Henri Dutilleux is dead

Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013)  died this morning, aged 97. This photo dates from 2008, when the composer came to London to receive the Gold Medal from The Royal Philharmonic Society. He attended a concert at the Wigmore Hall, given in his honour. Later that evening, who should I meet walking past the Wigmore Hall at midnight? 92-year-old Henri Dutilleux, on his way to his hotel after the post-concert party.

The Wigmore Hall concert was rather special because it was conducted by Jan-Pascal Tortelier, whose father, Paul Tortelier, had studied with Dutilleux at the Paris Conservatoire. How often does a conductor do the music of a composer who has known him since he was in nappies? Dutilleux recounted how he and Paul Tortelier as students were too poor to go out much, but scraped together enough so they could hear Stravinsky conduct Les Noces. So Tortelier fils prefaced his concert with Stravinsky's Concerto in D for string orchestra (1946)  written around the time Dutilleux began to make his own name.

There were many other cryptic references in Tortelier's erudite programme, played by the Nash Ensemble. Dutilleux’s Dyptique- Les Citations is an unusual combination for harpsichord, oboe, percussion and double bass. Britten had also used percussion and harpsichord together, and there’s also a quote from Peter Grimes since the piece was initially written to honour Peter Pears. In typical Dutilleux mode, the composer added the double bass part in 1991 with a quote from  a piece for organ by Jehan Alain, another of Dutilleux's circle, who was killed in battle in 1940.

Extremely high violins introduced Ainsi la nuit, infusing the static first section with gleaming brightness. Again, this is distinctive Dutilleux, with elegant, delicate patterns evolving and changing until the piece reaches its conclusion in another static section where sound seems to float. Indeed, this section is actually called “suspended time”. This performance seemed to choreograph itself, so much were the musicians in accord. The long arches seemed like stretch, the ostinato like en pointe. I was struck by the connection to Les noces.

Tortelier also conducted Mystère d’un Instant so beautifully that Dutilleuex, greatly moved, said that was the finest he had ever heard. This version was a more recent revision of the 1989 original, reducing the number of strings to 18 from 24. There’s a feeling of space and light about this piece. Tones seem to shimmer, wavering between extremes of register, and textures seem to evaporate before reforming. What’s also interesting is Dutilleux’s composing rationale. Instead of using a formal strategy, in each of the ten sections he seeks the “mystery of an instant”, captured spontaneously as the musical idea emerges. Each section is an individual “snapshot” as Dutilleux calls it, like a Hockney collage perhaps, but animated and fluid. There’s a part where four cellos interact, another where high, keening string lines evolve into a tumble of quick, spiralling notes on cimbalom. A wayward drum rhythm unfolds to a jerky, pizzicato sequence on strings, itself superseded by a section where percussion and cimbalom lead. Then the strings soared higher and higher and in came the tam tam beaten at measured intervals, exactly as it would be in an East Asian temple. Dutilleux's reference is explicit, though what it signifies in the wider scheme of things I can’t guess. But that’s why this music is interesting. It may be neat and precise but it alludes to things beyond itself.

At one time some of Dutilleux's admirers resented Messiaen's much higher profile. That's petty. Dutilleux and Messaien are very different indeed. But perhaps they have a common heir in George Benjamin.

Something different for Wagner's Birthday

Happy 200th to Richard Wagner! How he would have enjoyed the attention. It's his due! This is a cartoon from 1876 showing him with the Valkyries. If anyone staged it like this these days, audiences would go berserk. But RW would have loved it.

How to avoid huge ships when the world is puddle-wonderful

"When the world is puddle-wonderful". and "How to avoid huge ships" Who can resist a titles like that?  And what about "Double Helix", "Caught on the Corner" and "At a distance of less than a yard..."

Already I'm intrigued. How inventive the music must be! Hear what the music sounds like tonight at the latest New Dots venture at the Forge, Camden. 

when the world is puddle-wonderful is by Michael Cutting. Note the lower case. Immediately one thinks Cummings is der Dichter. Cutting is interested on the relationship between words and music and is planning a large work of music theatre  to be completed in 2014. His work has already been performed by Fretwork, the BBC Singers, Lontano and the Endymion Ensemble. He's one of George Benjamin's PhD students. This particular piece isn't for voice as such. Instead the "voices" are flute, clarinet and piano. 

 How to Avoid Huge Ships for Wind Quartet is by Aaron Holloway-Nahum, who is composer in residence with the BBC SO. He's written scores for several art films, which is a plus. Music for film is important because it focuses a composer's mind on communicating. So many have learned their trade from writing for film - Benjamin Britten no less. He's also involved with somethinfg called the Riot Ensemble, which endears him to my heart. How to Avoid Large Ships was the title of .a serious technical guide for mariners. Apparently huge ships are hard to avoid if sea currents are against you and you have no room to manoeuvre. The title sounds funny but it can be life or death. What potential for vivid, inventive and dangerous music! (photo above is by Taras Kalapun from Homs, Syria. Hope he's well!)

Yuko Ohara's Double Helix suggests twisting, twining possibilities. For two instruments the solution would be easy. For solo flute, it's more of a challenge. She's worked with David Sawer, Toshio Hosokawa and Brian Ferneyhough. Emma-Ruth Richards Flute caught on a corner intrigues too. It's not "just" flute but scored for wind quartet. Richards' piece for solo viola is played by Paul Silverthorne. Hear it here. Piers Tattersall's work has featured at previous New Dots concerts. This time, the piece is At a distance of less than a yard... for clarinet, horn and piano.

And as an extra treat Richard Uttley will be playing Barkham Fantasy by Mark Simpson. It was "written during my stay at Barkham, an idyllic converted farmhouse amidst the backdrop of the Devonshire moors. I intended the piece to resemble a ghostly shadow of a slow movement of a Mozart or Haydn piano sonata. Whilst composing I had an unsettling feeling of being watched from a window in the barn. Over the course of my stay I was gradually instilled with a sense of fear and unease which manifested itself in the music I was writing. The idea of ghosts, hauntings and shadows inevitably played a larger part in this piece than I had originally envisaged."  Listen to the soundclip.

Richard Uttley will play with the Atea Wind Quintet. More details of the New Dots concert at the Forge HERE.

Wagner 200 BBC Radio 3 birthday specials

Wagner's 200th Birthday is Wednesday 22nd. How he would have enjoyed the fuss and expected nice presents! Too often anniversaries are an excuse for sloppy programming, but BBC Radio 3 seems to be doing something useful. Here is a link to this week's schedule. It's quite a good introduction to the composer and the man.

Donald Macleod's "Composer of the Week" focuses on Wagner's early Romantic influences, a subject dear to my heart. MacLeod's Composer of the Weeks are sometimes very good and I think this is a new one we haven't heard. He will be shedding "light on Wagner's lesser known, early operas, created under the spell of such diverse influences as the German Romantic operatic tradition of Weber, the "bel canto" style of singing of Bellini, and French Grand Opera of the 1830s. Donald Macleod presents excerpts from Wagner's earliest opera Die Feen, his sunny, Italian-esque Das Liebesverbot, and the 'black sheep' of Wagner's output: his vast operatic spectacular Rienzi - which he later virtually disowned."

Most of the recordings being broadcast are familiar, but there are a few rarities, like Wagner's  arrangement of Beethoven's Choral Symphony and his Piano Sonata. Missing is the Urfassung edition of Der fliegende Hollander resuscitated in 2004, with no Erik, no Daland and no Norway!   This edition shows how Wagner was influenced by popular taste in his time. Rossini probably got there first with La donna del lago (which I'm at tonight). Then Donizetti Lucia di Lammermoor in 1835 and much else. At least Mendelssohn had the guts to hike through the country and see it first hand instead of relying on Walter Scott and Ossian. Since there was no tourist industry in Mendelssohn's time, he really was engaging with the locals and living fairly rough. So much for Wagner thinking Mendelssohn was effete. Perhaps one of the reasons we're not hearing the pre-Edition of DfH is that the only recording is pretty hokey. An edition is not a production. Productions we can see any time but an Urfassung is unique. The Ur-edition is being produced three times this summer in Germany, so who knows, a new recording might come about.

Many of us switch BBC Radio 3 off completely after 10 pm when music turns to chat. This week the chat is rather more elevated. At 22.45 the Essay will present a series on Wagner's philosophers, Wagner and German idealism. Roger Scruton, AC Grayling, Christopher Janaway, Michael Tanner and John Deathridge are the speakers.

Glyndebourne Strauss Ariadne auf Naxos review

Utterly mad but absolutely right - Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos started the Glyndebourne 2013 season with an explosion. Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. Ariadne auf Naxos is not "about" Greek myth so much as a satire on art and the way art is made. Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. His music is a clue. There are, of course, references to Mozart, but these are prettified and tarted up. Are Strauss and Hofmannsthal suggesting that the Composer courts success rather than art for arts sake? He is, after all, writing for "the richest man in Vienna".  The Music Master (Thomas Allen) clashes with the Major-domo (William Relton), but the firework display takes priority. Ariadne auf Naxos is an indictment of the system..

The Vorspeil and Opera are distinct, but only up to a point.  Strauss pits art against artifice, disguisng the true, radical meaning of his work behind a veneer of elegant stylization. But these are mind games. As Zerbinetta tells the Composer, "Auf dem Theater spiele ich die Kokette, wer sagt, dass mein Herz dabei im Spiele ist? Ich scheine munter und bin doch traurig, gelte für gesellig und bin doch so einsam" (In the theatre I play the coquette. But who says my heart is in the game? I seem cheerful, but I'm sad. I play to the crowd, but I'm so alone".)

Katharina Thoma's staging is erudite. Years later, firebombs would destroy many German theatres, symbolically wiping out the German musical tradition. Obviously this was nothing in comparison to the destruction wrought by politicians and their philistine followers, but to a man like Strauss, whose world revolved around Dresden and Munich, the bombings were a metaphor for mindless barbarism.   "The holiest shrine in the world", he wrote "Zerstört!". Although Strauss could not forsee the future, Ariadne auf Naxos was written during the First World War. As a modern audience, we cannot forget the far more destructive war that came after. There are relevant connections between Ariadne auf Naxos and Metamorphosen, which is perhaps Strauss's most explicit comment on the madness that is war. Until we stop giggling when someone opens his cloak to reveal RAF logos, we have learned nothing.

Strauss's score gives us other clues. The stock characters reference standard commedia dell'arte where figures are hidden behind masks. Greek myth itself uses archetypes as metaphor. If Ariadne were a "real" person, she'd be sectioned under the Mental Health Act, given her obsessive delusions about Theseus and suicide. Given that she and Bacchus both come from family backgrounds where women have sex with gods and monsters, they have a lot in common. But what psychiatrist would countenance that?  Soile Isokoski sang the glorious aria "Ein Schönes war" so beautifully that we could feel Ariadne's tragedy as if it were personal and universal. "Und ging im Licht und freute sich des Lebens!" became a brave cry of protest against the hospital where "normal" people don't understand her extreme personality. Yet like Zerbinetta, Ariadne will not be silenced. In the end,  she (sort of) gets what she needs, escaping the mundane world in which she's trapped into a kind of warped apotheosis of love, death and delusion.

 Strauss had mixed feelings about Tristan und Isolde. His own take on the Liebestod is delicously delirious. The references to the "drink" is particularly ironic, given that mental hospitals dispense chemical solutions just as Brangäne dispensed a drink that didn't do what it was supposed to.  Strauss writes the nurses's last song so they have to warble like mad Rhinemaidens, totally uncomprehending what's going on round them.  Against his better instincts, Bacchus (Sergey Skorokhodov) cannot help but succumb. At the end, Thoma's staging shows the hospital curtains billowing out like the sails of a ship, heading out at last for the freedom of the seas. The "sails" are lit by a red glow. Is this sunset or fire ? Is Valhalla burning ? Or does it suggest Dresden, Munich, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Hamburg or many other cities destroyed  since?

Isokoski is one of the great Strauss singers of our time, so it was a pity that the production made more of Laura Claycomb's one-dimensional Zerbinetta.The part is central to the work as Zerbinetta interacts with the Composer (Kate Lindsey) while the Prima Donna (Soile Isokoski) s too wrapped up in her "role" as mega-star. Ariadne is frigid. Zerbinetta goes to the opposite extreme. Given that Greek myth is full of bestiality and explicit sex, we really should not be alarmed that Zerbinetta, who doesn't feature in antiquity, is a nympho.  Compared with Ariadne's mother, Zerbinetta is almost healthy. Claycomb is good at being strident and brassy, so if the subtlety in the role didn't come over well, there was much else in the production to savour. When Claycomb throws off the restraints of the straitjacket, we thrill at the strength of her spirit. It's a brilliant image, totally in keeping with the meaning of the opera on many levels.

Although the Vorspeil and the Opera are, ostensibly separate, they are integral to each other. The Composer sings in the first part because he/she's written a score. But when the Opera actually takes place, the characters transform, as if they've taken on lives of their own.  Hoffmansthal and Strauss don't give the Composer anything to sing in the second part. The Composer storms out when he realizes that scores don't exist in limbo but are changed by circumstances and performance. Hence the psychic creative storm as this bombshell drops. In Thoma's production, the Composer is struck dumb with the horror that he/she is no longer "in control".   As a successful composer, Strauss knew full well that a score only becomes an opera when it is performed by musicians who think and feel. There is no such thing as "non-interpretation". Now, Lindsey makes her presence felt through her acting, rather than by her singing, in a thoughtful reversal of roles.  The Composer "is" part of the opera, silent or otherwise.

Strauss's score is brilliantly anarchic, extending the idea of multiple levels of reality. The Mozart and commedia dell'arte references jostle with references to Wagner, popular dance tunes and woozy bursts of fantasy. Vladimir Jurowski has a wonderful feel for Strauss's sense of humour. The brasses of the London Philharmonic Orchestra blare just enough so we can hear the parody, the winds (especially the bassoons) wail like a bunch of mock tubas. The strings reminded me of Strauss' Metamorphosen.  Humour is even more difficult to express in abstract music than more obvious emotions, because by its very nature, it's quixotic, tilting at the windmills of rigid literality.

Hence the vignettes, which Thoma stages so well. They break the intensity, injecting an irreverent sense of the absurd.  The nymphs, Naiad, Dryad and Echo are mindless, not "carers" so much as nurses who follow rules without question. But how lovingly they are sung and acted by Ana Maria Labin, Adriana Di Paola, and Gabriela Istoc. The Four Comedians,  Harlequin, Scaramuccio, Truffaldino and Brighella (Dmitri Vargin, James Kryshak, Torben Jürgens and Andrew Stenson) are even more impressively performed. When they  dance, every movement matches perfectly with the music: even their toes are tuned just right. The figures may be "fools" but they're done with panache and precision.  They practically steal the show. 

This Glyndebourne Strauss Ariadne auf Naxos has the makings of a classic, once audiences realize how genuinely true it is to the savage wit of Strauss and Hoffmansthal.  Ariadne auf Naxos subverts delusion and false images. We need its irreverence more than ever. 

Catch the screenings. Full review and cast list in Opera Today.

photos by Alastair Muir, courtesy Glyndebourne Festival

Glyndebourne Ariadne auf Naxos Kate Lindsey

Utterly mad but absolutely right - Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos started the Glyndebourne 2013 season with an explosion. Full review HERE. Naiads and Dryads as nurses. Ariadne and Zerbinetta patients in a mental hospital. But then, Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. Vorspiel and Opera are quite distinct. But which is more real? Ariadne auf Naxos is not "about" Greek myth so much as a satire on art and the way art is made. The music is modern : snatches of waltz, moments of woozy fantasy: Strauss is referencing his own times.e
The Composer sings in the Vorspeil  because he/she thinks he/she can create a work of art. But the Opera takes on a manic new life of its own. The Composer (Kate Lindsey) watches in  mute horror  as the parts he thought he dictated express things he/she could hardly envisage. Strauss is sending up the very idea of art. He's also sending up social pretensions. Ariadne and Bacchus hardly come from "normal" families. Is it any surprise that Ariadne's fantasies seem quite insane? Freud would have had something to say about her sexual hangups, and Zerbinetta's lack thereof.  Strauss also satirizes other composers. No one is sacred. Rarely has the connection between Tristan und Isolde and the "opera" within Strauss's opera been made so explicit. Listen to the music and its parody of Wagner. Strauss's Liebestod unfolds as the hospital curtains billow outwards like the sails of a ship, lit by a red glow which suggests fire or sunset. Or, more potently, the burning of Valhalla.  Katharina Thoma's Ariadne auf Naxos is quite mad, but deliciously, deliriously werktreue, respecting Strauss and Hoffmannstahl's savage wit.

Instant opinion is almost always shallow. This production deserves much deeper thought. So I won't review it til tomorrow to do it justice. (please come back).  In the meantime, here is Robert Hugill's interview with Kate Lindsey in Opera Today. That's her in the photo, as The Composer (credit Alastair Muir) HERE IS A LINK TO MY FULL REVIEW WITH PHOTOS

ROH La donna del lago - the conductor speaks

"Rossini’s La donna del Lago at the Royal Opera House boasts a superstar cast. Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez are perhaps the best in these roles in the business at this time. Yet the conductor Michele Mariotti is also hot news. He has only just turned 34, but has extensive experience. He conducted Rigoletto at the Met. “You know,” he smiles, “the Rat Pack Rigoletto”"
 
"Rossini expresses feelings in a more abstract, intellectual way. The structure is almost completely vertical, not contrapuntal. It can look quite ‘frozen’ in theory, but it’s a very different way of expressing feelings. For example, in the Act Two trio, "Qual pena in me gia desta", Elena and her two suitors are singing short, sharp high C’s. But these notes bear swords!” “In the ‘King’s aria’, “O fiamma soave”, you can hear that Uberto cannot be a shepherd because the coloratura is so elegant, so royal that only a king could sing like that. He’s wearing a disguise as a shepherd, but the people in the audience can hear who he really is.”


Read the whole interview here in Opera Today
 Michele Mariotti conducts La donna del lago  (Full review to come)

Above: Michele Mariotti [Photo by Amati Bacciardi (Pesaro) courtesy of Columbia Artists Music]

Joyce DiDonato Rossini : La donna del Lago

Tonight a new production of Rossini's La donna del lago opens at the Royal Opera House. Originally this would have been a reprise of the production at the Opéra national de Paris, but that got pulled. So we in London get the same strong cast led by  Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Florez but a staging by Jiohn Fulljames. To get an idea of what's in store and what we're thankfully missing, read James Sohre's review of the 2010 Paris production in Opera Today.

".......For with (Joyce DiDonato's) consummately realized Elena in La Donna del Lago we are privileged to experience that rare perfect marriage of role and artist. This day there was nothing her voice could not do, and she (and Rossini) asked it to do a great deal. Perfectly realized coloratura one moment, melting legato the next, heady leaps to the heights and spot-on plunges to the depths, fizzy fioritura, and plangent despair — Elena la, Elena qua — Ms. DiDonato makes short work of any such challenges as if she were born with this role in her throat."

"The great final set piece Tanti Affeti was such stuff as legends are made of, with our diva not so much singing the aria as inhabiting it. The inevitability of every phrase, the quick-silver contrasts of emotion, the flawless musical instincts backed by one of the best techniques in the world held us utterly mesmerized. Indeed, at one momentary rest I became aware that no one seemed to be breathing. Although we were poised in our seats, mouths agape at the pyrotechnical display, no air was moving in or out lest the perfection of the moment be marred. Only the greatest artists giving the greatest performances can inspire that reaction holding an audience rapt, and Joyce DiDonato must certainly be numbered among them. Her aria effortlessly dispatched, all that was left was for us to roar our approval with such ferocity and persistence that it threatened to bring the plaster down upon our heads. Bravissima, Joyce. Oh hell, Bravississima."

"Would that the physical production had been up to the level of its world class singers.........Lluis Pasqual is credited as the director but it is hard to know what he did really, except have the chorus remain on the sides totally unengaged in the action, and have the soloists routinely circle the stage a bit and then tromp down center one by one in a numbingly repetitive pattern. Pasqual also kept having people spook around on the second and third levels of the balconies, without adding visual interest but at least too boring to even be distracting. Montse Colomé claims the distinction of devising perhaps the dorkiest dances I ever saw for three men and one woman as warriors, flailing arms and extending legs like Xena Meets The Matrix."
  
Don't forget, read the full review, it's delicious ! I've seen clips of the original production and think I would concur.

Andris Nelsons from CBSO to BSO - Chess moves !

Andris Nelsons has been appointed Chief Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He's completely different from predecessors like Seiji Osawa and James Levine, so maybe he represents the start of something big? He's a very innovative, adventurous conductor equally at home in orchestral music and opera. His wife is the soprano Kristine Opolais. A Dream Team, though they usually work separately.

In Britain, we've been fortunate that we've been able to hear Nelsons so frequently, and in so many different things. He's been head at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra since 2010, and is a regular at the Royal Opera House.  The CBSO connection is supremely important . More than 30 years ago, Simon Rattle transformed it. Now it's one of the best orchestras in the country. Rattle's vision focussed on progress. He was always interested in 20th century music, specially championing Mahler, Stravisnky, Szymanowski, Lutoslawski and so on. Sakari Oramo (now BBCSO) and Andris Nelsons have further polished the diamond.

Conductor moves are like chess moves. With each move, the whole game changes shape. Nelsons will almost certainly shake up Boston, since he's so very different from, say, Seiji Osawa or James Levine. At a time when the US orchestra scene seems in shambles, will he inject new life into the rest of the country? What can Boston offer to a conductor who commands respect at Bayreuth and the Royal Opera Hose ? And what are Nelsons' long term plans ? At 34, he's young and far too good to while out his career in one city as conductors did in the past.  Things don't work like that in an era of CDs, internet and travel. Where will he be in 10 years ? That's an even bigger question than who's taking over CBSO or what he'll do with the BSO. Nelsons is also unusually charismatic, which gives him the edge: conductors have to inspire as well as conduct well. With his charm, he can achieve great things. Nelsons conducts a lot in Berlin, too: some have suggested that he's the real dark horse favourite to succeed Rattle there, too.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor "Motherless child"

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's The Song of Hiawatha gets a keynote performance at this year's Three Choirs Festival, which gave him his first major commission: the Ballade in A minor for full orchestra, first heard in Gloucester.  It was his op 33, though he was only 23 years old

Like Antonin Dvořák and Frederick Delius, Coleridge-Taylor travelled to America and was fascinated by the "new" world. He was feted by the President Theodore Roosevelt. Although Coleridge-Taylor was an Englishman culturally, in some parts of the US he would have been considered "a coloured man".  While Vaughan Williams and Butterworth were collecting British folk songs, Coleridge-Taylor was listening to the folk songs of alien cultures. Below, one of his Five Negro Melodies op 59 (1905) to the old spiritual: