Engaging a director and a set designer to make their operatic débuts at Glyndebourne sounds like folly; and when that opera is as difficult an assignment as Britten’s all-male Billy Budd, folly turns to madness. However... the result is a triumph, the production the most successful to date, from the première, which I saw on December 1, 1951 onwards. Christopher Oram’s multi-decked set transports us to a ship of the line in 1797 when the British Navy was fighting not only the French but the threat of mutiny within its ranks (a member of the cast told me that the cast cheered when it saw the set at the first stage rehearsal). Herman Melville apparently based his short story on a true story of those old times when conditions were tense, discipline strict and cruel. In the first act we see the bloody result of a young novice flogged because he bumped into the Bosun, a flinchworthy sight that matches Britten’s pathetic music, a contrapuntal slow tangle that parallels some of Bach’s passion music with on the top line a poetic saxophone where the older composer used the cor anglais.
The director, Michael Grandage is well known for his work both in New York and in London where he runs the Donmar Theatre. His handling of a large chorus of the crew is as masterly as that of the principals, both the lower deck and the officers on the bridge. We see Captain Vere who fails to save the young foretopman Billy Budd from the penalty of hanging from the yard arm when, unable to overcome his stammer to answer the charge of mutiny brought by Claggart, the master of arms, he strikes his superior officer dead. Claggart is a villain of the deepest dye with a homosexual lust for the young sailor.
Nearly every opera that Britten composed had to have a big part for his tenor partner, Peter Pears. There is no parallel to this liaison which gave rise to at least six major operas. The curious thing is that Britten wrote music for Pears so bound up with the idiosyncrasies of the tenor’s voice and musical personality that one still seems to hear that unique voice again in the performance of latter-day singers. Here it is John Mark Ainsley singing very well but with the overtones of the original portrayer of the part of Vere. Jacques Imbrailo from South Africa is every inch and every sound Budd, loose-limbed, innocent, a carefree young man until he is doomed. Phillip Ens, from Canada, is an impressive Claggart, only lacking a hard edge to his voice that would make him into a kind of latter-day Iago. All the smaller roles are part of a cast that realises Britten’s intentions.
But all this excellence is matched by a mastermind directing Britten’s wonderful music (on reflection this grand opera and The Turn of the Screw, chamber opera, mark the summit of this composer’s achievement, despite the fine qualities of his first success in the medium Peter Grimes).
It seems to me that Sir Mark Elder is now at the zenith of his career. In his early sixties, every work he conducts has a feeling of rightness and he gets what he wants out of his performers. He is at home with modern music, he delights in music of the ottocento (1800 – 1850), his English music, Elgar and Delius, is first class and here he gives us a perfect performance of Benjamin Britten. The Hallé Orchestra is fortunate in having his direction and his visits to London’s concert halls and opera houses bear golden fruit and, as here, bring a Budd to glorious bloom.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
AIDA
Grandest of the grand
Rossini said: “Nobody is capable of writing grand opera except Verdi”: and Aida is the grandest of the lot. Intended for the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 it was eventually premiered in Cairo two years later. The triumph scene is just that, a miracle of organisation and inspiration. Aida, the Ethiopian slave girl, in love with the general of the army, Radames, but has a rival in Amneris, princess of Egypt and the two fathers, Amneris’ King of Egypt, an d Aida’s father, Amonasro, King of Ethiopia.
Act two scene two is the Triumph scene, celebrating the victory by Radames over the Ethiopians. Verdi juggles with three crowds, the Egyptian public, the priests and the defeated Ethiopians – it’s a sort of Three Choirs Festival, with climax after climax. By contrast Act Three is sung only by the four chief characters, it is the heart of the opera. Aida’s success rests mainly on these two peak scenes.
Verdi goes for your heart and your jugular. Never since has opera gone so straight forwardly, almost innocently, for the listener’s heart in terms that everybody can grasp immediately.
From Don Carlos onwards part of the secret construction is that Verdi concentrates on using, in technical terms, chords of the tonic key and its dominant, not often in root positions but in first or second inversion (unlike Berlioz who mostly uses chords in their root position). If you look at a few passages in the score you may see what I mean. And, of course, as well as the harmony, his use of counterpoint has in every line something meaningful and beautiful. Verdi keeps up a stream of inspired melody. A composer of genius in full flow is carried by some strange force, inspiration? Benjamin Britten once said to me that when he was prepared and in form he felt that the music came from somewhere else, as if he was connected to some grid of inspiration.
The new production which I saw on April 27 by Donald McVicar pulls together the many threads of this opera, so complex yet having the impetus of an arrow. The production is compelling if sometimes congested, as if McVicar is trying too hard. The sets designed by Jean-Marc Puissant are dark and gloomy, in contrast to the vision most of us have of Egypt, which is light and sunshine. The action is menaced by a large moveable wall whose prime object is to mask the coming and goings of the various crowds. The ballet is all wriggling, jerking and leap-frogging, effective if not inspired. Act three, the Nile scene looks like a slanted organ console with a big hole in the middle. No local colour or palm trees – too commonplace, perhaps?
Verdi said that his idea of Amneris was a bit of a devil aged twenty. At Covent Garden in this new production he got a singer looking more like a dowager. Admittedly the American mezzo, Marianna Cornetti, was a replacement but she did us no favours with her singing. Amneris is the most interesting character in the opera, dramatically and musically (Verdi seemed to love mezzos) and it is usually a gift to a singer. But this Amneris had a painful beat in her voice and she wob-bob-bob-bled. The Aida, Micaela Corsi, was not wobble-free either and she sang flat sometimes. Her oboeist in her act three aria, O patria mia played his obbligato solos exquisitely; if he had played like the two ladies sang, he would have had his cards (and I bet they were paid ten or twenty times more that he was). The Radames, Marcelo Alvarez, coped with his difficult part well without impressing with any great beauty of timbre. The best singing came from the two kings, Egypt sung by the company stalwart Robert Lloyd, Amonasro (Ethiopia) sung by Marco Vratogna.
The director in the pit, Nicola Luisotti, held things together but smouldered rather than flamed. The chorus did not sound as fresh as it usually does.
The previous production I saw at Covent Garden was Turco in Italia by Rossini and everything was first-class from beginning to end, cast, staging, orchestra, and chorus. This Aida was mediocre by comparison – win some, lose some – does it always have to be like that?
Rossini said: “Nobody is capable of writing grand opera except Verdi”: and Aida is the grandest of the lot. Intended for the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 it was eventually premiered in Cairo two years later. The triumph scene is just that, a miracle of organisation and inspiration. Aida, the Ethiopian slave girl, in love with the general of the army, Radames, but has a rival in Amneris, princess of Egypt and the two fathers, Amneris’ King of Egypt, an d Aida’s father, Amonasro, King of Ethiopia.
Act two scene two is the Triumph scene, celebrating the victory by Radames over the Ethiopians. Verdi juggles with three crowds, the Egyptian public, the priests and the defeated Ethiopians – it’s a sort of Three Choirs Festival, with climax after climax. By contrast Act Three is sung only by the four chief characters, it is the heart of the opera. Aida’s success rests mainly on these two peak scenes.
Verdi goes for your heart and your jugular. Never since has opera gone so straight forwardly, almost innocently, for the listener’s heart in terms that everybody can grasp immediately.
From Don Carlos onwards part of the secret construction is that Verdi concentrates on using, in technical terms, chords of the tonic key and its dominant, not often in root positions but in first or second inversion (unlike Berlioz who mostly uses chords in their root position). If you look at a few passages in the score you may see what I mean. And, of course, as well as the harmony, his use of counterpoint has in every line something meaningful and beautiful. Verdi keeps up a stream of inspired melody. A composer of genius in full flow is carried by some strange force, inspiration? Benjamin Britten once said to me that when he was prepared and in form he felt that the music came from somewhere else, as if he was connected to some grid of inspiration.
The new production which I saw on April 27 by Donald McVicar pulls together the many threads of this opera, so complex yet having the impetus of an arrow. The production is compelling if sometimes congested, as if McVicar is trying too hard. The sets designed by Jean-Marc Puissant are dark and gloomy, in contrast to the vision most of us have of Egypt, which is light and sunshine. The action is menaced by a large moveable wall whose prime object is to mask the coming and goings of the various crowds. The ballet is all wriggling, jerking and leap-frogging, effective if not inspired. Act three, the Nile scene looks like a slanted organ console with a big hole in the middle. No local colour or palm trees – too commonplace, perhaps?
Verdi said that his idea of Amneris was a bit of a devil aged twenty. At Covent Garden in this new production he got a singer looking more like a dowager. Admittedly the American mezzo, Marianna Cornetti, was a replacement but she did us no favours with her singing. Amneris is the most interesting character in the opera, dramatically and musically (Verdi seemed to love mezzos) and it is usually a gift to a singer. But this Amneris had a painful beat in her voice and she wob-bob-bob-bled. The Aida, Micaela Corsi, was not wobble-free either and she sang flat sometimes. Her oboeist in her act three aria, O patria mia played his obbligato solos exquisitely; if he had played like the two ladies sang, he would have had his cards (and I bet they were paid ten or twenty times more that he was). The Radames, Marcelo Alvarez, coped with his difficult part well without impressing with any great beauty of timbre. The best singing came from the two kings, Egypt sung by the company stalwart Robert Lloyd, Amonasro (Ethiopia) sung by Marco Vratogna.
The director in the pit, Nicola Luisotti, held things together but smouldered rather than flamed. The chorus did not sound as fresh as it usually does.
The previous production I saw at Covent Garden was Turco in Italia by Rossini and everything was first-class from beginning to end, cast, staging, orchestra, and chorus. This Aida was mediocre by comparison – win some, lose some – does it always have to be like that?
THREE SYMPHONIES
Myaskovsky, Copland and Liszt
Thats not a bad harvest for the latter half of a single week in London April 29, 30 and May 1, the middle symphony in the Barbican, the other two in the Festival Hall. At the Barbican Antonio Pappano led the London Symphony Orchestra; for the other two Vladimir Jurowsky the Philharmonic, all performances exemplary.
We don’t hear much of Nikolay Myaskovsky’s symphonies; did he flood the market, with twenty-seven of them? I cherish the only one I know, which is number 6 in E flat minor, Opus 23, 1923, particularly for its helter-skelter scherzo (with a slow flute trio of enchantment) and its luscious slow movement. The opening movement is frantically romantic, full of tension and silent gasping pauses; the finale is a bit of a let-down, so desperately jolly as if sucking up to the party bosses; quoting French Revolutionary songs somehow doesn’t help. Jurowsky conducted it as if his life depended on it. It is a long work, its course stated in the programme to be 75 minutes but Jurowsky passed the post at 62.
Copland kept his symphonic tally down to three and the Third Symphony is also long. By 1946 he had established himself as American’s most prominent composer and felt he had to make a statement. He did. It is a fine work yet has elements in it that are overblown, bordering on the portentous. Some of the finest moments are those in which this urban Jewish composer manages to evoke the wide open parts of his continent with widely spaced ethereal high notes, nothing in the middle, supported by a strong bass. The finale is preluded by the Fanfare for the Common Man which became so popular that it/is often played by itself, even used for commercials! Pappano gave it the works. God bless America!
The cliché has it that the Devil always gets the best tunes but in Liszt’s A Faust Symphony in three Characteristic Pictures the Devil steals the tunes of Faust and Gretchen and twists them, mangles them, parodies them in the finale; the first two movements being portraits of Faust and his loved one. Liszt does not tell the story at all, he sketches the characters of all three, except for one episode in Gretchen when the music seems to be saying: “He loves me: he loves me not”.. Sometimes it appears almost as if Liszt is improvising, not at the piano as he was frequently apt to do but on the orchestra. A section comes to an end and the textures pares down to a single line, as if Liszt was wondering what to do next. Sometimes, notably in the symphonic poem Orpheus and in Gretchen, Liszt put aside his virtuoso habits and his devilish complexities and wrote gentle, purely lyrical music. There are some longueurs in the symphony but on the whole the work goes ahead meaningfully and poetically. The melodic material is memorable. And Liszt makes sure that we know the tunes by repeating them again. Faust, the first movement is dramatic, searching and often frantic; Gretchen is graceful, lyrical and as beautiful as Goethe portrays her. Mephistopoles is Allegro vivace, ironico, he has no tunes of his own but transforms the themes of his victims. How to end?
Liszt sums up with an epilogue of almost political correctitude although he calls it a mystical chorus (with tenor solo) proclaiming that “everything is transitory... eternal womanhood leads us on high!! ... das Ewig weibliche!”.
Liszt finished his Faust Symphony in 1857. At the very beginning Faust has a motive that seems to question, with notes of the whole-tone scale, a device that looks to the future of melody and harmony, a pioneering gesture all Liszt’s own. The transformation of themes owes much to the Symphonic Fantastique that Berlioz composed some twenty years earlier.
The symphony was passionately and superbly played. Jurowsky solved the problem of the final by employing an eighty-strong chorus. Too often the final chorus is sung by a small body so that the performance ends in anti-climax. Not so here; Liszt’s symphony ended powerfully.
Thats not a bad harvest for the latter half of a single week in London April 29, 30 and May 1, the middle symphony in the Barbican, the other two in the Festival Hall. At the Barbican Antonio Pappano led the London Symphony Orchestra; for the other two Vladimir Jurowsky the Philharmonic, all performances exemplary.
We don’t hear much of Nikolay Myaskovsky’s symphonies; did he flood the market, with twenty-seven of them? I cherish the only one I know, which is number 6 in E flat minor, Opus 23, 1923, particularly for its helter-skelter scherzo (with a slow flute trio of enchantment) and its luscious slow movement. The opening movement is frantically romantic, full of tension and silent gasping pauses; the finale is a bit of a let-down, so desperately jolly as if sucking up to the party bosses; quoting French Revolutionary songs somehow doesn’t help. Jurowsky conducted it as if his life depended on it. It is a long work, its course stated in the programme to be 75 minutes but Jurowsky passed the post at 62.
Copland kept his symphonic tally down to three and the Third Symphony is also long. By 1946 he had established himself as American’s most prominent composer and felt he had to make a statement. He did. It is a fine work yet has elements in it that are overblown, bordering on the portentous. Some of the finest moments are those in which this urban Jewish composer manages to evoke the wide open parts of his continent with widely spaced ethereal high notes, nothing in the middle, supported by a strong bass. The finale is preluded by the Fanfare for the Common Man which became so popular that it/is often played by itself, even used for commercials! Pappano gave it the works. God bless America!
The cliché has it that the Devil always gets the best tunes but in Liszt’s A Faust Symphony in three Characteristic Pictures the Devil steals the tunes of Faust and Gretchen and twists them, mangles them, parodies them in the finale; the first two movements being portraits of Faust and his loved one. Liszt does not tell the story at all, he sketches the characters of all three, except for one episode in Gretchen when the music seems to be saying: “He loves me: he loves me not”.. Sometimes it appears almost as if Liszt is improvising, not at the piano as he was frequently apt to do but on the orchestra. A section comes to an end and the textures pares down to a single line, as if Liszt was wondering what to do next. Sometimes, notably in the symphonic poem Orpheus and in Gretchen, Liszt put aside his virtuoso habits and his devilish complexities and wrote gentle, purely lyrical music. There are some longueurs in the symphony but on the whole the work goes ahead meaningfully and poetically. The melodic material is memorable. And Liszt makes sure that we know the tunes by repeating them again. Faust, the first movement is dramatic, searching and often frantic; Gretchen is graceful, lyrical and as beautiful as Goethe portrays her. Mephistopoles is Allegro vivace, ironico, he has no tunes of his own but transforms the themes of his victims. How to end?
Liszt sums up with an epilogue of almost political correctitude although he calls it a mystical chorus (with tenor solo) proclaiming that “everything is transitory... eternal womanhood leads us on high!! ... das Ewig weibliche!”.
Liszt finished his Faust Symphony in 1857. At the very beginning Faust has a motive that seems to question, with notes of the whole-tone scale, a device that looks to the future of melody and harmony, a pioneering gesture all Liszt’s own. The transformation of themes owes much to the Symphonic Fantastique that Berlioz composed some twenty years earlier.
The symphony was passionately and superbly played. Jurowsky solved the problem of the final by employing an eighty-strong chorus. Too often the final chorus is sung by a small body so that the performance ends in anti-climax. Not so here; Liszt’s symphony ended powerfully.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
FERRIER AWARDS 2010
Somehow the Wigmore Hall atmosphere is always sympathatic during the annual Ferrier Awards, people come every year and there is friendly support for the singers. The date of the finals was 23 April and the winner was the South African baritone, Njubulo Madlala (28). His voice was the only one of the six contestants that sounded mature with all the registers balanced and he made a warm sound. His programme was chosen wisely to display what he could do best.
A Bellini aria was followed by Butterworth’s song on Bredon Hill, Schumann’s Lied Balsazar, a folksong from the kraal and a passionately warm aria from Leoncavallo’s Zaza (good idea to sing music that the judges might not be too familiar with). His musicianship was impeccable and he didn’t make the mistake that other contestants had made, of singing too loud, and he had ‘the gift to be simple’. He was a winner whose name is worthy to be placed alongside previous winners, who include some of the finest singers of recent times.
Madlala was awarded £10,000; the second prize, half that sum, went to Dubliner Sarah Power with a voice not quite mature but with enough purity and style to win through (though she should beware of a shrill edge to her tone, probably caused by nerves). Bellini again, a bit of Stravinsky’s Rake, R. Strauss and a delightful children’s song by Poulenc with the voice and piano in chattering unison. Anna Cordona her excellent pianist (she won the accompanist’s prize of £3000). I was sorry that the Australian baritone Duncan Rock did not win anything but a lot of sympathy from the audience; he has a good voice and dramatic sense, strong to the point of occasionally hectoring.
To complete the honours: the Song Prize of £4000 went to Manchester soprano Laurie Ashworth with her Strauss, Purcell, Jonathan Dove, Mozart and Je suis Titania from Mignon.
The judges included three eminent singers: Della Jones, Felicity Palmer and Sandy Oliver, pianist Roger Vignoles and administrator Gavin Henderson.
A Bellini aria was followed by Butterworth’s song on Bredon Hill, Schumann’s Lied Balsazar, a folksong from the kraal and a passionately warm aria from Leoncavallo’s Zaza (good idea to sing music that the judges might not be too familiar with). His musicianship was impeccable and he didn’t make the mistake that other contestants had made, of singing too loud, and he had ‘the gift to be simple’. He was a winner whose name is worthy to be placed alongside previous winners, who include some of the finest singers of recent times.
Madlala was awarded £10,000; the second prize, half that sum, went to Dubliner Sarah Power with a voice not quite mature but with enough purity and style to win through (though she should beware of a shrill edge to her tone, probably caused by nerves). Bellini again, a bit of Stravinsky’s Rake, R. Strauss and a delightful children’s song by Poulenc with the voice and piano in chattering unison. Anna Cordona her excellent pianist (she won the accompanist’s prize of £3000). I was sorry that the Australian baritone Duncan Rock did not win anything but a lot of sympathy from the audience; he has a good voice and dramatic sense, strong to the point of occasionally hectoring.
To complete the honours: the Song Prize of £4000 went to Manchester soprano Laurie Ashworth with her Strauss, Purcell, Jonathan Dove, Mozart and Je suis Titania from Mignon.
The judges included three eminent singers: Della Jones, Felicity Palmer and Sandy Oliver, pianist Roger Vignoles and administrator Gavin Henderson.
Monday, April 26, 2010
ROSSINI’S TURKISH DELIGHT
Prodigies? Well, there’s Mozart of course, Mendelssohn challenging Shakespeare, Saint-Saéns with 32 sonatas under his pianistic belt, the infant Yehudi and the brilliant young Dimitri’s first symphony; but then what about the kid from Pesaro not yet had his 5th birthday (Leap Year Baby), already producing his 13th opera and he’s only 21? Ferrara, Milan and Venice had staged numbers one to twelve and here in Milan comes Turco in Italia in 1811, the year Napoleon abdicated, two years before the Barber arrive.
This is a revival five years on of Turco in the Royal Opera House (April 19). The production by Moshe Laiser and Patrise Caurier is lively, imaginative, witty and effective, excellent pit direction by Maurizio Benini.
Rossini called it a dramma buffo. A randy Turk, his old girlfriend, a nifty new Italian pick-up, her ancient husband, a tenor rival and a Poet manipulating the situation as grist for an opera libretto he wants to write. This Poet is a bit of a throw – back to Don Alfonso, a connection with Cosi fan tutte that Rossini and his new librettist Romani allude to. Like Cosi, Turco was a moral feather ruffler, I say!., married woman having it off with an infidel. Tut, tut.
Rossini was a cool cat, more interested in situations than characters but he knew how to cater for his cast and their strengths. The plot bristles farcically, twisting wittily. The music is not Rossini’s finest vintage, there are no melodies to go home with, but the score is tuneful, elegant, merry and professional to a degree, abundant with tricks, sorties, sallies and clichés of the period, formulae which are justified in a winning way. Patter and coloratura (several notes to one vowel) provide pegs for slick singing which it gets nicely here.
Tom (he insists on Sir Thomas) Allen is in brilliant form as the Poet, more Italian than any Italian, up to the mark, down to the wire. But the character who brings down the house is Geronimo, Alessandro Corbelli, a droll to cherish, a baritone to admire. Aleksandra Kurzak, Polish soprano, is his wife, Fiorilla, she has the lioness’ share of the notes with an attractive, athletic voice, stratospheric notes a speciality and she fits the flighty bill. The Turk is glamorous and excellent, Ildebrando d’Arcangelo and no archangel when it comes to speed courting. The outsider Narciso is a tenor to watch, fluent, mellifluous and South African, Colin Lee by name. Zaida who gets the Turk in the end completes the cast successfully, performed by Leah-Marian Jones (she’s Welsh, would you believe it?.)
A happy evening.
This is a revival five years on of Turco in the Royal Opera House (April 19). The production by Moshe Laiser and Patrise Caurier is lively, imaginative, witty and effective, excellent pit direction by Maurizio Benini.
Rossini called it a dramma buffo. A randy Turk, his old girlfriend, a nifty new Italian pick-up, her ancient husband, a tenor rival and a Poet manipulating the situation as grist for an opera libretto he wants to write. This Poet is a bit of a throw – back to Don Alfonso, a connection with Cosi fan tutte that Rossini and his new librettist Romani allude to. Like Cosi, Turco was a moral feather ruffler, I say!., married woman having it off with an infidel. Tut, tut.
Rossini was a cool cat, more interested in situations than characters but he knew how to cater for his cast and their strengths. The plot bristles farcically, twisting wittily. The music is not Rossini’s finest vintage, there are no melodies to go home with, but the score is tuneful, elegant, merry and professional to a degree, abundant with tricks, sorties, sallies and clichés of the period, formulae which are justified in a winning way. Patter and coloratura (several notes to one vowel) provide pegs for slick singing which it gets nicely here.
Tom (he insists on Sir Thomas) Allen is in brilliant form as the Poet, more Italian than any Italian, up to the mark, down to the wire. But the character who brings down the house is Geronimo, Alessandro Corbelli, a droll to cherish, a baritone to admire. Aleksandra Kurzak, Polish soprano, is his wife, Fiorilla, she has the lioness’ share of the notes with an attractive, athletic voice, stratospheric notes a speciality and she fits the flighty bill. The Turk is glamorous and excellent, Ildebrando d’Arcangelo and no archangel when it comes to speed courting. The outsider Narciso is a tenor to watch, fluent, mellifluous and South African, Colin Lee by name. Zaida who gets the Turk in the end completes the cast successfully, performed by Leah-Marian Jones (she’s Welsh, would you believe it?.)
A happy evening.
VARÈSE
Still a Modern Pioneer
Of famous composers only Webern left fewer compositions, just twelve, all played during a mini-festival devoted to Edgard Varèse 1883 – 1965. He was born in France, studied with Roussel, d’Indy and Widor. All his early works were destroyed in a fire probably during WW1. In 1915 he went to America, remaining there the rest of his life. He made his conducting début with the vast Requiem of Berlioz.
His music is still startlingly original, strings rarely used in favour of brass and loads of percussion. He writes little that could be called melody, or harmony; his rhythms can suggest a sort of counterpoint, layer above layer. He referred to his works, not as music, but ‘the organization of sound’.
Varèse had few performers and he had lengthy periods of depression but he was sustained by the friendship and support of many visual artists such as Picasso and Giacometti as well as composers like Busoni, Debussy and Schoenberg (though he no truck with serialism). Latterly he excited the interest of Boulez, Cage, Stockhausen, Frank Zappa and Charlie Parker. His music looked always to the future, he was one of the first to use tapes and electronics; enthusiasm for the new was part of his personality.
His works have interesting titles (fancy?) such as Octandra, Hyperprism, Equatorial and Ionisation. The festival (April 16 and 18 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall) opened with the latter piece whose title is explained: ‘the disassociation of electrons from the nucleus of their atom and their transformation into negative or positive ions’ – not exactly non-fluting! The performance were convincingly played and conducted by David Atherton with the London Sinfonietta. Tapes were used and video, devised by Pippa Nissen, on three screens – landscapes, cloud-scapes, moonscapes, Mars-scapes although we were once brought down to earth by a hand putting powder into a glass. Some of the works were sung well by the soprano Elizabeth Atherton, the Sinfonietta Chorus and, sportingly we all thought, by John Tomlinson, authors Huidobro, Tablada, Verlaine and chants from the Mayan.
Was there a downside to all this startlingly original pioneer music, composed at much the same time as the work of those other pioneers, Charles Ruggles and Charles Ives? Most of the audience seemed to think otherwise, applauding vigorously throughout, But some of us found that the ear gets as tired as the brain with works that seem to have no logic, no intimation of climaxes or summation. In the thirties it might have been labeled by the acronym ODTAA – One Damn Thing After Another; rumble-rumble-bang-crash-wallop. Sometimes there were sequences, sometimes beautiful incantatory solos; Varèse can do pianissimo but more often the noise level was extremely high. The first ten minutes were more enjoyable than the last. But there is no doubt that Varèse at his best had a kind of magic. His work has been described as ‘music in the pure state’. ‘tornadoes of sound’ and ‘a nightmare dreamed by giants’. There are designs in the piece for producing grief and anxiety but none for drama. Varèse often thought of his work to be parallel to crystals: “In spite of their limited variety of internal structure, the external forms of crystal are almost limitless.” Just so.
Varèse was without doubt a great original but for the average concert-goer he needs to be taken in small doses.
Of famous composers only Webern left fewer compositions, just twelve, all played during a mini-festival devoted to Edgard Varèse 1883 – 1965. He was born in France, studied with Roussel, d’Indy and Widor. All his early works were destroyed in a fire probably during WW1. In 1915 he went to America, remaining there the rest of his life. He made his conducting début with the vast Requiem of Berlioz.
His music is still startlingly original, strings rarely used in favour of brass and loads of percussion. He writes little that could be called melody, or harmony; his rhythms can suggest a sort of counterpoint, layer above layer. He referred to his works, not as music, but ‘the organization of sound’.
Varèse had few performers and he had lengthy periods of depression but he was sustained by the friendship and support of many visual artists such as Picasso and Giacometti as well as composers like Busoni, Debussy and Schoenberg (though he no truck with serialism). Latterly he excited the interest of Boulez, Cage, Stockhausen, Frank Zappa and Charlie Parker. His music looked always to the future, he was one of the first to use tapes and electronics; enthusiasm for the new was part of his personality.
His works have interesting titles (fancy?) such as Octandra, Hyperprism, Equatorial and Ionisation. The festival (April 16 and 18 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall) opened with the latter piece whose title is explained: ‘the disassociation of electrons from the nucleus of their atom and their transformation into negative or positive ions’ – not exactly non-fluting! The performance were convincingly played and conducted by David Atherton with the London Sinfonietta. Tapes were used and video, devised by Pippa Nissen, on three screens – landscapes, cloud-scapes, moonscapes, Mars-scapes although we were once brought down to earth by a hand putting powder into a glass. Some of the works were sung well by the soprano Elizabeth Atherton, the Sinfonietta Chorus and, sportingly we all thought, by John Tomlinson, authors Huidobro, Tablada, Verlaine and chants from the Mayan.
Was there a downside to all this startlingly original pioneer music, composed at much the same time as the work of those other pioneers, Charles Ruggles and Charles Ives? Most of the audience seemed to think otherwise, applauding vigorously throughout, But some of us found that the ear gets as tired as the brain with works that seem to have no logic, no intimation of climaxes or summation. In the thirties it might have been labeled by the acronym ODTAA – One Damn Thing After Another; rumble-rumble-bang-crash-wallop. Sometimes there were sequences, sometimes beautiful incantatory solos; Varèse can do pianissimo but more often the noise level was extremely high. The first ten minutes were more enjoyable than the last. But there is no doubt that Varèse at his best had a kind of magic. His work has been described as ‘music in the pure state’. ‘tornadoes of sound’ and ‘a nightmare dreamed by giants’. There are designs in the piece for producing grief and anxiety but none for drama. Varèse often thought of his work to be parallel to crystals: “In spite of their limited variety of internal structure, the external forms of crystal are almost limitless.” Just so.
Varèse was without doubt a great original but for the average concert-goer he needs to be taken in small doses.
JULIAN BREAM – MASTER OF THE FRETS
He was a lad in his early teens when I first met Julian Bream. He was born in Battersea and he sounded like it; he kept his cockney accent all his life (so far) although sometimes he would try to talk posh but it did not disguise his origins. His dad worked in advertising but played jazz guitar. Julian started playing that way but one day Dad brought home the recording of Segovia playing the Tremolo Study of Tarrega; the die was cast. Several doshed folk helped pay his fees for him to go to the Royal College of Music. At that time the guitar was scarcely known straight music apart from the great Segovia. Julian’s personality and his guitar soon had the other students flocking round him, so much that the director actually forbade him to bring his instrument into the College. He played at parties and the girls adored him.
Parties, little concerts, a broadcast or two, gradually he became known. He acquired a contract with RCA Victor and his records sold like hot cakes. He came many times to the Summer School of Music that I organized at Dartington, sometimes with Peter Pears, sometimes just recitals, later on master-classes and with a consort that he formed to play what Hardy called ‘the ancient stave’ my wife Olive Zorian played violin with him) and one year he brought the slightly younger Australian guitarist John Williams. These last two played some happy concerts together and it was fascinating to compare the two players: John a cooler player but technically more reliable whereas Julian was the great communicator even if he took more risks and squeaked more often.
Julian’s contract with RCA was unique. I think. He was able to record what he liked, where he liked and with whom he liked. Julian’s talent and his personality enabled him to get many composes to write pieces for him: Malcolm Arnold, Henze, Walton, Maxwell Davies, Rawsthorne, Tippett and Benjamin Britten.
Some Juliana: mutual friend John Warrack went with Julian to the Royal Academy show one year and they went into one room dominated by a large nude. Julian:”Christ, I know ‘er”. Silence in that room and bystanders waited for the next pronouncement. “What a smashing pair of plonkers”.
While on a longish tour of India (he made time to see a bit of interesting countries) Julian lent his Earl’s Court flat to a singer friend. She found eighteen pairs of evening shoes under the bed, all worn down at the heels, likewise a cupboard containing a couple of dozen dirty evening shirts and a sack full of unopened letters and telegrams.
Down in Dorset there was an annual cricket match (Julian was a good slow bowler), myself one year on Julian’s team playing the local farmers. Julian said they were nice chaps but they argued when the umpire gave them out and wouldn’t walk. Julian got round problem by getting the local Jesuit priest to umpire.
Julian encouraged me to come to the annual English Music Week in the Bavarian Alps at Schloss Elmau. “Great place, nice people, good music, good tucker and I was knee-deep in girls”. I couldn’t refuse and went the following year: it was, they were, it was and he was...
Alas, some of the fire and that power of communication declined after Julian crashed his car on a bridge near home after a convivial evening (“That bridge got smaller that night”) and after a 70th birthday Wigmore recital he decided to retire. Sadly he has become rather reclusive, living alone, walking the dog but not seeing or communicating with his old mates.
Julian was a one-off. His musicianship was profound yet full of joy. Like the greatest of musicians he knew his stuff but played on his intuition. Never routine, never playing to the gallery except sometimes when chatting to the audience, he enriched the repertoire and he enriched the musical experience of his audience. And his programmes were never boring like so many guitarists were. Building up the architecture of the great Bach Chaconne, loving the line of an ancient pavane, savouring the lollipop Malcolm Arnold Concerto, tearing away passionately in a Villa-Lobos study or just frivolling some encore meringue, he was unique.
Parties, little concerts, a broadcast or two, gradually he became known. He acquired a contract with RCA Victor and his records sold like hot cakes. He came many times to the Summer School of Music that I organized at Dartington, sometimes with Peter Pears, sometimes just recitals, later on master-classes and with a consort that he formed to play what Hardy called ‘the ancient stave’ my wife Olive Zorian played violin with him) and one year he brought the slightly younger Australian guitarist John Williams. These last two played some happy concerts together and it was fascinating to compare the two players: John a cooler player but technically more reliable whereas Julian was the great communicator even if he took more risks and squeaked more often.
Julian’s contract with RCA was unique. I think. He was able to record what he liked, where he liked and with whom he liked. Julian’s talent and his personality enabled him to get many composes to write pieces for him: Malcolm Arnold, Henze, Walton, Maxwell Davies, Rawsthorne, Tippett and Benjamin Britten.
Some Juliana: mutual friend John Warrack went with Julian to the Royal Academy show one year and they went into one room dominated by a large nude. Julian:”Christ, I know ‘er”. Silence in that room and bystanders waited for the next pronouncement. “What a smashing pair of plonkers”.
While on a longish tour of India (he made time to see a bit of interesting countries) Julian lent his Earl’s Court flat to a singer friend. She found eighteen pairs of evening shoes under the bed, all worn down at the heels, likewise a cupboard containing a couple of dozen dirty evening shirts and a sack full of unopened letters and telegrams.
Down in Dorset there was an annual cricket match (Julian was a good slow bowler), myself one year on Julian’s team playing the local farmers. Julian said they were nice chaps but they argued when the umpire gave them out and wouldn’t walk. Julian got round problem by getting the local Jesuit priest to umpire.
Julian encouraged me to come to the annual English Music Week in the Bavarian Alps at Schloss Elmau. “Great place, nice people, good music, good tucker and I was knee-deep in girls”. I couldn’t refuse and went the following year: it was, they were, it was and he was...
Alas, some of the fire and that power of communication declined after Julian crashed his car on a bridge near home after a convivial evening (“That bridge got smaller that night”) and after a 70th birthday Wigmore recital he decided to retire. Sadly he has become rather reclusive, living alone, walking the dog but not seeing or communicating with his old mates.
Julian was a one-off. His musicianship was profound yet full of joy. Like the greatest of musicians he knew his stuff but played on his intuition. Never routine, never playing to the gallery except sometimes when chatting to the audience, he enriched the repertoire and he enriched the musical experience of his audience. And his programmes were never boring like so many guitarists were. Building up the architecture of the great Bach Chaconne, loving the line of an ancient pavane, savouring the lollipop Malcolm Arnold Concerto, tearing away passionately in a Villa-Lobos study or just frivolling some encore meringue, he was unique.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
BARTOK’S RELINQUISHMENT
After his early days when Debussy and Richard Strauss were considerable influences on his music, especially in the opera Bluebeard’s Castle, Bartok’s more mature music, the music that he is best known for, is marked by the folk music of his native land and what might be called ‘expressive dissonance’. His music became percussive, eastern European rhythms dominated. But from 1939 onwards, the expression and harmonies became gentler, more accessible to ears used to less harsh harmonies and rhythms.
It so happened that in the concert given on March 18 in Blackheath Halls by the Trinity College of Music Symphony Orchestra all three works were composed by the ‘gentler’ Bartok. Curiously, these works did not reflect the more ‘dissonant’ events in Bartok’s life: his flight from Europe to America, his penurious existence, increasing bad health and death in 1945 at the age of sixty-four. The long programme consisted of the 1938 Violin Concerto, the 1945 Piano Concerto No. 3 and the 1943 Concerto for orchestra.
Of the three works, the Concerto for orchestra stands out as perfect; it is like a symphony in five movements yet also a showpiece, as you might expect, for an orchestra. There were a few very minor faults of intonation, ensemble and a lack of virtuosity, but only minor ones. This was a performance that tingled with energy and understanding, the more extraordinary, since the conductor Zsolt Nagy had only three days with the Trinity students.
Mind you, he is an experienced director, well able to pass on his expertise and feeling for the music of his countryman. The violins sounded passionate, led by Tadasuke Lijima. The orchestra plays on the flat in this hall and although one heard the higher sounds and the percussion well, much of what was played in the middle registers was not clear; the violinist, hailing from Slovenia but now living in London, Lana Trotovsek, had the measure of the concerto, musically and technically; likewise the Russian pianist Mikhail Shilyaev. The slow movement of the piano work is marked religioso, a pallid adagio whilst the finale of the violin concerto seems to try too hard and runs out of steam.
Even when he was so broke in New York that at one time he stayed in his flat because he lacked a tip for the lift man, Bartok was too proud to accept charity. The violinist Joseph Szigeti told me that the conductor Serge Koussevitsy only got the composer to accept some money by saying that his commissioning foundation insisted on making a down payment. The première of the Concerto for orchestra in Boston, conducted by Koussevitsky, was a success but during the final afternoon rehearsal one of two ladies in the audience, members of the blue rinse brigade was heard to say “Gee, conditions must be terrible right now back in Europe”.
In the fourth movement there is a passage where Bartok hoped to parody the Leningrad symphony of Shostakovich but when he slyly asked the conductor Antal Dorati if he recognized the tune he was horrified that Dorati said “yes, its Lets all go to Maxims from the Merry Widow”. Which of course it could also be.
It so happened that in the concert given on March 18 in Blackheath Halls by the Trinity College of Music Symphony Orchestra all three works were composed by the ‘gentler’ Bartok. Curiously, these works did not reflect the more ‘dissonant’ events in Bartok’s life: his flight from Europe to America, his penurious existence, increasing bad health and death in 1945 at the age of sixty-four. The long programme consisted of the 1938 Violin Concerto, the 1945 Piano Concerto No. 3 and the 1943 Concerto for orchestra.
Of the three works, the Concerto for orchestra stands out as perfect; it is like a symphony in five movements yet also a showpiece, as you might expect, for an orchestra. There were a few very minor faults of intonation, ensemble and a lack of virtuosity, but only minor ones. This was a performance that tingled with energy and understanding, the more extraordinary, since the conductor Zsolt Nagy had only three days with the Trinity students.
Mind you, he is an experienced director, well able to pass on his expertise and feeling for the music of his countryman. The violins sounded passionate, led by Tadasuke Lijima. The orchestra plays on the flat in this hall and although one heard the higher sounds and the percussion well, much of what was played in the middle registers was not clear; the violinist, hailing from Slovenia but now living in London, Lana Trotovsek, had the measure of the concerto, musically and technically; likewise the Russian pianist Mikhail Shilyaev. The slow movement of the piano work is marked religioso, a pallid adagio whilst the finale of the violin concerto seems to try too hard and runs out of steam.
Even when he was so broke in New York that at one time he stayed in his flat because he lacked a tip for the lift man, Bartok was too proud to accept charity. The violinist Joseph Szigeti told me that the conductor Serge Koussevitsy only got the composer to accept some money by saying that his commissioning foundation insisted on making a down payment. The première of the Concerto for orchestra in Boston, conducted by Koussevitsky, was a success but during the final afternoon rehearsal one of two ladies in the audience, members of the blue rinse brigade was heard to say “Gee, conditions must be terrible right now back in Europe”.
In the fourth movement there is a passage where Bartok hoped to parody the Leningrad symphony of Shostakovich but when he slyly asked the conductor Antal Dorati if he recognized the tune he was horrified that Dorati said “yes, its Lets all go to Maxims from the Merry Widow”. Which of course it could also be.
Friday, March 19, 2010
LIFE ENHANCING JANACEK
Catharsis is the word, the release of strong emotions. That definition fits the music of Janacek. Yet until the fifties we knew it not. The Big Four were Stravinsky, Bartok, Schonberg and Hindemith. The latter soon slipped out of prominence. And then in 1951 there was a new name to conjure with: Janacek.
A young Australian conductor, Charles Mackerras, studying in Czechoslovakia had been bowled over by the music of this strange composer. Janacek had come to fame late in life but had then written masterpiece after masterpiece until he died in 1928, aged seventy-four. His music is full of woodnotes wild, totally original although not avant-garde technically, awkwardly written, stretch-players and singers, exciting music, somehow life-enhancing; even his darkest and tragic scores bring joy – catharsis in fact. Young Mackerras persuaded the sensitive director of Sadler’s Wells Norman Tucker to première Katia in the Festival of Britain year.
Janacek had arrived. Not liked at first but gradually gaining acceptance, especially in Katia’s revival in 1954 conducted by the great Rafael Kubelik. His first night was one of the most memorable I can remember. It was as if Ostrovsky’s (the librettist) The Storm had been made palpable. Our emotions were well and truly wrung. At the climaxes it felt as though the roof would crack. The Wells Orchestra, not the best in London, played within an inch of its life. One of the cellists said to me afterwards; “what happened? we can’t play as well as that!”.
One of the amazing things about Janacek is how he brings his characters to life, and his ability to compress the events of the drama. You go through heaven and hell, only to find that the act took barely half-an-hour.
Gradually we got to experience other operas by the Moravian: Jenufa, Vixen, House of the Dead, Makropoulos and even Broucek. And now every opera house produces Janacek. We have gained a master composer. On March 15 Katia was given a new production by the English National in the Coliseum. Production, cast and orchestra did the composer proud in this work, one of many inspired by his love of a woman in an affaire that never really happened; he admitted that it was an invention. Kamilla was cool towards him, she was married, didn’t care for music, especially his. There was no consummation, except, thank God, in the music that positively poured out of him.
When we arrived in the theatre, half the stage was already visible: on one side an obtruding wall with one chair in front of it; and we had seen that before recently in Covent Garden’s Tristan. When the curtain opened fully we saw that the wall went on and on, but the rest of the stage was empty, the cast could either stand or squat. The sparseness of David Alden’s production continued, the cast spotlit unencumbered by furniture. As the action continued there was much and cleverly contrived use of shadows.
Alden was clever with his singers too and they excelled: Susan Bickley made much of the ghastly, hypocritical mother-in-law; John Graham-Hall was a convincing wimpish husband, likewise Clive Bayley as Bickley’s admirer. The tenor-lover Stuart Skelton sang impressively and Anne Grevilius was perfect as Varvara. There was only one disappointment: Patricia Racette, soprano from Texas, was a fine performer, good diction, clear lines, presence but the voice was not listener-friendly. Mark Wigglesworth directed superbly and the orchestra played up appropriately.
It was a good evening at the opera. Hearts were wrung.
A young Australian conductor, Charles Mackerras, studying in Czechoslovakia had been bowled over by the music of this strange composer. Janacek had come to fame late in life but had then written masterpiece after masterpiece until he died in 1928, aged seventy-four. His music is full of woodnotes wild, totally original although not avant-garde technically, awkwardly written, stretch-players and singers, exciting music, somehow life-enhancing; even his darkest and tragic scores bring joy – catharsis in fact. Young Mackerras persuaded the sensitive director of Sadler’s Wells Norman Tucker to première Katia in the Festival of Britain year.
Janacek had arrived. Not liked at first but gradually gaining acceptance, especially in Katia’s revival in 1954 conducted by the great Rafael Kubelik. His first night was one of the most memorable I can remember. It was as if Ostrovsky’s (the librettist) The Storm had been made palpable. Our emotions were well and truly wrung. At the climaxes it felt as though the roof would crack. The Wells Orchestra, not the best in London, played within an inch of its life. One of the cellists said to me afterwards; “what happened? we can’t play as well as that!”.
One of the amazing things about Janacek is how he brings his characters to life, and his ability to compress the events of the drama. You go through heaven and hell, only to find that the act took barely half-an-hour.
Gradually we got to experience other operas by the Moravian: Jenufa, Vixen, House of the Dead, Makropoulos and even Broucek. And now every opera house produces Janacek. We have gained a master composer. On March 15 Katia was given a new production by the English National in the Coliseum. Production, cast and orchestra did the composer proud in this work, one of many inspired by his love of a woman in an affaire that never really happened; he admitted that it was an invention. Kamilla was cool towards him, she was married, didn’t care for music, especially his. There was no consummation, except, thank God, in the music that positively poured out of him.
When we arrived in the theatre, half the stage was already visible: on one side an obtruding wall with one chair in front of it; and we had seen that before recently in Covent Garden’s Tristan. When the curtain opened fully we saw that the wall went on and on, but the rest of the stage was empty, the cast could either stand or squat. The sparseness of David Alden’s production continued, the cast spotlit unencumbered by furniture. As the action continued there was much and cleverly contrived use of shadows.
Alden was clever with his singers too and they excelled: Susan Bickley made much of the ghastly, hypocritical mother-in-law; John Graham-Hall was a convincing wimpish husband, likewise Clive Bayley as Bickley’s admirer. The tenor-lover Stuart Skelton sang impressively and Anne Grevilius was perfect as Varvara. There was only one disappointment: Patricia Racette, soprano from Texas, was a fine performer, good diction, clear lines, presence but the voice was not listener-friendly. Mark Wigglesworth directed superbly and the orchestra played up appropriately.
It was a good evening at the opera. Hearts were wrung.
AN EVENING OF CHOPIN
Jacqueline du Pré is remembered in the Wigmore Hall by an annual charity concert; this year’s took place on March 9 and was devoted to the music of Chopin, except for one work, Mozart’s piano trio in E, K. 542 which was a favourite of Chopin ‘s that he played in public in one of his rare concerts. It is one of his most intimate and tender works yet the performance revealed no feeling for style, being brusque and matter-of-fact, curious in that the performers call themselves the London Mozart Trio.
Chopin’s account opened with a peak work, his fourth Ballade in F minor which begins so disarmingly simply and developes in a remarkably convoluting way, almost like seeing a speeded up film of a rain forest, ending with a coda of a cadenza that is a seething mass of modulating brilliance. Evelyne Berezovsky, not yet twenty years of age, a Russian pianist now living in London could see through the tangled paths and guide us on the fantastic journey, the only criticism possible being that she somewhat over-used the sustaining pedal.
In another of Chopin’s recital programmes he played the last three movements of his late cello sonata, a work that often confirms the view that Chopin was not at his best when he added stringed instruments to his palette. Not so on this occasion, for Jamie Walton was thoroughly convincing and so was his pianist, Daniel Grimwood. After the interval Alison Pearce sang three Mazurkas arranged as songs by Pauline Viardot, Chopin’s friend. These are interesting but attention waned because of the singer’s dubious intonation and lack of charm.
Finally Piers Lane played the Fantasie in F minor, Berceuse and the great Barcarolle. Was it the result of waiting two hours in the dressing room that dampened the usual sparkle of this stimulating pianist? All the notes were there …
When the music falls short of interest in the Wigmore I always look at the art-deco frieze above the heads of the artists, commiserating with that central godlike creature who surely cannot be comfortable with his genitals in the grip of a crown of thorns. Beside him is some sort of scribe, copying out music but looking like Pimen (from Boris Gudonov). And beyond him is a naked girl who is suffering, a doctor friend told me, from an inguinal hernia (confirmed by the bulge below her navel).
After looking at the frieze my thoughts wandered to Chopin’s long liaison with Gorge Sand. With her assumption of a masculine name and her scruffy mannish clothes, she might at first be taken for a lesbian. But no, she was apparently a regular man-eater, flitting from one to another if they failed to come up to snuff. She confided her disappointment, for example, with her one night stand with Prosper Merimée. No merry-mating apparently. Yet it looks as if Chopin was often content and productive under her care at her house in Nohant.
For all his dandyish ways and complaints (“I am without my white gloves” he wrote to a friend from Valdemossa) how virile his music is and with genius he could compress his epic visions into small masterworks!!
Chopin’s account opened with a peak work, his fourth Ballade in F minor which begins so disarmingly simply and developes in a remarkably convoluting way, almost like seeing a speeded up film of a rain forest, ending with a coda of a cadenza that is a seething mass of modulating brilliance. Evelyne Berezovsky, not yet twenty years of age, a Russian pianist now living in London could see through the tangled paths and guide us on the fantastic journey, the only criticism possible being that she somewhat over-used the sustaining pedal.
In another of Chopin’s recital programmes he played the last three movements of his late cello sonata, a work that often confirms the view that Chopin was not at his best when he added stringed instruments to his palette. Not so on this occasion, for Jamie Walton was thoroughly convincing and so was his pianist, Daniel Grimwood. After the interval Alison Pearce sang three Mazurkas arranged as songs by Pauline Viardot, Chopin’s friend. These are interesting but attention waned because of the singer’s dubious intonation and lack of charm.
Finally Piers Lane played the Fantasie in F minor, Berceuse and the great Barcarolle. Was it the result of waiting two hours in the dressing room that dampened the usual sparkle of this stimulating pianist? All the notes were there …
When the music falls short of interest in the Wigmore I always look at the art-deco frieze above the heads of the artists, commiserating with that central godlike creature who surely cannot be comfortable with his genitals in the grip of a crown of thorns. Beside him is some sort of scribe, copying out music but looking like Pimen (from Boris Gudonov). And beyond him is a naked girl who is suffering, a doctor friend told me, from an inguinal hernia (confirmed by the bulge below her navel).
After looking at the frieze my thoughts wandered to Chopin’s long liaison with Gorge Sand. With her assumption of a masculine name and her scruffy mannish clothes, she might at first be taken for a lesbian. But no, she was apparently a regular man-eater, flitting from one to another if they failed to come up to snuff. She confided her disappointment, for example, with her one night stand with Prosper Merimée. No merry-mating apparently. Yet it looks as if Chopin was often content and productive under her care at her house in Nohant.
For all his dandyish ways and complaints (“I am without my white gloves” he wrote to a friend from Valdemossa) how virile his music is and with genius he could compress his epic visions into small masterworks!!
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
MESSIAH TREADS THE BOARDS
First impressions not good; action during the overture; first chorus, stage filled with a bed, nurses, benches, laptops and a woman ironing. This is Deborah Warner’s new production for ENO at the Coliseum, premiere 27 November. Was this to be as distrauting as her St. John Passion (many greetings events, including Jesus having his head pushed into a plate of soup)?
Unusually, I asked friends in the interval their reaction, including fellow critic Andrew Porter, Tex-Prom director Sir Nicholas Kenyon. It seemed we all agreed: dismay had given way to tolerance, leading to acceptance and enjoyment. And we all thought this despite agreeing that there was 30% too much going on. For instance, a coloured child kept rushing rushing around the stage, finally shaking hands with everybody: why?
Sophie Bevon, wonderful voice, skilfully used, sang I know that my redeemer liveth flat on her back in the omnipresent bed fussed over by two nurses (two! Obviously not NHS).
Musically this was an excellent performance: the soloists were all first-rate, clear, fine voiced and impeccable intonation: the aforementioned Sophie Bevon, John Mark Ainstey, Brimdley Shevrett and Harvey Bradford or Louis Watkins (treble). The lioness’ share was powerfully thoroughly taken by Catherine Wyn-Rogers. After Ferrier it seems we don’t bread controls anymore, so there were some underpowered low notes but otherwise it was a performance to remember and cherish. Martin Merry deserves to be mentioned as he trained the chorus up to the skies. Lawrence Cummings conducted with fervour and consummate expertise. ENO is to be congratulated on fielding such a great team. Chorus and orchestra are remarkably versatile; the night before they had performed Turandot, switching imperturbly performing Handle as to the manner born and in baroque style.
Deborah Warner’s production grew on one, she was no iconoclast and most of her updating was convincing. Her handling of the chorus was especially fine: they were individuals yet they were also a group.
The staging worked well (sets Tom Pye), lighting up as from the dim Christ at the beginning was immovative and mind-blowing with video montage and ancient pictorial master pieces.
Thank you, English National; can it be that you are triumphantly emerging from your operatic recession?
Unusually, I asked friends in the interval their reaction, including fellow critic Andrew Porter, Tex-Prom director Sir Nicholas Kenyon. It seemed we all agreed: dismay had given way to tolerance, leading to acceptance and enjoyment. And we all thought this despite agreeing that there was 30% too much going on. For instance, a coloured child kept rushing rushing around the stage, finally shaking hands with everybody: why?
Sophie Bevon, wonderful voice, skilfully used, sang I know that my redeemer liveth flat on her back in the omnipresent bed fussed over by two nurses (two! Obviously not NHS).
Musically this was an excellent performance: the soloists were all first-rate, clear, fine voiced and impeccable intonation: the aforementioned Sophie Bevon, John Mark Ainstey, Brimdley Shevrett and Harvey Bradford or Louis Watkins (treble). The lioness’ share was powerfully thoroughly taken by Catherine Wyn-Rogers. After Ferrier it seems we don’t bread controls anymore, so there were some underpowered low notes but otherwise it was a performance to remember and cherish. Martin Merry deserves to be mentioned as he trained the chorus up to the skies. Lawrence Cummings conducted with fervour and consummate expertise. ENO is to be congratulated on fielding such a great team. Chorus and orchestra are remarkably versatile; the night before they had performed Turandot, switching imperturbly performing Handle as to the manner born and in baroque style.
Deborah Warner’s production grew on one, she was no iconoclast and most of her updating was convincing. Her handling of the chorus was especially fine: they were individuals yet they were also a group.
The staging worked well (sets Tom Pye), lighting up as from the dim Christ at the beginning was immovative and mind-blowing with video montage and ancient pictorial master pieces.
Thank you, English National; can it be that you are triumphantly emerging from your operatic recession?
A SCHOOL’S MUSIC
Dulwich College in Town
My old school gave its Winter Concert on Monday 30 November in St. John’s Smith Square. As usual, there was a big pause between items as the performers were in different categories; stage and music stands had to be reset.
First, a symphony orchestra under the College’s director of music, Richard Mayo: Wagner’s overture to Rienzi. The slow and final movements of Weber’s Bassoon Concerto were most expertly played by Leo Baker, making, as required, tender noises up top and rude ones down below. After which a symphonic wind band was set up for Holst’s Second Suite in F, tricky stuff rhymically, especially when the composer counterpoints the Dargason with Greensleaves; however, no casual ties. There followed David Bedford’s Sun Paints Rainbow on the Vast Waves. David (now 72) spent much of his childhood, in Aldeburgh, often with his singer mother’s friend, Benjamin Britten. This piece for wind band has echoes of Peter Grimes and the chord sequence in Billy Budd; at other times Bedford goes minimal and, with three cymbals crashing away, seems to be peering through a (Philip) Glass darkly. Alas, not as enjoyable as many of David’s works.
After the interval of this sold out concert we had some stylish piano playing from Tom Deasy in Saint-Saens Septet with Thomas Wilson on trumpet, a delightful work that often sounds like the composer’s friend and pupil, Gabriel Fauré.
So far, fine, good playing but nothing special. But the finale was quite superb. A madrigal choir of seventy singers on the stage with piano and percussion were flanked by some 200 boys in the balcony in five numbers, Ghanaian, Zulu, American and Aboriginal. The singers had learned these five folk songs by ear under the direction of singing master Dan Ludford-Thomas, a young, sallow-faced, hirsute, spectacled man. He was a real show off but also a performer of superior calibre. The boys sang lustily and musically, their faces radiant with the pleasure they gave the audience and the pleasure of singing with this brilliantly gifted director. The performance lifted the hearts of all present.
One suggestion; the four conductors all bowed but the boys stood, almost glumly. Could they not bow when the conductors does – and perhaps smile?
My old school gave its Winter Concert on Monday 30 November in St. John’s Smith Square. As usual, there was a big pause between items as the performers were in different categories; stage and music stands had to be reset.
First, a symphony orchestra under the College’s director of music, Richard Mayo: Wagner’s overture to Rienzi. The slow and final movements of Weber’s Bassoon Concerto were most expertly played by Leo Baker, making, as required, tender noises up top and rude ones down below. After which a symphonic wind band was set up for Holst’s Second Suite in F, tricky stuff rhymically, especially when the composer counterpoints the Dargason with Greensleaves; however, no casual ties. There followed David Bedford’s Sun Paints Rainbow on the Vast Waves. David (now 72) spent much of his childhood, in Aldeburgh, often with his singer mother’s friend, Benjamin Britten. This piece for wind band has echoes of Peter Grimes and the chord sequence in Billy Budd; at other times Bedford goes minimal and, with three cymbals crashing away, seems to be peering through a (Philip) Glass darkly. Alas, not as enjoyable as many of David’s works.
After the interval of this sold out concert we had some stylish piano playing from Tom Deasy in Saint-Saens Septet with Thomas Wilson on trumpet, a delightful work that often sounds like the composer’s friend and pupil, Gabriel Fauré.
So far, fine, good playing but nothing special. But the finale was quite superb. A madrigal choir of seventy singers on the stage with piano and percussion were flanked by some 200 boys in the balcony in five numbers, Ghanaian, Zulu, American and Aboriginal. The singers had learned these five folk songs by ear under the direction of singing master Dan Ludford-Thomas, a young, sallow-faced, hirsute, spectacled man. He was a real show off but also a performer of superior calibre. The boys sang lustily and musically, their faces radiant with the pleasure they gave the audience and the pleasure of singing with this brilliantly gifted director. The performance lifted the hearts of all present.
One suggestion; the four conductors all bowed but the boys stood, almost glumly. Could they not bow when the conductors does – and perhaps smile?
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
HOWARD’S BEETHOVEN END
“Music is the mediator between intellectual and sensuous life”
Beethoven (1810)
The prize for the performance of the year should surely be awarded to Leslie Howard for his playing of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata Opus 106 (November 8, Wigmore Hall). Intellectually, physically, virtuosically and emotionally, this was a towering performance. Recently a critic called op. 106 ‘grim’ but that must be a misreading or mishearing – monumental, visionary, mind-blowing, yes; but grim, no. And that was what was so moving about the performance; sinews there were but also heartstrings. The sheer beauty of the slow movement, which seemed unlikely ever to end (and one did not want it to end) is a miracle of warm, nocturnal music that seems sometimes to pre-echo Chopin. There is aggression in the bitter, brittle scherzo but it is offset by the virility of the opening movement and the colossus that is the final fugue that pounds our minds as if we are in some engine – room of the mind, pistons and cylinders crashing in perfect synchromisation. But man is there too, expressed in Beethoven’s love of humanity.
How was it possible that one man, one brain, one heart, could conceive all those late works, the quartets, the Mass, the grosse Fuge, the piano sonatas, the Diabelli Variations, without his senses caving in with the amount of continual concentration required to pour out this almost superhuman flow of meaningful beauty? 106 is the Mt. Everest of music and very few pianists can achieve the perfection that Leslie Howard produced. The great Schnabel, for example, was in awe of the work and went into retreat for weeks before attempting to play it. Even the Diabelli Variations seem a less daunting task (the Matterhorn perhaps?) but our intrepid Antipodean seemed to take the Hammerklavier in his stride, a virile exposition with a pulsing heart behind it all.
Leslie Howard never ceases to amaze. He has played and recorded every scrap of the music of Liszt and shares that master’s tolerance and relish for the troughs as well as the peaks of music. Otherwise he surely could not have followed op.106 with the third volume of Liszt’s Années de péleriuage (published posthumously). The centrepiece of the set is the wonderful acqueous evocation The Fountains at the Villa d’Este. But the others in the set are empty rhodomontade and meretricious – that word so near and so far from meritorious. And with that comment I salute Master Howard again, wishing him and all our readers a merry trishmas!
Beethoven (1810)
The prize for the performance of the year should surely be awarded to Leslie Howard for his playing of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata Opus 106 (November 8, Wigmore Hall). Intellectually, physically, virtuosically and emotionally, this was a towering performance. Recently a critic called op. 106 ‘grim’ but that must be a misreading or mishearing – monumental, visionary, mind-blowing, yes; but grim, no. And that was what was so moving about the performance; sinews there were but also heartstrings. The sheer beauty of the slow movement, which seemed unlikely ever to end (and one did not want it to end) is a miracle of warm, nocturnal music that seems sometimes to pre-echo Chopin. There is aggression in the bitter, brittle scherzo but it is offset by the virility of the opening movement and the colossus that is the final fugue that pounds our minds as if we are in some engine – room of the mind, pistons and cylinders crashing in perfect synchromisation. But man is there too, expressed in Beethoven’s love of humanity.
How was it possible that one man, one brain, one heart, could conceive all those late works, the quartets, the Mass, the grosse Fuge, the piano sonatas, the Diabelli Variations, without his senses caving in with the amount of continual concentration required to pour out this almost superhuman flow of meaningful beauty? 106 is the Mt. Everest of music and very few pianists can achieve the perfection that Leslie Howard produced. The great Schnabel, for example, was in awe of the work and went into retreat for weeks before attempting to play it. Even the Diabelli Variations seem a less daunting task (the Matterhorn perhaps?) but our intrepid Antipodean seemed to take the Hammerklavier in his stride, a virile exposition with a pulsing heart behind it all.
Leslie Howard never ceases to amaze. He has played and recorded every scrap of the music of Liszt and shares that master’s tolerance and relish for the troughs as well as the peaks of music. Otherwise he surely could not have followed op.106 with the third volume of Liszt’s Années de péleriuage (published posthumously). The centrepiece of the set is the wonderful acqueous evocation The Fountains at the Villa d’Este. But the others in the set are empty rhodomontade and meretricious – that word so near and so far from meritorious. And with that comment I salute Master Howard again, wishing him and all our readers a merry trishmas!
HANS VAN BÜLOW
HANS VAN BÜLOW
A life and Times
Alan Walker
Pp 510, many illustrations price £30
What a man, what a musician, what a life! And what an enthralling book, finely researched! Strange that this is the first life of was such an interesting, chequered existence.
Once Bülow was asked if he knew Richard Wagner. He replied: “Oui, madame, il est le mari de ma femme.” Not only was that true – she was Cosima Wagner – but Bürlow suffered her to produce three girl children fathered by Wagner while he was still legally her husband.
Hans von Bülow (1830 – 1894) was one of the great pianists of his time, greatly admired by Liszt, but also the first star conductor. He had a photographic memory; he was the first to specialize in the piano works of Beethoven (he used to play the last five sonatas in a programme, including that Everest of sonatas, the Hammerclavier.) He raised the Meiningen Orcherstra to be Germany’s finest ensemble, encouraged not only to stet while they played but also to play from memory, even a corker like the Grosse Fuge.
He also possessed a witty, devastating tongue which he used too frequently, often damaging his persona more than his victims. He was intimate with Liszt (in a non-fathering way, with Cosima’s non-mothering way). Walker’s book reads like some fascinating, couplex 19th century novel, a tangled web of liaisons dangérous uses that is utterly enthralling, a “couldn’t put it down volume”.
von Bülow was so generous, forgiving Cosima, continuing to love her, although he had neglected her, so that she fell in the arms of Wagner. He provided money for the 3 children, paid for the legal costs of their divorce and raised huge sums of money for Bayreuth. Eventually he continued to proclaim Wagner the composer whilst excoriating Wagner the man. (like most of us) His capacity for work almost beggars belief. He helped young people and also his fellow composers. (He premiered Tchaikovsky’s famous Piano Concerto when others had refused to perform it.)
His health was bad, fainting fits; he was continually at spas and health centres. Yet he soldiered on, playing and conducting despite bad pianos, bad halls, tiring journeys. He gave over a hundred recitals all over North America, hating performing, yet doggedly raising money (for Wagner’s children).
It seems that Alan Walker has left no stone unturned. Travels, programmes, emotional troughs, good analysis of Bürlow’s compositions and style of piano playing.
As you might gather from the above, this book is highly recommended.
A life and Times
Alan Walker
Pp 510, many illustrations price £30
What a man, what a musician, what a life! And what an enthralling book, finely researched! Strange that this is the first life of was such an interesting, chequered existence.
Once Bülow was asked if he knew Richard Wagner. He replied: “Oui, madame, il est le mari de ma femme.” Not only was that true – she was Cosima Wagner – but Bürlow suffered her to produce three girl children fathered by Wagner while he was still legally her husband.
Hans von Bülow (1830 – 1894) was one of the great pianists of his time, greatly admired by Liszt, but also the first star conductor. He had a photographic memory; he was the first to specialize in the piano works of Beethoven (he used to play the last five sonatas in a programme, including that Everest of sonatas, the Hammerclavier.) He raised the Meiningen Orcherstra to be Germany’s finest ensemble, encouraged not only to stet while they played but also to play from memory, even a corker like the Grosse Fuge.
He also possessed a witty, devastating tongue which he used too frequently, often damaging his persona more than his victims. He was intimate with Liszt (in a non-fathering way, with Cosima’s non-mothering way). Walker’s book reads like some fascinating, couplex 19th century novel, a tangled web of liaisons dangérous uses that is utterly enthralling, a “couldn’t put it down volume”.
von Bülow was so generous, forgiving Cosima, continuing to love her, although he had neglected her, so that she fell in the arms of Wagner. He provided money for the 3 children, paid for the legal costs of their divorce and raised huge sums of money for Bayreuth. Eventually he continued to proclaim Wagner the composer whilst excoriating Wagner the man. (like most of us) His capacity for work almost beggars belief. He helped young people and also his fellow composers. (He premiered Tchaikovsky’s famous Piano Concerto when others had refused to perform it.)
His health was bad, fainting fits; he was continually at spas and health centres. Yet he soldiered on, playing and conducting despite bad pianos, bad halls, tiring journeys. He gave over a hundred recitals all over North America, hating performing, yet doggedly raising money (for Wagner’s children).
It seems that Alan Walker has left no stone unturned. Travels, programmes, emotional troughs, good analysis of Bürlow’s compositions and style of piano playing.
As you might gather from the above, this book is highly recommended.
PURCELL IN HIS ABBEY HOME
350th Anniversary
A celebration of the music of Henry Purcell was held in Westminster Abbey on 28 November (Princess Alexandra was in the audience). It was a kind of home-coming for the composer spent nearly half his life in the Abbey as organist, i.e. director of music, appointed at the phenomenally early age of twenty until the day he died, too early by far, in 1695. (the same age as Mozart).
The programme was called “Hail, bright Cecilia”, the title also of the Ode for soloists, chorus and orchestra that constituted the second half of the evening. One of the numbers of that work is Thou tun st this world below, the spheres above, a soprano solo, exquisitely sung by Carolyn Sampson; Purcell certainly did that. The abbey Choir shone brilliantly in this 50 minute cantata, directed in style by James O’Donnell, Purcell’s successor 3 ½ centuries later, supported by the ‘authentic St. James Baroque (Orchestra understood). Here were flatt trumpets, “amorous flutes”, “airy violins”, chortling recorders and all the ancient continuo conveniences. The soloists were all good, especially the tenor Ed Lyon who salvoed in The Fife and all the harmony of war.
However Purcell not only excelled in all things bright and glorious but also melancholy, the high spot of the evening came in the Burial Sentences with music for the funeral of Queen Mary, prefaced by the awe-inspiring sound of a single drum that resounded eerily round the abbey. In this sad ceremonial there followed a dead march and a canzona for brass, the players atop the choir screen. The aspiring sentences where the trebles reach up & up again were emotionally tingling & thrilling sung by the boy trebles in this amazing piece first performed shortly before Purcell’s own premature death.
Seated in the packed nave we recalled the generosity of Purcell’s teacher, John Blow in giving his office away to his pupil at the age of twenty – and then succeeding him in the post again in 1695. Blow composed an Ode on the death of Mr Purcell which incidentally, in the setting of the composer’s name shows us that the correct pronouncement is Purcell and not Purcell . Alas this subtlety had not reached the lady chaplain who before the music began, welcomed us to the concert of music by Purcell. Tut tut!
This however was the only tiny blot on the evenings splendour of a tribute to our beloved British worthy whose plaque in the Abbey reminds us that he “left this life, And is gone to that Blessed Place where only his Harmony can be Exceeded” (the dubious grammar is sometimes attributed to John Dryden).
Speaking of plaques, last week an elegant stone was here unveiled to the founders of British Ballet. Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton, Constant Lambert and Margot Fonteyn. It is to be found on the west side of the choir, near to Charles Dickens.
A celebration of the music of Henry Purcell was held in Westminster Abbey on 28 November (Princess Alexandra was in the audience). It was a kind of home-coming for the composer spent nearly half his life in the Abbey as organist, i.e. director of music, appointed at the phenomenally early age of twenty until the day he died, too early by far, in 1695. (the same age as Mozart).
The programme was called “Hail, bright Cecilia”, the title also of the Ode for soloists, chorus and orchestra that constituted the second half of the evening. One of the numbers of that work is Thou tun st this world below, the spheres above, a soprano solo, exquisitely sung by Carolyn Sampson; Purcell certainly did that. The abbey Choir shone brilliantly in this 50 minute cantata, directed in style by James O’Donnell, Purcell’s successor 3 ½ centuries later, supported by the ‘authentic St. James Baroque (Orchestra understood). Here were flatt trumpets, “amorous flutes”, “airy violins”, chortling recorders and all the ancient continuo conveniences. The soloists were all good, especially the tenor Ed Lyon who salvoed in The Fife and all the harmony of war.
However Purcell not only excelled in all things bright and glorious but also melancholy, the high spot of the evening came in the Burial Sentences with music for the funeral of Queen Mary, prefaced by the awe-inspiring sound of a single drum that resounded eerily round the abbey. In this sad ceremonial there followed a dead march and a canzona for brass, the players atop the choir screen. The aspiring sentences where the trebles reach up & up again were emotionally tingling & thrilling sung by the boy trebles in this amazing piece first performed shortly before Purcell’s own premature death.
Seated in the packed nave we recalled the generosity of Purcell’s teacher, John Blow in giving his office away to his pupil at the age of twenty – and then succeeding him in the post again in 1695. Blow composed an Ode on the death of Mr Purcell which incidentally, in the setting of the composer’s name shows us that the correct pronouncement is Purcell and not Pur
This however was the only tiny blot on the evenings splendour of a tribute to our beloved British worthy whose plaque in the Abbey reminds us that he “left this life, And is gone to that Blessed Place where only his Harmony can be Exceeded” (the dubious grammar is sometimes attributed to John Dryden).
Speaking of plaques, last week an elegant stone was here unveiled to the founders of British Ballet. Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton, Constant Lambert and Margot Fonteyn. It is to be found on the west side of the choir, near to Charles Dickens.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
GHOSTS, FROTH and BREEZE BLOCKS
Wexford Festival 2009 – late October
Emmanuel Chabrier 1841 – 1893 had a short career, has a short list of works but a big reputation with his tuneful, witty, pastel, quirky music, several operas, delightful piano pieces, a handful of songs and a few orchestral works, including Espana. He was one of Debussy’s three favourite composers, Ravel and Satie said they owed him much, and Poulenc loved him so much that he wrote a book about him. The lad from the Auvergne came to Paris, met all the artists, owned 11 Manets and 6 Renoirs; Manet painted him and died in his arms (on different days!) and Verlaine apostrophised him in a poem.
Wexford, famous for putting on rarely performed operas (and sometimes ones that should be rarely performed) just now paired his Une éducation manquée with La Cambiale di Matrimonio, composed when Rossini was 18. The Chabrier last three-quarters-of-an-hour a frothy little piece that smacks of Weekerlin’s bergerettes and Messager’s brace of pigeons. Characters three: bridegroom, bride and tutor. Tutor has taught him every subject except what to do on his bridal night. Thunderstorms and his inhibitions disappear like a flash of lightning. The issue is somewhat confused because the chap was nicely sung by the soprano Kishani Kavasinghe, the bride by Paula Morriny and the (drunken) tutor by Luca dell Amico, stylish conductor Christopher Franklin. Nice bed designed by Lorenzo Cutuli who cluttered up the stage for the Rossini with heavy blocks of stairs which producer Roberto Reccnia had the cast move around too many times. The second wedding piece gave us an English father (Giovanni Bellavia) trying to palm off his daughter (Pervin Chakar) onto a Canadian visitor (Vittorio Prato). She of course already has a partner and won’t budge. At 100 minutes, the piece is too long but the length was redeemed by the superb singing from all five principals. Quite a feat by the Wexford Management. You can’t expect vintage Rossini but he provides a very drinkable young wine.
When is a tragedy not a tragedy? Surely when nobody dies in the end? Not even when the fat lady sings her heart out. In 1841 Donizetti’s Maria Padilla he had his heroine kill herself but the censors insisted that she die of joy. At Wexford it was not clear if she died at all. Never mind, American soprano Barbara Quintilian had already sung half a million notes, florid bel canto stuff, only a few stratospheric notes off key. The first act curiously gives more prominence to her sister Inez, also a soprano, Ketevan Kemoklidze (Georgian with a name like that). Later the two would duet delightfully (thirds and sixtees in the approved manner).
It is a long opera and since Donizetti only seemed to compose with passion in act two, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to scrap the first. The music is good second-rate Donizetti, not in the same class as Lucia, the Derbyshire lass, but good. What is odd about the plotting and casting is that the part of the girls father, Ruiz, is a tenor although it is more like a baritone role. At Wexford it was quite magnificently sung by Adriano Graziano (Italian name, British passport).
The sets were fatuous. Act One was a vast jumble of breeze blocks with a rectangular frame set askew on top. Mauro Tinti, the décor creator striving for the title of Wexford Clever Dick of the year? He continued his silly tricks: act two has a score of chairs, wired up, so that you know that sooner or later they are going to be sent up into the flies. Then comes act three: nine mortuary slabs. How crass can you get? David Agler, director of the festival should have vetoed the designs. As it is, he conducted a fine performance, full of Italian guts and style.
The third opera at Wexford was The Ghosts of Versailles by the American composer, John Corigliano (b.1938), which created quite a stir when it premiered at the Met, New York in 1991. Quite a lot of the audience in Ireland seemed to like it, partly maybe because the production by James Robinson was excellent. But my view is that this is a rare case where the libretto is better than the music. The plot might be called ingenious and perhaps posthumous. Marie Antoinette, well sung by Maria Kanyova, decides at the end of the opera that, although she has a love match with Beaumarchais, to go to the guillotine again.
The libretto of this opera bufra in two acts is by William Hoffman, based on La mère coupable (1792) by Beaumarchais. The culpability of Rosina, Countess in Figaro, is that she had it off with Cherubino and gave birth to a daughter, Florentine, which has alienated her from the Count, all of whom are characters in this Ghosts, also Figaro and Susanna. The villain of the piece is one Bergéarss who wants to marry Florentine and get her parents guillotined. The opera is episodic with solos, concerted numbers and a near pantomime Turkish section. Rollicking fun. If only the music displayed some passion, some wit! There are allusions, parodies and a big orchestra employed but only at the very end does any meaningful invention support Corigliano’s obvious professionalism. Elsewhere it seems that the composer is all dressed up but nowhere to go. No personality. And it is mighty long. Up to the rise of the curtain I was sympathetic towards Marie Antoinette but by the time it came down I would happily have helped sharpen the guillotine.
One story about Chabrier: on a visit to Bayreuth he was invited to tea by Cosima and this took place in the late Master’s dressing room. Saddled with a huge slice of (German) inedible cake the Frenchman waited until Cosima was out of the room, then slipped the cake into a drawer of the Master’s silk shirts.
Emmanuel Chabrier 1841 – 1893 had a short career, has a short list of works but a big reputation with his tuneful, witty, pastel, quirky music, several operas, delightful piano pieces, a handful of songs and a few orchestral works, including Espana. He was one of Debussy’s three favourite composers, Ravel and Satie said they owed him much, and Poulenc loved him so much that he wrote a book about him. The lad from the Auvergne came to Paris, met all the artists, owned 11 Manets and 6 Renoirs; Manet painted him and died in his arms (on different days!) and Verlaine apostrophised him in a poem.
Wexford, famous for putting on rarely performed operas (and sometimes ones that should be rarely performed) just now paired his Une éducation manquée with La Cambiale di Matrimonio, composed when Rossini was 18. The Chabrier last three-quarters-of-an-hour a frothy little piece that smacks of Weekerlin’s bergerettes and Messager’s brace of pigeons. Characters three: bridegroom, bride and tutor. Tutor has taught him every subject except what to do on his bridal night. Thunderstorms and his inhibitions disappear like a flash of lightning. The issue is somewhat confused because the chap was nicely sung by the soprano Kishani Kavasinghe, the bride by Paula Morriny and the (drunken) tutor by Luca dell Amico, stylish conductor Christopher Franklin. Nice bed designed by Lorenzo Cutuli who cluttered up the stage for the Rossini with heavy blocks of stairs which producer Roberto Reccnia had the cast move around too many times. The second wedding piece gave us an English father (Giovanni Bellavia) trying to palm off his daughter (Pervin Chakar) onto a Canadian visitor (Vittorio Prato). She of course already has a partner and won’t budge. At 100 minutes, the piece is too long but the length was redeemed by the superb singing from all five principals. Quite a feat by the Wexford Management. You can’t expect vintage Rossini but he provides a very drinkable young wine.
When is a tragedy not a tragedy? Surely when nobody dies in the end? Not even when the fat lady sings her heart out. In 1841 Donizetti’s Maria Padilla he had his heroine kill herself but the censors insisted that she die of joy. At Wexford it was not clear if she died at all. Never mind, American soprano Barbara Quintilian had already sung half a million notes, florid bel canto stuff, only a few stratospheric notes off key. The first act curiously gives more prominence to her sister Inez, also a soprano, Ketevan Kemoklidze (Georgian with a name like that). Later the two would duet delightfully (thirds and sixtees in the approved manner).
It is a long opera and since Donizetti only seemed to compose with passion in act two, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to scrap the first. The music is good second-rate Donizetti, not in the same class as Lucia, the Derbyshire lass, but good. What is odd about the plotting and casting is that the part of the girls father, Ruiz, is a tenor although it is more like a baritone role. At Wexford it was quite magnificently sung by Adriano Graziano (Italian name, British passport).
The sets were fatuous. Act One was a vast jumble of breeze blocks with a rectangular frame set askew on top. Mauro Tinti, the décor creator striving for the title of Wexford Clever Dick of the year? He continued his silly tricks: act two has a score of chairs, wired up, so that you know that sooner or later they are going to be sent up into the flies. Then comes act three: nine mortuary slabs. How crass can you get? David Agler, director of the festival should have vetoed the designs. As it is, he conducted a fine performance, full of Italian guts and style.
The third opera at Wexford was The Ghosts of Versailles by the American composer, John Corigliano (b.1938), which created quite a stir when it premiered at the Met, New York in 1991. Quite a lot of the audience in Ireland seemed to like it, partly maybe because the production by James Robinson was excellent. But my view is that this is a rare case where the libretto is better than the music. The plot might be called ingenious and perhaps posthumous. Marie Antoinette, well sung by Maria Kanyova, decides at the end of the opera that, although she has a love match with Beaumarchais, to go to the guillotine again.
The libretto of this opera bufra in two acts is by William Hoffman, based on La mère coupable (1792) by Beaumarchais. The culpability of Rosina, Countess in Figaro, is that she had it off with Cherubino and gave birth to a daughter, Florentine, which has alienated her from the Count, all of whom are characters in this Ghosts, also Figaro and Susanna. The villain of the piece is one Bergéarss who wants to marry Florentine and get her parents guillotined. The opera is episodic with solos, concerted numbers and a near pantomime Turkish section. Rollicking fun. If only the music displayed some passion, some wit! There are allusions, parodies and a big orchestra employed but only at the very end does any meaningful invention support Corigliano’s obvious professionalism. Elsewhere it seems that the composer is all dressed up but nowhere to go. No personality. And it is mighty long. Up to the rise of the curtain I was sympathetic towards Marie Antoinette but by the time it came down I would happily have helped sharpen the guillotine.
One story about Chabrier: on a visit to Bayreuth he was invited to tea by Cosima and this took place in the late Master’s dressing room. Saddled with a huge slice of (German) inedible cake the Frenchman waited until Cosima was out of the room, then slipped the cake into a drawer of the Master’s silk shirts.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
A CARMEN PRODUCTION TO RELISH
Brahms and Tchaikovsky agreed only on one thing: they both adored Carmen. The new production of Bizet’s evergreen masterpiece at Covent Garden is the best of a score of them that I have seen. It is also the best work I have seen by Franscesca Zambello; the designer is Tanya McCallin.
Orange is the colour of the snow (not videophone!). The dark red plush curtains of the Royal Opera House are replaced before the curtain rises by orange ones. The scenery is likewise orange. A vivid orchestral prelude tells us that the French pianist Bertrand de Billy is no goat but a capable conductor. Welcome is the use of the original dialogue and a few bits of linking material that will be new to some.
The production is commendably straight, respects the composer and has imagination. The melodrama comes across, pleases your mind and hits you where it should do. Act One was memorable for the singing and disposition of (I guess) some thirty-five children, singing delightfully/raucously. The set includes a watergutter with real H20 and there is a live horse on stage and a donkey which behaves as it should (and not as it shouldn’t). In Act Two brigands scud up and down walls and in the last act there is a splendid procession that includes a wonderfully kitchy catholic becandled cart complete with a mouthing priest fore and a Madonna aft. When I mention that the cast includes Liping Zhang/Micaela, Changan Lim/Morales and Eri Nakamura/Frasquita you can tell that the Management has scoured the Orient and Africa for singers. (Nice to see Eri again, she was the star of a young artists scheme, performed here who we praised her Manon.)
Alas, Micaela was not quite up to it, whilst Ildebrando d’Argangelo reminded me of the story if a Beecham audition when he asked the aspiring Escmilo of he was auditioning for the part of the Toreador or the bull. Elina Garanca as Carmen was a presence of fiery nature, a real mankiller and a formidable performer if not quite the singer of one’s dreams, often mistaking volume for intensity, of which fault Roberto Alagna was also guilty. His Flower Song was lusty but charmless. But when Don Jose has to turn from being lyric to a dramatic tenor in the last act he came into his own. Despite being a half-head snorter than Carmen she was dispatched as to manner born! The grown-up chorus matched the kids.
Any quibbles ? a few details missed: those bumping/string pizzacati in the quintet, the G string turns on the violins could not be heard but Bizet’s masterly use of percussion came out well, the tambourine in Act Three and the clacking castanets (it seems that no Carmen to-day can be bothered to learn to play them and has to be helped out in the pit).
The production glowed, fired and exploded as it should, on this occasion, the 523rd performance in this house, a performance worthy of its composer. What a masterpiece it is every egg a bird! Every detail showing a master and wonderful counterpoint, deftness, charm and passion in number after number.
Orange is the colour of the snow (not videophone!). The dark red plush curtains of the Royal Opera House are replaced before the curtain rises by orange ones. The scenery is likewise orange. A vivid orchestral prelude tells us that the French pianist Bertrand de Billy is no goat but a capable conductor. Welcome is the use of the original dialogue and a few bits of linking material that will be new to some.
The production is commendably straight, respects the composer and has imagination. The melodrama comes across, pleases your mind and hits you where it should do. Act One was memorable for the singing and disposition of (I guess) some thirty-five children, singing delightfully/raucously. The set includes a watergutter with real H20 and there is a live horse on stage and a donkey which behaves as it should (and not as it shouldn’t). In Act Two brigands scud up and down walls and in the last act there is a splendid procession that includes a wonderfully kitchy catholic becandled cart complete with a mouthing priest fore and a Madonna aft. When I mention that the cast includes Liping Zhang/Micaela, Changan Lim/Morales and Eri Nakamura/Frasquita you can tell that the Management has scoured the Orient and Africa for singers. (Nice to see Eri again, she was the star of a young artists scheme, performed here who we praised her Manon.)
Alas, Micaela was not quite up to it, whilst Ildebrando d’Argangelo reminded me of the story if a Beecham audition when he asked the aspiring Escmilo of he was auditioning for the part of the Toreador or the bull. Elina Garanca as Carmen was a presence of fiery nature, a real mankiller and a formidable performer if not quite the singer of one’s dreams, often mistaking volume for intensity, of which fault Roberto Alagna was also guilty. His Flower Song was lusty but charmless. But when Don Jose has to turn from being lyric to a dramatic tenor in the last act he came into his own. Despite being a half-head snorter than Carmen she was dispatched as to manner born! The grown-up chorus matched the kids.
Any quibbles ? a few details missed: those bumping/string pizzacati in the quintet, the G string turns on the violins could not be heard but Bizet’s masterly use of percussion came out well, the tambourine in Act Three and the clacking castanets (it seems that no Carmen to-day can be bothered to learn to play them and has to be helped out in the pit).
The production glowed, fired and exploded as it should, on this occasion, the 523rd performance in this house, a performance worthy of its composer. What a masterpiece it is every egg a bird! Every detail showing a master and wonderful counterpoint, deftness, charm and passion in number after number.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
FLUTE
FLUTE
Richard Adeney
Brimstone Press
(PO Box 114, Shaftsbury SP7 8XN)
£12.50, p.222
If the performance is routine, perhaps with a duff conductor, sometimes a solo by one of the players will lift things onto another plane, the orchestra suddenly slips from the routine to the sublime, the spirits soar, life climbs up a notch.
In World War 2 I worked in a humble capacity for the London Philharmonic Orchestra and went to many of their concerts in and around London. There were two players in the LPO at that time who regularly were able to lift the orchestra up by its boot straps and lodge us in heaven, maybe for the rest of the evening. One was the first trumpeter, Malcolm Arnold, before he became known as a composer; the other was the first flute, Richard Adeney. They were both in their twenties, replacing older men who had gone off to fight.
Richard was handsome, an introvert, unlike Malcolm who was quite good to look at, but as extrovert as it is possible to be. But the sound Adeney made, the nuances he effected, the quality of his musicianship was magical; he could put a spell on us all in the audience.
Richard played a decade with the LPO, became freelance for a decade, playing often with the Melos Ensamble. His recording with that group of the Debussy Sonata for harp, flute and viola is still deeply satisfying – with two great players: Cecil Aronowitz and the harpist Osian Ellis. Then came the years with the English Chamber Orchestra, complete Mozart Piano Concerto, first with Daniel Barenboim and later with Murray Perania. In between came years directed by Benjamin Britten; operas, concerts and without a conductor, the three church parables where the players dressed as monks. Came his sixties and Richard packed up his flutes and sold them, exchanging them for photography; he had exhibitions and some of his work is seen in this book. Coming up to 80 he disposed of his cameras. He looks now in very good shape so at dinner the other day asked him to what he attributed his good health. Over the soup he answered “Sex four times a week” but over the coffee he said “John, I exaggerated – twice a week”.
In the book Richard recalls that in his teens he decided that “I wanted three things from life:
first: that I would become the best flute player in the world.
second: to have a huge amount of sex.
third: to make some sense of the mysterious and confusing world.”
Well, his book shows that he has done well on all counts. Certainly as a chamber music and orchestral player he was the tops. And he hasn’t done too badly in the other categories. He writes well and entertainingly, never hesitating to call a spade a bloody shovel. But better than his spicy stories and cuss words, he gives a better idea than I’ve come across anywhere else of what it feels like to play in an orchestra. He doesn’t quite tell us what it is like to be a homosexual but he gets near. The insight and stories about the orchestra and its conductors are enthralling. Strong likes and dislikes, some expected (Sargent), some unexpected (Abbado).
Nobody who has lived thought the musical scene of today and yesterday should miss this fascinating book. R.A. the man is quiet, even a little shut in, self-effacing. But his book comes at you boldly colourful and thought provoking.
Richard Adeney
Brimstone Press
(PO Box 114, Shaftsbury SP7 8XN)
£12.50, p.222
If the performance is routine, perhaps with a duff conductor, sometimes a solo by one of the players will lift things onto another plane, the orchestra suddenly slips from the routine to the sublime, the spirits soar, life climbs up a notch.
In World War 2 I worked in a humble capacity for the London Philharmonic Orchestra and went to many of their concerts in and around London. There were two players in the LPO at that time who regularly were able to lift the orchestra up by its boot straps and lodge us in heaven, maybe for the rest of the evening. One was the first trumpeter, Malcolm Arnold, before he became known as a composer; the other was the first flute, Richard Adeney. They were both in their twenties, replacing older men who had gone off to fight.
Richard was handsome, an introvert, unlike Malcolm who was quite good to look at, but as extrovert as it is possible to be. But the sound Adeney made, the nuances he effected, the quality of his musicianship was magical; he could put a spell on us all in the audience.
Richard played a decade with the LPO, became freelance for a decade, playing often with the Melos Ensamble. His recording with that group of the Debussy Sonata for harp, flute and viola is still deeply satisfying – with two great players: Cecil Aronowitz and the harpist Osian Ellis. Then came the years with the English Chamber Orchestra, complete Mozart Piano Concerto, first with Daniel Barenboim and later with Murray Perania. In between came years directed by Benjamin Britten; operas, concerts and without a conductor, the three church parables where the players dressed as monks. Came his sixties and Richard packed up his flutes and sold them, exchanging them for photography; he had exhibitions and some of his work is seen in this book. Coming up to 80 he disposed of his cameras. He looks now in very good shape so at dinner the other day asked him to what he attributed his good health. Over the soup he answered “Sex four times a week” but over the coffee he said “John, I exaggerated – twice a week”.
In the book Richard recalls that in his teens he decided that “I wanted three things from life:
first: that I would become the best flute player in the world.
second: to have a huge amount of sex.
third: to make some sense of the mysterious and confusing world.”
Well, his book shows that he has done well on all counts. Certainly as a chamber music and orchestral player he was the tops. And he hasn’t done too badly in the other categories. He writes well and entertainingly, never hesitating to call a spade a bloody shovel. But better than his spicy stories and cuss words, he gives a better idea than I’ve come across anywhere else of what it feels like to play in an orchestra. He doesn’t quite tell us what it is like to be a homosexual but he gets near. The insight and stories about the orchestra and its conductors are enthralling. Strong likes and dislikes, some expected (Sargent), some unexpected (Abbado).
Nobody who has lived thought the musical scene of today and yesterday should miss this fascinating book. R.A. the man is quiet, even a little shut in, self-effacing. But his book comes at you boldly colourful and thought provoking.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
TRISTE TRISTAN
A musical opinion on the latest production of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde in the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (October 5) would have to register: Tolerable singing, passion in the pit but Sterility in the staging. The villain is the producer/director Christof Loy, whose lack-lustre and lack-lust Lulu, his previous Garden production, should have caused the management of the Royal Opera House, and it’s music director in particular, to cancel Loy’s participation in the present new Tristan. His policy eliminates gesture (which might be thought to be essential in presenting any drama or opera on the stage) and imposes Loy on Wagner’s great work. The concept includes no ship, a posse of actors in evening dress not minding a ship, modern clothes, no daylight, no bed, one chair in act one, two chairs and a table in act two, Isolde removing Brangane’s dress, and a damned great wall that doesn’t fit the stage on one side of it.
The back of the stage is curtained on and off, the foreground is bare. This concept staging was greeted on opening night with booing. Now booing is something surely not to be approved of, but it does indicate that all is not well. This is particularly regrettable because otherwise there is much to be enjoyed. The orchestral playing is very fine indeed under Antonio Pappano. The singing is not perfect, except for an outstanding Kurwenal from Michael Volle. Alas, his is the only voice free from wobble or a beat that prevents the sound from being true. Of course this is a fault common to many singers today, in Wagner in particular. If you were to hear this cast on the radio or a CD it would be more tiresome than in the flesh. The awful thing is that listeners have got used to this. Listening to recordings of singers like Flagstad, Maggie Teyte, Birgit Nilsson or Fischer-Dieskau would point out the difference. So would listening to Michael Volle, fine actor and a bang in the middle of the note singer.
Nina Stemme acts a fine Isolde, and her top and piano notes were beautiful.
Was it chance or by design that the voice of Sophie Koch (Brangane) is so similar to that of Stemme that from a distance it was difficult to tell which was which? Ben Heppner’s voice has not much sap left but he put up a good show. But he is no hero, no lover, no captain of a ship (more likely a tugmaster). I heard somebody say he looked like a hundredweight of condemned meat. Stretched out on the floor Tristan looked like a beached whale (Loy seemed to have no concern for his ageing tenor). Sir John Tomlinson had stepped in for an ailing Matti Salminen. As always he gave a credible performance and we all love him, although his voice is now showing signs of wear and tear, fraying at the extremes (as King Marke).
So, this was a Tristan not only wounded in act two, but throughout by the stage director. Fortunately, Wagner’s music lived to tell the tale and grip a large and appreciative audience.
The back of the stage is curtained on and off, the foreground is bare. This concept staging was greeted on opening night with booing. Now booing is something surely not to be approved of, but it does indicate that all is not well. This is particularly regrettable because otherwise there is much to be enjoyed. The orchestral playing is very fine indeed under Antonio Pappano. The singing is not perfect, except for an outstanding Kurwenal from Michael Volle. Alas, his is the only voice free from wobble or a beat that prevents the sound from being true. Of course this is a fault common to many singers today, in Wagner in particular. If you were to hear this cast on the radio or a CD it would be more tiresome than in the flesh. The awful thing is that listeners have got used to this. Listening to recordings of singers like Flagstad, Maggie Teyte, Birgit Nilsson or Fischer-Dieskau would point out the difference. So would listening to Michael Volle, fine actor and a bang in the middle of the note singer.
Nina Stemme acts a fine Isolde, and her top and piano notes were beautiful.
Was it chance or by design that the voice of Sophie Koch (Brangane) is so similar to that of Stemme that from a distance it was difficult to tell which was which? Ben Heppner’s voice has not much sap left but he put up a good show. But he is no hero, no lover, no captain of a ship (more likely a tugmaster). I heard somebody say he looked like a hundredweight of condemned meat. Stretched out on the floor Tristan looked like a beached whale (Loy seemed to have no concern for his ageing tenor). Sir John Tomlinson had stepped in for an ailing Matti Salminen. As always he gave a credible performance and we all love him, although his voice is now showing signs of wear and tear, fraying at the extremes (as King Marke).
So, this was a Tristan not only wounded in act two, but throughout by the stage director. Fortunately, Wagner’s music lived to tell the tale and grip a large and appreciative audience.
LE GRANDE MACABRE
LIGETI ’S SCABROUS OPERA
The last thing we see in this new production of Ligeti’s opera by English National Opera in the London Coliseum, first night September 17, is a hand pulling a lavatory chain. If this suggests that the whole evening has been a load of crap, so be it. This is not so much the theatre of the absurd as the opera of the cloacal.
In Alan Bennett’s play the Schoolmaster observes: When humour has to descend into the lavatory, the writing is on the wall. The writing in the programme book is full of intellectual flim-flam but Ligeti’s theatre piece, premiere 1978 in Stockholm, intends to shock, to stick its finger in your eye. In the following thirty-one years it has had twenty-five different productions in Europe and America staged by thirty-three opera companies. Of modernish operas, only Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtensk and Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes seem to be the ones to have enjoyed such a spate of productions. And, curiously enough, all three of these operas have an orchestral passacaglia at the heart of their scores.
So, although I might prefer, as it were, to pull the chain on Ligeti I must describe a few details. This new production is based on one by the Catalan collective La Fura Dels Baus and has already been seen at La Monnaie, Brussels and the Teatro dell’ Opera in Rome. After six performances in London it will be seen in Barcelona’s Gran Teatro del Liceu and later at the Adelaide Festival in Australia.
The text is partly by the composer himself, after Michel Ghelderode’s play La Balade du Grand Macabre. The décor mainly consists of a 20 feet high fibre-glass figure of a naked woman (with a face somewhat resembling the cricketer Mike Atherton). This monster’s eyes light up, various parts of its body open up and are detachable (foot, backside, nipples) it revolves frequently. Members of the cast go in and out of her (she is called Claudia) and sometimes climb and walk around her – Alfons Flores designed her. The whole production is fascinating, even awe-inspiring, and a miracle of ingenuity. Décor and action hark back to the paintings by Bosch (The Garden of Earthly Delights) and Breughel (The Triumph of Death). Those medieval painters invented surrealism and all kinds of obscenity. But seen moving on a stage they can still produce a frisson of shock, a giggle and eventually, a yawn.
Scene three, for example, begins with Claudia’s bum (excuse me ... and there is worse to come) facing us and in a moment a face appears in the crack of it. It opens up and we see Claudia’s tripes which soon tumble out. No holds are barred and many of them are ingenious. It often appears that the theatrical avant-garde is to be seen in our age in the opera rather than the play house. Musicals sometimes show advanced stagings but they don’t set out to shock quite like Grand Macabre.
But, hey, this is supposed to be an opera! What of the music? Well, there isn’t much. And it doesn’t compare with many other works by Ligeti. The score is not as offensive as the action. There are melodic fragments occasionally, lots of bangs from the percussion, squeaks from the woodwind and so on. The vocal writing does not beguile. The only real music comes late in the proceedings, the afore-mentioned passacaglia, the opening of the fourth and last scene, and towards the end, the orchestra has some interesting material. The work seems to have come to a close (consumetum est is sung) but then there is another fifteen or more minutes which do not add anything dramatically or musically. There are in the score various allusions and parodies but unless you know where they come, you might miss them.
This show contains no musical catharsis, does not grip your deeper emotions, as Grimes or Lady Macbeth; it comes over as a rather childish, unsophisticated, out-of-date exercise in let-it-all-hang-out, a vastly expensive waste of time for those in front of and behind the curtain.
Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (that tenor who specializes in the bizarre) plays Piet the Pot, Susan Bickley is Messalina, and Susanna Andersson is Venus doubling as Gepopo, Chief of Police. To all of them, my thanks …. and condolences. Baldur Brönimann steers chorus and orchestra efficiently.
I met Ligeti several times and found him charming, highly intelligent, warm, funny and serious. Not a sign of the emotional chips that might have been expected on his shoulder – he suffered under fascism and Stalin, his family all killed. He was also uninhibited; it wasn’t safe for a woman to be alone with him.
What would he have composed if he lived longer? A song-cycle Pee, pot, belly, ho, bum, drawers, a cantata Tourette’s Syndrome or the opera Sodom and Gomorrah? Or perhaps another fine Violin Concerto, more masterly Atmosphères, more interesting piano pieces or further witty Aventures?
The last thing we see in this new production of Ligeti’s opera by English National Opera in the London Coliseum, first night September 17, is a hand pulling a lavatory chain. If this suggests that the whole evening has been a load of crap, so be it. This is not so much the theatre of the absurd as the opera of the cloacal.
In Alan Bennett’s play the Schoolmaster observes: When humour has to descend into the lavatory, the writing is on the wall. The writing in the programme book is full of intellectual flim-flam but Ligeti’s theatre piece, premiere 1978 in Stockholm, intends to shock, to stick its finger in your eye. In the following thirty-one years it has had twenty-five different productions in Europe and America staged by thirty-three opera companies. Of modernish operas, only Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtensk and Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes seem to be the ones to have enjoyed such a spate of productions. And, curiously enough, all three of these operas have an orchestral passacaglia at the heart of their scores.
So, although I might prefer, as it were, to pull the chain on Ligeti I must describe a few details. This new production is based on one by the Catalan collective La Fura Dels Baus and has already been seen at La Monnaie, Brussels and the Teatro dell’ Opera in Rome. After six performances in London it will be seen in Barcelona’s Gran Teatro del Liceu and later at the Adelaide Festival in Australia.
The text is partly by the composer himself, after Michel Ghelderode’s play La Balade du Grand Macabre. The décor mainly consists of a 20 feet high fibre-glass figure of a naked woman (with a face somewhat resembling the cricketer Mike Atherton). This monster’s eyes light up, various parts of its body open up and are detachable (foot, backside, nipples) it revolves frequently. Members of the cast go in and out of her (she is called Claudia) and sometimes climb and walk around her – Alfons Flores designed her. The whole production is fascinating, even awe-inspiring, and a miracle of ingenuity. Décor and action hark back to the paintings by Bosch (The Garden of Earthly Delights) and Breughel (The Triumph of Death). Those medieval painters invented surrealism and all kinds of obscenity. But seen moving on a stage they can still produce a frisson of shock, a giggle and eventually, a yawn.
Scene three, for example, begins with Claudia’s bum (excuse me ... and there is worse to come) facing us and in a moment a face appears in the crack of it. It opens up and we see Claudia’s tripes which soon tumble out. No holds are barred and many of them are ingenious. It often appears that the theatrical avant-garde is to be seen in our age in the opera rather than the play house. Musicals sometimes show advanced stagings but they don’t set out to shock quite like Grand Macabre.
But, hey, this is supposed to be an opera! What of the music? Well, there isn’t much. And it doesn’t compare with many other works by Ligeti. The score is not as offensive as the action. There are melodic fragments occasionally, lots of bangs from the percussion, squeaks from the woodwind and so on. The vocal writing does not beguile. The only real music comes late in the proceedings, the afore-mentioned passacaglia, the opening of the fourth and last scene, and towards the end, the orchestra has some interesting material. The work seems to have come to a close (consumetum est is sung) but then there is another fifteen or more minutes which do not add anything dramatically or musically. There are in the score various allusions and parodies but unless you know where they come, you might miss them.
This show contains no musical catharsis, does not grip your deeper emotions, as Grimes or Lady Macbeth; it comes over as a rather childish, unsophisticated, out-of-date exercise in let-it-all-hang-out, a vastly expensive waste of time for those in front of and behind the curtain.
Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (that tenor who specializes in the bizarre) plays Piet the Pot, Susan Bickley is Messalina, and Susanna Andersson is Venus doubling as Gepopo, Chief of Police. To all of them, my thanks …. and condolences. Baldur Brönimann steers chorus and orchestra efficiently.
I met Ligeti several times and found him charming, highly intelligent, warm, funny and serious. Not a sign of the emotional chips that might have been expected on his shoulder – he suffered under fascism and Stalin, his family all killed. He was also uninhibited; it wasn’t safe for a woman to be alone with him.
What would he have composed if he lived longer? A song-cycle Pee, pot, belly, ho, bum, drawers, a cantata Tourette’s Syndrome or the opera Sodom and Gomorrah? Or perhaps another fine Violin Concerto, more masterly Atmosphères, more interesting piano pieces or further witty Aventures?
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