto cento, as the Italians call it). She makes her entry, one hand first round the door and then flitting across the stage to a tilting sofa, for all the world like a Hammer Horror.

Now comes the famous sextet (in the old 78 days, it was the only gramophone record, single-sided of' course, to have a white label and sell for sixteen shillings, the costliest of all - Caruso was the tenor, he made a huge success in the part of Edgardo. poor Lucia's intended but thwarted). Barry Banks was the Coliseum's tenor, English, wonderfully fluent, even if the voice is not ideally beautiful. Anna Christy, American, house debut, was a very fine Lucia, every note histrionically convincing.

When it came to the Mad Scene where was the flute obligato? Banished in favour of the musical glasses, apparently Donizetti's original idea to add spookiness to the wildly careering colaratura. Chorus and orchestra were both excellent under the splendidly driving Paul Daniels, back in the pit where for years he was ENO's musical director. So, if you can bear to see a goonish version of Lucia, go to the ENO show at the Coliseum and join the cheering crowds; they are in the majority, critics of this mayhem in the minority.

A trip to the ballet

WHY do we call afternoon shows matinees ? Probably too late to change it now; but wouldn't apres-midiens be more accurate? Anyway I went on Saturday 6 February to the Royal Ballet performance in Covent Garden which began at 12.30 pm and it was absolutely packed, lots of children. What the little dears made of a tough programme I would like to know; they probably found it easier to take than some of the older ones.

The first item was only the sixth performance of the sensation of 2006: Chroma, choreography by Wayne McGregor, sets by the architect John Pawson, lighting by Lucy Carter - all three need to be mentioned as highly commended. The set was described as "in a sense, charged limbo", a rectangle with another one, raised, towards the back, excitingly lit and frequently metamorphosed.

The choreography, ah!, difficult to describe. It is classical dancing thrust forward in language, legs, arms, neck, head and trunk move in wave not seen before; fluid, rippling, bending, curving, twining, but you really have to see it and I sincerely hope you do, for this is something new and exciting, an extension of the ballet language. What that language is saying is not quite clear but perhaps that is not so important as the sensation of seeing it.

There are ten dancers involved, dancers but here also super athletes too. Twenty minutes is the duration, most of it quick and strenuous almost to the point of violence at times. But there are two brief pas de deux, the first of which I found as unutterably beautiful and rivetting as anything I ever saw on a stage, limbs twined, ravishingly lovely human bodies in motion.

Joby Talbot's music, with some extra settings by Jack White, is up to date, stretched tonality, with hints of minimalism, orientalism and other isms, snappy, strident, plenty to assault the ears but not 'frighten the horses'; not great music but strikingly effective.

Different Drummer is one of MacMillan's troubled pieces, telling the story inside-out fashion of Berg's opera Wozzeck but, weirdly, using not Berg's music but early, stretched, tonal music by Berg's colleagues, Webern (Passacaglia, opus 1) and Schoenberg (the gorgeous string sextet Verklaerte Nacht, an aural counterpart of Klimt?). We see all Buchner's characters as in the opera and the choreography gives ample roles for Marie (Leanne Benjamin) and Wozzeck (Edward Watson) - fine performances both.

The last ballet was Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. I know the generally accepted cliche is that the music is just too powerful for any choreographer to match. But MacMillan gives Stravinsky almost as good as it deserves. The rounds and tribal dances do go on perhaps a bit too long but MacMillan's half-a-hundred corps de ballet (the most numerous in any ballet ?) do wonders and at the end are quite terrifying. And the Sidney Nolan sets and costumes are mightily impressive to look at. Tamara Rojo had recovered sufficiently from her efforts in Chroma to be a vibrant and pulsating sacrificial Chosen One.

Barry Wordsworth celebrated his return to the post of the Royal Ballet's Music Director to conduct thoroughly lively and convincing performances with a responsive Covent Garden Orchestra.

Mikado times two

Political correctness forced Robertsons to remove from their jams the charming gollywog logo. But The Mikado, the most successful of all the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas has survived and is even to be seen in London currently in two productions: by the English National Opera at the London Coliseum in Jonathan Miller's by now quite ancient version, black and white, hardhitting and not at all traditional, and by the Carl Rosa Company in the Gielgud Theatre where it is in repertory until 1 March, in tandem (tricycle?) with Iolanthe and The Pirates of Penzance in something like the traditional style of the D'Oyly Carte productions which adhered to the first prompt book ("two steps down stage, wait for the pause" - and so on)? At the Coli, everything is writ as large as the theatre itself. In the intimate Gielgud. the twenty or so chorus members have to watch they don't bump into one another.

In the good Doctor's writ-large-production the singers are mostly members of the company whereas the Carl Rosa have sought to be sure of bums on seats by bringing in TV favourites who are probably singing for money for the first time in their lives. Thus Jo Brand is Sergeant of Police in Pirates, whilst Alistair McGowan sings (somewhat in parlando fashion but very effectively) the title role in The Mikado, whilst Nichola McAuliffe sings extremely well in a more human portrayal of Katisha than usual.

The Carl Rosa Mikado is quite soft-centred (as opposed to hard-core Doctor Miller) and quite toothsomely kitschy. Since we all know that hypocrisy and lying are the order of the day the production by Peter Molloy has no sting (though however it has a pleasant bite: several anachronistic gags as is usual these days).

I didn't see any Japanese in the audience the night I went (February 4, a Monday traditionally the worst night of the week; and although the audience was most enthusiastic and knowledgable it was sparse - can the impresario Raymond Gubbay keep going, one wonders ?) and I wonder if the Japanese shun it because of its political incorrectness, although in fact ' topsy-turviness' being Gilbert's genre the success of The Mikado is because the entire is not aimed at the Japs but at us British.

So, at the Gielgud we had a small but spirited orchestra (conductor Martin Handley), and excellent chorus and a first-class cast and it is a pleasure to name them: Andrew Rees/Nanki-Poo, Ko-Ko/Fenton Gray, Pooh-Bah Bruce Graham. Charlotte Page/Yum-Yum was pretty but a bit under-parted. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

What a joy this work is ! Sullivan's score is a masterpiece of the genre, so incredibly felicitous. If the words have barbs the music cancels them out, practically every melody is a winner, its presentation perfect. Maybe the cadences can veer towards cliche but otherwise charm, grace and a heaven-sent imagination rule the staves.

Book review

Sandor Vegh in Cornwall: the Hungarian Virtuoso Violinist and the founding of the International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove.

By Hilary Tunstall-Behrens
49 (large)pp £15
IMS 52 Grafton Square, London SW4 ODB Tel. 0207 720 9020

Sandor Vegh's claim to fame, a large fame, was as a violinist, leader of a celebrated string quartet bearing his name, a teacher of international renown and a conductor. He was a pupil of the great Hubay, of Kodaly, he led the Budapest National Orchestra, premiered Bartok's String Quartet No. 5 and with his quartet made recordings of the complete set of Beethovens that are still considered one of the best half a century later.

His postwar association with this country was his nine visits to the Summer School of Music at Bryanston, later Darlington, over a period from 1950 to 1979, concerts with the quartet in the fifties, recitals and master classes in the seventies. Students came from far and wide to study with him, for his work with Bartok, Kodaly and, later, Casals somehow led to his playing and teaching embodying the best of the traditions of the nineteenth century. What he taught was imagination and colour, with the bow especially, to make music sound fresh, spontaneous and inspired, so that performances were not manacled to the printed notes or the bar line but took off into the air. And that spontaneity had to be based on proper study, hard work and tradition/experience. His master-classes were inspiring, combining intensity with the basic truths of music that could often bring tears to the eye.

His playing of the late Beethoven quartets almost matched the profundity and spiritual qualities of those works, not forgetting the prodigious skill required to negotiate the abnormally high flying first violin parts of those works. As a soloist he illuminated Bach's solo sonatas and one never-to-be-forgotten evening at Darlington, it felt as if he almost changed our lives with his playing of all three of the Brahms Sonatas.

But at Dartington his classes were part of a large programme of teaching and a visit to Cornwall led to the formation of the seminars at Prussia Cove; master-classes for strings and piano in the spring, chamber music with teachers playing together with students in the autumn, Sandor Vegh in charge. The author of this handsomely produced little book organised the sessions. The Cove is based on a fascinating house with art-decorations, a stone's plop from the sea, not far from Penzance. Here the students and professors live, eat together, work together, play together and, who knows, sometimes sleep together. Now that Vegh is gone (he died in 1997 at the age of 86 according to Behrens, although Groves says 95), Stephen Isserlis is music director.

He was a vast man and his looks led many Americans to ask for what Vegh called his 'autogram', only to be disappointed when they found he was not Charles Laughton. Strong accent: Hungarian mixed with German. From observations over several years in the green room it seemed to me that the other three members of the quartet did not relish his company. It seemed as if they avoided contact as much as possible and that they argued all the time; but that might have something to do with the Hungarian language. The desire of the various members to get away from each other was also apparent. For years Vegh lived in Zurich, the violist and cellist in Geneva and Basle, whilst the second violinist was domiciled in Paris. This meant that the question "Where shall we rehearse ? Your place or mine ?" was fairly important.

Another feature was their reluctance to give balance tests. "We always play the same - so what's the point?" they said. In old age arthritis brought his playing to an end, so he took to conducting: string orchestra versions of quartets and sextets (the Brahms larger chamber works were a speciality) and then recordings with Andras Schiff of all the Mozart Piano concertos, the rehearsals were like master-classes, fine CDs they were.

His wife survives to this day. A stunningly beautiful actress before their marriage, she was bright and witty, protective and trying - sometimes vainly - to curb his appetite for a fattening dish or a pretty girl. He had a good life and he was good for musical life, he brought music to a better life and students nearer the goal.

Hilary tells it like it was and it is a heartening story, including good quotes (particularly from Susan Tomes who played many times for his classes and writes of them perceptively). Some of Vegh's sayings are included and they tell something of his wisdom: "to be a soloist one must also be a chamber musician; if I engender a tension be it physical or mental, its corollary must be a relaxation of that tension; there is never an authentic interpretation; never be a slave to your violin. First be a musician and then a violinist; make music with love and joy". Vegh lived all these sayings, especially the last.

Remembering Rubinstein

An evening with this title was given on January 22. It was a curate's egg affair. Good were the filmed tributes from Zubin Menta the conductor and Daniel Barenboim the everything in music. Good were the film clips of the the great pianist Artur Rubinstein although vile was the sound. Bad was the discussion with Ronald Harwood interviewing the pianist Janina Fialowski. the leader and violist of the Guarneri String Quartet, and the producer of Rubinstein's records. Once again the sound was poor even when Annabelle Weidenfeld tweaked the mikes, She was the instigator of the evening nominally arranged by the Artur Rubinstein International Society. (I'm sure that she was responsible for the five foot high cylindrical hammocks awash witn jonquil and other spring flowers, stunningly beautiful).

Good was the playing after the interval of Mozart's late D major piano sonata k.576 by Alexander Gravylyuk, winner of the 2005 Artur Rubinstein Piano Competition, clear, fresh. But the disappoinment of the evening was the final item, Schumann's glorious Piano Quintet. Fialowska, Rubinstein's protege was adequate but the Guarneri Quartet co-heroes of so many magnificent recordings with Rubinstein, were tame and lacklustre. They formed in 1974 and were, alas, past their sell-by date.

During the performance there was plenty of time to remember Rubinstein. What a career and how long he continued to give pleasure! He was born almost exactly 125 years ago in Poland. The great violinist Joachim heard the boy and took charge of his education and conducted his debut in Potsdam, sending him to Max Bruch for theory and Padrewski for piano. As we saw in the excellent slides throughout the evening even as a tousle-headed kid, Artur looked recognisably similar. The slides included portraits by many artists, including Picasso and Cocteau. His career leapt upwards but in 1952 his new, adorable wife Nela persuaded Artur to take time off to regroup, improving his technique and disciplining himself. He had too easy a time and took life itself too easily. Now a vastly better pianist, he went from triumph to triumph. In Mozart, Beethoven. Schubert , Schumann and Brahms he played as well as his peers, in Chopin, Spanish and Latin-American music he reigned supreme; and he was a wonderful chamber music player, especially with The Guarneri, and with his piano trio with Heifetz and Feuermann, later Piatigorsky, despite constant rows with Heifetz because of his yobbish manners and, worse, the way he hogged the microphone.His repertory was large up to and including his friend and compatriot Symanowski, his stamina enabling him to programme concertos two at a time (Brahms) and even three at a time (Beethoven). He also had a penchant for lighter music such as the Saint-Saens G minor which he had played for over seventy years with unbelievable charm.

He also possessed remarkable recall of events in his life. The first volume of his autobiography My Young Years is a great read, entertaining and enlightening. Alas, volume two, written when his sight had failed him as he approached his ninetieth birtnday, is repetitive and dull, a catalogue of conquests at the piano and in the bedroom.

He was a great pianist, a great musician and a great entertainer so that remembering Rubinstein was also a great pleasure - for anybody old enough to do so; or anybody who listens to his vast number of recordings. Pity about the curate's egg.

Billy Budd, The Barbican, 9 December 2007

When Britten announced that he was going to write an all-male opera we thought he was barking mad (just as we did when he said he was writing a requiem interspersing Wilfred Owen poems with sections of the liturgy - and that turned out to be his most popular work: it made,as Michael Flanders quipped, Bundles for Britten, just as he also said of Billy Budd, the all-male opera, that it made Joan Cross. One more quip and then I'll be serious: Britten sent Michael Tippett a copy of the libretto of Budd, asking for comments. Tippett replied saying what a good libretto Eric Crozier and E.M.Forster had written. But he suggested that a line in act One might be misconstrued: Claggart at one point sings "Clear the decks of seamen". Britten wrote back saying what a filthy mind Michael had: but he cut the line.

All this apropos two concert performances (both packed, in the Barbican; I heard the second, December 9) of Billy Budd meticulously prepared by the London Symphony Orchestra under its principal guest conductor,Daniel Harding, conducted with great accuracy, enthusiasm and perception.

It is a large cast and the performance was dominated by Gidon Saks in the part of Claggart, master-at-arms and villain of the piece. This character is so depraved and disliked that it has proved from the premiere (which I saw at Covent Garden fifty-six years ago, December 1951) onward the most difficult of roles to make credible. Saks needed no stage to project a frightening villain, masterfully sung. The audience sensed that this was an overwhelming performance by a great artist.

The title role was sympathetically sung by Nathan Gunn. The Peter Pears role of Captain Vere was sung by lan Bostridge. This concert was the opening salvo in a Barbican series devised by and featuring the tenor lan Bostridge but, truth to tell, his performance, though sung with great understanding and consummate musucianship, was the least satisfying vocally. Style there was in plenty, but vocal beauty was sadly lacking. The large cast distinguished iteelf and it would be invidious to mention one without mentioning all; nevertheless Andrew Tortise forces himself into print here because he made such a convincing sneak of Squeak, Claggart's creature and provocateur. Chorus and orchestra completed the round of performance excellence.

What a great opera is Billy Budd: Grimes was a wonderful first opera but Budd is an even greater work, like an arrow directed so firmly at the target, all of a piece musically with its unique concentration of dark colours (below the Plimsoll line ?) woodwind and brass to the fore, dramatic thrust, the conflict as Vere is faced with the opposing forces of duty and morality. That he fails as a human being is of course what makes the drama so telling. The anti-climax
when the mist thwarts the HMS Indomitable from getting to grips with the enemy is gripping for the audience. (It was typically crass that the British Council sent the original Covent Garden production for performance in Paris and wondered why it didn't go down too well, especially the scene when the officers sing the lines: "Don't like the French.Don't like their Frenchified ways.")

With all the stupid 'concept' productions that do their utmost to disregard the composer's intentions, an intelligent concert performance like the present one is something of a blessing and a relief.

Parsifal, Covent Garden, 6 December

I saw the last performance in the present Covent Garden run of Wagner's Parsifal and it was probably the last time that Sir John Tomlinson sang the part of Gurnemanz (all 65 minutes of it - the longest role in opera ?) and perhaps the last time we shall hear Bernard Haitink conduct it. The word was that the Dutch musician was going slow but the duration was only fifteen minutes slower than the estimated four hours. In old age Toscanini got notably faster, Klemperer and Giulini slower (sometimes their singers gasped like fish out of water). Tomlinson wobbled a bit at the top but nobody cared about that for the main part of the voice is still a glorious instrument. I've heard many Gurneys in sixty years but Sir John tops the lot, not only because of his voice, but because of his acting, his sympathetic approach and his effortless command of the stage and the music.

Haitink led his admiring orchestra to glory, they played their hearts out for him and, since the orchestra and the chorus carry the tunes (I suppose that in Wagner you could say that the orchestra is the meat, solo voices the veg). Petra Lang sang well as Kundry and looked well too, having mastered the art of standing or sitting still but conveying much. Wagner is reported to have considered Kundry his most interesting female role; in which case why did he confine her part in the third act to singing just two words; 'lch dien" ? She was dressed in dark colours throughout - why on earth didn't the costume designer let her slip into something loose (with brighter colours) for her vamping of Parsifal in the Magic Garden scene ? And, speaking of costumes,. Parsifal was dressed in an old jersey with baggy pants, looked as if he had just come from a village football game. Incidentally if Guremanz has the longest part in opera, Parsifal has one of the shortest hero parts, just 23 minutes singing.

Indeed if the music was glorious and did not make one regret that a balcony seat cost £175, the production was scarcely worth change for a pound. For instance, that scene where Klingsor throws the Spear at Parsifal; in the old days at least some attempt was made with wires; could not present-day technology fudge up something better than just turning off the lights as Klingsor hurls and switching them on again with Parsifal holding the said spear (money back!)? Christopher Ventris has played the Fool in five productions during the last ten years but this was his Covent Garden debut as Parsifal. He gets through right enough but he glows rather than shines and the production doesn' let us know if he can act. Also debuting in the house was Falk Struckmann, an adequate Amfortas without appealing charms - the programme is dolefully uninformative about him, as it is about most of the artists. Klingsor was suitably blackhearted in a red dressing gown, dark brown in voice and multi-coloured is nis villainy, Willard White was the singer. The best thing in the £6 programme book is the illuminating article on the opera by Lucy Beckett.

All in all then - and continuing the culinary idea - musically this production delivered a shining, perfectly prepared dish, whereas the production laid an egg. Thank you, Sir John, thank you (Sir) Bernard (hon.KBE), thank you Miss Lang, thank you Willard White, thank you Glynne Howell (a fine Titurel), but shame on you Covent Garden for not matching the musical excellence with a tolerable production.

What a genius is the composer Richard Wagner and how adored he is by so many! His admirers are fiercer in their adoration than lovers of other classical or romantic composers. The majority of music buffs swear by him. And we others who cannot abide his operas, what of us? Why do we not relish the Ring?

I myself concede that he is a great genius and I can still bear to attend a performance of Parsifal, only that one amongst his oeuvre. I am convinced he was on the wrong tack when he declared: "The melody must therefore spring, quite of itself, from out of the words; it must not attract attention as sheer melody for its own sake, but only in so far as it was the most expressive vehicle for an emotion already plainly outlined in the words. Given this conception of melody, I now completely abandoned the usual mode of operatic composition and no longer tried for customary melody, or in a sense for melody at all, but absolutely let the vocal line base itself upon the expressive utterance of the words.. I heightened the individuality of this expression by a more and more symbolic treatment of the instrumental orchestra....."

And there you have it; Wagner's vocal lines in solo singing have left the stage for the pit and the orchestra becomes more important. For the most part the vocal lines have notes related to the harmonies in the orchestra. Which becomes tedious. And that tedium is pointed up in those places in the score when Wagner returns to the old order, the voices sing melody and the music takes wing, as in much of act One of Valkyries, the Woodbird's Song, parts of the duet in Siegfried, Wotan's Farewell, the Prize Song and the Quintet in Meistersinger and various other parts of the operas, notably in the choral passages. And why does he return to writing melody ? Because of its greater power to capture our hearts. The orchestral sections capture our hearts because there are no dull vocal lines. The orchestra has all those motives which go amazingly deep into our subconscious.

Another reason for distaste for much of the operas concerns the incredibly slow pace that the drama moves at, as if stuck in a time warp, like some of the old black and white silent films. Repetition palls too of which there are many examples in Parsifal, for example Gurnemanz goes on and on, nagging the boy for having shot the swan.

Bernard Miles pondered the idea of a shortened Ring which might have consisted of the beginning and end of Rheingold, most of act One of Valkyries, Wotan's Farewesll, the Tinkers chorus and some of the love duet from Siegfried preceded by the Hero encompassing the firegirt rock, Journey down the Rhine, the glee club number, the Hero's death, march, and the finale from Gotterdamerung, plus all the bits where the orchestra plays alone. I'd book for this straightaway. And I am sure many others would join me. Wouldn't it be luvverly ?

Beaux Arts Trio, Wigmore Hall, 19 November 2007

So, farewell, Menanem Pressler, farewell Beaux Arts Trio, you gave the musical world supreme enjoyment with. your performances of a thoroughly satisfying repertoire. You gave your first concert in 1953, fifty four years ago. Violinists and cellists have come and gone,'the Beaux Arts Superior String Players Employment Agency', but you. Menahem, were the one and only pianist. You listened to your colleagues, sure. but they listened to you and your views, your style, your musicianship affected them, rubbed off you. turned them into Beaux Artists. You were the little guy in the line-up, your face like a boy, babyish and innocent, constantly turning towards your colleagues, your mouth almost like an amorous goldfish as you encouraged them to make music, to serve the composer, to play your heart out and to play every grupetto, every sforzando chord, every note and every phrase as if'your life depended on it. The piano trio is tricky to balance but you excelled in just that. You accompanied the string players, you blended perfectly with them and you only overwhelmed them when the composer wanted you too - in, say, the finale of the Ravel Trio, when you, positively deluged their trills with your ecstatic fortissimo chords.

Every phrase you placed,, seemed just what the composer asked for, you could be as soft and delicate as gossamer, you could thunder like Jove, but your playing of music that was neither loud nor soft, what might be called your 'bread-and-butter' playing, that was so meaningful and so beautiful. 'Rarely,rarely comest thou', oh pianist of perfection like the wizard who was born in Magdeburg in 1925, studied in Israel and then in America with Egon Petri, winning a Debussy Prize in San Francisco at the age of seventeen. You were a formidable soloist (I remember your Dvorak Concerto in New York) but the B.A.Trio is what the musical world will remember for a long time, a memory fortunately perpetuated in your vast collection of recordings.

Your appreciation of various styles seemed limitless, your Haydn and Mozart as satisfying as your performances of anything,later, up to Ravel and Shostakovich. We critics are, alas, apt to carp if we get a chance and when we write we remember Blake's saying 'Damn braces,, bless relaxes', yes, we do a lot of bracing. But the B.A. have had all us hacks permanently in the 'bless' mode.

The farewell concerts in Londin's Wigmore Hall on November 18 and 19 were devoted to Schubert and Beethoven. I heard the latter when they played the Kakadu Variations and the Archduke, performances that showed the maturity we expect, but tempered with freshness and vitality. Daniel Hope, violin, and Antonio Meneses are as good, if not better, than some of the other players of the past.

The audience stood at the end to thank the musicians and to say goodbye. Pressler's fingers are as good as ever but in future he will mainly be teaching. The other two we shall, hear more of. Hope is springing if not eternally, then quite frequently in the U.K. these days.

Encores? yes, of course: rather curiously the slow movement of LvB's Clarinet Trio (parts redistributed) Opus 11 and then the squib second movement of Trio No. 2 by Shostakovich.

Goodbye, Beaux Arts Trio, and thank you.

Orchestral Enlightenment

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is twenty-one and celebrated on June 30 with a mammoth concert in the Royal Festival Hall. It began at seven o'clock and the Stage of Endarkenment did not occur until nearly eleven o'clock, by which time many good citizens of Penge, Norbury and Twickenham had gone to catch their last train home.

Pluralism was the order of the day: four conductors, two forte-pianists. five bassoons, two intervals, a choir, eight vocal soloists, half-a-dozen horns, the same number of trumpets and a full house of punters eager to join in the fun and applaud the consort of scene-shifters who necessarily took quite a time to set the stage. music-stands and music.

First came Purcell's delectable mini-Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, Richard Egarr directing. Next came Sir Roger Norrington with an electrically charged performance of a suite from the opera Dardanus 1739 by that quirky genius, Rameau; music that never goes quite where you think is going but you are delighted with where it does go, wilful but tender and exciting.

It was interesting to compare the two conductors: in the Purcell, Richard Egarr directing every rhythm, every phrase, it looked awfully fussy: Norrington nudged, pointed but it was definitely hands-off directing, as if he had done all the work at rehearsal, and was now just making sure that the players were doing what they had worked at, surely the way conducting ought to be.

For the next item, Egarr came back. this time partnering Robert Lewin in Mozart's Double Keyboard Concerto in E flat, K.565, the keyboards being those of fortepianos. Unamplified, forte chords sounded like somebody in the next room thrashing a birdcage, not a nice sound. After Mozart, a Haydn Symphony in C, La Roxelane, No.65, conductor Vladimir Jurowski - Glyndebourne's music director. The sound changed instantly; it was as if blurred vision suddenly became in focus, sounded stylish and was most enjoyable.

Drama took the stage, the spooky Glen Scene from Weber's Der Freischütz , vividly brought to life under the direction of Mark Elder, and equally vividly sung in character by the ever young Philip Langridge as Max with Clive Bayley as Kaspar. They acted it out like the old style melodrama it is. Finally came Rameau's exact contemporary, GeorgeFrideric Handel, his Fireworks music, than which there is no grander music in the repertory. It was half past ten before the first rocket sounded, an exciting moment with a big band, including those half-dozen horns, trumpets and a gaggle of bassoons. The visual aspect was good too, especially the horns with their double circles of brass, the main horn topped by a crook.

Sir Charles Mackerras at 8o is better than ever, has found a kind of Grand Old Man's serene maturity and what a week he had, Janacek last Sunday and Monday, the Sinfonietta with the Philharmonia, joyous and exciting (twelve trumpets, three tubas and all)and, next day, a thrilling Katya Kabanova on the stage of Covent Garden, the week ending with the Royal Fireworks Music.

So, Happy Birthday, O of the A of E, you played all six birthday concert works with your usual enthusiasm, virtuosic expertise and lack of vibrato. Can one really believe that absolutely no vibrato was used all those centuries ago? I would have given a lot to have a pennorth or two of throbbing strings. Without that spice, music sounds rather like an egg without salt, I find.

This was my first visit to the newly reopened Royal Festival Hall, cost £13 million. What's the difference? I could not lay my hand on my heart (or my ear) and say that I noticed any great smmx improvement.: More room between the rows of seats, yes, that is a boon for long-legged punters. The changes are considerable outside the auditorium; more room to perambulate and more space for food and drink. The bookshop is now part of a building between the Hall and the railway, a block with places to eat and drink which is better for us and, of course, better balancing the books. My usual watering hole has become a Ladies and the Ladies next door has become a Gents. Big deal!

Death in Venice and Aldeburgh

There were several threads weaving through the life of Benjamin Britten: on, more like a hawser than a thread perhaps, was the defence of his being homosexual; this ran parallel to the theme of innocence betrayed. Probably this had something to do with some event in his early life that haunted him for the rest of his days. These two threads merged in his choice of opera plots; Peter Grimes, Albert Herring, The Rape of Lucretia, The Little Sweep, Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, Owen Wingrave, and the last one, Death in Venice, recently seen in London and at the Aldeburgh Festival.

The thirties were a difficult time for a middle-class dentist's sone in a seaside town to realise that he was not as other men were, that he was subject to 'desires that dare not speak their name'. BB's extraordinary and precocious musical ability served as a defence against his sexual inclination, likewise his urge to win at games, a 'look at me, Mum'. The same thing accounts for his chumming up with the royals, marrying off his surrogate father's daughter to an Earl (Marian Stein to George Harewood).

Another strong thread was his composing work after work for his longtime partner the tenor, Peter Pears. Most of the operas, song-cycles, canticles, cantatas, a score of scores. I think that Ben knew that his insistence on finishing Death in Venice before submitting to a heart operation was dicing with death (in Suffolk 1976). And, by the time of composing that last opera (with a massive central part for Pears), the battle for homosexuality had been won. Gone the anxious days when the bourgeois Suffolk man was summoned to Scotland Yard for questioning and warning.

But there it is, Death in Venice exists, his final act of the defence of the Homosexual Realm, hitched to Thomas Mann's novella of an artist who becomes infatuated with a young boy. The opera is not entirely successful, marred by the passages in which occur the highflown Appolonian glorification of the boy Tadzio and his friends prancing about the Lido. As Blake wrote, "Damn braces, bless relaxes"; in other words, evil is easier to portray than good. Myfanwy Piper's libretto (Britten no doubt conniving) sometimes seems, as my colleague Hilary Finch put it in her Times review , like "research notes for a first year course in philosophy and aesthetics". How many times does the artist Aschenbach utter, "My mind beats on"?

However there is plenty to admire and be moved by in Death in Venice, particularly the orchestral parts, the ingenious as ever orchestration, and episodes like the two visits to the barber's (although the film by Visconti sensibly condenses the two into a single one). Ah yes! The film. Wisely or not, this sixtieth Aldeburgh Festival featured the film as well as the opera. I shall probably be drummed out of the town for writing that, in many ways, the film tells the story better, not so wordy, more condensed.

With time, Alan Oke will probably acquire more authority and gravitas in his portrayal of Aschenbach. Already, he sings the music and puts the words across brilliantly, but he does not suggest an artist distinguished in the eyes of the world. Peter Sidhom has a fine voice and bearing as the malevolent Traveller but the director reduces the shock we should feel at his recurrent appearances by having him change his appearance and clothes on stage. Otherwise, there can be nothing but praise for the Japanese director, Yoshi Oida. The brick walls of Snape Maltings are left bare and we are mostly to imagine Venice, aided by lighting and a five foot screen that shows appropriate film; there is real water, real oars, but no gondola. The prancing and dancing of the boys is well done, but Tadzio's looks are plain, so that one wonders at Aschenbach's desires. Paul Daniel conducted the Britten-Pears Orchestra and the student players did fine things under his direction. Could the ends of both acts have been more pointed? Probably.

Pelléas et Mélisande - Royal Opera

Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande is a sport. True, Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov is an influence with its naturalistic setting of language and the Frenchman may have known Dargomyzhsky's The Stone Guest with its thinly accompanied recitative style.

Debussy had been thinking about writing a new kind of of opera for years: music begins where the word finishes. It must emerge from the shadows. Music is insolently predominant. There is too much singing. Musical setting is too heavy. Extended development does not fit, cannot fit, the words.

All this three years before Pelléas, finished around 1902 the date of the premiere in Paris, a premiere that baffled; although it intrigued many, and the last performances in the run at the Opera Comique actually made a profit.

The new production is botched scenically. As so often these days the musicians fall over backwards to do what is in the correctly what is in the score; and the production villains fall over backwards to show us what is not in the score or the libretto. This is a joint production so Covent Garden 's opera director the usually expert and knowledgeable Elaine Padmore no doubt saw it in Salzburg. So why did she bring over a production that was utterly against anything that would win the approval of critics and many of the audience? I suppose that her answer might be, that she had booked Sir Simon Rattle to conduct and a near-perfect cast.

Mélisande is usually a blonde with long hair, dressed in pastel shades or grey; here she is a brunette with shortish hair and wearing a dark red dress. For contrast everybody else is dressed in clowns' clothing which makes their bums look big in them. What the connection is, goodness knows.

It was during rehearsals for the premiere that the stage director asked for more music to cover the scene changes. Sometimes a conductor (John Eliot Gardiner, for example) has decided that Debussy's first thoughts were best and has omitted those orchestral interludes. But that is to miss some of the most beautiful and profound moments in the score, for they express psychological insight into the characters and events in the work (and they almost certainly led to similar interludes in Wozzeck, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and Peter Grimes, highlights in Berg, Shostakovich and Britten).

Mélisande is named after a character in another Maeterlinck play Ariane et Barbebleue, turned into an opera by Dukas, in which she is one of Bluebeard's wives (which is how she came by the crown that features in Debussy's first scene). Now we know that Mélisande is good at evading questions but how did she evade being killed by Bluebeard ? The character can be portrayed as totally fey or straightforward and a bit sly; Angelika Kirchschlager, the Austrian soprano favoured the latter approach and carried it out in a convincing way, a singing actress of stature.

Two of our finest baritones play Pelléas and Golaud, the half-brothers; Simon Keenlyside copes with the high lying part, is a superb, communicating performer of the highest quality, the best I have seen in the part. He says that he is getting long in the tooth for Pelléas and this was his last per6rmance in the role (May 25) but let us devoutly hope he changes his mind. Gerald Finley as the sad victim of jealousy and great provocaion will no doubt be even better in five years time but is already very fine.

Earlier I said the singing/acting was near perfect; so is anything missing ? The voice of experience says 'yes': mature character in the voice: I am thinking of Söderström's charisma as Mélisande or Jose Van Dam's as Golaud. Robert Lloyd's present portrayal of the old King Arkel had that quality of ripe maturity that the rest of the cast must strive toward.

Curiously enough, there is not a single French singer in the line-up. Now we English do not always have great love for the French but let any foreigner maul the French language about and we are up in arms. One must be able to hear the difference between e grave, e aigu and plain e; here at the Jardin de Couvent everything seemed en place.

The orchestra is a protagonist in this opera and no praise is too high for the playing, virtuosity, balance, power, passion, elegance, Sir Simon Rattle coaxed the players into the spirit of the work. It could not have been better. The big interlude in Act Four was moving, thrilling, overwhelming.

One or two of the stage pictures were eloquent but on the whole the director Stanislas Nordey seemed determined to show what a clever fellow he is and put his stanp on the production. Alas, he did. No water, no tower, no tumbling hair, no castle, no sword, all make-believe, Mélisande dies in a chair; the only furniture visible. The sets were cumbersome and had to be laboriously hauled about; they consisted mainly of vast rectangular objects patterned like pencil boxes. There were also some expensive gimmicks: one scene had a wall filled with thirty-eight rreplicas of Mélisande's red dress; the final scene had twenty male dummies. What a mess! Salvaging what is possible from the wreckage, my advice is to listen to the relay on Radio 3 on 9 June.

GRANGE PARK LOSES A GAMBLE

"Where's your favourite opera venue?' an acquaintaince asked last Monday. Looking out over rolling Hampshire fields and countryside not far from Winchester I said I would settle for Grange Park Opera which we were attending. Truly beautiful, with a partly renovated Palladian
style house, pillars and all, in the foreground, two magnificent cedars and, a touch that would have delighted Salvador Dali, a red telephone box all by itself in a fold of the fields. And a recently built small opera house where every summer a season takes place, the whole enterprise fired, and I do mean fired, by an attractive conductor turned administrator called Wasfi Kani.

If I tell you that the programme book is priced at £15 you can get an idea of how much dinner and your ticket would set you back. Heigh ho! when financial rape seems inevitable, open your wallet and give way to luxurious serendipity, especially since the roster of operas this season includes Falstaff, Bellini's take on the Romeo & Juliet story, Handel's Semele and The Magic Flute.

But before these delights there was some medicine to take, a Russian pill to swallow in the form of The Gambler, a setting of Dostoevsky's story based on his own unhappy experiences at the wheel of misfortune. An elderly aunt comes to the townof Roulettenburg to investigate Alexei's addiction to gambling. She gets badly bitten by the bug and loses thousands. In the fourth act Alexei wins thousands but loses his girl.

This was the first completed opera of Prkfv (Prokofiev's own abbreviation) and it reveals him as still wet behind the operatic ears, misjudging the pacing and continuity of music for the stage. In a word, the score is fidgety: ideas overlap, fresh ideas occur every few seconds, rhythms, vocal lines and orchestration change constantly, likewise moods; in his desire to avoid operatic conventions, Prkfv employs the sort of kaledioscopic movement that Verdi created so effectively in quite his last opera Falstaff. However the Italian composer was by then quite dry behind the ears. The Russian began The Gambler is his early twenties but was thirty-seven by the time he had revised it for its premiere in Brussels in 1929. It was slated then as it usually has been (Edinburgh 1962 and Wexford) but it remains a challenge that some opera houses seem unable to resist. David Fielding's Grange production and designs are apt and smooth running. Prkfv himself concocted the text, retaining (apparently) much of the original dialogue. The words come plenty and fast, too quick for surtitles and it was not easy to hear David Pountney's translation. Only, as usual, Andrew Shore's words, singing the part of an old general, could be easily heard, and it was not easy to sort out who was who in the large cast. The central figure,
Alexei, the gambler, was convincingly played by Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts (looking slightly like another Alexei, Sayle), a tenor. Carol Rowlands made the most of the cameo part of the visiting aunt, but Katherine Rohrer's voice, as the girl, was not at all ingratiating. Andre de Ridder, formerly assistant to Mark Elder in Manchester, coped tidily with the busy score with the Orchestra of St.John's.

There are moments when one can discern the future genius but on the whole this is a lack-lustre, lack-lyricism, lack-charm, lack-too much score, a gamble that fails to hit the jackpot.

Mstislav Rostropovich 1927-2007

There are stars in our musical firmament, usually preeminent in one sphere, but occasionally, perhaps once a century, along comes a megastar. Rostropovich was such a one. If Casals put the cello on the map in the first half of the twentieth century, then in the latter half of that century Slava - the diminutive of his first name, it means 'glory' - may be said to have extended that map, and coloured it too.

But he had other talents in music: he played the piano marvellously, notably in recitals with his wife, Galina Vishnievskaya, the most eminent Russian dramatic soprano of her day. He also composed in his young days and was a pupil of Shostakovich until that day in 1948 when he arrived at the Conservatoire for his lesson to find - as he told me one day in his own brand of English - "On wall I see notice saying Shostakovich no longer teacher, too low standard teaching." Slava was also in his later days a conductor who could make any orchestra play its heart out for him. But as well as all that, he was a rare human being, an exceptionally brave one who defied the Soviet government by housing the ailing and officially oppressed author Solzhenitsin; he also wrote to the national newspapers attacking the regime. As a result, both he and Galina were deprived of tneir citizenship. Finally, after six decades of over-working (never more than four hours sleep a night), over-playing, over-living, his health gave out and he succumbed to cancer, surviving just long enough for an 80th birthday party in the Kremlin hosted by Putin himself.

On the day that Russian tanks rolled into Prague, Slava was due to play a concerto in the Royal Albert Hall. His first thought was to cancel but then he decided go ahead. Loud opposition from some of the audience ceased as soon as he began to play...of all works, the Dvorak! Nobody who was there that evening will forget it: Slava played with tears streaming down his face, leaving no one in doubt as to where his sympathies lay.

His father was a respected cellist and teacher, after whose early death Slava supported the family. He fairly shot up as a soloist soon becoming the most famous and loved cellist in the world. Not for him the usual Russian po-faced attitude towards the public; his ugly mug beamed at one and all, and it was nothing unusual for him to go round after a performance, giving a hug to every member of the orchestra.

There were no limits to his technique and he had exceptional comprehension of the music he played, everything by heart and also memorising the accompaniments of every work he played, be it chamber music, solo or orchestral. Yet everything sounded spontaneous, he was a powerhouse of energy and passion, his repertoire was vast: in a series of concerts given in Russia, Paris, London and New York he played no less than 27 concerted works. More than two hundred compositions were written for him, many of them learned in a matter of days. Some of the most noteworthy performances were of sonatas and concerto works composed by his friends Britten, Prokofiev and Shostakovich; his recordings of these pieces reach the very summit of performance and interpretation.

Before launching himself in the West, Slava toured extensively in the Soviet Union, from the icy north to the tropical south, bringing music to unfamiliar ears and always making friends. Elizabeth Wilson's excellent new biography (Faber, £25) makes the claim that, as well as all his other activities, Rostropovich was something of' a genius at teaching; she was a pupil at the same time in Russia as Mischa Maysky, Karine Georgian and Jacqueline du Pre. He expected a lot from his adoring pupils and got it; classes were sporadic, yet once started, they could go on well past midnight. As well as music he encouraged his students to think for themselves and to appreciate, as he did, drama, literature, architecture and painting.

Was he then a perfect human being ? Not quite, of course; he was a good and kind man but he could drink like fish, had an eye for the girls and was an inveterate prankster. He would serve up a plastic fried egg to a nervous new pupil and, in a recital with Galina singing Musorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death he would play from an upside-down vocal score of Trovatore, nudging the page-turner into action every two minutes. Another time, accompanying Schumann's Frauen Liebe und Leben, he suddenly played the fourth song with the hands reversed. Galina realised that some joke was going on and was naturally furious.

They had many shouting matches but they usually ended in smiles. She knew better than to curb him too much. Despite provocations she stuck to him, supported him in his political battles. And she helped him to spend prodigious amounts of money, on cars, clothes and property - property in Russia, New York, Paris, London - they even had a house in Aldeburgh (Would one ever forget the first time he played at the Suffolk festival ? I remember him before one concert: he stood on a path near Orford Church, smiling at concertgoers and shaking everybody's hands.) The couple were both acquisitive and, charmingly, ruthless. One time Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten were cajoled into taking with them to Moscow a hundred-weight of gravel because it was needed for the rock-garden outside Slava's dacha (sand luggage ?).

As time went on Slava realised that conducting revealed errors less than playing the cello so latterly he beat more than he bowed, 18 years directing the Washington Orchestra and guesting all over the world. Every concert was a joyous event, almost like a party. His interpretations was often self-indulgent, details at the expense of the whole, tempi sometimes slower than Klemperer's. But audiences mostly accepted that, because he knew and had been intimate with the likes of Shostakovich, Britten and Prokofiev; his readings of their works were authentic.

All in all: what a performer! what a musician ! and what a man !. Indeed we shall not look upon his like again.

Les Miserables, Pimlico Opera, Wandsworth Prison

Not long ago there was an Indian girl called Wasfi Kani. She was a conductor who ran a chamber opera company called Pimlico. A compassionate person and a super-competent organiser she had the idea of taking opera to prisons and her visit was to Wormwood Scrubs where Pimlico performed Figaro and Walton's The Bear. The next year, 1991, she took the idea further, incorporating the prisoners in the performance of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd but including a few professionals in the leading parts. This took place in the Scrubs wing where all the inmates are lifers (i.e. in for murder). I took a tape recorder to the dress rehearsal and interviewed some of the cast - more of that by and by.

The following year it was Guys and Dolls in Wandsworth, West Side Story, in 1996 Dublin and Oxford. Performances followed in Downview, Surrey, Winchester, the Scrubs again and Ashwell in Leicestershire. In 2006 it was Chicago in a women's HMP in Bronzefield, near Heathrow and it was brilliant. By now Wasfi was more of a producer in the film sense that she did the paperwork and proved to bet a wizard at getting dosh from sponsors and donors, thus able to provide quite lavish decor and costumes, and to hire bands. Even more important perhaps than the artistic results was the result in human terms, giving the prisoners responsibility for learning words and music (very few of them could read music) and taking part in a company event. Most of them had never been in a theatre so that performing was a new, absorbing and therapeutic gift. What is also touching is that the printed programmes contain testimonies to the inmates's life, expertise and what it means to them to take part.

The audience has to arrive early for security reasons, sometimes having to dye thumbs and wear identity bracelets. Present are sponsors, guarantors, relatives and friends of the inmates. The venue is usually a large warehouse-type space with no windows.

The music, Les Mis was composed by Schoenberg - no, not Arnold but Claude-Michel, the other Schoenberg, the text is based on Victor Hugo (hélas!), it has not come my way before now and I must confessIwas underwhelmed. The narrative seems to me unconvincing, characters do not develop. The music plods along four-in-a-bar almost throughout and, though charming at first, soon palled, there being too much of typical American musical manufactured lyrical climaxes (as in Sondheim and not, definitely not, as in Bernstein's superior West Side Story).Choruses were lustily sung and the band, under John Beswick, was quite satisfactory.

Now last year's Chicago was a fizzing show but Les Mis I found disappointing, not inventive and not inspiring the amateurs in the cast to rise to a show of professionalism. Was Michael Moody, director since the beginning in 1991. having a fallow year? Wandsworth being a male establishment, girls were brought in for the show but all but two (Cosette and a tall girl with comedy and good projection) were feeble and their voices (and some of the men) badly needed the mikes they didn't have. Excellent were the professionals Elliot Goldie (Javert) and Blake Pischer (Valjean). Costumes conventional to the point of banality.

To return to my 1990 visit to the Scrubs. I took a tape recorder and, after interviewing Wasfi and various other principals I talked to a chorus member. For the first time in my broadcasting career, I made the mistake of getting off my subject by asking him: "What is the worst thing about being banged up for life?" "No visitors". "What, no nice girl friend to come and see you ?" "Well, I killed her. didn't I ?".

Royal Ballet is the tops

This is a good time to visit the Royal Ballet and to be proud of its achievements. And, look you, the top price for the seats is roughly a third of what an opera stall would cost you. But, more important even than the cost, what you get is aesthetic satisfaction. O.K no Fonteyn, no Helpmann, no Constant Lambert and no great new works. In the last decade or so policy has changed, as it did with the Opera a long time ago; the idea of a national company has given way to an international one; it must be babel backstage. The new order has some disadvantages but on the whole the result is advantageous.

In fact many of us consider that, under the sensible and sensitive direction of Monica Mason, the company is peaking as never before. The soloists excel and the corps de ballet has a wonderful discipline as near perfect as dammit (very nearly as good as the Kirov). Mind you, the roster of ballet conductors could be improved but the choreographers seem to have realised at last that the composer's tempo is more important than theirs. In terms of repertoire one of the revolutions has been the continuing inclusion of Balanchine works, formerly looked down on by 'Madame' de Valois - they are good for discipline as well as being masterpieces in their own right; and bridge the gap between the classical dancing and the neo-classical style. Also of course his ballets have respect for music in a remarkable and unique way.

One aspect of things today that is not satisfactory is the paucity of good new ballets, a weakness that I am sure Monica Mason is aware of. But then there is a paucity of good choreographers today (why not bring in John Neumeier ?). The vast space of the Covent Garden stage is no place for a try out for a not fully-fledged choreographer.

These thoughts were proved by two visits, one to see a triple bill (March 13), the other to see a three-acter (March 21), Onegin, as fine an example of the narrative ballet as Balanchine's is of the more abstract species. Stravinsky's and Balanchine's Apollo is a landmark in the annals of ballet, a perfect fusion of a score especially composed to be danced to, the neo-classical style, and Balanchine’s poetic and analytical choreography. It was first performed in 1928 when Balanchine was only 24. Stravinsky himself was forty-six; his choice of a string orchestra to complement a neo-classical ballet was inspired - a kind of white-on-white combination of sound and vision. The score is curious in that it manages to evoke memories of Tchaikovsky yet also including glimpses of popular music - there is a quote, for example, of The Stein Song, a hit of the late twenties. Yet withal the atmosphere is one of purity. Led by Federico Bonelli as the burgeoning Apollo the three Muses were perfectly represented by Terpsichore (Zenaida Yanovsky), Calliope (Isabel McMeekan) and Polyhymnia (Deirdre Chapman) - the four dancers being respectively Italian, French, British and American.

Next came a new ballet by the British choreographer Alastair Marriott, Children of Adam, that was sniffed at by the ballet critics as being too strongly influenced by other people's works. Myself, a non-technical ballet person who loves the art more from the musical angle, found much to enjoy in this Cain and Abel fable danced to Concerto per Corde, a concert work by the American composer Christopher Rouse. The references to the Prokofiev-Balanchine Prodigal Son seemed intergrated in this study of a younger brother (the brilliant emerging star Steven McRae, Australian) sexually enthralled by the woman of his brother who comes back from the dead to comfort his sibling (Freud fodder).



Finally another Balanchine master work, Theme and Variations that complements his earlier Ballet Imperial which was almost the first of the Georgian-born choreographer ballets to be danced by our Royal Ballet. At the premiere I saw Fonteyn fall flat on her face; as a result she refused ever to dance the part again. Both these ballets - music by Tchaikovsky, this one the finale from his Suite No. 5 in G - look back to the splendours of Imperial Russia, nostalgia, grand and glamorous, a perfect vehicle for the company and in particular for the great Darcey Bussell (soon to retire, alas) and Carlos Acosta, giant of near perfection. Orchestra excellent under Barry Wordsworth.

The surprise feature of the Onegin ballet is, that although the plot follows closely Pushkin and Tchaikovsky's opera, the choreographer John Cranko (1965) used a score that contains not a single bar of the opera. Surprise no 2 is that this works well. Kurt-Heinz Stolze, the concoctor, has taken bits , mostly piano pieces, by Tchaikovsky (just a couple that Stravinsky lifted for his Le Baiser de la fée), and orchestrated them. However for the last scene of all, where Tatiana, although she still loves Onegin, sends him packing (hooray for Women's Lib), uses to great effects the latter part of the tone-poem Francesca da Rimini. The South African born John Cranko devised a masterpiece that makes one regret all over again his death at the age of forty-five on a plane when he choked after having taken a sleeping pill.

The story of Tatiana, sister Olga, her lover Lensky and Eugene Onegin is told elegantly and powerfully. Cranko’s invention was never more fruitful than here with ingenious lifts and dramatically telling gestures. Has any choreographer kept his dancers in the air more than Cranko? And one feature is that Onegin's hauteur and disdain is conveyed more effectively than in the opera. Martin Harvey (good English theatrical name) brought the character vividly to life. The Spanish dancer Laura Morera was a touching Tatiana; Lensky's solo before the duel and Olga's charming capriciousness also come off better danced than sung. The sets are charming and the evening's entertainment was complete. The principals on March 21 were not the most famous or starry but the satisfaction they gave is a measure of the Royal Ballet's strength in that the second, third or fourth casts can give great pleasure. Let us cherish the company and salute Monica Mason.

Agrippina - English National Opera

Blind Delius, craggy craniumed Sibelius,, bewildered-looking Bruckner, retired Colonel Elgar, bewigged Bach and that blind old pro Händel - natural that we know them from their old age when artists were commissioned or friends got their Kodaks out. O.K., they were all young once; in his early twenties George Frideric Händel (let's give him his rightful umlaut for once) left his north German homeland for a spell in Italy. He knew his craft so well and had developed such a gift for melody and fluency that his first opera Rodrigo was a success and his second, Agrippina had a run of twenty-seven consecutive nights in Venice. Not bad for a gay blade of a Protestant in a Catholic country - who would never have got a post there because of the religious angle.

"Damn braces: bless relaxes". Religious music favours the first part of Blake's apophthegm,, opera the second, bracing damns are surefire in opera. "She had all the assets except goodness" said Tacitus of Poppea. That lady is as prominent in this opera as is the title-role one. Grip (for short) spins deceit as she tries to propel her son Nerone to the throne whose physical presence dominates the heavy scenery in this producion of Agrippina which I saw on March 1 in the London Coliseum production by David McVicar given by English National Opera (penultimate performance of the run but it will be back - old GFH is popular these days, even with a score of arias that always repeat the A of an ABA form, little chorus work and a length of four hours).

The performance contained swings and roundabouts, metaphorically. In Händel's day the voices, research, logic and guesswork tells us, would have had more personality than present-day ones. At the Coli the whole cast sang musically, accurately and were thoroughly rehearsed and prepared, getting tnrough fiendishly difficult passage work with extremes of vocal range but the voices lacked that elusive quality of character which enabled us to say within three notes, oh, that's Sutherland or Vickers or Callas or Gobbi. But, as I say, we have accuracy, style and enthusiasm, plus pacing and commitment under the Dutch conducter Daniel Reuss, well known abroad and now welcome here.

Production. The general attitude these days to 18th century opera - to which David Mc Vicar obviously subscribes - is: pep it up,boys, look lively and show a leg. The singers showed that they could act, they showed legs (Poppea in her undies) they sang most competently and the conductor kept them on the move, the strings played their lovely intros well and four hours passed in a flash.



Sarah Connolly as Agrippina


What shockers the characters are, regular showers! All except Claudius (remember your Robert Graves ? Him, Claudius, is weak, stutters but he is clean, well he prefers Pop (for short) to Grip,but who can blame him?). Castration not being the order of the day, we have two, no three coutertenors, including Nerone (when he gets to the top of the thirty-nine steps he will soon become that wicked Nero who famously combined fiddling with fireworks) finely played as a slouching yob by Christine Rice and there's the head general, hard done by Ottone well sung by Reno Troilus.

A word about the un-named sign interpreter. This one was quite unobtrusive, graceful and obviously knew the whole, opera by heart. Unfortunately I missed the moment when she has to sign-interpret a line in Amanda Holden's translation which is "Fucketty-fuck-fuck".