Messiah

Barbican, London

17 December 2013

Countertenor Iestyn Davies in Handel's Eternal Source of Light Devine,. 

Not from the Messiah, but gives some sense of what Davies can do with decent accompaniment. From here.

A tedious performance wasting talented musicians.

This was the most anaemic Messiah I have encountered. That’s not necessarily because the forces were small, though in the Barbican it didn’t help.

It’s more that conductor Bernard Labadie adopted a deadening approach to tempi, and phrasing.

Handel, I feel, could have set the phone book in a pulse-quickening manner. In this work almost every aria, and every chorus, is exciting or memorable. Contemplating the refiner’s fire, or the wrongful sufferings of Christ, or the justice of the last judgement, brings out the best in the composer. Messiah also confirms that music can be dramatic even if there is no clear narrative, or characters.

On the plus side, the excellent diction from the soloists and chorus allowed us to recognise Jennens’ contribution in selecting some of the best verses from the King James’ Version of the Bible.

On the minus, I left wondering how Handel could have orchestrated the work so feebly. Perhaps this is the test of a decent performance. It should make us ignore the orchestration.

Slow tempi needn’t be a problem, but consistently smoothed-over phrasing certainly is. Every opportunity for contrast and vigour was missed, producing a single mush of beautiful, polite tones. The Hallelujah chorus lacked gusto, or even vulgarity, which would have been an acceptable substitute.

I suppose the many fans of countertenor Iestyn Davies would be happy, at least. His voice is beautiful, but that doesn’t in itself create drama, and in the event his arias only intensified the somnolescent effect.

The other singers also had ‘period instrument’ voices, ie no vibrato, which is a pity but it is not possible to blame them for the overall dreariness of the evening. Amazingly, the greatest aria in the work, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth, worthy of Bach, was a failure,  and surely that does reflect badly on soprano Lydia Teuscher.

Unwisely, this was a full-length performance, lasting around 3 hours (with short interval). An endurance test.

Carol recital

St Mary-at-Hill, London

5 December 2013

Warlock's Adam Lay Ybounden, in its more familiar choral version,.

The words are gratefully indistinct, even when sung by the Choir of King's College Cambridge. From here.

Making the words of carols audible only highlights the vulgarity of Christmas, with few exceptions.

Yet another cleverly programmed free lunchtime recital in a London church, scandalously under-attended. I haven’t seen anyone at these events who looks like they work in the capital’s financial district, so it’s sad that these great venues and concerts are inconveniently located for music-lovers.

The paradoxically austere intimacy of Wren’s church, lit by the midday sun, jarred with the traditional idea of a carol concert, but actually this wasn’t too traditional. For one thing, the words were clear.

Regarding the mismatch between words and music, carols represent an extreme version of all that is despicable and complacent in modern Christianity. The music of the worst example here, Cooke’s O Men from the Field, blithely ignores the understandable fear the poem states the shepherds felt when angels appeared and directed them to God’s incarnation. The Holly and the Ivy, also presented here, has one of the finest poems addressing what is supposed to be a mysterious fusion of joy and tragedy, but nothing of this is evident in Sharp’s famous but sentimental musical setting.

The problem is highlighted, but not solved, in two appealing carols by a contemporary composer, Thomas Hewitt Jones. Here the words struggle with the myth of the tragic incarnation, but the result is a victim of its own success: the repellent aspects of a god sacrificing his own son are out of synch with the rest of the carols. Perhaps they are better suited for Easter.

Two of the finest works here were settings of disturbing poems. Rubbra’s Rune of Hospitality sets a poem that treats Jesus as if he were the Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid, disguising himself as a beggar to test his people’s charity. So generosity to the poor is linked firmly with self-interest. The other disturbing highlight was Warlock’s setting of the medieval Adam Lay Ybounden, an astonishing celebration of the redeeming power of sin that boldly reinforced the ‘acetic priest’ underpinnings of the religion.

Robert Smith, the pianist, is also an organist, so the concert contained two solo organ works by Buxtehude, and two songs accompanied on that instrument. Turning the necessity of having to move around into inventiveness, the seating plan allowed the audience to focus on the architecture, a very good idea given the visual dullness of a typical concert.

Tenor Charles MacDougall gave helpful synopses of the carols and why they were in this particular order; song texts were unnecessary given his clear diction.

Performance-wise, the only mistake in the programme was Adam’s rapturous O Holy Night (in English); otherwise the recital seemed ideally chosen to reveal the rottenness of this season.

Napoléon

Royal Festival Hall

30 November 2013

For once, a non-shit trailer, from here.

The greatest historical drama?

More accurately, the film should be called Young Napoléon, because although it lasts five and a half hours, it only reached his invasion of Italy, as commander of the French armies, not yet even First Citizen. Mind-bogglingly, writer-director Abel Gance intended this as the first of six films covering the central character’s life.

The ambition and scale of all this is staggering. The nearest comparison is with Peter Jackson’s six films adapted from Tolkein. And like Jackson, Gance is passionately in love with the visceral possibilities of a mobile camera and with spectacular set-pieces.

This kind of thrillingly edited experience is what Hollywood does best, in which case Gance should be its patron saint.

The film has been criticised as being proto-fascist, and it clearly is, but it is no moreso than many other artworks, especially those in the Romantic tradition. The ‘strong leader’ model of government has proponents even today among even within the ‘enlightened’ development community. And if Napoléon’s life cannot be presented as Romantic, whose can?

Gance and his team aren’t crude propagandists. The battle sequences are brutal, surely influenced by the 1914-18 European war. His hero takes on the mantle of the French Revolution but significantly doesn’t promise not to betray it. From the first sequences of a snowfight, Napoléon is presented as a Lord of Misrule, who not only thrives in apparent chaos but delights in it.

Combined with a well-constructed misanthropy, these characteristics make him a hero for his cruel, tumultuous times. And the film conveys these times with a gusto that works more effectively than naturalism.

Truffaut excitedly claimed that every shot contributed to furthering the story, the experience, that nothing was wasted. That is an impossible claim, but I did feel that at least every scene made a contribution, and was conscious throughout of momentum. The characters are so well known, their fate so well known, that the film makes no pretence of surprise; yet the tension is sustained throughout.

The only comparison I can make is with Shakespeare's Henry V, where the audience knows the outcome, shares the author's misgivings, yet still gets carried away by the glory and excitement of war and of 'history' unfolding.

The cast is phenomenal; it's as if they stepped from the late eighteenth century. There is no weak link.

The other, very prominent, ingredient in the success of this experience is Carl Davis' live score, a thundering postmodern mashup of composers from the period, most especially Beethoven. It's more brilliant than that suggests, however, for Davis gives the hero a recurring Brucknerian theme that seamlessly blends with the souped-up Beethoven.

The score, then, is also a masterpiece, and it was a privilege to hear Davis himself conduct a faultless Philharmonia. I wasn't sure he synched it fully with the images, but climaxes are hard to time. Should they come at the very end of a scene, or run over a little? I assume Davis achieved what he intended by opting for the latter.

I think every other critic is right. This was an unmissably cinematic experience.

Britten recital

Hall of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, London

21 November 2013

Britten's Canticle 1, performed by Anthony Rolfe-Johnson (tenor) and Graham Johnson (piano). 

From here.

A full performance of Winter Words would have been welcome, but this recital admirably conveyed the range of Britten's songwriting.

The Britten centenary has been celebrated vigorously all year, and is now reaching a fever pitch of concerts, radio broadcasts, etc. Like Shostakovich, Britten was overrated during his lifetime by those who wanted music that acknowledged modernism while remaining fundamentally comfortable.

Now though, the conflict between modernists and traditionalists (romantics, neoclassicists) seems misguided, and we can admire the romantic Ralph Vaughan-Williams quite as much as the atonal Harrison Birtwhistle.

Britten retains a prominent place as a music dramatist, the greatest in English opera by a large margin (competing only with the Gershwins and Rogers & Hammerstein). That isn’t meant to be damning with faint praise: in the last century English-language is the most illustrious form of contemporary music drama.

This remarkable free concert highlighted another of the composer’s strengths – his songs. The centrepiece, selections from his Winter Words, made me wonder why more composer haven’t been influenced by Schubert’s Winter Journey. Perhaps they have; perhaps I only know of Britten’s homage because I am British. In any case, it’s a benign influence and the work retains the potency of its predecessor.

Britten’s first Canticle, setting the obscure Jacobean poet Francis Quarles’ My beloved is mine, and I am his, is a little unsettling. It is obviously a love song to Peter Pears, who sang it and many other works, but is it exhibitionist, or prurient? And if we consider it ahistorically, is it really any good? I‘m not sure. It felt overlong.

The rest of the programme comprised lighter works, including the ever-popular arrangements of Purcell and folksongs.

Tenor Nicholas Allen has an appealing voice, and of course seemed influenced by the recordings of Pears in this repertoire, which can’t sensibly be a criticism. Pianist and mastermind Gavin Roberts joined Allen in providing helpful explanations of the songs and choices.

Song recital: Verdi and Wagner

Hall of St Botolph without Bishopsgate

14 November 2013

Verdi's L'esule (the exile), sung by the great Carlo Bergonzi. From here.

A birthday celebration capturing the best of these composers.

Nationalism in Verdi and Wagner was the theme second and final free lunchtime Song in the City concert. If it was more interesting than the first concert, this may be due to my familiarity with the concert layout – dramatised readings from the composers interspersed between their songs, arranged thematically – or my mood on the day, rather than something intrinsic to the programme.

Each composer was active during the exciting period when their respective nations were born; both were patriots; and their operas have yielded nationalistic interpretations more than any other comparable great operas, save perhaps Mussorgsky’s. It’s easy to feel their songs must also reflect nationalism.

Yet from another perspective, neither composer was nationalistic. Wagner’s thoughts on art may link with his patriotism, but they are universal. Verdi’s ability to vividly express human passions would likewise seem to transcend parochialism. Most straightforwardly, both artists set their works in various countries; neither were dogmatic patriots.

Their songs reflect this, especially Wagner’s, whose early songs were often in French, including those with a patriotic ardour. He hated France so it is peculiar to hear Mary Queen of Scots lamenting leaving the country with such operatic histrionics. Was Wagner deliberately overdoing it in the style of Meyerbeer, or was that the only style he knew at the time? Did he share the poem’s sentiments, was he sending them up, or was he drawing a more general conclusion about exile, as Verdi does in his setting of a poem of that title?

Leaving aside these biographical reflections, encouraged by this programme, the song is more of a dramatic aria, though you wouldn’t guess it was by Wagner. It reminds me of an early Verdi piece, or of Elisabeth’s longing for France in Don Carlos, though not as good as that. But compared to the general tone of these composer’s songs, it’s welcome to hear something closer to their hearts ie drama.

In his maturity, Wagner applied his distinctive style to song through the Wesendonck poems, and we heard several of them here. They struck me as even more effective than in last week’s recital, perhaps because surrounded by greater contrast such as the earlier French aria-song.

It’s a matter of mood. The Wesendonck songs are closely related to Tristan & Isolde, and share that work’s suffused, elongated erotic tension. When contrasted with songs of longing, as last week, their remarkable mood doesn’t seem that original, and perhaps art songs had already achieved something of the subtlety that Wagner sought on stage.

When contrasted with ‘dramatic’ songs, ones appropriate for feelings of patriotism or exile, the achievement seems greater. Director (and pianist) Gavin Roberts, when programming, seems to have intended to point out this difference.

It’s especially interesting because some characteristic mature Verdi seems to be present in his songs here. L'esule is really a tenor aria from any of the operas up until Otello, and the effect was spectacular, even if it did suggest the great composer didn’t vary his approach to the tenor voice very much.

And the final drinking song, presented slightly awkwardly by all four singers, is also a classic Verdi theme, having little to do with nationalism, but what the hell.

Reich concert

Royal Festival Hall, London

10 November 2013

A full performance of the Music for 18 Musicians. From here.

The appealing, popular yet mysterious offspring of dada. How does this work?

This was the second concert of two devoted to the masters of 1970s minimalism. For my observations on minimalism generally, read the first review.

Critics tend to prefer high-minded Steve Reich to the more commercial and popular Philip Glass, but if we’re comparing their central works during the 1970s ‘pure’ phase of minimalism, I’m not sure the difference is so great.

Music for 18 Musicians is no more audience-demanding as Glass’ Music in Twelve Parts, and the effect is similar. The visual aspect, with musicians wandering around to various instruments, is apparently intentional, and it helpfully provides interest during this intense work. But as with Glass’ music, all other aspects of the performance – melody, harmony, tone colour, volume, tempo – varies only gradually.

You could argue that the 18 musicians are more actively involved in this conductorless work than in Glass’, but the similarities with the more decentralised musicmaking of jazz don’t seem so very great. Each musician is effectively a repetitive cog in the machine.

Reich’s piece is much colder, more percussive than Glass’, more open about its Gamelan inspirations. It is also, like Music in Twelve Parts, somehow immune to criticism, at least to mine. I simply haven't heard them often enough to notice significant alterations, or even to have significant views on a performance.

All I can note is that I can't pay the same attention to this music as I can with say, a similarly long-spanned Bruckner symphony. 

Some short experimental pieces set the scene. Though slight, all were interesting, and made the links between minimalism and dada explicit.  That even ‘pure’ minimalism is popular, as heard in these two concerts, should not mislead us over its revolutionary approach to music.

Glass: Music in Twelve Parts

Royal Festival Hall, London

9 November 2013

The first of the twelve parts, lasting 10 minutes. You'll know if you're ready for the remaining 3 hours. 

From here.

How is such a long, repetitious piece of non-music so successful and deservedly popular?

I’m tempted to pass judgement on minimalism as a whole when I get to hear central works by two enormously influential still-living composers over one weekend, as part of a retrospective celebration on twentieth-century music.

Both composers (certainly Glass) claim they no longer compose in a minimalist idiom, which I take to mean that the 1970s form was the most concentrated, the purest, form.

Perhaps we should better think of a musical revolution, akin to that of atonalism 60 years earlier, or the neoclassical counter-revolution. Glass is quoted in the programme notes saying his music is not normal, not what people expect, and as a result they claim it is similar to hypnosis, religious ceremonies or other experiences that are not normal.

He has a point, but so does his audience. It is difficult to describe this music. It takes monotony to an extreme, but is not unpleasant, which is remarkable. Small variations maintain our interest, but the original theme is so brief, and the work is so extended, that the sounds become a kind of aural wallpaper, and it is impossible for me to invest all of my concentration, or even significant portions of it, to listening.

Here, Glass massively increases the monotony by allowing only small variations along any of the axes usually ascribed to music: of melody, of harmony, of tone colour, of volume, of tempo. The impression is that everything occurs in a brilliant ‘light’ that endures almost forever, though each discrete part is around 15 or 20 minutes long.

We ought to be astonished this works at all, much less that it is popular. It connects with traditional Western ideas of music in only the most marginal manner, and from what I have heard, it connects no better with any other kind of music (in this, it differs from the music of Steve Reich).

If there is a connection at all, it is with one of Glass’ teacher, Nadia Boulanger, and through her the neoclassical tradition of Stravinsky. With so little variation possible, Glass needs to create a beautiful, transparent starting point, meaning that his tone colours and orchestration need to be absorbing. And they are.

This is an extremely demanding work, but the comparisons made during the concert, or in the programme, are entirely misleading. This is not anything like reading (or attending a performance of) the Mahabharata, the Ring Cycle, or even a Mahler symphony. Those are dramatic works, with a narrative. ‘Pure’ Glass was understandably narrative-phobic, and definitively anti-dramatic in this work.

Any performance by the composer’s own ensemble is going to be unimpeachable, especially as they have performed it many times before. The key aspect of a performance is how well the synthesisers blend with the other instruments: after decades of it, this group are experts.

Roméo et Juliette

Barbican, London

6 November 2013

Olga Borodina singing the strophes from the first part of Berlioz' symphony. 

Conducted by Colin Davis rather than Valery Gergiev (as at the Barbican). From here.

An underrated – perhaps because unclassifiable – pinnacle of music drama receives another moving and profound interpretation.

Berlioz refused to make things easier for himself. Is this work meant to be judged as a representation of Shakespeare’s tragedy or is it an independent piece with aspects inspired by that drama? I think that is the correct way to think of the problem, for we can easily agree that it is a type of symphony and not a type of opera: it’s place is the concert hall, not the theatre.

David Cairns has been writing about Berlioz, and this work, almost everywhere for what must be decades now, and he has another go in the programme notes to this concert. But I think he still doesn’t address the right problem. He seems to want to justify the piece as a ‘pure’ symphony, but then what is going on in the penultimate section, Romeo alone at the tomb, if even Cairns needs to describe it in terms of Garrick’s mutilated Shakespeare? Can it stand alone within the context of the work, and nowhere else?

I’m probably making too much of this. Perhaps this is a hybrid, best understood sometimes in terms musical and sometimes in terms extra-musical. Thankfully it’s a dramatic masterpiece, regardless of classification. But I wonder if the tradition of playing the orchestral parts on their own doesn’t hint at a serious musical weakness when considering it as a ‘symphony’. We wouldn’t approve of playing one or several parts of Beethoven’s own Choral Symphony on their own. Then again, Wagner is often played out of context. Lapses in taste happen.

This is the second performance of this work I have heard recently: a blessing for which I am grateful. Valery Gergiev’s view of it corresponds to his view of everything – it is played with great ferocity and dynamic contrast. The start of the opening movement was so fast even the London Symphony Orchestra seemed to be gabbling.

Not everything was so hard-driven. The neoclassical choral simplicity of the fifth movement, starting the third part, came off well, though I didn’t feel the next two movements, the hardest to bring off, produced the right sense of troubled reconciliation emerging from conflict. Gergiev’s approach made the conflict extremely thrilling, but the lengthy aria-and-chorus that concludes the symphony needs to feel much less perfunctory.

At the centre of this titanic depiction of love and death, conflict and peace, is the wonderful Love Scene. It worked its effect, as it almost always does, but I regretted that the conductor maintained tension without providing suitable release.

The orchestra, double chorus and soloists were excellent, especially Olga Borodina’s dramatic performance of the strophes in the first part, quite unusually dramatic, but very appropriate.

Song recital: Verdi and Wagner

Hall of St Botolph without Bishopsgate

7 November 2013

Angela Gheorghiu singing Verdi's uncharacteristically light-hearted Stornello. From here. 

Minor works by great composers presented brilliantly. More, please.

This is the first of two extremely enterprising – and free! – lunchtime song recitals from Song in the City dedicated to these great musical dramatists, both born 200 years ago.

Focussing on their songs, rather than aria arrangements, displays integrity but also presents problems. Neither composer is at his best in the song form, which is more peculiar for Verdi than Wagner, whose orchestral mastery is a greater part of his appeal.

The theme of this concert was love and/or obsession, and stressed the similarities of these contemporaries. A series of dramatised readings from their letters helped, interspersed with the songs. In these readings, both composers emerged as an intense Romantic, with Wagner prone to poetic excess and Verdi crustier but still passionate.

Confirming that in their early years, neither had a distinctive voice, the songs were similar in verse and musical setting.

The first two songs even had the same verse, from Goethe’s Faust, Part One, Gretchen’s spinning song, set most memorably by the young Schubert, and perhaps set most effectively by Carl Loewe. Against such competition neither opera composer comes out well.

If this were a competition, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Verdi comes off worst, for Wagner wrote the Wesendonck Lieder at a point where he had achieved miracles within opera, far beyond Verdi’s ambition. Verdi’s songs, and most of Wagner's, are much earlier.

Surprisingly, the gap between the songs of the young-ish Verdi and the fully mature Wagner are not as great as we might think. Although the selections of those Wesendonck lieder heard here were definitely the highlights, the Italian’s similarly evocative settings around night or longing were also very effective.

We're used to hearing the Wesendonck songs in their orchestral versions, mostly by Mottl, but employing Wagner's advances in orchestration. The piano-accompanied originals, then, are not as interesting, at least on this showing.

Ironically, the concert ended with a song that pianist and director Gavin Roberts called an Italian approach to love, rather than the heavy ‘Wagnerian’ themes that had gone before. Ironic, because both composers were extremely high-minded, and if anything Verdi was temperamentally more serious than Wagner. That he also managed a soubrettish song says less about him being Italian and more about his interest in depicting a wide range of types of people.

The performances, in this small pretty hall, were uniformly excellent, singers admirably scaling down to meet the acoustics.

Britten and Haydn quartets

Bishopsgate Hall, London

29 October 2013

Gresham Professor Roger Parker's lecture on Britten's third quartet. Given in August 2013. From here.

Two masterpieces played with burning conviction.

This concert was so good I have trouble accepting that it was free, provided presumably for City bankers on their lunchbreak. I noticed none of those, unsurprisingly, but I felt that the 45-minute, two-work concert needed no further justification: it worked perfectly.

No doubt it mattered that the two pieces were string quartets, a medium optimised for that convivial tension we associate with chamber music.

This programme might have been devised by the musicologist Hans Keller, combining his two enthusiasms, for Haydn’s quartets and for Britten’s music in general. Indeed Britten’s valedictory third quartet is dedicated to Keller.

Almost any Haydn quartet is a joy, giving the impression that, while we listen to them, we cannot imagine being anywhere else, or wanting to listen to anything else. Opus 54, number 2 doesn’t disappoint, though it is unusual in placing a heavy burden on the lead violinist. Here, her performance was as ecstatic as the composer must have desired.

The serious finale is also unusual, and Keller, perhaps swept away with enthusiasm, claimed that Haydn pre-empts Mahler and Tchaikovsky in ending a ‘symphonic’ piece with a slow movement. More reasonably he suggests that Haydn was introducing the ‘French overture’ style to his ‘symphonic’ quartets.

I wouldn’t deny the quartets are symphonic but the much later adoption of slow movement finales is surely better thought of as a response to the ‘finale problem’ composers faced after adopting Beethoven's model. If a slow movement is going to carry the whole gravity of a work, where can it be placed?

In this quartet, as everywhere else except his symphony 88, Haydn doesn’t aim for a profound, soul-searching slow movement. Which isn’t to say the slow finale isn’t both lovely and a beautiful surprise. So the work as a whole deserves to be placed with French overtures rather than, say, Mahler's symphonies.

Britten’s work justifies Keller’s enthusiasm, at least in this performance. It also has a sombre finale, in this case very clearly the emotional focus of the work. By the end of it I was very nearly in tears, not a reaction I typically associate with his music.

We’re very used to a narrative of Britten’s earlier warmer sounding style being pared down in the late 1950s, and though true, I hardly find his earlier works to be abundantly emotional or warm. His later astringency seems a natural consequence of the repressed approach found in almost everything he did, as if exuberance or even openness was vulgar.

It seems different in this quartet. The ascetic sound remains, but the associations with Death in Venice here seem to fulfil that earlier opera, rather than simply recycling its themes. The opera emerges as a weaker expression of the quartet, rather than the other way round.

It’s too easy to suggest that Britten found it easier to express emotions through pure music, without words getting in the way but that’s what I felt when listening to this piece. Clearly I need to listen to it further.

I clearly also need to listen to more performances by the Jubilee Quartet.

Recital: Haydn, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Fitkin piano works

Steinway Hall

23 October 2013

The Rach Bach partita transcription, played by Yoshio Hamano at this concert. 

The rest of the concert is also available from YouTube. From here.

Interesting recital bookended by classical and modern nearly-mechanical pianism, with a more expressive middle.

The small recital room in Steinway Hall – as with the equivalent in Chappell of Bond Street – ought to present a challenge to programming. Piano works intended for large concert halls are less suitable here.

For his selection, Yoshio Hamano chose promisingly intimate works by Haydn, Brahms and Bach/Rachmaninov though bucked the trend with what sounded like louder works by Graham Fitkin, a contemporary composer new to me.

Pellucid is the word for the performance of Haydn’s Andante and Variations, which was also, to my surprise, the work I enjoyed most here. I suppose this is the standard way of performing Haydn’s piano works, of making them exercises in controlled, abstract pianism derived from Glenn Gould. No doubt this misses the drama of this composer, but in any case the result was extremely charming.

Bach’s third solo violin partita, as adapted by Rachmaninov, is a curiosity. The most pressing question is why bother? The solo piano repertoire is vast; that of the violin much smaller; and if you want transcribed Bach in a romantic idiom, doesn’t Stokowski do a better job?

Perhaps Hamano wanted some baroque music, and it is perhaps more honest to play a Rach Bach than to pretend the German wrote for a piano. The performance was good, though it didn’t erase my recent memory of a performance of the original.

Between these relatively lightweight works came Brahms’ much more substantial Fantasien Op116. This ought to have been the recital’s centre of gravity but it didn't quite work. As I’m not fond of Brahms’ piano music (yet), I couldn’t say if this was inherent in the music, or a consequence of the performance.

Finally, two works by Fitkin, both in a post-minimalist idiom. From Yellow to Yellow is the shorter and more introspective, while Frenetic basically describes itself, though there are passages of subdued come-down. The latter, in particular, seemed incredibly demanding for the performer, but turned him into a machine, which is neither big nor clever. Both pieces were forgettable.

Recital: Britten songs

Bishopsgate Institute Great Hall

22 October 2013

Maureen Forrester singing the Charm of Lullabies.

A nocturnal song cycle was the highlight of this committed survey of the composer.

The City Music Society somehow arranges free lunchtime recitals of impressive quality. This one was devoted to Benjamin Britten’s songs, commemorating his upcoming hundredth birthday. It was a very useful survey of this aspect of the composer, conveying a good sense of his strengths and weaknesses.

Britten is startlingly parochial, which makes little sense, as he was drew upon non-Western influences as well as non-British ones. Yet he returned to say, Purcell, or folk songs (both illustrated here) not in the spirit of promoting them or making them relevant to a modern (international) audience, but rather in a much more personal manner, as if trying to make them part of his own oeuvre.

It's as if he were a musical version of architect John Nash, looking upon the design of Mughal buildings as a blueprint for the Brighton Pavilion. That's harsh on Britten, who does a much better job of creating something   that can be appreciated internationally from his musical tourism.

The composer's clear, chilly style is especially well-suited to folk songs. I’m not sure the warmer Purcell benefits from being adapted by Britten, but the folk songs certainly do.

The cabaret songs are only a modest success, no patch on Weill/Brecht or even Eisler/Brecht, despite the fame of some of Auden’s verse (Funeral Blues) and Britten’s music (Tell Me The Truth About Love). I doubt either artist felt more than temporarily comfortable in this idiom. Bitterness, sarcasm, lust, political anger – none of this is really present in these charming but slight works.

The greatest work in this concert was the Charm of Lullabies. Night's mystery suited Britten perfectly, and he produced several song cycle masterpieces on the subject, including this one.

The lasting impression is one of death and darkness, without a trace of sentimentality, though mixed enough with charm, in charisma and magical senses, to prevent the mood souring completely.

Anna Huntley has a powerful mezzo voice, projected with great force, which sometimes threatened to be too much for this venue. But a dramatic approach works well with these songs; Britten was a major opera composer after all.

Recital for solo violin and piano

Palau de la Música Catalana

17 October 2013

The venue, designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner.
From here.

A singing solo violin recital of precisely the right length, followed by a less impressive piano recital.

The solo violin repertoire is small, so it made sense for Sara Cubarsi i Fernández shared her concert with pianist Luis Arias; but I also tend to think lengthy solo recitals should be unusual, not the norm.

Here, both artists contrasted an early modernist work with something older, and both made sensible programming decisions. Bartók’s solo violin sonata is to my ears even more poetic than Bach’s third sonata, though less memorable and uplifting, justifying the decision to place Bach second, at the risk of offputting audience members unused to Bartók.

After the interval, Schumann’s peculiar Kreisleriania was followed by Prokofiev’s more bravura fifth piano sonata. But the highlight, for me, was the solo violin section.

The Bartók is wonderful, being both inventive and challenging in the right way, providing a jolt but sufficiently welcoming that any audience can warm to it. Perhaps Bach wasn’t placed second so as not to pose impossible ‘follow that’ expectations after all.

Bach’s work doesn’t seek to challenge the audience, except perhaps in endurance, for we’re not so used to full-sized solo violin pieces. It’s full sized in another way too, given the composer’s ability to give weight through fugal passages.

Between Bach’s time and Schumann’s, we apparently discovered sonata form, and an unprecedented opportunity to create thematically-derived musical structures. Not that I noticed this in Kreislerania, which may be my fault more than the fault of the pianist, though surely the composer must take more of the blame.

A sequence of meandering poetic fragments, sometimes interesting, mostly not; I am probably allergic to the composer, with the exception of his Fantasie. Prokofiev seems a finer composer for the piano, and underrated, or at least underperformed.

Both performers combined musicianship with the technical skill that we shockingly take for granted. But both were upstaged by the venue: it is hard for to compete with the astonishing profusion of visual delights in this hall.

Britten: concert

Dances from the Prince of the Pagodas; Suite on English Folk Songs; Nocturne; Cello Symphony

Royal Festival Hall

2 October 2013

The masterful Nocturne, sung by Jerry Hadley. From here.

The Nocturne is a masterpiece, but other late works for concert hall are much less successful.

A collection of concert works with orchestra from Britten’s ‘late period’ from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. It’s the period when his sound changed, became more astringent, less appealing, though that needs qualification.

For Britten’s characteristic musical style, early or late, is something like a colder version of Debussy. His dread of sentimentality clearly went further than just a distaste of Puccini, or fear of becoming Puccini.

It’s this fear, and the underlying attraction to sentimentality that it fights against, that determines why his music sounds as it does. He attempts to combine Mahler with Debussy, which strikes me as doomed to fail, and a much worse choice than his contemporary Shostakovich, who wedded Mahler with Tchaikovsky.

Like Shostakovich, you feel a sense of kinship with the composer through his music. Britten emerges as a repressed hedonist.

The music of late Britten is not dark, contrary to the programme notes. It is etiolated, as if his earlier music had been aurally bleached or deprived of something life-giving.

I don’t mean it lacks vitality, or even interest; but we might reasonably regret, in the orchestral works at least, that the composer’s quest for refinement led to such little delight.

So unsurprisingly the most successful, and enjoyable, work here was the Nocturne song cycle. Always a great word-setter, Britten’s choice of texts fit his musical mood, and he created a magical complement to the equally fine earlier Serenade.

Mark Padmore sang beautifully, and has a fuller tone than the work’s dedicatee, Peter Pears (at least from recordings), though is equally comfortable with singing falsetto when needed.

He found more humour, I think, in the Midnight Bell central song than Pears did, but I’m not sure the variety worked – Nocturne is essentially an extended lullaby, creating a sense of delicate insomnia.

The Cello Symphony is also clearly a substantial work, but I found it uneven, and despite some very subtle quiet playing from the London philharmonic, I struggled to hear Truls Mørk’s cello, presumably intentionally recessed (repressed?) The work comes alive in the cadenza which leads to an energetic finale, almost lively.

The Suite on English Folk Songs, like Nocturne, shows off Britten’s late approach to orchestration, and like the Nocturne a series of miniature mood pieces plays to his strengths.

In contrast, I could scarcely stay awake during the excerpts from the Prince of the Pagodas ballet, which played to his weaknesses. An exotic tale, exotically orchestrated, ought to have inspired delightful music. Instead the drabness reminded me of the sea at Britten’s beloved Aldeburgh.

Roméo et Juliette

Royal Festival Hall

26 September 2013

The great love scene under Salonen, this time with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms in 2007. 

From here.

Beautiful playing from the Philharmonia misses some of the work's passion in favour of establishing symphonic credentials.

Although you can see why Berlioz called this masterpiece – one of music's pinnacles – a dramatic symphony, it’s a misleading and indeed oxymoronic title: a symphony is already a form of drama in music.

It is because he took things rather further, and linked his work closely to Shakespeare’s drama, adding arias and choruses, but although I feel this is an important attempt to ‘realise’ Shakespeare’s tragedy in music, that isn’t the central achievement here. This is firstly a symphony, albeit a strange one.

For one thing, the work doesn’t end in tragedy, but rather in reconciliation and hope, more related to Beethoven’s ninth than anything in Shakespeare (except The Tempest). Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen was especially good here, expertly pacing the final movement’s transition from conflict to peace, itself reminiscent of the last few minutes of the ninth.

The finale is less important than in other major post-Beethoven symphonies because its composer sidesteps the problem of how to craft a finale that will sounds effective after a profoundly searching slow or tragic movement.

Berlioz’ slow movements are an ecstatic love scene and a Gluck-inspired funereal chorus, both extremely moving though the love music carries off the palm by virtue of being some of the most beautiful music we have (as Toscanini claimed).

The last movement instead contrasts with and follows the jarring, forceful music of the movement titled ‘Romeo at the Capulet’s tomb’. Salonen’s pacing and dynamics were excellent in both of these tricky movements.

Berlioz isn't self-evidently successful in creating a symphony out of these disparate movements, though the sense of being jolted around is much less prevalent here than in his other characteristic works, and there is less of the sense of frantically running without moving.

I have some sympathy with those critics, starting with Wagner, who adore parts but find the whole tiring. This may be because the aria-and-chorus concerted bookends can seem problematic. The first movement is described as a prologue even by champions like David Cairns, and the symphony does seem to be launched twice. The ending, as described above, counterbalances sudden and shuddering violent death rather than overwhelming grief, which comes earlier and is in any case classically restrained.

So it’s to Salonen’s credit that he imparts full gravity to these outer movements and makes them work.

It is a pity his approach was less successful elsewhere. Partly this was due to lack of ferocity or crudeness, common among conductors wanting to place Berlioz within the pantheon of sober symphonists. Partly it was also due to insufficient romance, either in the first movement or more seriously in the love scene.

But this is actually a small quibble. Is a more magical experience possible than when the offstage voices fade away and the love scene properly starts? And wasn’t Toscanini right? This is the kind of experience that transforms the way we feel, at least for some decent time afterwards.

Rigoletto

Barbican

15 September 2013

A new star tenor? An example of his Duke of Mantua, if you are into that. From here.

An inspired concert performance of this dark-tinted drama.

Rigoletto not only announced Verdi's maturity as a dramatic artist, it is also better than most of his subsequent works. Perhaps Victor Hugo's source drama contributes but it is an uncomfortable, wholly Verdian idea to make the audience fall in love with the Duke, quite as much as Gilda does.

The second act is nearly perfect, though so distressing I can only assume applauding interrupting audiences aren't paying sufficient attention. The Duke sympathises with the abducted Gilda, swears vengeance, proclaims a new leaf, and is entirely convinced of it himself, according to the music. When he learns the girl was abducted for his benefit, he quickly forgets about her distress and focuses on his upcoming pleasure. When we finally see Gilda the tense duet with her father makes it clear she has been raped. Rigoletto gets bitter pleasure from the thought of vengeance, but the suddenly banal music shows it is a weak compensation.

Admittedly Gilda is a pathetic figure, of a type the composer avoided using again until his Desdemona, who is much more spirited. What might properly be her tragedy is transferred instead to her father, a more complex and unlikeable figure, even compared to the Duke.

It may be a flaw that we are manipulated into caring more for the two most unpleasant characters – the Duke and his jester – than for the person who sacrifices herself at the end. The drama’s verdict is damning. Both the fortunate sybarite and the wretched waspish Rigoletto survive, indeed thrive in some form, while the innocent lover sacrifices herself without meaning.

Given the bleak situation throughout the work, in direct contrast to at least the singing of the Duke and Gilda, this is much more of a conductor’s opera than is typically supposed. Recordings by Giulini and Sinopoli should have established that, and the recent Covent Garden performances with Eliot Gardiner confirm it.

I didn’t find Gianandrea Noseda quite as convincing as Eliot Gardiner, but my memory may be faulty, for it was still a very impressive performance with the LSO, even if they were reduced to ‘opera pit’ size. Only a few times did the prominence of the on-stage orchestra threaten to overwhelm the singing, but Noseda maintained the necessary momentum and when needed obtained suitably vigorous climaxes.

The cast were excellent, with some genuinely impressive acting, despite this being a concert performance. A highlight was when Rigoletto turns his back on his newly disgraced daughter: a response both understandable and horrific.

Dmitri Platanias was open-throated in the title role, and this is surely the only way to do it, much as it might wreak havoc with the voice. Desirée Rancatore was a limpid, girlish Gilda, though hers is a lyric not dramatic soprano voice. Saimir Pirgu’s Duke was appealing in both voice and appearance. Smaller roles were taken well.

Brahms, Mozart, Mahler: concert

 St Alfege's church, Greenwich

14 September 2013

First movement of Brahms' clarinet trio, in a classic performance by Kell, Pini and Kentner. 

From here.

Ambitious and interesting free concerts showing that even the largest scale works can be given revealing performances in more intimate surroundings.

My heart sank when I learned that instead of Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night, the Kantati Ensemble were going to play a chamber version of Mahler’s First Symphony complete their free concert in Hawksmoor’s relatively intimate St Alfege’s Greenwich.

My fears proved mistaken. Undoubtedly some weight was lost, but the cramped acoustics ensured that conductor Lee Reynolds carefully worked up to the climaxes. And this helped strengthen the performance: I think Mahler benefits from a measured, rather than rhapsodic or excitable approach.

As this quixotic programme selection indicates, his rise in popularity and esteem continues. Perhaps his musical anxiety and neurosis reflects our present condition, but I don’t believe this is what we feel when while we listen. Surely his success is due to his sheer sound, the remarkable lyricism and orchestral colour combined with resounding climaxes.

Mahler’s makes famously original use of the different sections of the orchestra, so that a chamber version really highlights that variety.

The first is his most straightforwardly enjoyable work, also relatively unambitious, so didn’t lose as much with reduced forces. Chamber orchestras rarely get to make so much noise, but on the evidence of this performance they can produce revealing performances of these orchestral monsters.

Before the interval, Mozart’s fifth violin concerto made an interesting, perhaps unintentional comparison. Ideas are thrown around with a similar profligacy, but the effect is different. Mozart certainly didn’t intend to throw his audience around, as Mahler did.

Soloist Beatrice Philips gave a sweet-sounding, quasi-romantic account of the violin part, though this is not an inspired work: I assume the composer wanted to write it for piano instead.

A desultory performance of the same composer’s Figaro overture opened the concert, but in fact this industrious ensemble had already provided a more effective opening an hour before, as three of its members played Brahm’s masterful Clarinet Trio in the same church.

Here the comparison with Mahler was explicit. The programme pointed out that both composers used a ländler in the works we heard, and handled them very differently. And the finale of the chamber piece prefigures later rhythmic developments. Brahms the progressive, indeed.

This is a subdued work, far removed from the exertions of Mahler (the programme notes plausibly suggest the latter was attempting to blow Brahms out of the water with his first). It was given a committed performance, though given the venue I would have liked softer playing.

Bach, Bruckner: concert

Royal Albert Hall

6 September 2013

Looking suitably excited, Maazel conducting the finale of Bruckner's eighth, with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. 

From here.

Resounding night-before-the Last-Night Prom.

I spent the majority of the Bruckner 8 in a state of rapt attention, in what I imagine would be a suggestible hypnotic state. It is an effect peculiar to Bruckner, and different from the state that, say Gorecki or Glass can induce with their slow or fast repetitions respectively.

Unlike our contemporary long-spanned composers, Bruckner is not exploring a single emotional state at great length. His symphonies are intensely dramatic, in the line of Beethoven, and actually the older school of Brucknerians, archetypally Furtwängler, created a much less rhapsodic effect with extreme tempo fluctuations.

The current tradition in playing these masterpieces is a steady, broad pulse with emphasis on projecting their astonishing grandeur. As happens here, this risks downplaying the significance of the final climax of the first movement, a moment of terrible crisis which haunts the following two movements and is only resolved after a struggle in the finale.

In other Proms concerts, some members of the audience applaud particular movements, and this is understandable. Here, I doubt anyone imagined applauding until the end of this enormous work, and this could either reflect the exhaustion we feel after each movement, or our awareness that the symphony must obviously continue, to resolve in some way.

The Royal Albert Hall felt saturated with sound, a wondrous experience, and I assume that conductor Lorin Maazel must take some credit for this, as the ‘sound’ of a work is one of the areas in which he is highly regarded. I imagine the Vienna Philharmonic could play this music in their sleep, and so deserve even more of the credit.

The finale is a great challenge, and part of this is because Bruckner must have found it formidably difficult to compose, much as he later did with sketches of a finale for his ninth. What can properly relieve the previous three movements, most especially the intensity of the preceding slow movement?

I didn’t notice any great difficulties in the tricky transitions in the finale, though I did wonder if Maazel had really plumbed the depths and heights in the slow movement. But the only serious blemish was the trio in the second movement, driven too hard and fast.

The first part of the concert was almost inevitably obliterated in comparison, but was a thoughtful example of programming: Bach organ works and transcriptions, played by Bruckner’s current successor as organist in St Florian.

Klaus Sonnleitner grappled with the unwieldy brute of an organ, hardly optimised for Bach, and produced excellent results. His encore was much better suited to the instrument, but that didn’t matter. The sense that Bruckner was at the organ, as indeed he was in 1871, was a magical prelude to what I believe is the greatest of orchestral works.

Schubert piano recital

Royal Albert Hall

5 September 2013

Schubert's sonata played by Sviatoslav Richter, a more forceful interpretation than Cooper's. 

From here.

70 minutes of sustained and profound lyricism, courtesy of Schubert.

Programming Schubert’s piano sonata in C minor (D958) followed by his ‘Grand’ piano duo in C major (D812) worked sublimely, for the reason given by pianist Imogen Cooper in the programme guide: the sonata creates a dark impression, which is then dispelled by the fairly upbeat, bright duo.

This composer must be almost synonymous with musicianship, a word that can otherwise be difficult to articulate. It is distinguished from technical skill, though usually is required alongside that skill, such as in the piano works of say, Beethoven or Chopin. This isn't really the case with Schubert.

The sonata, under Cooper’s hands, is projected lyrically, and I was forcefully struck with a sense of unending melody, not an unfolding in the way that for example, a Bellini aria unfolds, nor the working out of an argument as in Beethoven, but maybe closer to Wagner in the way that attention is maintained, though surely to a very different end result.

A beautiful and moving experience. Perhaps Cooper’s approach doesn’t bring out all of the dramatic potential of the work, as Richter does above. Her flowing approach also made her sound quite fast, and it is possible to make the sonata sound considerably slower and more intense. But this masterpiece benefits from multiple interpretive styles.

Cooper’s particular style made especially good sense given her programme. Had the sonata been a shattering experience, the duo would have seemed impertinent. Instead, the mood gradually lifted to one of celebration.

In Paul Lewis, Cooper must have found an ideal partner. Certainly they seemed of one mind, not to mention gesture. If the duo is a symphony in fancy dress, as some believe, I would think this performance was inadequate, for I couldn’t imagine it orchestrated. It seemed entirely suitable to the sound of the piano, right down to the chiming at the end of the piece.

Verdi, Tchaikovsky: concert

Royal Albert Hall

5 September 2013

Joseph Calleja singing Verdi's imperishable La donna è mobile, this time in context. 

From here.

A great composer filleted, but the concert redeemed through championing an interesting Tchaikovsky work.

The Verdi bicentenary has hardly been noticed at the BBC Proms: it has received less attention than the anniversaries of Wagner and Britten, and less attention than Tchaikovsky, whose complete symphony cycle was finished in the second half of this concert, as if to add to the insult. Verdi maybe rates a little higher than Granville Bantock, but I’m not even sure of that.

A selection of orchestral excerpts and five tenor arias is a highly misleading way to represent this great musical dramatist, even if the arias, from his early and middle period, give the impression they can stand alone. But this is utterly untrue of La Traviata’s wonderful prelude, and as it died away I felt cheated that the ball scene didn’t immediately follow.

The overture to La Forza del Destino is more of a showpiece, but it was again jarring to hear Aida’s Triumphal March out of context, even if Verdi’s special trumpets are always worth hearing.

With one exception, the arias were from lesser-known Verdi operas, and oddly covered the same sentiment, a hero remembering past love. None showed the composer at his best, apart from the exception, La donna è mobile from Rigoletto. Tenor Joseph Calleja must be one of the finer Verdi tenors today, with an ardent, appealing tone that nonetheless pings as needed.

Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony is also poorly known, despite being composed between his mature fourth and fifth symphonies. It ought to be better known, if this performance by Xian Zhang and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi is any indication.

As the composer recognised, the first movement is the strongest, a powerful depiction of crushing melancholy or depression, which eventually overcomes any pleasant memories. The remaining movements are less inspired, culminating in a clattering finale that is supposed to represent a demonic orgy but is completely sexless, and too reserved in this performance to truly sound demonic.

If that doesn’t sound like the strongest recommendation, there is still much to enjoy, in Tchaikovsky’s tuneful, colourful manner. In this performance, it seemed longer than its inspiration warrants, and it isn’t a masterpiece on the level of his sixth, but the handling of the obsessive idée fixe seems to me better than in most of Berlioz and perhaps this is the best representation of that concept in music.