Thomas Adès. LPO season opener : Stravinsky Adès Lutosławski

Continuing the London Philharmonic Orchestra's year-long Stravinsky series at the Royal Festival Hall, Thomas Adès conducted Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements,  Lutosławski Symphony no 3 and his own In Seven Days.  Adès has sometimes been a conductor who puts more into his own works, which is perhaps fair enough, but this was a superb Stravinsky - full of vigour, but perhaps even more pointedly, shaped with an understanding of the structure of the piece and how it works as a coherent whole. The Symphony in Three Movements  operates like a kaleidoscope, with quotes from other works, notanly the Rite of Spring, appearing, fragmentizing and re-surfacing in new combinations. As has been said many times, it's a bit like the cinematic use of collage, where different frames are put together to create a new whole. Stravinsky would have been well aware of Sergei Eisenstein, so it's perhaps no accident that snippets of music planned for use in the film of Franz Werfel's The Song of Bernadette  appear. In musical composition, collage creates impressionistic density, images proliferating in layers and patterns.  Stravinsky suggested that some images were inspired by war : hence the brutal, stomping march that evolves from the "primitivism" of the Rite of Spring, ritual now a force for destruction not regrowth. The inner movement is brief respite before savage, angular ostinato figues return.  One might, perhaps,  read into the piece insights into Stravinsky's predicament, looking back on his past and anxiously ahead, in exile, but the energy of this performance was such that it wholly convinced on its own terms.

This idea of music as collage continued with Adès's own In Seven Days, subtitled "piano concerto with moving image". Ten years ago, when it premiered with Nicholas Hodge and the London Sinfonietta, it was presented with video accompaniment by Adès's partner Tal Rosner, the visuals were given equal billing to the music, to the detriment of the music. Freed of the clumsy caricatures of the video, the piece revealed its true colours.  Bouncing, vibrant staccato and twirling traceries of woodwinds suggest freshness and light.  Passages where clusters of small, rapid notes evoked stars in the universe, perhaps, or city lights at night – it doesn’t matter either way as both catch the fragmented, flickering mood of the music.  A beautiful setting for Kirill Gerstein's rich, deep chords, rumbling at the lower register like some force of nature.  The brass and winds behind him provided another texture - long, rising lines - before the tiny fragments Gerstein played, each note cleanly defined and shining.  The title In Seven Days refers to the seven days of Creation. Each “day” represents a stage in the formation of the universe, though perhaps it’s best not to be too literal: the impression of a universe being created is what matters. Thus the rushing forces towards the middle section and the moment of mysterious calm which seemed to resonate into infinity.  Gerstein's playing in the final section was beautifully assured : no visual images are needed to evoke the sense of some magical dawn materializing in our imaginations.  A sudden, unexpected end, hinting at more to come. Visuals better suited to the music might help, but not the originals.

To my eternal regret, I turned down a chance to hear Witold Lutosławski conduct his Symphony no 3 in 1992, but fortunately it is now established canon and performed by other masters.  Adès has  high standards to meet, but this was very good.  For his publishers, the composer wrote "The work consists of two movements, preceded by a short introduction and followed by an epilogue and a coda. It is played without a break. The first movement comprises three episodes, of which the first is the fastest, the second slower and the third is the slowest. The basic tempo remains the same and the differences of speed are realised by the lengthening of the rhythmical units. Each episode is followed by a short, slow intermezzo. It is based on a group of toccata-like themes contrasting with a rather singing one: a series of differentiated tuttis leads to a climax of the whole work. Then comes the last movement, based on a slow singing theme and a sequence of short dramatic recitatives played by the string group. A short and very fast coda ends the piece."  But within that such originality !

Startling chords announce its arrival.  These form a sharp outline, containing  the individual instrumental groups in the orchestra which operate almost in free form between the punctuation points that hold them in. The woodwinds test and tease, strings tiptoe tentatively, celli tracing elliptical figures.  As the winds break out of formation, percussion attempts control, but the multiple voices in the orchestra remain irrepressible, even when trumpets scream like klaxons.  Zig zag figures, darting forth and flying free. The tension between forms seems to shape the piece as much as the forms themselves. Quieter passages heralded a change of direction : longer, more deliberate liness stretched out, tiny fragments of sound meeting loud chords : a cataclsym where bells and sirens screamed, and timpani thundred. I lovced the way the LPO played the riot (of sorts) that followed, fragments sharp yet sparkling, building up in force.  Towards the end an anthem seems to emerge, rising above and beyond. At last, the startling chords are stilled. 

Ian Bostridge Winterreise Wigmore Hall Thomas Adès

Ian Bostridge and Thomas Adès in Schubert Winterreise at the Wigmore Hall. Please read Claire Seymour's review here in Opera Today.   Like all good artists, Bostridge doesn't do autopilot but keeps searching for more. Which is the whole point of Winterreise.  The protagonist doesn't stop searching, even when he's reduced to following a beggar, or an apparition thereof.  Once it was fashionable to assume that the protagonist must go mad and die, because sensible people don't search. Now, thank goodness we realize that there's more to the human psyche than Biedermeyer home comforts. For goodness sake, think about the text ! 
Will dich im Traum nicht stören,

Wär schad’ um deine Ruh’

Stravinsky Perséphone, Thomas Adès, Barry RFH

Continuing the London Philharmonic Orchestra's Stravinsky Journey at the Royal Festival Hall,  Thomas Adès : Powder Her Face suite (new), Stravinsky Perséphone, and Gerald Barry's Organ Concerto.  Oddly enough, Stravinsky's Perséphone and Adès's Powder Her Face suite make good bedfellows. Both are unusual works for music theatre that don't fit into easy pigeonholes, both innovative in their own ways.

When  Adès's opera Powder Her Face premiered in 1995, its subject caused a sensation.  Last revived at the Linbury at the Royal Opera House in 2010, it deserves another outing, not only because it's musically inventive but because it encapsulates a vision of Britishness that still has the power to upset. Scandal, hypocrisy and venality - some things don't change.  In the suite, however, we can focus on the inventivenss in the music.  This version of the suite is apparently Adès's second. I haven't heard the first but this one's a full-throated (oops) approach which maximizes orchestral drama. Since the characters in the original opera were hard to swallow (oops again), the suite is in many ways Opera ohne Worte and works rather well.  Sophisticated London is evoked in the introduction - sharp, brittle figures giving way to sweeping lines which carry such force they sweep all doubts away.   A fanfare of sorts emerges - nightclub sleaze but done with stylish flair, a more melancholy melody whipping at the corners which eventually comes to the fore, acompanied by tinkling piano.  Circular figures emerge, then the sound of sirens. From silence emerges a sinister theme that coils upon itself in sweeping ellipse.  Prickly staccato again - tense and brittle (like the characters in the opera). These battle with the large, looming  trombone and tubas. Eventually the orchestra settles into wan detumescence, the woodwinds crying. Suddenly the music flares up - small horns calling, trombones wailing in ferocious fanfare. Towards the end, the "world" retreats, vast figures moving onwards, leaving a violin to sing, almost alone.  Frenzied staccato and winds screaming like whips, grunts from the brass. The glamour is gone, but the brutishness remains. Not  easy listening but emotionally true.

Stravinsky's Perséphone is part oratorio, part theatre, very much a product of the 1930's with its stylized neo-classical lines.  The tenor (Toby Spence) and narrator (Kristin Scott Thomas)  operate like chorèges, narrating and speaking for characters, supported by orchestra, and chorus (the Tiffin Boys' Choir). Duality is embedded into the piece, reflecting shifting balances. Perséphone is the daughter of the goddess of fertility, her promise is cut short because she's abducted into the underworld.  Thus the ritualized interplay of darkness and light, death and life.  I liked the contrast between Spence's austere delivery and Scott Thomas's softer, girlish style.  The orchestration is spare : piccolos, cors anglais, and strings (including harp), evoking the instruments of Greek theatre.  Contrabassoons moaned, as if in mourning.  As Perséphone re-entered the world and Spring returns, textures lightened and the voices of the children's choir rang out brightly.

Between Stravinsky and Adès, Gerry Barry's Organ Concerto.  There's no reason why music can't be humorous, but in this case, the joke was on everyone but the composer.  

National Treasures : Simon Rattle LSO Elgar Birtwistle Knussen Adès

Sir Simon Rattle conducting the LSO. photo Tristram Kenton, courtesy LSO

"This is Rattle" the title of a ten-day Barbican festival inaugurating Sir Simon Rattle as new Music Director at the London Symphony Orchestra.  There's a lot more to being Music Director than conducting.  Rattle is a brilliant communicator whose enthusiasm fires up those around him.  He's the best possible ambassador for the LSO, the Barbican and for British music all round. This concert could mark an historic occasion.  Will Rattle revitalize the LSO and London, as  he transformed the City of Birmingham and its Symphony Orchestra ?  Will Rattle succeed single handedly in reversing the insular philistinism that's plaguing this nation?   In our celebrity-obsessed age, you need a celebrity to reach the masses.  If the new concert hall for London is ever built - and it should be  - somehow Rattle's role should be recognized. This inaugural concert of the new LSO and Barbican season might, in time, prove an historic occasion.  For my review of Rattle's Berlioz Damnation of Faust, click here.

And now, to the music! An all-British programme proving that British music is alive and thriving.  When Sir Edward Elgar was "Britain's Greatest Living Composer", his music was often associated with Birmingham.  Rattle's Elgar credentials go way back  Thus the Enigma Variations, its cheerful geniality matching the occasion.  Once Elgar was "new music". But good music keeps evolving. Britain's "Greatest Living Composer" is now Sir Harrison Birtwistle, so original that his contemporaries, alive or not, don't come close.

Birtwistle's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (2010-11) is classic Birtwistle. It operates on several simultaneous layers, moving in well defined patterns, proceeding with the deliberation of ritual magic. It also connects to Birtwistle's operas and music theatre. The soloist, Christian Tetzlaff, for whom it was commissioned, always hold centre stage, the orchestra acting like a  chorus.  A rumbling introduction, suggesting portent.  Almost immediately the violin spins into life - quirky, angular figures - characteristic Birtwistle zig-zags, lit by sudden explosions in the orchestra - high strings, then low winds, and an underlying pulse which emerges in bursts of ostinato.  Five "dialogues" in which the violin discourses with individual instruments.  Unlike Greek drama where the chorus comments on proceedings, the orchestra follows the soloist, interacting with the inventiveness in the violin part. Frequent exclamation points - a gong,  bell-like marimba like a laugh of recognition,  exotic sounds whose meaning may be unclear but significant, nonetheless.  Wild outbursts and delicate, wayward passages.  The violin sings at the top of its register, tantalizingly beyond and above the orchestra, which responds with groaning blasts. Inventive, richly rewarding and enlivened by Birtwistle's whimsical wit.  An excellent companion piece to Elgar's Enigma Variations: the pair should be heard together more often.

Simon Rattle's associations with Oliver Knussen and Thomas Adès are even closer.  Rattle premiered Adès's Asyla in 1995 in Birmingham and recorded it with the CBSO and later with the  Berliner Philharmoniker.  Indeed, he included it in his inaugural concert in Berlin in 2002.  The title "Asyla" refers to asylums, places of refuge as well as incarceration.  It's pertinent, since it's a piece of incessant variations. Inspired by techno music and the idea of repeated mechanical patterns, it channels obsession into energy. Though the famous third movement allegedly depicts swarming hordes bobbing up and down in a crowded nightclub, probably high on drugs, the same could apply to shamanistic dance, where shamans, often high on peyote, dance themselves into oblivion, thereby releasing their subconscious.  Asylum as escape and refuge, yet also dangerous.  Thus the grand Hollywoodesque climax, an ejaculation in many ways.  Asyla can be read as a series of variations, though, unlike Birtwistle and Elgar, these variations are tinged with insanity and desperation.   Adès's finest work feeds off this primal energy. Perhaps it needs challenge to keep the sparkplugs firing.  Some of his later work isn't as good as Asyla, or The Tempest, or America: a Prophecy, but he's still an important composer. 


Pointedly, Rattle included Oliver Knussen in his pantheon. Knussen has been a regular at the Barbican, so Rattle could hardly fail to acknowledge his role in promoting new music, in London, in Birmingham and at Aldeburgh.   But their relationship is closer than that : Rattle conducted Knussen when Knussen was barely out of his teens.  Knussen's Symphony no 3 (1973-79) takes its cue from Shakespeare's Ophelia, distraught with grief, singing "mad songs" in Hamlet.  For more background, please read the description  on Faber, who are Knussen's publishers.  The piece has been in Rattle's repertoire since CBSO days. It's a pity that the only recording of this work was not by Rattle, who reveals Knussen's Symphony in its full glory:  (Knussen's conducted it lots, too). It's an amazing work, at turns quirky, magical, demented and inspired. 

Knussen's Third Symphony is wordless, but its sinuous figures suggest curving, swaying movement, like a dancer turning in circles. Knussen has referred to its "cinematic" nature and "the potential relationship in film between a tough and fluid narrative form and detail which can be frozen or 'blown up' at any point." Without words, Knussen creates drama, in the shifting layers and tempi. Each permutation unfolds like a frenzied dance, or perhaps processional, given the size of these orchestral forces. The orchestra is huge - especially for a piece that lasts 15 minutes, but at its heart lie just three players, a sub unit of celeste, harp and guitar (alternating mandolin). Does that suggest Mahler's Seventh Symphony, and its strange Nachtmusik? Knussen and Mahler don't sound the least bit similar, but the comparison is fruitful, because both symphonies evoke contradictory responses. That's part of their enigmatic power.  Knussen's symphony "dances" with grave dignity, strong tutti chords suggesting fractured intensity. Darkness and blinding bright light. Yet at the heart, quiet, simple sounds suggesting the fragile human soul within.

A wonderful performance - let's hope Rattle and the LSO do it again, in tribute, for Knussen is very much "more" than a composer, just as Rattle is "more" than a conductor. Knussen's a towering figure in every way, who has done more than most for music in this country.  Because his energies have found so many outlets, he hasn't written as much as he might have, but almost everything he does write is top notch, top rank.

Among the many composers Knussen has nurtured is Helen Grime.  Appropriately, Rattle chose her for the the piece with which the concert began - Fanfare - from a much larger work still in progress.  Another excellent choice, linking the past to the future, proof that music in Britain is alive and well and deserves to thrive. 

Thomas Adès : The Exterminating Angel ROH London

Thomas Adès The Exterminating Angel at the Royal Opera House, London,  reviewed in depth by Claire Seymour in Opera Today : The most detailed review so far !

The opera’s score is an ingenious re-enactment of the past in the present. But, in this work Adès’s characteristically and remarkably skilful parodic eclecticism does more than remind us that our experience of music is filtered through our memory of past musical experiences - from medieval song to modernism; here, such musical echoes imply own our entrapment. So, in Act II the ‘Fugue of Panic’ layers snatches of Strauss waltzes - and Adès imagines the latter as teasing and taunting, ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? Don’t worry about what’s going on outside’ - as the artifice of which the waltz is a symbol, and upon which the guests’ sense of propriety is founded, is exposed as illusory. - See more at: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2017/04/the_exterminati.php#sthash.Qv0SpwEh.dpuf

The opera’s score is an ingenious re-enactment of the past in the present. But, in this work Adès’s characteristically and remarkably skilful parodic eclecticism does more than remind us that our experience of music is filtered through our memory of past musical experiences - from medieval song to modernism; here, such musical echoes imply own our entrapment. So, in Act II the ‘Fugue of Panic’ layers snatches of Strauss waltzes - and Adès imagines the latter as teasing and taunting, ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? Don’t worry about what’s going on outside’ - as the artifice of which the waltz is a symbol, and upon which the guests’ sense of propriety is founded, is exposed as illusory. - See more at: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2017/04/the_exterminati.php#sthash.Qv0SpwEh.dpuf

he opera’s score is an ingenious re-enactment of the past in the present. But, in this work Adès’s characteristically and remarkably skilful parodic eclecticism does more than remind us that our experience of music is filtered through our memory of past musical experiences - from medieval song to modernism; here, such musical echoes imply own our entrapment. So, in Act II the ‘Fugue of Panic’ layers snatches of Strauss waltzes - and Adès imagines the latter as teasing and taunting, ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? Don’t worry about what’s going on outside’ - as the artifice of which the waltz is a symbol, and upon which the guests’ sense of propriety is founded, is exposed as illusory. - See more at: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2017/04/the_exterminati.php#sthash.Qv0SpwEh.dpuf

The opera’s score is an ingenious re-enactment of the past in the present. But, in this work Adès’s characteristically and remarkably skilful parodic eclecticism does more than remind us that our experience of music is filtered through our memory of past musical experiences - from medieval song to modernism; here, such musical echoes imply own our entrapment. So, in Act II the ‘Fugue of Panic’ layers snatches of Strauss waltzes - and Adès imagines the latter as teasing and taunting, ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? Don’t worry about what’s going on outside’ - as the artifice of which the waltz is a symbol, and upon which the guests’ sense of propriety is founded, is exposed as illusory. - See more at: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2017/04/the_exterminati.php#sthash.Qv0SpwEh.dpuf

The opera’s score is an ingenious re-enactment of the past in the present. But, in this work Adès’s characteristically and remarkably skilful parodic eclecticism does more than remind us that our experience of music is filtered through our memory of past musical experiences - from medieval song to modernism; here, such musical echoes imply own our entrapment. So, in Act II the ‘Fugue of Panic’ layers snatches of Strauss waltzes - and Adès imagines the latter as teasing and taunting, ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? Don’t worry about what’s going on outside’ - as the artifice of which the waltz is a symbol, and upon which the guests’ sense of propriety is founded, is exposed as illusory. - See more at: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2017/04/the_exterminati.php#sthash.Qv0SpwEh.dpuf

The opera’s score is an ingenious re-enactment of the past in the present. But, in this work Adès’s characteristically and remarkably skilful parodic eclecticism does more than remind us that our experience of music is filtered through our memory of past musical experiences - from medieval song to modernism; here, such musical echoes imply own our entrapment. So, in Act II the ‘Fugue of Panic’ layers snatches of Strauss waltzes - and Adès imagines the latter as teasing and taunting, ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? Don’t worry about what’s going on outside’ - as the artifice of which the waltz is a symbol, and upon which the guests’ sense of propriety is founded, is exposed as illusory. - See more at: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2017/04/the_exterminati.php#sthash.Qv0SpwEh.dpuf

The opera’s score is an ingenious re-enactment of the past in the present. But, in this work Adès’s characteristically and remarkably skilful parodic eclecticism does more than remind us that our experience of music is filtered through our memory of past musical experiences - from medieval song to modernism; here, such musical echoes imply own our entrapment. So, in Act II the ‘Fugue of Panic’ layers snatches of Strauss waltzes - and Adès imagines the latter as teasing and taunting, ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? Don’t worry about what’s going on outside’ - as the artifice of which the waltz is a symbol, and upon which the guests’ sense of propriety is founded, is exposed as illusory. - See more at: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2017/04/the_exterminati.php#sthash.Qv0SpwEh.dpuf

The opera’s score is an ingenious re-enactment of the past in the present. But, in this work Adès’s characteristically and remarkably skilful parodic eclecticism does more than remind us that our experience of music is filtered through our memory of past musical experiences - from medieval song to modernism; here, such musical echoes imply own our entrapment. So, in Act II the ‘Fugue of Panic’ layers snatches of Strauss waltzes - and Adès imagines the latter as teasing and taunting, ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? Don’t worry about what’s going on outside’ - as the artifice of which the waltz is a symbol, and upon which the guests’ sense of propriety is founded, is exposed as illusory. - See more at: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2017/04/the_exterminati.php#sthash.Qv0SpwEh.dpuf

The opera’s score is an ingenious re-enactment of the past in the present. But, in this work Adès’s characteristically and remarkably skilful parodic eclecticism does more than remind us that our experience of music is filtered through our memory of past musical experiences - from medieval song to modernism; here, such musical echoes imply own our entrapment. So, in Act II the ‘Fugue of Panic’ layers snatches of Strauss waltzes - and Adès imagines the latter as teasing and taunting, ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? Don’t worry about what’s going on outside’ - as the artifice of which the waltz is a symbol, and upon which the guests’ sense of propriety is founded, is exposed as illusory. - See more at: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2017/04/the_exterminati.php#sthash.Qv0SpwEh.dpuf

The opera’s score is an ingenious re-enactment of the past in the present. But, in this work Adès’s characteristically and remarkably skilful parodic eclecticism does more than remind us that our experience of music is filtered through our memory of past musical experiences - from medieval song to modernism; here, such musical echoes imply own our entrapment. So, in Act II the ‘Fugue of Panic’ layers snatches of Strauss waltzes - and Adès imagines the latter as teasing and taunting, ‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? Don’t worry about what’s going on outside’ - as the artifice of which the waltz is a symbol, and upon which the guests’ sense of propriety is founded, is exposed as illusory. - See more at: http://www.operatoday.com/content/2017/04/the_exterminati.php#sthash.Qv0SpwEh.dpuf

VOTE NOW South Bank Breakthrough Award

VOTE NOW - voting ends tomorrow - for the South Bank Breakthrough Awards. Results will be unveiled later this month on Sky HD. These awards cover everything  - pop. TV, comedy, drama, visual arts and theatre.  Most interesting, though, is the South Bank Breakthrough Artists Award nominations because the choices don't favour the very rich and very famous. For opera and classical, the nominations are : Alessandro Talevi and Anna Clyne. HERE is a link to the voting form. 

Alessandro Talevi is the nominee for opera. Last October, he directed the Welsh National Opera's Roberto Devereux. "With this thrilling performance of Roberto Devereux ......The Welsh National Opera vindicates its decision to stage Donizetti's Tudor trilogy" said the Guardian.  For Opera North, he created Don Giovanni in 2012 and The Turn of the Screw in 2010. His productions have also been seen in Puglia, Central City Colorado (the hippest secret in the US opera world), Sweden and of course many, many times in London. His productions spring from an intuitive feel for the way music itself creates drama. A true original.

Anna Clyne is the nominee for classical music. Her Masquerade featured at the BBC Last Night of the Proms, when they were making a big splash to promote women artists. Here is an analysis by new music specialist 5:4.

Harrison Birtwistle and Thomas Adès are composers but they have to compete against a blogger – Alex Ross – for the main a award for classical music. That award is sponsored by the South Bank. Say no more. So I've chosen to vote for music instead, Thomas Adès's Totentanz  - real music - which I wrote about HERE.

Totentanz : Thomas Adès gets his mojo back

Welcome back, Thomas Adès  Adès Totentanz received its world premiere at BBC Prom 8.  It's a strikingly original work, quite unlike anything he's written in years, and restores his status after a long dry period. Totentanz should enter the repertoire even though performance presents logistical problems. Central to the piece is a giant Taiko drum, bigger than the one depicted here. But the drum is the heartbeat of Totentanz, integral to its meaning. The starting point of Adès's Totentanz was a fresco in the Lübeck Marienkirche which shows a series of people, dancing hand in hand with corpses, a view of the city (and Church) in the distance. 

The Dance of Death was a frequent theme in medieval art, literature and music. There are dozens of depictions. But Adès's choice of the Lübecker Totentanz is particularly poignant. It no longer exists. It was destroyed in a firebombing raid in 1944. Ghosts haunt this music in many ways. Benjamin Britten wrote his War Requiem to mark the bombing of Coventry Cathedral. Adès's Tontentanz marks the infinitely more extensive destruction of an even greater heritage, and I don't just mean the cathedrals of Germany. This was a period when it was acceptable to destroy history, not just military targets.  The Taiko drum reminds us that terrible things happened all over the world, not just in Europe.

Medieval art isn't naturalistic. Large scale works are shown in sequence and there's no perspective in the modern sense. Adès's structure replicates this formality. Each segment unfolds like a dignified procession towards an inevitable conclusion.  While listening, I kept thinking how graphic this music is. The stomping ostinato suggests angular, vertical form, which suggests the movement of feet, trapped in lockstep. Strings wail, violently oscillating diagonals, up and down the scale like screams of terror. Trumpets and smaller percussion create details that suggest what is being lost. Happier memories, real dances perhaps not the sinister Dance of Death.

Two voices stand in the foreground, against a panoramic large orchestra, just like the original fresco. Not all music with voices is opera. Adès's Totentanz is not operatic. The voices function as an extension of the orchestra. Even the vocal lines replicate the shapes in the orchestra. The baritone (Simon Keenlyside) part is solid and non-effusive.Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau would have been ideal for this - another reference to Britten's War Requiem, as galling as that might be for Adès to admit. The baritone represents Death. The mezzo (Christianne Stotjin) represents Everyman, not just the Maiden, often chosen as a symbol for the loss of youth and beauty. Her lines waver upwards and down, contorted like spasms of pain. Adès was wise to choose a mezzo instead of a higher voice, for the shrillness suggests anguish. Lighter textures would not have quite the same effect.Words like "Ritter", "schwer" and "züruck" are spat out like missiles, weapons in a battle that has only one end.

After a magnificently cacophony, the music begins to spiral downwards. "Nimm, nimmer" sings the baritone, quietly, as if in macabre lullaby, The mezzo's voice elides, smearing the words so they sound like she's being drugged. She is. Her system is breaking down. The marching jackboot rhythms diminish to a slower, comatose tempo. At the end, the music scrapes along in near silence. We feel like we're being dragged, physically, into the grave.

There isn't anything quite like Adès's Totentanz in the mainstream. The only parallels I can think of offhand are the music dramas of Honegger, Carl Orff, K A Hartmann and Walter Braunfels in the 1930's and 40's, also recreating stylized "medieval" aesthetics. Or Britten's Church Parables. Plenty about all these composers elsewhere on this website, please explore. Modernity as medievalism. This aspect of music drama ia sadly neglected, but important.

This Prom began with Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem. Too much is made of the Japanese connection, though Adès's use of the Taiko drum is relevant. Britten know about the Nanjing massacres even if the British government looked the other way. Because Adès's main concern was, rightly enough, the Totentanz, it wasn't particularly expressive.  Much better realized was Witold Lutoslawski's Concerto for Cello, thanks to a vivid performance by Paul Watkins.

Prom 8 is available online for 7 days HERE and will no doubt make further appearances. It's also being broadcast on BBC TV 4 on 28 July.

Taxidermy Tempest - Adès at the Met

What would Robert Lepage make of Thomas Adès's The Tempest ? The Tempest is inherently dramatic, given its Shakespearean origins, and  Adès's music soars to sublime, supernatural heights.  The Met is wealthier than any other house, and Lepage has a penchant for expensive machines..This was an opportunity for the Met to use its resources to craete something truly magical.

Instead it proved to be a grotesque, proving yet again that throwing money at things means nothing if there's no vision behind it.  Imagine a Mies van der Rohe masterpiece with glorious vistas. Then stuff  it full to bursting with discards from a shabby amateur dramatics prop room.

 Lepage's concept is built round a mock-up of the Teatro alla Scala, on the dubious premise that Prospero once lived in Milan. However, La Scala didn't exist in Shakespeare's time. Why are the costumes facsimilies of late 19th century Italian opera?  " Milan" and "Naples" are symbols of temporal  power, rendered impotent.  The Tempest is allegory, not history.  In many ways it  is the most "English" of operas. Furthermore, Shakespeare deliberately locates it on a mythical island in a mythical ocean, where nature spirits operate beyond the confines of civilization.  Central to the plot, and to Adès's music is the cosmic storm.  Adès's music sizzles and spins with supernatural energy. Lepage smothers it in formaldehyde, turning it to taxidermy.
 
The Tempest is Adès's  finest achievement. How could he have countenanced this? He might as well have replaced his music with elevator muzak, for all the relevance this production had to the opera. Lepage has direccted the stage play many times. How could he have misunderstood it so completely? Perhaps he's making a reference to the artficial nature of theatre, which might work with many operas, but not for something as esoteric as The Tempest. One wonders if composer and director were hypnotized by the Met aesthetic of money before taste. Some opera goers could not care less about art, music or drama. Ironically, the same audiences who wail at "Regie" will not notice that Lepage's pointless staging and costumes are the worst form of directoral excess.

Because The Tempest predicates on psychic imbalance and distorted reality, Adès's  music is finely tuned to capture this distorted reality. Cadences rise madly up and down the scale, pitches switch suddenly, key changes occur when you least expect. Adès always conducts his own music better than he conducts any othe composer, so I shut my eyes to concentrate on the orchestra. But listen to the Royal Opera House recording, where he's more spontaneous. At the Met he doesn't take risks, and doesn't fully engage with the wild fantasy.
 
The vocal lines are set counter-intuitively, emphasizing words out of syntax.  Ariel and Caliban have the most difficult music because they are supernatural beings who aren't supposed to function in normal terms. The original Ariel, Cynthia Sieden, was an unusually high coloatura, but she had to train her voice specially to sing the part, and do excercises to recover afterwards, but she sang with a quite incredible beauty, her interpretation informed by her extensive experience in baroque roles, which are full of bizarre characters. Audrey Luna sings, but doesn't create the part. "Full Fathoms Five" drifted past, though it's integral to the plot and Adés writes some of his most glorious music for it. Indeed, the Guardian ignored it altogether. But  heroic efforts would have been in vain in this production. Lepage relies too much on mechanical effects to bother about singing or acting, and most of this cast were too inexperienced to override him.

Simon Keenlyside, however, created the role in the original Royal Opera House production. He relishes its challenges and develops Prospero into a plausible human being. He has the range and the flexibility to cope with the constant convoultions. He conveys genuine emotional depth. All credit to the felt tip pen tattoo artist, but the costume concept made Keenlyside look like a monument defaced by graffiti, rather a telling image for the production as a whole. The original  Caliban was created by  Ian Bostridge, whose unique voice brought out the alien strangeness of Caliban's personality, tragic and demonic by turns, the voice shift shaping almost as much as Ariel's but in a lower register. Caliban is a counterpart to Prospero, even though he doesn't have as much to sing, so it takes a tenor with Bostridge's intuitive feel for the surreal to develop the part for maximum impact. Alan Oke has the notes, but not the craziness, and is no match for Keenlyside, worthy as he is. As Adés said himself:"This Caliban is different".

On the other hand, maybe Met audiences don't want challenge, however integral it is to the drama. Toby Spence impressed, as did Kevin Burdette and Iestyn Davies, but the rest of the cast was hampered by the appalling libretto (Meredith Oakes). Humour certainly has a place in this opera, but this text is just plain daft. In theory, one might create a staging which turned this weakness into a virtue. The libretto can be overcome because Adés's  music ignores it in favour of his own musical waywardness. But it would take a much better director than Lepage to direct singers to sing the spirit of what they are singing rather than  just the words. Good direction is all the more important in a production which relies too much on props and mindless costumes. Adès's The Tempest is a radical but lovely piece of music, but Lepage and the Met have once again denatured art and brought it down to the level of pantomime. It's not strictly their fault aloner, but that of an audience that prefers costumes to creativity.

Adès Power of Powder Linbury ROH

Thomas Adès's Powder Her Face is back at the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House.It's a classic. Once again, Joan Rodgers sings the Duchess, supported by Alan Ewing, Iain Paton and the incomparable Rebecca Bottone, all in multiple roles.
 

In 15 years, Powder Her Face has gone from new music cult hit to an opera of international significance. The Tempest notwithstanding, it's Adès's finest work. He's gone on to fame, fortune and Los Angeles, but  hasn't recaptured the vitality of his early work. More recently, he's revisted Powder Her Face, writing a suite based on it, so maybe that will reinvigorate his creative juices.

So cherish this wonderful production directed by Carlos Wagner. The production is every bit as much of a star as the drama queen who inspired the opera itself.

"In your face" is probably  indelicate, but it describes the magnificent staging well. There's no way round the fact that the Duchess of Argyll was destroyed by hypocrisy. In the small space of the Linbury Studio, Conor Murphy's giant staircase overwhelms, but that's the point : no escape! It's a brilliant piece of theatre in itself, because it changes character in each scene. In the end, Paul Keogan's lighting turns it into a lurid neon sunset, the perfect coda to the Duchess's life.

The stairs also mean the cast can go up and down (oops) using the whole space, overcoming the cramped limitations of the small stage. Perhaps that's a reverse metaphor for the Duchess, too. With her wealth and beauty she could have lived a charmed life, if she'd conformed. Instead she grabbed life greedily, imbibing to the full.  The headless men in the notorious photos got away scot-free, as did the philandering, brutish Duke, but the Duchess's reputation was destroyed. Defiant to the end, she cocoons herself away from a world that's changing in ways she can't understand ("Buggery, legal?" she exclaims.) Her end is sordid, but she keeps her dignity, at least in delusion. Larger than life personalities just don't fit in grubby society.

The music's remarkably inventive. Saxophones and jazzy clarinets evoke the glamour of 1930's London.  "They don't know how to do parties now," she wistfully tells a young reporter. Adès' does luscious elegance, but undercuts it with sharp, dissonant edges. The luxury is illusion. Debutante balls were a meat market for the upper classes, nothing romantic.  The Duchess buys sex from a waiter. Two weeks wages for a blow job? "You can get anything with money," she cries. But others have more money, and more power. The Courts rile against her, to the prurient delight of the "lower" class, represented by Bottone and Paton in dirty macs. And when the money runs out, the Duchess is evicted.

Adès weaves elusive sounds into his orchestra. At the beginning of the second Act, he starts with solo accordion, played in a mysterious, bluesy fashion.. It makes an excellent bridge between past and present. Later, accordion, harp and piano (Adès's instrument and "voice") combine, wheezing, wailing and tensely staccato percussive blasts. It's surreal, like hearing the ghosts of the past dancing in Hell.

The opera is both diamond hard and brittle, but then, that's the subject. The Duchess wasn't a nice person even though she was a product of the circles she moved in, and the men around her are worse. Her sexuality is compulsive, and fundamentally unerotic. (It's the role, not Rodger's portrayal.)  Perhaps the maid gets more fun. Bottone's high-pitched shrieks at the top of her register (an Adès' trademark) are well deployed. She's the voice of anarchy. Her voice rips through the silky surface of propriety. In the end it's not she who gets screwed, whatever the Duke might think..