You may have seen advertisements in this journal for a summer course for singers August 1 to 9 and I went to see what goes on. To start with SMAULL is not a misprint, it is a Gaelic name for a farm in a place about as remote as you can get although as the Crow Flies (or British Airways) only some three score miles due west of Glasgow. It is on the Isle of Islay where the Lords of the Isles held sway a few centuries ago. From the airport you get in your car, take an A road, then several B roads and finally some roads further down the alphabet, ending up unlocking a padlock, opening a few more gates, till you get to the farm house where live the organisers of the course, Philip Maxwell, and his wife Briony. Adjacent to the house are barns, one of which is the home of several hundred choughs, the other of which has been turned into two music rooms. Here may be found the dozen participants in the course, the teachers and one or two hangers on, like myself, a non-participating listener.
The singers are mixed pros, students and amateurs, living in the house or nearby, a happy band of congenial muzos. Each of the singers has prepared three songs (the first two had worked up Britten, Brahms and Poulenc; Roussel, Wolf and Schumann). In addition certain numbers or scenes from operas were on the agenda; and the singers also sang as a chamber choir. The standard varied.
Mary Hill not only coached but also took SATB ensemble. She was one of the teachers but the main master classes were given by Richard Jackson, sometimes baritone in the Song Makers Almanac. He knew every song by heart and its background. He had the gift of improving the singing of each participant by at least a third within twenty minutes, always encouraging, wonderfully inventive in his direction and never falling into the trap of turning teaching into an ego trip.
Richard was illuminating, inspiring – and entertaining. The accompanist, young Australian Claire Howard, also deserves a mention, expert, sympathetic and supportive (pretty too!).
There were two moments that stood out during my brief visit, both relating to Debussy: Marjorie Ouvry, inspired by Jackson, turned Noël des enfants –Debussy’s last song – into a wartime/mini drama; and Jan Wiener caught perfectly the fleeting poetic moods and emotions of La flûte de Pan. This was a singer in, what should one say?, the second flush of youth, using her voice in a way that had me remembering the great Maggie Teyte, who sixty years ago opened British ears to the marvels of French song.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Dog Bites Soprano
New Glyndebourne Opera
August 10
The premiere at Glyndebourne of a new, commissioned opera by Peter Eötvöșa, a Hungarian composer previously known as a fine conductor mainly of contemporary works. Love and Other Demons is based on the novel of that name by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The action takes place in a colonial sea port in Columbia in the 18th century and it begins with an eclipse of the sun, during which Sierva is bitten by a dog (non-singing role) which gives her rabies and causes her to scream for most of the opera in stratospherically high notes way above the staves. The Bishop orders Delaura, his librarian, to exoricize her but before that happens she is sent to a convent and there are encounters with the Abbess, and a former nun who has gone mad. Whilst Sierva is possessed of demons Delaura is possessed with love for Sierva. Eventual exorcism and death of Sierva.
The production is elaborate and brilliant, by the Romanian director, Silviu Purcararete, even though at times it is difficult to make out what is going on. And the programme book does not help as the synopsis is inept. The libretto, by Kornel Hamvai, is in English although certain passages are written in a foreign tongue. Fortunately, there are subtitles which reveal often that English is not a language that the composer knows well. Some of the wording veers between naiveté and pretension. There is not much choral or ensemble music. The score is wispy and gestural, curiously neutral textures and orchestration for a composer who is a conductor. Musical content is in short supply. Most people I spoke to agreed that one observed and listened but emotions were not engaged.
Allison Bell took over the part of the Sierva from the indisposed advertised soprano and achieved wonders with her high lying vocal utterings. Nathan Gunn, Felicity Palmer, Jean Rigby and Mats Almgren were excellent respectively as Delaura, the Abbess, the Insane Nun and the Bishop, all serving the composer right. There was nothing in the music to frighten the horses and the duration was short.
It will be interesting to see if this opera survives or sinks without a trace. Last performance this season 30 August, I don’t think it will be difficult to get a ticket.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Aldeburgh Festival
No.61, June 13 – 29 began with a stinker and ended with a bang. Things here are changing; some of the almost derelict buildings adjacent to the concert hall at Snape are being developed into space for dressing rooms, a 340-seater concert room and rehearsal rooms - £15 million has already been raised. Also Thomas Adès ‘Die Frist ist um’ (ref. Flying Dutchman ‘the time is up’) after ten years. He has been performing less and less and has relied on the help of an assistant director, the composer John Woolrich, two of whose composition were performed this June, one of them the premiere of a Violin Concerto. Adès’ advertised new work was not ready in time but he piano-partnered Steven Isserlis in a good programme; Sonatas by Debussy, Poulenc, and Schumann’s A minor Violin Sonata No.3 in a transcription by Isserlis; this is the late work that Clara forbad performances of, on the grounds that its composer was of unsound mind at the time, which he was, it is a relentlessly striving, nerve-wracking sonata that only relaxes at the very end. Fine playing. Adès also directed the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in his own Living Toys and works by Ligeti, Gerald Barry and Kurtag.
Gyorgy Kurtag was the featured composer this year and we suffered (in both senses of the word) a dozen of his wispy works. Some managed to derive some satisfaction for these but most of us failed to find them attractive, inventive, inspired or even worthwhile. Kurtag was born 82 years ago and it was a sight to see him and his equally venerable wife Marta, like some Derby and Joan, at an upright (amplified) piano playing away at the wisps, interspersed with some much appreciated Bach transcriptions.
I was congratulated three times on having missed the opening festival salvo, a stage piece An Ocean of Rain by Yanis Kiriakides, Greek, born 1969, which the Sunday Times critic said was unspeakably awful and drove my Telegraph colleague almost to apoplexy. Just one performance.
Director-delegate of the festival is the justly renowned French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard who (June 14) also conducted the Britten Sinfonia in thoroughly acceptable performances of Haydn’s delightful Symphony No. 22, Ives The Unanswered Question with Kurtag’s answer to it entitled Ligatura, the rare Three Piece for Chamber Orchestral by Schoenberg (1910) and Webern’s early string orchestral Five Pieces; after the interval came an excellent Coronation Concerto with Aimard as soloist-director. He also gave a piano recital playing rather too emphatically most of The Art of Fugue interspersed with (yes, you’ve guessed it) Kurtag, nine more wisps.
Before accepting the Directorship Aimard sent for all the festival programmes – which is good. But when asked by a journalist what his attitude to Britten was he (allegedly) replied; “Neutral” – which doesn’t sound so good. In fact, many of us regulars consider that not enough music of the Master is heard at the festivals. The tally this June was ten works, four of them almost as wispy as Kurtag.
Highlights? A masterly Diabelli Variations, Beethoven as to the manner successfully acquired, by Stephen Kovacevich. The pianist had a stroke not long ago but his art seems only to have deepened still further. There were enjoyable string quartet programmes given by the (French) Modigliani, the Badke and the Belcea, the latter with Imogen Cooper for an invigorating Trout. Northern Sinfonia played a noble Schumann 3 (the Rhenish) directed by Thomas Zehetmair with some Schubert songs orchestrated by Webern and one with Britten tickling the Trout.
One enjoyable trip to the flicks was to see two Barry Gavin films featuring A.L. (Bert) Lloyd 1908-82, a remarkable man who was a whaler, broadcaster, scholar, singer, journalist, folk-song collector (collaborator with Vaughan Williams, no less.) His programme on The Origins of Polyphony is such a seminal and enjoyable item that the BBC has not revived it! One film showed Lloyd retracing Bartok’s steps in Eastern Europe collecting songs (wonderful peasant wedding scene); the other was a personal memoir.
The festival ended with a concert by the hard-working and virtuosic City of Birmingham Symphony that consisted, after the obligatory Kurtag wisp, of two British masterpieces; Britten’s Cello Symphony and Walton’s Symphony No.1. Edward Gardner earned his spurs directing, with suitable expertise and tension, exemplary performances. Yes, the Britten is gritty, quite hard work for the ears and the brain but rewarding. Both works were written at a time of great personal turmoil. Walton has said that the symphony relates to his tempestuous liaison with the Baroness Irma Doernberg but what was worrying Britten in 1960? Shall we ever know?
I stayed two weeks in Aldeburgh and went to three-quarters of the events (and was one of them; I gave a talk about Britten and Tippett), skipping some that I knew I would not enjoy. Curious, but I find that some of my colleagues seem to employ double standards. When I started writing reviews there were some ageing Canute-like critics who seemed to want to stem the tide of ‘modernism’, senior writers such as Frank Howes of the Times, and Richard Cappell of the Telegraph. I don’t want to stem the tide but I don’t necessarily want to swim in it. Whereas nowadays many critics coo at every new work that comes along, I demand a minimum of melody, something that I can relate to and recognise if it should happen to recur. Music is the art I love best and I hate not enjoying most of the new music. Such a lot of it recalls the Emperor’s New Clothes and is the result of a lack of professionalism.
I suppose it was ever thus. But there are exceptions: Weir, Turnage, Adams and (if the piece lasts less than ten minutes) Taverner. Above all music must have passion and imagination, not just confirm to fashion. And Stravinsky once said “Sincerity is a sine qua non, which however in itself guarantees nothing.”
Typical of music today is a story about the composer Sciarino. He was heard to say: “Pollini talked about my music recently on the radio He said my music has passion – I’ll kill him.”
Gyorgy Kurtag was the featured composer this year and we suffered (in both senses of the word) a dozen of his wispy works. Some managed to derive some satisfaction for these but most of us failed to find them attractive, inventive, inspired or even worthwhile. Kurtag was born 82 years ago and it was a sight to see him and his equally venerable wife Marta, like some Derby and Joan, at an upright (amplified) piano playing away at the wisps, interspersed with some much appreciated Bach transcriptions.
I was congratulated three times on having missed the opening festival salvo, a stage piece An Ocean of Rain by Yanis Kiriakides, Greek, born 1969, which the Sunday Times critic said was unspeakably awful and drove my Telegraph colleague almost to apoplexy. Just one performance.
Director-delegate of the festival is the justly renowned French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard who (June 14) also conducted the Britten Sinfonia in thoroughly acceptable performances of Haydn’s delightful Symphony No. 22, Ives The Unanswered Question with Kurtag’s answer to it entitled Ligatura, the rare Three Piece for Chamber Orchestral by Schoenberg (1910) and Webern’s early string orchestral Five Pieces; after the interval came an excellent Coronation Concerto with Aimard as soloist-director. He also gave a piano recital playing rather too emphatically most of The Art of Fugue interspersed with (yes, you’ve guessed it) Kurtag, nine more wisps.
Before accepting the Directorship Aimard sent for all the festival programmes – which is good. But when asked by a journalist what his attitude to Britten was he (allegedly) replied; “Neutral” – which doesn’t sound so good. In fact, many of us regulars consider that not enough music of the Master is heard at the festivals. The tally this June was ten works, four of them almost as wispy as Kurtag.
Highlights? A masterly Diabelli Variations, Beethoven as to the manner successfully acquired, by Stephen Kovacevich. The pianist had a stroke not long ago but his art seems only to have deepened still further. There were enjoyable string quartet programmes given by the (French) Modigliani, the Badke and the Belcea, the latter with Imogen Cooper for an invigorating Trout. Northern Sinfonia played a noble Schumann 3 (the Rhenish) directed by Thomas Zehetmair with some Schubert songs orchestrated by Webern and one with Britten tickling the Trout.
One enjoyable trip to the flicks was to see two Barry Gavin films featuring A.L. (Bert) Lloyd 1908-82, a remarkable man who was a whaler, broadcaster, scholar, singer, journalist, folk-song collector (collaborator with Vaughan Williams, no less.) His programme on The Origins of Polyphony is such a seminal and enjoyable item that the BBC has not revived it! One film showed Lloyd retracing Bartok’s steps in Eastern Europe collecting songs (wonderful peasant wedding scene); the other was a personal memoir.
The festival ended with a concert by the hard-working and virtuosic City of Birmingham Symphony that consisted, after the obligatory Kurtag wisp, of two British masterpieces; Britten’s Cello Symphony and Walton’s Symphony No.1. Edward Gardner earned his spurs directing, with suitable expertise and tension, exemplary performances. Yes, the Britten is gritty, quite hard work for the ears and the brain but rewarding. Both works were written at a time of great personal turmoil. Walton has said that the symphony relates to his tempestuous liaison with the Baroness Irma Doernberg but what was worrying Britten in 1960? Shall we ever know?
I stayed two weeks in Aldeburgh and went to three-quarters of the events (and was one of them; I gave a talk about Britten and Tippett), skipping some that I knew I would not enjoy. Curious, but I find that some of my colleagues seem to employ double standards. When I started writing reviews there were some ageing Canute-like critics who seemed to want to stem the tide of ‘modernism’, senior writers such as Frank Howes of the Times, and Richard Cappell of the Telegraph. I don’t want to stem the tide but I don’t necessarily want to swim in it. Whereas nowadays many critics coo at every new work that comes along, I demand a minimum of melody, something that I can relate to and recognise if it should happen to recur. Music is the art I love best and I hate not enjoying most of the new music. Such a lot of it recalls the Emperor’s New Clothes and is the result of a lack of professionalism.
I suppose it was ever thus. But there are exceptions: Weir, Turnage, Adams and (if the piece lasts less than ten minutes) Taverner. Above all music must have passion and imagination, not just confirm to fashion. And Stravinsky once said “Sincerity is a sine qua non, which however in itself guarantees nothing.”
Typical of music today is a story about the composer Sciarino. He was heard to say: “Pollini talked about my music recently on the radio He said my music has passion – I’ll kill him.”
Monday, July 21, 2008
A Rake Without Progress
Neither Stravinsky, Hogarth nor W.H Auden were best served by the new production at Covent Garden of The Rake’s Progress, first night of five shows on July 7. Robert Lépage seems to be one of those directors determined to stamp a production with his own personality rather than project that of the composer or librettist. So, here we have yet another of these ‘concept’ productions. In this case Lépage’s stated idea is to angle the opera from the point of view of the period/time during which the composer was writing; so we are in a world of 1950, of tv (flickering sets all over the stage), oil (there’s a nodding donkey in the Trulove garden – which turns into a film camera in the brothel scene – Hollywood for the moment, it’ll be Las Vegas by and by) oh! The unnecessary expense of all the gadgetry! Tom Rakewell is dressed initially as a cowboy; in the scene of Baba’s first appearance, Anne arrives in a red sports car, Baba in a sedan outside on Oscar evening-cinema exterior. In Tom’s town house there is a bubble which turns into an indoors caravan. Baba is not submerged by the usual tea cosy but in a swimming pool, later the scene of the Auction. There are some better ideas: the explosions of light when Tom shakes hands with Nick Shadow; and the way in which the coupling Tom and Mother Goose literally disappear through a hole in the bed.
But the director, for all the gimmicks, floors that up and down neon lights etc., does not add anything to the story nor bring the characters to life.
So, what of the music? Thomas Adés conducts but fails to point up the sharpness, the pathos or the tenderness in the score. The orchestra plays well, the chorus sings well but the result is dull, lacklustre. And of the voices, only John Relyea’s Nick Shadow seems truly worthy to stand and deliver on our number one operatic stage where so many great voices have been heard in the past. Sally Matthews sings her lullaby in the looney-bin beautifully softly but her louder notes do not charm, move one, or seem in focus.
Charles Castronovo’s voice for the Rake on this occasion dealt with the notes but lacked sap and projection. Patricia Bradon sang well as Baba and showed an almost totally hirsute body above a good pair of legs. Sellem, the auctioneer was badly cast, neither well sung, funny or interesting.
Stravinsky seemed pleased with the libretto but most of act two sounds as if he didn’t quite understand all the intellectual quirks and implications of the text which surely tries too hard to establish its literary credentials, too often trying to show an eighteenth century style but giving the composer some pretty unsolvable problems.
But the director, for all the gimmicks, floors that up and down neon lights etc., does not add anything to the story nor bring the characters to life.
So, what of the music? Thomas Adés conducts but fails to point up the sharpness, the pathos or the tenderness in the score. The orchestra plays well, the chorus sings well but the result is dull, lacklustre. And of the voices, only John Relyea’s Nick Shadow seems truly worthy to stand and deliver on our number one operatic stage where so many great voices have been heard in the past. Sally Matthews sings her lullaby in the looney-bin beautifully softly but her louder notes do not charm, move one, or seem in focus.
Charles Castronovo’s voice for the Rake on this occasion dealt with the notes but lacked sap and projection. Patricia Bradon sang well as Baba and showed an almost totally hirsute body above a good pair of legs. Sellem, the auctioneer was badly cast, neither well sung, funny or interesting.
Stravinsky seemed pleased with the libretto but most of act two sounds as if he didn’t quite understand all the intellectual quirks and implications of the text which surely tries too hard to establish its literary credentials, too often trying to show an eighteenth century style but giving the composer some pretty unsolvable problems.
Candide/Candud
Leonard Bernstein was the all-American Mr. Music. He adored applause, he courted it, he got it and he deserved it. On form he was the top conductor, a brilliant communicator, a compelling lecturer/educator/tv talker; his ‘serious’ compositions could be heavy, over intellectual, constipated but his work in popular music fizzed and was first-class: On The Town, Wonderful Town were hits and West Side Story (1957) is one of the great works of the 20th century. His film score for On The Waterfront is a classic.
But Candide, just now having a run of fifteen performance (last one July 12) at the London Coliseum by the English National Opera, that is another matter. It has been a problem child since the start and has been subject to endless revision. The music begins stunningly with a comedy overture in the Rossini class; piquant, tuneful, irrepressible, dashing, cleverly changing tempi to pile up a climax that whets the appetite for the operetta or musical comedy to follow. And then comes a brilliant opening number with unusual tricky rhythms that Max Adrian negotiated so magically in the first London run in the fifties at the Cambridge Theatre put on by Laurence Olivier.
But from then on it’s all downhill. The score turns clever, parodies that don’t click, tunes that sag, the whole thing becomes rather boring. The book is credited to six writers, including the starry names of Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker and Stephen Sondheim. Even Mrs Bernstein wrote one number. And the current producer, Robert Carsen, has freely adapted the mélange in a joint production with La Scala, Milan and the Châtelet, Paris. Maybe something has got lost in transit; maybe the coliseum is too darn big. But the result is stale and too cutely American for words. The rot sets in early as the ear is distracted from hearing the overture because a movie runs right through it and destorys it. The plot, derived from Voltaire’s novella, becomes tedious and the production heaps flashy Pelion on Hollywood Ossa: armies, ship decks, elaborate dance routines (Busby Berkeley, thou shouldst be living at this hour). It is no fault of the performers that the characters are cardboard caperers and do not engage our sympathy or interest. Toby Spence sings pleasantly in the title role. Anna Christy looks a treat in a pink Marilyn Monroe gown; she can hit the high C’s but lower down the staves her voice lacks focus. Alex Jennings plays Pangloss and Voltaire but lacks the spicy individuality of the beloved Max Adrian of fifty years back. Beverley Klein does her best with the crashingly tiresome Old Lady (through pleasantly reminding me of the late Caryl Brahms). Everything happens cutely on cue and I have to say the audience responded (July 4) as if it were enjoying itself.
Since there were so many revisions the writers, including Bernstein himself, he must have known that they were working on a cardboard turkey. ENO keeps on trying to earn money by putting on musicals; bums on seats maybe, but no marks for artistic excellence.
Fanciulla and Rusalka
Grange Park Opera Triumphs
Grange Park Opera in Hampshire near Basingstoke has come of age in the current season with its production of Puccini’s Fanciulla del West and Dvorak’s Rusalka. In the past good work has been done but the house style could sometimes be a bit flighty (neon lights in Thais) but not consistent in standard, but this year these performances of two operas on the verge of being in the big league are worthy of the highest praise. True, the singing in the Puccini is not of the best but the Dvorak is strongly cast. The staging is blessedly free from ‘concept’ and is played in a straight way so that, rare these days, I think the composer and librettist would still recognize their work.
Fanciulla had a propitious send-off in New York in 1910 with the two most famous singers of the day in the leading roles: Emmy Destinn as Minnie, pub-keeper in gold rush California, and Caruso, bandit in disguise, with Toscanini conducting. Yet although the opera brought in the crowds it has remained a little sister to Bohème, Tosca, Butterfly and Turandot. Why? Only one big hit of an aria, no pathetic ‘little woman’ and no tragedy could be the answer. Yet the Puccini musical thumbprints are there, sumptuous orchestration, rich harmonies and idiomatic writing for the voices (including the chorus, all male of course). Perhaps the vocal writing breaks into lyricism not enough, proceeding too often in a kind of arioso, not enough of those winning moments that touch and provoke tears.
Yet a good performance is very satisfying, as at Grange Park (I was there July 4). Rory McDonald conducted a performance that sang full of passion, colour and pace (English Chamber Orchestra).
Another ‘yet’, there were no first-class singing performances. Cynthia Makris (Finnish) the soprano looked fine, was 100% sympathetic and held the stage very well. Her top notes were clean but lower down the tone was not pure or in the middle of the note. The tenor, John Hudson, sang his notes ok but looked more like an ageing bank clerk than a bandit. I warmed more to the Icelandic baritone, Olafur Sigurdason, but Puccini didn’t give Jack Rance, the sheriff in love with Minnie, more than an arietta to sing (Ravelish), little gem though it is.
Realistic sets by Francis O’Connor and sturdy chorus singing completed the evening’s pleasure factor. The director was Stephen Metcalf.
Rusalka was even better, with a strong cast and more starry singing. The title role was consummately performed by the French soprano, Anne-Marie Duprels, the mermaid who turns into a mute human in pursuit of a Prince. Alas, he grows tired of her silence (rare to find a voiceless soprano in opera) jilts her for a Foreign Princess, changes his mind and is given the kiss of death by his fishy bride. Duprels sang, mimed and acted in positively star fashion. Her merman father, Clive Bayley, matched her excellence. Jeffery Lloyd-Roberts was a portly Prince with a sympathetic face and a fine voice (they all sang in Hampshire Czech). Anne-Marie Owens was good, too, doling out her magic potion as a perfect bitch of a witch whilst Janis Kelly was fine and every inch the other Woman/Foreign Princess.
Stephen Barlow conducted the ECO in a reading instinct with power, passion and poetry. Dvorak was just coming up to 60 when he composed this opera in 1900. The music is supremely competent, rich in sound (bass clarinet and double bassoon help with that) even if it does not plumb the depths of feeling like Dvorak’s orchestral master-pieces. The production and design by Anthony McDonald was imaginative, could scarcely be bettered.
Grange Park Opera takes place in an opera house next to a partly derelict Palladian villa set in rolling country-side. It is the creation of Wasfi Kani a conductor turned wizard fund raiser. She will have a job keeping up this standard (but I bet she will succeed). In 2009, she promises Norma, Senta, Eliogabalo (that’s a difficult one!) and a Cunning Vixen.
Grange Park Opera in Hampshire near Basingstoke has come of age in the current season with its production of Puccini’s Fanciulla del West and Dvorak’s Rusalka. In the past good work has been done but the house style could sometimes be a bit flighty (neon lights in Thais) but not consistent in standard, but this year these performances of two operas on the verge of being in the big league are worthy of the highest praise. True, the singing in the Puccini is not of the best but the Dvorak is strongly cast. The staging is blessedly free from ‘concept’ and is played in a straight way so that, rare these days, I think the composer and librettist would still recognize their work.Fanciulla had a propitious send-off in New York in 1910 with the two most famous singers of the day in the leading roles: Emmy Destinn as Minnie, pub-keeper in gold rush California, and Caruso, bandit in disguise, with Toscanini conducting. Yet although the opera brought in the crowds it has remained a little sister to Bohème, Tosca, Butterfly and Turandot. Why? Only one big hit of an aria, no pathetic ‘little woman’ and no tragedy could be the answer. Yet the Puccini musical thumbprints are there, sumptuous orchestration, rich harmonies and idiomatic writing for the voices (including the chorus, all male of course). Perhaps the vocal writing breaks into lyricism not enough, proceeding too often in a kind of arioso, not enough of those winning moments that touch and provoke tears.
Yet a good performance is very satisfying, as at Grange Park (I was there July 4). Rory McDonald conducted a performance that sang full of passion, colour and pace (English Chamber Orchestra).
Another ‘yet’, there were no first-class singing performances. Cynthia Makris (Finnish) the soprano looked fine, was 100% sympathetic and held the stage very well. Her top notes were clean but lower down the tone was not pure or in the middle of the note. The tenor, John Hudson, sang his notes ok but looked more like an ageing bank clerk than a bandit. I warmed more to the Icelandic baritone, Olafur Sigurdason, but Puccini didn’t give Jack Rance, the sheriff in love with Minnie, more than an arietta to sing (Ravelish), little gem though it is.
Realistic sets by Francis O’Connor and sturdy chorus singing completed the evening’s pleasure factor. The director was Stephen Metcalf.
Rusalka was even better, with a strong cast and more starry singing. The title role was consummately performed by the French soprano, Anne-Marie Duprels, the mermaid who turns into a mute human in pursuit of a Prince. Alas, he grows tired of her silence (rare to find a voiceless soprano in opera) jilts her for a Foreign Princess, changes his mind and is given the kiss of death by his fishy bride. Duprels sang, mimed and acted in positively star fashion. Her merman father, Clive Bayley, matched her excellence. Jeffery Lloyd-Roberts was a portly Prince with a sympathetic face and a fine voice (they all sang in Hampshire Czech). Anne-Marie Owens was good, too, doling out her magic potion as a perfect bitch of a witch whilst Janis Kelly was fine and every inch the other Woman/Foreign Princess.
Stephen Barlow conducted the ECO in a reading instinct with power, passion and poetry. Dvorak was just coming up to 60 when he composed this opera in 1900. The music is supremely competent, rich in sound (bass clarinet and double bassoon help with that) even if it does not plumb the depths of feeling like Dvorak’s orchestral master-pieces. The production and design by Anthony McDonald was imaginative, could scarcely be bettered.
Grange Park Opera takes place in an opera house next to a partly derelict Palladian villa set in rolling country-side. It is the creation of Wasfi Kani a conductor turned wizard fund raiser. She will have a job keeping up this standard (but I bet she will succeed). In 2009, she promises Norma, Senta, Eliogabalo (that’s a difficult one!) and a Cunning Vixen.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Opera At Its Best
Don Carlos at Covent Garden 12.10.58
From ’The Scotsman’ (n.b.date)
“To mark the centenary of the opening of the present Royal Opera House in Covent Garden a new production of Verdi’s Don Carlos was given on Friday night.
A magnificent cast has been assembled to give the work in Italian, with Luchino Visconti and Carla-Maria Giulini , the most renowned producer and conductor in Italy today. No expense has been spared to make this new offering a celebration worthy of the occasion.
On many similar occasions when such an effort is made, with all the stops pulled out, the result falls short of expectation. But this presentation of Don Carlos exceeds hope, and is nothing short of magnificent. There have been, since the Opera House reopened after the last war, comparable musical experience – notably Kleiber’s Rosenkavalier, Wozzeck, and Elektra, Beecham’s Meistersinger, Kubelik’s Jenufa and Kempe’s Ring, but of no opera has there been any complete performance as good as this Don Carlos.
Here everything combines to give the work in all its glory: singing, orchestral playing, musical direction, acting, décor – this is opera at its best. ‘Integration’ is the word that comes to mind to describe the rare harmony between first-rate talents that have combined to give here the most complicated of art-forms a near perfect representation.
Never have I seen such good use made of the big Covent Garden stage; each of the seven sets is a beautiful sight in itself and completely right in the context. Visconti has not only produced the opera, but also designed, with the help of two assistants, these sets and the fine costumes. He is perhaps better known as one of the foremost Italian film directors, but he shows himself now as a masterly operatic producer.
The opera – written in 1866, preceding Aida – is a long one, for Verdi sets himself the task of working out the many conflicts in Schiller’s drama of the court of Philip II of Spain: Catholic Spain opposed to Protestant Flanders, the liberal Rodrigo to autocratic State, King to Grand Inquisitor, and also the frustrated love between Don Carlos and the Queen, his intended bride who becomes his stepmother instead, owing to a change of State plans.
Verdi succeeds in his task and creates six substantial parts for singers: six genuine operatic characters of considerable depths. The score has many fine things in it, but the quality is not even; individual numbers do not always sustain otherwise excellent scenes and the promise of the opening scene in the forest of Fontainebleau is not made good until after the big auto-da-fé scene in the third act. In the opening scene of Act IV occurs the extraordinary scene between King and Grand Inquisitor, two basses, followed by several numbers, including a quartet, that are amongst Verdi’s very finest creations.
The singing reached a high level; Boris Christoff, as the King, gave a performance that combined dramatic power with musical refinement; Gre Brouwenstijn, as the Queen, sang with more warmth and beauty of tone than hitherto; Tito Gobbi was in excellent voice and made a convincing Rodrigo; Jon Vickers both sang and acted with more subtly than would have been suspected from his past performance; and Marco Stefanoni was suitably dark-voiced for the Inquisitor. Fedora Barbieri had the misfortune to catch a frog in her throat in ‘Don Fatale’, impeding a performance that was anyhow not in the same class as her colleagues.
But the performance was dominated by the conducting of Giulini. Here was the complete realisation of the score in what was easily the finest Verdi that London has heard for many a long year.”
Hindsight: Even forty years later I still think that this Don Carlos was the best thing I ever saw on the operatic stage, the most completely integrated performance including all aspects; conducting, singing, acting, production, sets. Part of the secret of its success was, I believe, due to the fact that the designer/producer Visconti and conductor Giulini attended every stage rehearsal. Giulini at this stage of his career was at his most dedicated and passionate.
However, I have modified my view of the work in as much as I can now appreciate that the three duets at the end of act two are a marvellous dramatic feat even if the Posa-Philip one, despite endless revisions by Verdi, does not contain the beauty and depth of the act four wonders.
After Giulini, nothing can eclipse his total realisation of its strength, emotional pull and mastery. Pappano gets near but lacks the ultimate, quite how I find it difficult to say. Chorus and orchestra gave their worthy best. And Nicholas Hytner’s production is spot on.
Roland Villazon’s tenor rings out superbly, he is as neurotic as hell and taking vocal risks all the time – can he keep it up at this intensity? Marina Poplavskaya was truly adequate as the Queen without revealing any strong character in the voice. Simon Keenlyside was pure gold, bold, sympathetic and papering over the cracks in the role of Posa, political ardour and impulses not being the best weapons in Verdi’s armoury, sincere and motivated though he was. The Tebaldo of Pumeza Matshika was the best Tebaldo the page that I have seen, Sonia Ganassi was not, though it must be said that this role has seen many an Eboli stumble, the role is a Beecher’s brook. Ferruccio Furlanetta’s voice is not the most beautiful but his artistry is very fine (wonderful legs too!) He was the only Italian to appear (as the King) in this Italian sung version.
All in all it was a pleasurable, powerful evening (11 June) devoted to Verdi’s sprawling masterpiece, when the performance was obviously more trouble- free than the first night.
From ’The Scotsman’ (n.b.date)
“To mark the centenary of the opening of the present Royal Opera House in Covent Garden a new production of Verdi’s Don Carlos was given on Friday night.
A magnificent cast has been assembled to give the work in Italian, with Luchino Visconti and Carla-Maria Giulini , the most renowned producer and conductor in Italy today. No expense has been spared to make this new offering a celebration worthy of the occasion.
On many similar occasions when such an effort is made, with all the stops pulled out, the result falls short of expectation. But this presentation of Don Carlos exceeds hope, and is nothing short of magnificent. There have been, since the Opera House reopened after the last war, comparable musical experience – notably Kleiber’s Rosenkavalier, Wozzeck, and Elektra, Beecham’s Meistersinger, Kubelik’s Jenufa and Kempe’s Ring, but of no opera has there been any complete performance as good as this Don Carlos.
Here everything combines to give the work in all its glory: singing, orchestral playing, musical direction, acting, décor – this is opera at its best. ‘Integration’ is the word that comes to mind to describe the rare harmony between first-rate talents that have combined to give here the most complicated of art-forms a near perfect representation.
Never have I seen such good use made of the big Covent Garden stage; each of the seven sets is a beautiful sight in itself and completely right in the context. Visconti has not only produced the opera, but also designed, with the help of two assistants, these sets and the fine costumes. He is perhaps better known as one of the foremost Italian film directors, but he shows himself now as a masterly operatic producer.
The opera – written in 1866, preceding Aida – is a long one, for Verdi sets himself the task of working out the many conflicts in Schiller’s drama of the court of Philip II of Spain: Catholic Spain opposed to Protestant Flanders, the liberal Rodrigo to autocratic State, King to Grand Inquisitor, and also the frustrated love between Don Carlos and the Queen, his intended bride who becomes his stepmother instead, owing to a change of State plans.
Verdi succeeds in his task and creates six substantial parts for singers: six genuine operatic characters of considerable depths. The score has many fine things in it, but the quality is not even; individual numbers do not always sustain otherwise excellent scenes and the promise of the opening scene in the forest of Fontainebleau is not made good until after the big auto-da-fé scene in the third act. In the opening scene of Act IV occurs the extraordinary scene between King and Grand Inquisitor, two basses, followed by several numbers, including a quartet, that are amongst Verdi’s very finest creations.
The singing reached a high level; Boris Christoff, as the King, gave a performance that combined dramatic power with musical refinement; Gre Brouwenstijn, as the Queen, sang with more warmth and beauty of tone than hitherto; Tito Gobbi was in excellent voice and made a convincing Rodrigo; Jon Vickers both sang and acted with more subtly than would have been suspected from his past performance; and Marco Stefanoni was suitably dark-voiced for the Inquisitor. Fedora Barbieri had the misfortune to catch a frog in her throat in ‘Don Fatale’, impeding a performance that was anyhow not in the same class as her colleagues.
But the performance was dominated by the conducting of Giulini. Here was the complete realisation of the score in what was easily the finest Verdi that London has heard for many a long year.”
Hindsight: Even forty years later I still think that this Don Carlos was the best thing I ever saw on the operatic stage, the most completely integrated performance including all aspects; conducting, singing, acting, production, sets. Part of the secret of its success was, I believe, due to the fact that the designer/producer Visconti and conductor Giulini attended every stage rehearsal. Giulini at this stage of his career was at his most dedicated and passionate.
However, I have modified my view of the work in as much as I can now appreciate that the three duets at the end of act two are a marvellous dramatic feat even if the Posa-Philip one, despite endless revisions by Verdi, does not contain the beauty and depth of the act four wonders.
After Giulini, nothing can eclipse his total realisation of its strength, emotional pull and mastery. Pappano gets near but lacks the ultimate, quite how I find it difficult to say. Chorus and orchestra gave their worthy best. And Nicholas Hytner’s production is spot on.
Roland Villazon’s tenor rings out superbly, he is as neurotic as hell and taking vocal risks all the time – can he keep it up at this intensity? Marina Poplavskaya was truly adequate as the Queen without revealing any strong character in the voice. Simon Keenlyside was pure gold, bold, sympathetic and papering over the cracks in the role of Posa, political ardour and impulses not being the best weapons in Verdi’s armoury, sincere and motivated though he was. The Tebaldo of Pumeza Matshika was the best Tebaldo the page that I have seen, Sonia Ganassi was not, though it must be said that this role has seen many an Eboli stumble, the role is a Beecher’s brook. Ferruccio Furlanetta’s voice is not the most beautiful but his artistry is very fine (wonderful legs too!) He was the only Italian to appear (as the King) in this Italian sung version.
All in all it was a pleasurable, powerful evening (11 June) devoted to Verdi’s sprawling masterpiece, when the performance was obviously more trouble- free than the first night.
Monday, June 02, 2008
An English Rosenkavalier
"Too many notes", the Emperor famously rebuked Mozart; and maybe an Emperor could have said "too many words" after the 1911 premiere of Der Rosenkavalier. Hofmannsthal's libretto is wordy, positively garrulous at times but Richard Strauss was so enamoured of it that he not only set every word of it, he even set some of the stage directions as well. After Salome and Elektra he realized that he could not go any further down the road of modernity, for the two earlier works had subjects that horrified his audiences, with music that shocked the ears of the world by pushing the frontiers of harmony over the top into atonality.
As animals are said to sense an impending catastrophe, some musicians in the years before World War I seemed to sense that the world was hurtling towards disaster and produced compositions that reflected this: Sibelius with his fourth Symphony, Stravinsky with The Rite of Spring, Schoenberg with his twelve-tone works and Strauss with his twin shockers. So the German poet and composer did an about-turn with a comedy, a massive Viennese-type comedy set in the eighteenth century, containing not only anachronistic, if enchanting waltzes, but also some quite shocking situations. The opening scene sees a girl dressed as a boy with a woman twice his age, making love after an orchestral prelude whose whooping horns fed everything to the imagination.
As animals are said to sense an impending catastrophe, some musicians in the years before World War I seemed to sense that the world was hurtling towards disaster and produced compositions that reflected this: Sibelius with his fourth Symphony, Stravinsky with The Rite of Spring, Schoenberg with his twelve-tone works and Strauss with his twin shockers. So the German poet and composer did an about-turn with a comedy, a massive Viennese-type comedy set in the eighteenth century, containing not only anachronistic, if enchanting waltzes, but also some quite shocking situations. The opening scene sees a girl dressed as a boy with a woman twice his age, making love after an orchestral prelude whose whooping horns fed everything to the imagination.
The score is a fascinating mixture: plenty of anarchic harmony but often the dissonances are tempered with celesta, harp and glockenspiel sounds that parallel the taste of crystallised fruit. There are touching moments, like the orchestral outburst when the boy mistakenly judges that his mistress's post-coital melancholy is a sign of dismissal, like the ravishing moment when the young Sophie (his new love to be) is presented with the silver rose and, above all, the final trio whose mounting climax is not only sexual but is one of the great moments of emotional power in all music, a scene in which the older woman realizes now ecstatically happy the young ones are and relinquishes her hold on her toy-boy. Hofmannstahl may have over-egged the verbals but he also provided situations rich in emotional, even philosophical subtleties. Strauss produced a masterpiece, immediately successful but enduring. Mind you, there are a few longueurs, including the first twenty minutes of Act Three when Strauss seems to be driving his music along on auto-pilot.
There were many moments of satisfaction in the performance on Saturday, May 24, the second of a new production by the English National Opera in the London Coliseum. John Tomlinson's portrayal of the lecherous, seedy aristocrat, Baron Ochs was fine, almost like a latter-day Falstaff, his acting telling, his voice in good shape, dispelling any thoughts that age was dimming its prowess - there were some beautiful notes at the top, even though the famous final bottom E at the close of Act Two was a bit anaemic.
But older opera-goers could not but notice that, as usual in this whopping great house, the female singers were often forcing their notes except when they were singing pure tones in head-voice. Above all the stave Janice Watson (Marschallin), Sarah Connolly (Octavian) and Sarah Tynan (Sopnhe) sang well; and all three acted convincingly. Andrew Shore deserves a special mention for he made the role of the nouveau-riche Faninal, a cameo, seem like a principal one.
There was a good deal of hammy horseplay in the ensembles just as there were over-the-top elements in the decor of Michael Vale and Tania McCullin: bloated curtains half-a-dozen chandeliers and naff silver armour for Octavian. Alogether this was a rather English Rosenkavalier, more boiled beef and carrots than Sachertorte. Mind you, the audience was enthusiastic.
The orchestral playing and direction under their young music director, Edward Gardner, settled down well after the opening half-hour when the balance seemed faulty, both in the pit, and with the stage. As a footnote: the custom of a young cavalier formalizing an engagement with the presentation of a silver rose had a sequel in the later opera Arabella which ends with another quaint form of proposal. Only here is a Slovakian custom, apparently, in which the girl presents her intend with ... a glass of water!
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Eugene Onegin, Glyndebourne, May 21
Eugene Onegin is notably superior to Tchaikovsky's other half dozen odd operas. Why? Probably because it was nearer to his private life than the others which deal with gambling (Pique Dame), Mazeppa - Cossack chetman, The Maid of Orleans, The Sorceress - medieval blind princess, Oprichnik - crude melodrama, Undine, jilted water-nymph, Voyevoda, medieval woman stealer. All of these operas contain some, but not enough, fine music but the plots were not anywhere near to Tchaikovsky's life or person. But Onegin was: he himself had received a letter from a girl throwing herself at the feet of someone she barely knew. As we know, Onegin coldly rebuffed Tatiana. Tchiakovsky was touched by the situation and set to work immediately on his famous letter scene. And, although he wrote Onegin some fine music,, the composer hated Onegin so that when he received in real life a similar letter, he determined that he would not behave heartlessly. So Tchaikovsky married the letter writer - with predictably disastrous results; homosexual marries the letter-writer (at a time of course when he needed to fend off accusations of 'un-natural practices')
On May 21 Onegin was the second opera to be performed in the current season at Glyndebourne - mairaculously in halcyon weather. Six operas form the repertoire Albert Herring, Carmen, Hansel and Gretel, a new opera by Peter Eötvös called Love and Other Demons and the season began with Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea, a performance whose music side under Emmanuel Haim was lauded by the critics but whose production was loudly dislauded.
Onegin has no hero onstage but here in Sussex it had one, conducting in the pit. Vladimir Jurowski, the young Moscow-born music director at Glyndebourne, was the star of the evening. It was a curious performance in as much as none of the singers was able to project their characters enough and yet the evening was vastly enjoyable because of the orchestra's playing and Graham Vick's production.
I have heard the Letter Scene in concert hundreds of times and seen it on stage three score or more times, but I have never been so moved by it since I first heard it, as on this occasion. The young Latvian soprano Maija Kovaloeska looked good and sang nicely without completely getting to grips with either the character or her music. But the London Philharmonic under Jurowksi really touched the spot. The soft playing of the first horn was exceptionally beautiful. We had the Slovakian baritone Ales Jenis as the cad Onegin, an Italian tenor, Massimo Giordano as the fated poet Lensky and a Russian bass, Mikhail Schelomianski as Tatiana's second choice, the Prince Gremin: all adequate, none entirely satisfactory. Chorus excellent.
The production, on the other hand, was not only satisfactory but superb. Graham Vick's productions these days are usually rather wilful and over the top, trying too hard, not content to leave the music speak for itself. But this Onegin was first seen here in 1994. Sometimes the scene is spare (just two chairs for the final confrontation between Onegin and Tatiana) but other scenes are truly memorable: the scene of the duel was hauntingly lit and set, and , best of all, the dance at the Laras in act one, one of the best operatic scenes I have encountered, a real country hop with chidren larking about and all.
The evening began coldly, but soon warmed up, thanks to Jurowski's passionate yet elegant, life-enhancing realisation of Tchaikovsky's evergreen masterpiece. Mrs Tchaikovsky may have been repellent in the composer's eyes, but she inspired one of the greatest and most lovable of operas.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Book Review
THE REST IS NOISE
Listening to the Twentieth Century
Alex Ross
Pp 624
Fourth Estate £20
This book is well worth the money – the best survey I’ve come across, a worthy successor to Constant Lambert’s Music Ho! Which came out in 1834, wildly witty, entertainingly opinionated but wise at times. Alex Ross’s survey is more inclusive, also wise, not many jokes but entertaining, informative and eminently sane; and inducing compulsive page turning.
Both books preface with Shakespeare: Lambert has “The Music Ho! Let’s to billiards”; Ross has “…the rest is silence…. why does the drum come hither?” Ross does not scintillate like Lambert but the writing is good, reading more like a historical novel than a textbook.
Ross begins, interestingly not with Schoenberg or The Rite of Spring but with the premiere in 1906 in Graz of Richard Strauss’s opera Salome (dedicated to an English banker!) Apparently Mahler was there and Berg, Puccini and possibly Adolf Hitler and, in imagination, Adrian Leverkühn. Ross’s range is almost incredibly wide, he seems to have researched everything there is to know or has been written about the music, the composers and the times they lived in. Like Lambert, Ross thinks that Sibelius was a good way forward, even though many took the atonal path, perhaps for the general bad. Ross is good on jazz (as befits a writer many of us know and admire for his/her articles in the New Yorker), overpraises Copland, and sums up well Berlin in the twenties and the Soviet scene. There are very good sections on Kurt Weill, Peter Grimes and Wozzeck. Messiaen, minimalist and the latest trends, ways forward and dead ends all receive lively comment.
Quibbles; apart from Britten, our British worthies get short shrift, Tippett just mentioned, Adès considered over-rated; and Ross seems to point an accusing finger by smearing Strauss: “On the day that Capriccio was finished, 682 Jews are killed in Romania, 1500 in Latvia” and more in the same vein. Not nice, surely not germane.
Did you notice that I referred to Alex Ross as he/she? That’s because the jacket blurb refers to the author as he, whilst in the preface Ross thanks her husband. Never mind, which way Tiresias/ Ross dresses, he/she has written a mighty fine important book.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Viva la Diva
Did you know that Darcey Bussell could speak lines? Or that Kathleen Jenkins could dance? Pop along to your local arena then, and find out for yourself. I popped along to mine (May 10), which happens to be The Dome (remember The Dome?), which seats - eight thousand? During some boring moments of a rehash of The Red Shoes I started doing some sums: 8000 seats, average ticket price £50, crikey that’s a lot of moolah. Mind you, there were quite a lot of artists, technicians and managerial staff to pay, plus the hire of the Dome and shepherds to make sure us sheep got through the car parks and approach walks plus restaurants and shops to our seats.
So what kind of a show did the divas cook up? At least the programme book (price £10 – wow!) told us that the living divas (Bussell and Jenkins) had devised and written the entertainment themselves. Unhelpfully the programme book did not tell us what the items were, or give any credits to composers. The performing area consisted of a stage and a small upstairs space. The central part of the arena, stalls, are on the flat. Never mind, the audience can either look at that stage (performers look rather small) or at either of two large screens on which television cameras project the dancers and singers. Lots of dancers, about a couple of dozen, very good, hard working in a three-hour show (too long but you feel you are getting your money’s worth).
There are about twenty items, based on the work and songs of famous stars and shows of yesterday, stars of screen and records, Callas, Astaire, Charisse, Kelly, Garland, Day, Bassey, Piaf, Monroe, plus Chorus Line, Busby Berkeley, Bob Fosse and the Red Shoes numbers and a flamenco dance and chunks of Carmen and the Barber of Seville.
There is a lot of crossover and Darcey gets to do some snippets of ballet and they are brilliant, especially part of Elite Syncopations (Scott Joplin) and Red Shoes; her showbiz routines do not come off so well but she surprises us at the end with some spirited and efficient tap dancing.
Has Kathleen Jenkins swum into your ken yet? Did you know that she is the only singer in musical history simultaneously to hold the number 1,2,3 and 4 positions in the classical album charts, only last year? Her Piaf is not very good but her Rossini Una voce poco fa was, despite the fact that on certain notes she displays a king sized disfiguring judder.
What both Darcey and Kathleen have is charming personalities, beautiful faces and good figures. But they are short of sex appeal. Their costumes are gorgeous and they both can take the stage (and the screen). The show sometimes falls between the stools of televisions and theatre but on the whole it is efficiently done, imaginatively staged and the supporting dancers and band are first rate.
The audience? Well, the arena was absolutely packed. Where did they all come from and who were they? Middle class, those around me came from Purley, Streatham, Chelsea and Notting Hill Gate. Mostly middle aged, no foreigners, all white. They applauded dutifully but not over enthusiastically, not surprisingly since they were watching screens rather than the distant performers. I had the feeling somewhat that I was a prole in some 1984 entertainment, sitting in a vast arena, watching distant figures on a screen. But there was not Big Brother, only two talented likeable Big Sisters.
So what kind of a show did the divas cook up? At least the programme book (price £10 – wow!) told us that the living divas (Bussell and Jenkins) had devised and written the entertainment themselves. Unhelpfully the programme book did not tell us what the items were, or give any credits to composers. The performing area consisted of a stage and a small upstairs space. The central part of the arena, stalls, are on the flat. Never mind, the audience can either look at that stage (performers look rather small) or at either of two large screens on which television cameras project the dancers and singers. Lots of dancers, about a couple of dozen, very good, hard working in a three-hour show (too long but you feel you are getting your money’s worth).
There are about twenty items, based on the work and songs of famous stars and shows of yesterday, stars of screen and records, Callas, Astaire, Charisse, Kelly, Garland, Day, Bassey, Piaf, Monroe, plus Chorus Line, Busby Berkeley, Bob Fosse and the Red Shoes numbers and a flamenco dance and chunks of Carmen and the Barber of Seville.
There is a lot of crossover and Darcey gets to do some snippets of ballet and they are brilliant, especially part of Elite Syncopations (Scott Joplin) and Red Shoes; her showbiz routines do not come off so well but she surprises us at the end with some spirited and efficient tap dancing.
Has Kathleen Jenkins swum into your ken yet? Did you know that she is the only singer in musical history simultaneously to hold the number 1,2,3 and 4 positions in the classical album charts, only last year? Her Piaf is not very good but her Rossini Una voce poco fa was, despite the fact that on certain notes she displays a king sized disfiguring judder.
What both Darcey and Kathleen have is charming personalities, beautiful faces and good figures. But they are short of sex appeal. Their costumes are gorgeous and they both can take the stage (and the screen). The show sometimes falls between the stools of televisions and theatre but on the whole it is efficiently done, imaginatively staged and the supporting dancers and band are first rate.
The audience? Well, the arena was absolutely packed. Where did they all come from and who were they? Middle class, those around me came from Purley, Streatham, Chelsea and Notting Hill Gate. Mostly middle aged, no foreigners, all white. They applauded dutifully but not over enthusiastically, not surprisingly since they were watching screens rather than the distant performers. I had the feeling somewhat that I was a prole in some 1984 entertainment, sitting in a vast arena, watching distant figures on a screen. But there was not Big Brother, only two talented likeable Big Sisters.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
New Rawsthorne for old
March 30 in the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, had the first performance of Edward Harper’s re-orchestration of Alan Rawsthorne’s cantata Kubla Khan and first concert performance of the work. The poem is, of course, one of the best known in the language, frequently anthologised and full of familiar lines. It has an exotic flavour that one might think unlikely material for Rawsthorne, a composer more urban than one for the countryside or the orient, but it brings him to Coleridge’s dreamland with a hint of spice. Harper helps to invoke the atmosphere with some subtle but simple flavouring, mostly flute and xylophone.
If the man from Porlock interrupted Coleridge, it was a bomb from Germany that interrupted Rawsthorne. On the night that the work was given a studio performance at BBC Bristol, Rawsthorne’s flat together with the score and parts from Kubla Khan were destroyed. Despite friends who thought the work one of Alan’s best, he never got around to rewriting the score, All that remained was a vocal score which formed the basis for Harper’s reorchestration. The work lasts sixteen minutes and all but the spicy bits are typical Rawsthorne, from the very opening chords (C major triad anchored by an A flat in the bass). The words ‘a stately pleasure dome’ brings on another fingerprint, a seven-note phrase lifted from the Mathis der Maler symphony by Hindemith that Rawsthorne used again and again as the chief tune of the Street Corner overture.
I once asked Alan why he had set so few poems and he said ‘because I love poetry so much. Music so often drowns it’. Well it doesn’t here in this short cantata: ‘the tumult…prophesying war’ brings the middle section to a climax which dies down into the ‘caves of ice’. ‘Fast thick pants’ avoids bathos and the work ends shortly after ‘the Abyssinian maid’ singing her ‘symphony and song’
The work is a delight, well written for the chorus, with a few pages for solo alto and tenor (sung in Manchester by members of the chamber choir). Harper’s orchestration has style and imagination. But a short choral piece is not easy to programme. Perhaps it might be paired with his friend Constant Lambert’s Rio Grande to make a first half?
Incidentally Lambert was staying with Rawsthorne and his first wife Jessie Hinchcliffe at the time of the Bristol bombings and was seen helping to quell the flames… with small watering can. It was also in a review of Rawsthorne’s enchanting Theme and Variations for two unaccompanied violins that he write “If one wondered at the many passages of double-stopping in this work one had to remember that, as well as studying music the composer had taken a course in dentistry.
If the man from Porlock interrupted Coleridge, it was a bomb from Germany that interrupted Rawsthorne. On the night that the work was given a studio performance at BBC Bristol, Rawsthorne’s flat together with the score and parts from Kubla Khan were destroyed. Despite friends who thought the work one of Alan’s best, he never got around to rewriting the score, All that remained was a vocal score which formed the basis for Harper’s reorchestration. The work lasts sixteen minutes and all but the spicy bits are typical Rawsthorne, from the very opening chords (C major triad anchored by an A flat in the bass). The words ‘a stately pleasure dome’ brings on another fingerprint, a seven-note phrase lifted from the Mathis der Maler symphony by Hindemith that Rawsthorne used again and again as the chief tune of the Street Corner overture.
I once asked Alan why he had set so few poems and he said ‘because I love poetry so much. Music so often drowns it’. Well it doesn’t here in this short cantata: ‘the tumult…prophesying war’ brings the middle section to a climax which dies down into the ‘caves of ice’. ‘Fast thick pants’ avoids bathos and the work ends shortly after ‘the Abyssinian maid’ singing her ‘symphony and song’
The work is a delight, well written for the chorus, with a few pages for solo alto and tenor (sung in Manchester by members of the chamber choir). Harper’s orchestration has style and imagination. But a short choral piece is not easy to programme. Perhaps it might be paired with his friend Constant Lambert’s Rio Grande to make a first half?
Incidentally Lambert was staying with Rawsthorne and his first wife Jessie Hinchcliffe at the time of the Bristol bombings and was seen helping to quell the flames… with small watering can. It was also in a review of Rawsthorne’s enchanting Theme and Variations for two unaccompanied violins that he write “If one wondered at the many passages of double-stopping in this work one had to remember that, as well as studying music the composer had taken a course in dentistry.
After the cantata and the interval came the huge Resurrection Second Symphony of Mahler. Who but Mahler would have dared take on such a subject? And make it work? Positively cosmic. Doom and gloom, then breathtaking beauty, renewal and love.
The Amadeus Orchestra is, I understand, a training organisation But it was equal to Mahler’s demands and spirit. Philip Mackenzie was thoroughly in control conducting a convincing performance with several local choirs and two excellent soloists in Elizabeth Atherton and Jeanette Ager. The performance did not do justice to the pianissimo choral section but after some sagging about ¾ way through, the tension returned for the final climax.
The Amadeus Orchestra is, I understand, a training organisation But it was equal to Mahler’s demands and spirit. Philip Mackenzie was thoroughly in control conducting a convincing performance with several local choirs and two excellent soloists in Elizabeth Atherton and Jeanette Ager. The performance did not do justice to the pianissimo choral section but after some sagging about ¾ way through, the tension returned for the final climax.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Colin Davis celebrates with New Passion
Sir Colin Davis has been celebrating his 80th birthday in style, conducting Berlioz with the French National Orchestra, Gerontius in Boston, the Fauré Requiem in Dresden, Messiaen in London plus Cosi Fan Tutte at Covent Garden, recordings of the Beethoven Piano Concertos (with Kissin), Creation and the Mozart Requiem, a Matthew Passion in Amsterdam and concerts with the New York Philharmonic. Quite a year for him. He was born in September 1927.
The culmination of this anniversary year was the world premiere in the London Barbican of a St. John Passion by the Scottish composer James MacMillan. Sir Colin has played quite a few works by this composer and asked him to write something for this occasion, the work to be repeated in Amsterdam, Boston and Berlin; quite a send-off for MacMillan, born 1959, the more so because the Passion was recorded last Sunday, 27 March.
MacMillan is a committed Catholic and that faith shines in the musicthat he has composed whose performance forms part of the LSO Belief series. This John passion lasts about 100 minutes, has a baritone soloistwho sings words from the gospel and other sources, presumably by the com-poser. The text is sung by a chamber choir for narration, a large chorusfor comment and some portions in Latin of a more reflective and objectivenature. The composer writes, "The instrumental approach was to make a sparse and lean texture (so there is limited percussion, no harps or the usual keyboards)"
This statement is baffling because the orchestral part is anything but sparse and I think it must be the loudest oratorio ever written. The brass and percussion, the big guns, are brought into prominence for 80% of the piece. Overkill. The trombones snarl continually, drummers whack away ear-splittingly and the big tam-tam gong sounds altogether too much. For contrast three solo violins provide a sort of overhanging filigree. There are quieter moments for the chorus (beautiful writing) towards the end of part one and similar moments in the second part, which contains a setting of the Stabat Mater poem. There are ten separate sections, the final one Sanctus immortalies, miserere nobis, being for the orchestra alone, mainly for strings, putting one in mind of the third act prelude to Parsifal. Curiously enough, in this movement the cellos quote the first four notes, unaccompanied, of the prelude to Tristan (but without the chord).
Each time Christus sings - a masterly performance by Christopher Maltman - the first vowel has many notes, rather like the incipit in an illuminated manuscript. The choral writing is fine and at times a wailing portamenti is used. Whenever Pilate speaks wood blocks sound, for all the world like popping corks. The texture is usually very dense; behind a layer of sound, an almost alien other instrument is heard, as if in another room. Despite the extreme loudness the music is basically geared to tonality, give or take an occasional Charles Ives-like use of two keys at once. One section that puzzled me and sent me to check with my Bible to see if it appeared there (no, it doesn’t) was entitled The Reproaches: Christ bitterly asking "My people, what have I done to you?" and listing all the wrongs done to Him. This struck me as alien, un-Christ like.
This music has a soul, sincerity fairly batters the senses. But it impresses, rather than moving the emotions. No doubt it is useless these days to expect melodies that stick in the memory or even melodic fragments that are memorable; MacMillan doesn’t beguile the listener or strike the heart as, say, Britten's War Requiem does. Sir Colin did a marvellous job: chorus, soloist, orchestra; all sounded totally prepared and absolutely committed.
The culmination of this anniversary year was the world premiere in the London Barbican of a St. John Passion by the Scottish composer James MacMillan. Sir Colin has played quite a few works by this composer and asked him to write something for this occasion, the work to be repeated in Amsterdam, Boston and Berlin; quite a send-off for MacMillan, born 1959, the more so because the Passion was recorded last Sunday, 27 March.
MacMillan is a committed Catholic and that faith shines in the musicthat he has composed whose performance forms part of the LSO Belief series. This John passion lasts about 100 minutes, has a baritone soloistwho sings words from the gospel and other sources, presumably by the com-poser. The text is sung by a chamber choir for narration, a large chorusfor comment and some portions in Latin of a more reflective and objectivenature. The composer writes, "The instrumental approach was to make a sparse and lean texture (so there is limited percussion, no harps or the usual keyboards)"
This statement is baffling because the orchestral part is anything but sparse and I think it must be the loudest oratorio ever written. The brass and percussion, the big guns, are brought into prominence for 80% of the piece. Overkill. The trombones snarl continually, drummers whack away ear-splittingly and the big tam-tam gong sounds altogether too much. For contrast three solo violins provide a sort of overhanging filigree. There are quieter moments for the chorus (beautiful writing) towards the end of part one and similar moments in the second part, which contains a setting of the Stabat Mater poem. There are ten separate sections, the final one Sanctus immortalies, miserere nobis, being for the orchestra alone, mainly for strings, putting one in mind of the third act prelude to Parsifal. Curiously enough, in this movement the cellos quote the first four notes, unaccompanied, of the prelude to Tristan (but without the chord).
Each time Christus sings - a masterly performance by Christopher Maltman - the first vowel has many notes, rather like the incipit in an illuminated manuscript. The choral writing is fine and at times a wailing portamenti is used. Whenever Pilate speaks wood blocks sound, for all the world like popping corks. The texture is usually very dense; behind a layer of sound, an almost alien other instrument is heard, as if in another room. Despite the extreme loudness the music is basically geared to tonality, give or take an occasional Charles Ives-like use of two keys at once. One section that puzzled me and sent me to check with my Bible to see if it appeared there (no, it doesn’t) was entitled The Reproaches: Christ bitterly asking "My people, what have I done to you?" and listing all the wrongs done to Him. This struck me as alien, un-Christ like.
This music has a soul, sincerity fairly batters the senses. But it impresses, rather than moving the emotions. No doubt it is useless these days to expect melodies that stick in the memory or even melodic fragments that are memorable; MacMillan doesn’t beguile the listener or strike the heart as, say, Britten's War Requiem does. Sir Colin did a marvellous job: chorus, soloist, orchestra; all sounded totally prepared and absolutely committed.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Arabella hits Australia
Which opera by Richard Strauss has a text by Hoffmannsthal, a big soprano monologue to end act one, an important transvestite role and waltzes galore? Trick question, but the answer is not Der Rosenkavalier but Arabella, 16 years younger, premiere in 1955 in troubled times. The Nazis interfered with the production and Strauss's choice of conductor. The crits were mostly anti, pointing out the obvious similarities. However, there are many choice moments even though Act Two is not a bad time to have dinner. You would then miss the pallid waltzes that lack the charm and memorability of the earlier opera. Though it would be a pity to miss the duet at the beginng of the act, between Arabella and Mandryka, der richtige mann (Mr Right). But the first and third acts contain the best music: the fortune teller's at the very beginning where the orchestra fizzes about and Mandryka's aria where the Croatian country-man talks about his life and forests in the backwoods.. .and his wealth, offering his wallet to Arabella's father, Count Waldemer, who is a bad gambler and has come to Vienna to try to restore his fortune by a good marriage for his elder daughter, Arabella (to save money ? her sister has to pretend to be a man); Mandryka memorably says to the Count: "Teschek, bedien dich" - help yourself, mate. The best music, as so in often with Strauss, comes in the closing scene when Arabella descends the staircase of the hotel (where the family is lodging) holding out a glass of water to Mandryka (an old Croatian betrothal custom).
Admittedly there are many passages where the composer scores too busily and the tunes are mostly not vintage Strauss, Hoffmansthal (the poor man died before the premiere) was taking a risk with a second Viennese comedy. It needs a really good production to paper over the cracks. And this it had in the Sydney Opera where I was present at the first night, March 7. In charge of the stage was John Cox, veteran master-Strauss director with many successful productions at Glyndebourne. This Arabella was as near perfect a production as you will ever see. Overall and in detail it was the tops.
And sharing the honours was Robert Perdziola, once again aiding by creating wonderful costumes and settings. How Richard Hickox manages to produce such wonderful sounds and playing from his orchestra is a bit of a wonder when his technique seems to be what orchestral players term 'a box of down beats'. One cannot help thinking that a more fluid and linear style might produce even better results. Still, he has just celebrated his 60th birthday and signed up for another five years with Opera Australia, so let's just say "Bravo and Happy Birthday" and leave it at that. The casting was good if not 100% ideal. Best was Peter Coleman-Wright, a natural for Mandryka. He has the range, a fine voice, acts superbly and copes with any extremes that Strauss chucks at him. His real-life wife Cheryl Barker makes a pleasing Arabella, looks fine , sings well and only lacks a little cream in the voice (that cream that Lisa della Casa had a'plenty, the Arabella one could dream about when she sang the role in 1953 in Covent Garden).
Emma Matthews made a fetching Zdenka , the sister in drag, although she is deficient in the rich middle voice that the part calls for, but she has musicality in spades. (Isn't it curious that the chorus, prominent in the ballroom scene Act Two, keeps mum. Might not singing improve the shining hour?). All in all it was an enjoyable evening and made one remember Neville Cardus writing that the 1955 revival at Covent Garden "proved that Strauss was the best person to write a Strauss opera".
The rumour is that the Sydney Opera House is going to close for the whole of 2010 to re-jig the interior according to the architect's original plans. For years now opera has been staged in the smaller of the two halls, the disadvantage being that the acoustic which is bad is not improved by the pit being open, with the result that the orchestra sounds too loud, forcing the singers to bellow to make themselves neard. If the rumour is true, roll on, 2010!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The wizard in Oz
Enter a scruffy maestro, Nigel Kennedy himself, him wiv the bovver left boots, tassels a-dangling. He carries his violin in the left hand, the right hand making footie stadium gestures, punching the air and knuckle-greeting members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, all very with it (and slightly bogus?). He picks up a mike and does some stand-up comic, complete with some naughty Billy Connolly words. At last he relinquishes his mike for his bow and...hey presto, all is forgiven as he launches into the Prelude from Bach's E major Partita. The playing is faultless, likewise the musicianship. A Nigel Kennedy evening has begun. The date is mid-March (15th), the place is the Hamer Hall Melbourne's concert hail, seating over 2500 but with a perfect accoustic, every note clearly heard, good overall balance.Bach over more chat leading up to Nige announcing "Mozart's Concerto in D, K.218, for violin, orchestra and harpsichord." Ello, ello, did he say harpsichord ? Well, that's not in the score, but don't let's fuss, because it can't be heard. Nige occupies quite a large space in the middle of the strings so that he can direct the concert without the use of a conductor (he doesn't think much of the breed as we have heard). The opening tutti is virile and sinewy, no 18th century lace-making. Not too tough but good style. Nige moves around, now encouraging, almost daring them to play their best and beyond. The orchestra obliges, entering into the spirit of the fifty-one year old Maestro's direction, the concert is more of a show than the usual programme. The advertised items are just the Mozart and the Beethoven, just 75 minutes music but the evening lasts very nearly 3 hours.
One unusual feature of the Mozart is that the strings play during parts of the cadenza, sustained chords over which the violin hovers, now in virtuoso style, now rhapsodizing beguilingly in almost Romany style. It was a shock that soon became a pleasure, a fine performance.
To find anything like an equal one, my memory went back a long way; to hearing Szigeti with Sir Thomas Beecham. Mozart over, Nigel chats up the leader of the orchestra, Wilma Smith and they join forces for three enchanting duets of the 44 composed by Bartok. Interval and straight into the Beethoven, fastish tempi, drum taps underplayed. The slow movement was ecstatic, a truly rapt experience - is it not Beethoven's most dreamy piece ? A dithyramb.
Much applause, the audience is enthusiastic and it seems that an encore is in the offing and when it comes it seems the most unlikely of numbers; Monti's Czardas. Stone the crows, mate!Sacrilege ? As much as on the occasion of the Concerto's premiere when between the first and second movements a double-bass did a turn with the instrument played upside down.
I went afterwards backstage and asked some of the orchestra if they enjoyed the evening, had Nige gone too far with his fooling around interludes ? No, they all said, it was great fun and they respected Kennedy because they knew that he played his instrument better than any player in the band. And they were amused when I told them that I knew Nigel before he acquired his cockney accent. Mind you, he was only three months old.
I went afterwards backstage and asked some of the orchestra if they enjoyed the evening, had Nige gone too far with his fooling around interludes ? No, they all said, it was great fun and they respected Kennedy because they knew that he played his instrument better than any player in the band. And they were amused when I told them that I knew Nigel before he acquired his cockney accent. Mind you, he was only three months old.
So...good on you, Nige!
Monday, February 18, 2008
The Goon Show of Lammermoor (English National Opera, 16 February)
It was probably Donizetti's librettist who made Lord Henry Ashton the villain who wrongs Lucia di Lammermoor, instead of Walter Scott's villainess in the novel who was Lucy's mother, thus depriving us of what might have been a great mezzo or contralto role. But in Donizetti's otto cento in Italy one female major role was usually considered the norm. However, we must not complain, because ever since the overwhelmingly successful premiere in Naples in 1835 Lucia di Lammermoor has been hailed as the Italian Romantic Opera par excellence with Lucia's Dotty Scene as the perfect hurdle for coloratura sopranos to jump to fame with, like our Dame Joanie di Sutherland back in 1959 at Covent Garden.
English National Opera premiered a new production of Lucia on Saturday 16 February. Musically it is ten out of ten. every note in place, with quite a few on an instrument rarely heard. Mozart, wrote a Rondo for it, K.617. Old Willi Gluck gave concerts on it and, of all people, Benjamin Franklin became a virtuoso and perfected it, the glass harmonica, a set of glasses tuned so that you produce the notes by running your hand around the rim (a modern parallel would be if George Bush were to play the ondes martenot) - it makes a noise as if the notes were wrapped in tinsel but with upper partials so strong that the sound actually hurts some ears (mine. for one; and, indeed, at one time as a result,the instrument was banned in certain towns in Germany.
So, musically the performance of Donizetti's opera was a treat. But what did we see on stage? Scene one gave a clue to what was going to happen; a Scottish castle with walls that sprouted radiators; now who has ever heard of a Scottish castle with radiators - or one that even nowadays has any heat ? The walls moved and the male chorus entered through the windows; period photographs littered the stage, as they did in most scenes. Lucia soon appears, perched four feet above stage level, so that she has to jump if she wants to move, which she does, wearing a little girl outfit with pantaloons that are on show as she picks herself up after her jump, is this Alice in Lammermoor? The tenor appears and as if to emphasise the fact that he is vertically challenged, he appears on his knees.
English National Opera premiered a new production of Lucia on Saturday 16 February. Musically it is ten out of ten. every note in place, with quite a few on an instrument rarely heard. Mozart, wrote a Rondo for it, K.617. Old Willi Gluck gave concerts on it and, of all people, Benjamin Franklin became a virtuoso and perfected it, the glass harmonica, a set of glasses tuned so that you produce the notes by running your hand around the rim (a modern parallel would be if George Bush were to play the ondes martenot) - it makes a noise as if the notes were wrapped in tinsel but with upper partials so strong that the sound actually hurts some ears (mine. for one; and, indeed, at one time as a result,the instrument was banned in certain towns in Germany.
So, musically the performance of Donizetti's opera was a treat. But what did we see on stage? Scene one gave a clue to what was going to happen; a Scottish castle with walls that sprouted radiators; now who has ever heard of a Scottish castle with radiators - or one that even nowadays has any heat ? The walls moved and the male chorus entered through the windows; period photographs littered the stage, as they did in most scenes. Lucia soon appears, perched four feet above stage level, so that she has to jump if she wants to move, which she does, wearing a little girl outfit with pantaloons that are on show as she picks herself up after her jump, is this Alice in Lammermoor? The tenor appears and as if to emphasise the fact that he is vertically challenged, he appears on his knees.
The villainous brother is seen on a short bed that features in many scenes; he gropes his sister, Lucia, and ties her wrists to the bedposts. Ah, ha. not only villainy but incest too (Incest - the game the whole family can play). And so it goes on, until you wonder whether Donald Alden, the producer of all this madness, should himself be sectioned. Myself, I know Lucia quite well so that soon I began to tolerate, even enjoy, the mad things that happened. But my companion was seeing the opera for the first time and she was very confused by all the goings on. Oh, yes, and there was also an extra going-on that the producer had not arranged. Bidebent the parson came on and opened his mouth; but he was kidding us, poor chap; he had lost his voice and another bloke stood at the side of the stage and sang his notes. Now there is usually a confidante in operas of this period (early nineteenth century, the otto cento, as the Italians call it). She makes her entry, one hand first round the door and then flitting across the stage to a tilting sofa, for all the world like a Hammer Horror.
Now comes the famous sextet (in the old 78 days, it was the only gramophone record, single-sided of' course, to have a white label and sell for sixteen shillings, the costliest of all - Caruso was the tenor, he made a huge success in the part of Edgardo. poor Lucia's intended but thwarted). Barry Banks was the Coliseum's tenor, English, wonderfully fluent, even if the voice is not ideally beautiful. Anna Christy, American, house debut, was a very fine Lucia, every note histrionically convincing.
When it came to the Mad Scene where was the flute obligato? Banished in favour of the musical glasses, apparently Donizetti's original idea to add spookiness to the wildly careering colaratura. Chorus and orchestra were both excellent under the splendidly driving Paul Daniels, back in the pit where for years he was ENO's musical director. So, if you can bear to see a goonish version of Lucia, go to the ENO show at the Coliseum and join the cheering crowds; they are in the majority, critics of this mayhem in the minority.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
A trip to the ballet
WHY do we call afternoon shows matinees ? Probably too late to change it now; but wouldn't apres-midiens be more accurate? Anyway I went on Saturday 6 February to the Royal Ballet performance in Covent Garden which began at 12.30 pm and it was absolutely packed, lots of children. What the little dears made of a tough programme I would like to know; they probably found it easier to take than some of the older ones.
The first item was only the sixth performance of the sensation of 2006: Chroma, choreography by Wayne McGregor, sets by the architect John Pawson, lighting by Lucy Carter - all three need to be mentioned as highly commended. The set was described as "in a sense, charged limbo", a rectangle with another one, raised, towards the back, excitingly lit and frequently metamorphosed.
The choreography, ah!, difficult to describe. It is classical dancing thrust forward in language, legs, arms, neck, head and trunk move in wave not seen before; fluid, rippling, bending, curving, twining, but you really have to see it and I sincerely hope you do, for this is something new and exciting, an extension of the ballet language. What that language is saying is not quite clear but perhaps that is not so important as the sensation of seeing it.
There are ten dancers involved, dancers but here also super athletes too. Twenty minutes is the duration, most of it quick and strenuous almost to the point of violence at times. But there are two brief pas de deux, the first of which I found as unutterably beautiful and rivetting as anything I ever saw on a stage, limbs twined, ravishingly lovely human bodies in motion.
Joby Talbot's music, with some extra settings by Jack White, is up to date, stretched tonality, with hints of minimalism, orientalism and other isms, snappy, strident, plenty to assault the ears but not 'frighten the horses'; not great music but strikingly effective.
Different Drummer is one of MacMillan's troubled pieces, telling the story inside-out fashion of Berg's opera Wozzeck but, weirdly, using not Berg's music but early, stretched, tonal music by Berg's colleagues, Webern (Passacaglia, opus 1) and Schoenberg (the gorgeous string sextet Verklaerte Nacht, an aural counterpart of Klimt?). We see all Buchner's characters as in the opera and the choreography gives ample roles for Marie (Leanne Benjamin) and Wozzeck (Edward Watson) - fine performances both.
The last ballet was Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. I know the generally accepted cliche is that the music is just too powerful for any choreographer to match. But MacMillan gives Stravinsky almost as good as it deserves. The rounds and tribal dances do go on perhaps a bit too long but MacMillan's half-a-hundred corps de ballet (the most numerous in any ballet ?) do wonders and at the end are quite terrifying. And the Sidney Nolan sets and costumes are mightily impressive to look at. Tamara Rojo had recovered sufficiently from her efforts in Chroma to be a vibrant and pulsating sacrificial Chosen One.
Barry Wordsworth celebrated his return to the post of the Royal Ballet's Music Director to conduct thoroughly lively and convincing performances with a responsive Covent Garden Orchestra.
Mikado times two
Political correctness forced Robertsons to remove from their jams the charming gollywog logo. But The Mikado, the most successful of all the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas has survived and is even to be seen in London currently in two productions: by the English National Opera at the London Coliseum in Jonathan Miller's by now quite ancient version, black and white, hardhitting and not at all traditional, and by the Carl Rosa Company in the Gielgud Theatre where it is in repertory until 1 March, in tandem (tricycle?) with Iolanthe and The Pirates of Penzance in something like the traditional style of the D'Oyly Carte productions which adhered to the first prompt book ("two steps down stage, wait for the pause" - and so on)? At the Coli, everything is writ as large as the theatre itself. In the intimate Gielgud. the twenty or so chorus members have to watch they don't bump into one another.
In the good Doctor's writ-large-production the singers are mostly members of the company whereas the Carl Rosa have sought to be sure of bums on seats by bringing in TV favourites who are probably singing for money for the first time in their lives. Thus Jo Brand is Sergeant of Police in Pirates, whilst Alistair McGowan sings (somewhat in parlando fashion but very effectively) the title role in The Mikado, whilst Nichola McAuliffe sings extremely well in a more human portrayal of Katisha than usual.
The Carl Rosa Mikado is quite soft-centred (as opposed to hard-core Doctor Miller) and quite toothsomely kitschy. Since we all know that hypocrisy and lying are the order of the day the production by Peter Molloy has no sting (though however it has a pleasant bite: several anachronistic gags as is usual these days).
I didn't see any Japanese in the audience the night I went (February 4, a Monday traditionally the worst night of the week; and although the audience was most enthusiastic and knowledgable it was sparse - can the impresario Raymond Gubbay keep going, one wonders ?) and I wonder if the Japanese shun it because of its political incorrectness, although in fact ' topsy-turviness' being Gilbert's genre the success of The Mikado is because the entire is not aimed at the Japs but at us British.
So, at the Gielgud we had a small but spirited orchestra (conductor Martin Handley), and excellent chorus and a first-class cast and it is a pleasure to name them: Andrew Rees/Nanki-Poo, Ko-Ko/Fenton Gray, Pooh-Bah Bruce Graham. Charlotte Page/Yum-Yum was pretty but a bit under-parted. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
What a joy this work is ! Sullivan's score is a masterpiece of the genre, so incredibly felicitous. If the words have barbs the music cancels them out, practically every melody is a winner, its presentation perfect. Maybe the cadences can veer towards cliche but otherwise charm, grace and a heaven-sent imagination rule the staves.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Book review
Sandor Vegh in Cornwall: the Hungarian Virtuoso Violinist and the founding of the International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove.
By Hilary Tunstall-Behrens
49 (large)pp £15
IMS 52 Grafton Square, London SW4 ODB Tel. 0207 720 9020
49 (large)pp £15
IMS 52 Grafton Square, London SW4 ODB Tel. 0207 720 9020
Sandor Vegh's claim to fame, a large fame, was as a violinist, leader of a celebrated string quartet bearing his name, a teacher of international renown and a conductor. He was a pupil of the great Hubay, of Kodaly, he led the Budapest National Orchestra, premiered Bartok's String Quartet No. 5 and with his quartet made recordings of the complete set of Beethovens that are still considered one of the best half a century later.
His postwar association with this country was his nine visits to the Summer School of Music at Bryanston, later Darlington, over a period from 1950 to 1979, concerts with the quartet in the fifties, recitals and master classes in the seventies. Students came from far and wide to study with him, for his work with Bartok, Kodaly and, later, Casals somehow led to his playing and teaching embodying the best of the traditions of the nineteenth century. What he taught was imagination and colour, with the bow especially, to make music sound fresh, spontaneous and inspired, so that performances were not manacled to the printed notes or the bar line but took off into the air. And that spontaneity had to be based on proper study, hard work and tradition/experience. His master-classes were inspiring, combining intensity with the basic truths of music that could often bring tears to the eye.
His playing of the late Beethoven quartets almost matched the profundity and spiritual qualities of those works, not forgetting the prodigious skill required to negotiate the abnormally high flying first violin parts of those works. As a soloist he illuminated Bach's solo sonatas and one never-to-be-forgotten evening at Darlington, it felt as if he almost changed our lives with his playing of all three of the Brahms Sonatas.
But at Dartington his classes were part of a large programme of teaching and a visit to Cornwall led to the formation of the seminars at Prussia Cove; master-classes for strings and piano in the spring, chamber music with teachers playing together with students in the autumn, Sandor Vegh in charge. The author of this handsomely produced little book organised the sessions. The Cove is based on a fascinating house with art-decorations, a stone's plop from the sea, not far from Penzance. Here the students and professors live, eat together, work together, play together and, who knows, sometimes sleep together. Now that Vegh is gone (he died in 1997 at the age of 86 according to Behrens, although Groves says 95), Stephen Isserlis is music director.
He was a vast man and his looks led many Americans to ask for what Vegh called his 'autogram', only to be disappointed when they found he was not Charles Laughton. Strong accent: Hungarian mixed with German. From observations over several years in the green room it seemed to me that the other three members of the quartet did not relish his company. It seemed as if they avoided contact as much as possible and that they argued all the time; but that might have something to do with the Hungarian language. The desire of the various members to get away from each other was also apparent. For years Vegh lived in Zurich, the violist and cellist in Geneva and Basle, whilst the second violinist was domiciled in Paris. This meant that the question "Where shall we rehearse ? Your place or mine ?" was fairly important.
Another feature was their reluctance to give balance tests. "We always play the same - so what's the point?" they said. In old age arthritis brought his playing to an end, so he took to conducting: string orchestra versions of quartets and sextets (the Brahms larger chamber works were a speciality) and then recordings with Andras Schiff of all the Mozart Piano concertos, the rehearsals were like master-classes, fine CDs they were.
His wife survives to this day. A stunningly beautiful actress before their marriage, she was bright and witty, protective and trying - sometimes vainly - to curb his appetite for a fattening dish or a pretty girl. He had a good life and he was good for musical life, he brought music to a better life and students nearer the goal.
Hilary tells it like it was and it is a heartening story, including good quotes (particularly from Susan Tomes who played many times for his classes and writes of them perceptively). Some of Vegh's sayings are included and they tell something of his wisdom: "to be a soloist one must also be a chamber musician; if I engender a tension be it physical or mental, its corollary must be a relaxation of that tension; there is never an authentic interpretation; never be a slave to your violin. First be a musician and then a violinist; make music with love and joy". Vegh lived all these sayings, especially the last.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Remembering Rubinstein
An evening with this title was given on January 22. It was a curate's egg affair. Good were the filmed tributes from Zubin Menta the conductor and Daniel Barenboim the everything in music. Good were the film clips of the the great pianist Artur Rubinstein although vile was the sound. Bad was the discussion with Ronald Harwood interviewing the pianist Janina Fialowski. the leader and violist of the Guarneri String Quartet, and the producer of Rubinstein's records. Once again the sound was poor even when Annabelle Weidenfeld tweaked the mikes, She was the instigator of the evening nominally arranged by the Artur Rubinstein International Society. (I'm sure that she was responsible for the five foot high cylindrical hammocks awash witn jonquil and other spring flowers, stunningly beautiful).
Good was the playing after the interval of Mozart's late D major piano sonata k.576 by Alexander Gravylyuk, winner of the 2005 Artur Rubinstein Piano Competition, clear, fresh. But the disappoinment of the evening was the final item, Schumann's glorious Piano Quintet. Fialowska, Rubinstein's protege was adequate but the Guarneri Quartet co-heroes of so many magnificent recordings with Rubinstein, were tame and lacklustre. They formed in 1974 and were, alas, past their sell-by date.
During the performance there was plenty of time to remember Rubinstein. What a career and how long he continued to give pleasure! He was born almost exactly 125 years ago in Poland. The great violinist Joachim heard the boy and took charge of his education and conducted his debut in Potsdam, sending him to Max Bruch for theory and Padrewski for piano. As we saw in the excellent slides throughout the evening even as a tousle-headed kid, Artur looked recognisably similar. The slides included portraits by many artists, including Picasso and Cocteau. His career leapt upwards but in 1952 his new, adorable wife Nela persuaded Artur to take time off to regroup, improving his technique and disciplining himself. He had too easy a time and took life itself too easily. Now a vastly better pianist, he went from triumph to triumph. In Mozart, Beethoven. Schubert , Schumann and Brahms he played as well as his peers, in Chopin, Spanish and Latin-American music he reigned supreme; and he was a wonderful chamber music player, especially with The Guarneri, and with his piano trio with Heifetz and Feuermann, later Piatigorsky, despite constant rows with Heifetz because of his yobbish manners and, worse, the way he hogged the microphone.His repertory was large up to and including his friend and compatriot Symanowski, his stamina enabling him to programme concertos two at a time (Brahms) and even three at a time (Beethoven). He also had a penchant for lighter music such as the Saint-Saens G minor which he had played for over seventy years with unbelievable charm.
He also possessed remarkable recall of events in his life. The first volume of his autobiography My Young Years is a great read, entertaining and enlightening. Alas, volume two, written when his sight had failed him as he approached his ninetieth birtnday, is repetitive and dull, a catalogue of conquests at the piano and in the bedroom.
He was a great pianist, a great musician and a great entertainer so that remembering Rubinstein was also a great pleasure - for anybody old enough to do so; or anybody who listens to his vast number of recordings. Pity about the curate's egg.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Billy Budd, The Barbican, 9 December 2007
When Britten announced that he was going to write an all-male opera we thought he was barking mad (just as we did when he said he was writing a requiem interspersing Wilfred Owen poems with sections of the liturgy - and that turned out to be his most popular work: it made,as Michael Flanders quipped, Bundles for Britten, just as he also said of Billy Budd, the all-male opera, that it made Joan Cross. One more quip and then I'll be serious: Britten sent Michael Tippett a copy of the libretto of Budd, asking for comments. Tippett replied saying what a good libretto Eric Crozier and E.M.Forster had written. But he suggested that a line in act One might be misconstrued: Claggart at one point sings "Clear the decks of seamen". Britten wrote back saying what a filthy mind Michael had: but he cut the line.
All this apropos two concert performances (both packed, in the Barbican; I heard the second, December 9) of Billy Budd meticulously prepared by the London Symphony Orchestra under its principal guest conductor,Daniel Harding, conducted with great accuracy, enthusiasm and perception.
It is a large cast and the performance was dominated by Gidon Saks in the part of Claggart, master-at-arms and villain of the piece. This character is so depraved and disliked that it has proved from the premiere (which I saw at Covent Garden fifty-six years ago, December 1951) onward the most difficult of roles to make credible. Saks needed no stage to project a frightening villain, masterfully sung. The audience sensed that this was an overwhelming performance by a great artist.
The title role was sympathetically sung by Nathan Gunn. The Peter Pears role of Captain Vere was sung by lan Bostridge. This concert was the opening salvo in a Barbican series devised by and featuring the tenor lan Bostridge but, truth to tell, his performance, though sung with great understanding and consummate musucianship, was the least satisfying vocally. Style there was in plenty, but vocal beauty was sadly lacking. The large cast distinguished iteelf and it would be invidious to mention one without mentioning all; nevertheless Andrew Tortise forces himself into print here because he made such a convincing sneak of Squeak, Claggart's creature and provocateur. Chorus and orchestra completed the round of performance excellence.
What a great opera is Billy Budd: Grimes was a wonderful first opera but Budd is an even greater work, like an arrow directed so firmly at the target, all of a piece musically with its unique concentration of dark colours (below the Plimsoll line ?) woodwind and brass to the fore, dramatic thrust, the conflict as Vere is faced with the opposing forces of duty and morality. That he fails as a human being is of course what makes the drama so telling. The anti-climax
when the mist thwarts the HMS Indomitable from getting to grips with the enemy is gripping for the audience. (It was typically crass that the British Council sent the original Covent Garden production for performance in Paris and wondered why it didn't go down too well, especially the scene when the officers sing the lines: "Don't like the French.Don't like their Frenchified ways.")
With all the stupid 'concept' productions that do their utmost to disregard the composer's intentions, an intelligent concert performance like the present one is something of a blessing and a relief.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Parsifal, Covent Garden, 6 December
I saw the last performance in the present Covent Garden run of Wagner's Parsifal and it was probably the last time that Sir John Tomlinson sang the part of Gurnemanz (all 65 minutes of it - the longest role in opera ?) and perhaps the last time we shall hear Bernard Haitink conduct it. The word was that the Dutch musician was going slow but the duration was only fifteen minutes slower than the estimated four hours. In old age Toscanini got notably faster, Klemperer and Giulini slower (sometimes their singers gasped like fish out of water). Tomlinson wobbled a bit at the top but nobody cared about that for the main part of the voice is still a glorious instrument. I've heard many Gurneys in sixty years but Sir John tops the lot, not only because of his voice, but because of his acting, his sympathetic approach and his effortless command of the stage and the music.
Haitink led his admiring orchestra to glory, they played their hearts out for him and, since the orchestra and the chorus carry the tunes (I suppose that in Wagner you could say that the orchestra is the meat, solo voices the veg). Petra Lang sang well as Kundry and looked well too, having mastered the art of standing or sitting still but conveying much. Wagner is reported to have considered Kundry his most interesting female role; in which case why did he confine her part in the third act to singing just two words; 'lch dien" ? She was dressed in dark colours throughout - why on earth didn't the costume designer let her slip into something loose (with brighter colours) for her vamping of Parsifal in the Magic Garden scene ? And, speaking of costumes,. Parsifal was dressed in an old jersey with baggy pants, looked as if he had just come from a village football game. Incidentally if Guremanz has the longest part in opera, Parsifal has one of the shortest hero parts, just 23 minutes singing.
Indeed if the music was glorious and did not make one regret that a balcony seat cost £175, the production was scarcely worth change for a pound. For instance, that scene where Klingsor throws the Spear at Parsifal; in the old days at least some attempt was made with wires; could not present-day technology fudge up something better than just turning off the lights as Klingsor hurls and switching them on again with Parsifal holding the said spear (money back!)? Christopher Ventris has played the Fool in five productions during the last ten years but this was his Covent Garden debut as Parsifal. He gets through right enough but he glows rather than shines and the production doesn' let us know if he can act. Also debuting in the house was Falk Struckmann, an adequate Amfortas without appealing charms - the programme is dolefully uninformative about him, as it is about most of the artists. Klingsor was suitably blackhearted in a red dressing gown, dark brown in voice and multi-coloured is nis villainy, Willard White was the singer. The best thing in the £6 programme book is the illuminating article on the opera by Lucy Beckett.
All in all then - and continuing the culinary idea - musically this production delivered a shining, perfectly prepared dish, whereas the production laid an egg. Thank you, Sir John, thank you (Sir) Bernard (hon.KBE), thank you Miss Lang, thank you Willard White, thank you Glynne Howell (a fine Titurel), but shame on you Covent Garden for not matching the musical excellence with a tolerable production.
What a genius is the composer Richard Wagner and how adored he is by so many! His admirers are fiercer in their adoration than lovers of other classical or romantic composers. The majority of music buffs swear by him. And we others who cannot abide his operas, what of us? Why do we not relish the Ring?
I myself concede that he is a great genius and I can still bear to attend a performance of Parsifal, only that one amongst his oeuvre. I am convinced he was on the wrong tack when he declared: "The melody must therefore spring, quite of itself, from out of the words; it must not attract attention as sheer melody for its own sake, but only in so far as it was the most expressive vehicle for an emotion already plainly outlined in the words. Given this conception of melody, I now completely abandoned the usual mode of operatic composition and no longer tried for customary melody, or in a sense for melody at all, but absolutely let the vocal line base itself upon the expressive utterance of the words.. I heightened the individuality of this expression by a more and more symbolic treatment of the instrumental orchestra....."
And there you have it; Wagner's vocal lines in solo singing have left the stage for the pit and the orchestra becomes more important. For the most part the vocal lines have notes related to the harmonies in the orchestra. Which becomes tedious. And that tedium is pointed up in those places in the score when Wagner returns to the old order, the voices sing melody and the music takes wing, as in much of act One of Valkyries, the Woodbird's Song, parts of the duet in Siegfried, Wotan's Farewell, the Prize Song and the Quintet in Meistersinger and various other parts of the operas, notably in the choral passages. And why does he return to writing melody ? Because of its greater power to capture our hearts. The orchestral sections capture our hearts because there are no dull vocal lines. The orchestra has all those motives which go amazingly deep into our subconscious.
Another reason for distaste for much of the operas concerns the incredibly slow pace that the drama moves at, as if stuck in a time warp, like some of the old black and white silent films. Repetition palls too of which there are many examples in Parsifal, for example Gurnemanz goes on and on, nagging the boy for having shot the swan.
Bernard Miles pondered the idea of a shortened Ring which might have consisted of the beginning and end of Rheingold, most of act One of Valkyries, Wotan's Farewesll, the Tinkers chorus and some of the love duet from Siegfried preceded by the Hero encompassing the firegirt rock, Journey down the Rhine, the glee club number, the Hero's death, march, and the finale from Gotterdamerung, plus all the bits where the orchestra plays alone. I'd book for this straightaway. And I am sure many others would join me. Wouldn't it be luvverly ?
Monday, November 26, 2007
Beaux Arts Trio, Wigmore Hall, 19 November 2007
So, farewell, Menanem Pressler, farewell Beaux Arts Trio, you gave the musical world supreme enjoyment with. your performances of a thoroughly satisfying repertoire. You gave your first concert in 1953, fifty four years ago. Violinists and cellists have come and gone,'the Beaux Arts Superior String Players Employment Agency', but you. Menahem, were the one and only pianist. You listened to your colleagues, sure. but they listened to you and your views, your style, your musicianship affected them, rubbed off you. turned them into Beaux Artists. You were the little guy in the line-up, your face like a boy, babyish and innocent, constantly turning towards your colleagues, your mouth almost like an amorous goldfish as you encouraged them to make music, to serve the composer, to play your heart out and to play every grupetto, every sforzando chord, every note and every phrase as if'your life depended on it. The piano trio is tricky to balance but you excelled in just that. You accompanied the string players, you blended perfectly with them and you only overwhelmed them when the composer wanted you too - in, say, the finale of the Ravel Trio, when you, positively deluged their trills with your ecstatic fortissimo chords.
Every phrase you placed,, seemed just what the composer asked for, you could be as soft and delicate as gossamer, you could thunder like Jove, but your playing of music that was neither loud nor soft, what might be called your 'bread-and-butter' playing, that was so meaningful and so beautiful. 'Rarely,rarely comest thou', oh pianist of perfection like the wizard who was born in Magdeburg in 1925, studied in Israel and then in America with Egon Petri, winning a Debussy Prize in San Francisco at the age of seventeen. You were a formidable soloist (I remember your Dvorak Concerto in New York) but the B.A.Trio is what the musical world will remember for a long time, a memory fortunately perpetuated in your vast collection of recordings.
Your appreciation of various styles seemed limitless, your Haydn and Mozart as satisfying as your performances of anything,later, up to Ravel and Shostakovich. We critics are, alas, apt to carp if we get a chance and when we write we remember Blake's saying 'Damn braces,, bless relaxes', yes, we do a lot of bracing. But the B.A. have had all us hacks permanently in the 'bless' mode.
The farewell concerts in Londin's Wigmore Hall on November 18 and 19 were devoted to Schubert and Beethoven. I heard the latter when they played the Kakadu Variations and the Archduke, performances that showed the maturity we expect, but tempered with freshness and vitality. Daniel Hope, violin, and Antonio Meneses are as good, if not better, than some of the other players of the past.
The audience stood at the end to thank the musicians and to say goodbye. Pressler's fingers are as good as ever but in future he will mainly be teaching. The other two we shall, hear more of. Hope is springing if not eternally, then quite frequently in the U.K. these days.
Encores? yes, of course: rather curiously the slow movement of LvB's Clarinet Trio (parts redistributed) Opus 11 and then the squib second movement of Trio No. 2 by Shostakovich.
Goodbye, Beaux Arts Trio, and thank you.
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