Defeating COVID-19 by human decency - Rattle, Berliner Philharmoniker

Simon Rattle (Photo : Doug Peters)

Disastrous as COVID-19 is, can we learn from it ? At the Philharmonie, Berlin, Simon Rattle conducted Berio and Bartók to an empty hall, streamed internationally free of charge. Inevitably sneers from those who still don't know there's a pandemic around, and above all, cannot understand the role of music in difficult times.  It wasn't just any concert : of course there was no encore or applause.  An empty house brings home the message : millions might suffer and die. We can't take life or anything else for granted. And even those who survive will be scarred. (and lose their livelihoods in the economic downturn).  Concerts are live experiences, influenced by circumstances around them. To dismiss the human side of communication is to dismiss the whole point of music.

As Rattle said, there are connections between Berio Sinfonia and Bartók Concerto for Orchestra.  Both deal with memory, and the multiple threads that influence the way composers and listeners absorb their response to life and to music.  Berio's Sinfonia covers a sprawling range of human experience, questioning the way we process  that experience in music.  It is such a seminal work that it gets done very often indeed, and most people know it well, but it's not at all easy to pull off properly. (there are some lousy ones).  It's a Rattle speciality. Of the numerous performances I've heard,  this was a high point : sharper and tighter, extremely focussed.  Berio's  singers were English, establishing the tradition of British-sounding accents, which is relevant because it distances the voices from the German, Italian and other influences in the work. The soloists Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart are "English" enough but also "musical" enough to fit in with the music.  Even if this wasn't a special event concert, this performance would be up there near the top.

Rattle's introduction to Bartók Concerto for Orchestra was typically understated but that made it all the more powerful.  In this world it's not all me, me  me.  Good peoiple don't fight over toilet paper and abuse strangers.  Possibly even worse than the virus is the way it's revealed how deeply entrenched xenophonia is in this world, so endemic that even seemingly normal peopleshow their evil side.

The performance is superb, as to be expected since he's done this dozens of times, but make the time to listen to what Rattle says.  In these times of crisis, this is utterly relevant; humanity and  empathy for others is all the more important. That's why msuiciands are sacrificng their livelihoods and carrers, so the virus doesn't spread. No-one should have to die because some people want to go out.

In 1940, Bartók was a refugee in a new land, cut off from his creative roots. He was despondent, and broke. He was unknown and unwell. Smasll boys used to tease him in the street, as small boys do, alas.  He became ill,  and might have died in obscurity like so many others in his position. Fortunately, Serge Koussevitzky cared about him, aranging that he be treated with  a new experimental drug then only available to military personnel. One man helping another : passing on the flame as in Berio's Sinfonia. The Concerto for Orchestra  was another act of kindness, since it gave Bartók an income and new inspiration.  

Once he began writing, his mood lifted as if he were rejuvenated.  Although there are familiar "Hungarian" themes in the piece, it's not fundamentally nostalgic.  Bartók was looking back on his past, well aware of what was happening in the Europe he'd left behind, and of the right wing extremism in Hungary, whose government aligned itself with Hitler.  Rattle understands the granite-like inner strength in the piece and the firm lines beneath the nostalgia. Perhaps Bartók was drawing on sources in his psyche that went much deeper than folkloric colour. The ethereal opening theme developed until it emerged with expansive confidence. The music seems to oscillate, highlighting the more disturbing undercurrents in the work, alternating with moments of expansive feeling.  Rattle negotiated this constant flux, tempi spiriting along as if propelled by winds of change. This concert's being repeated on the Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall regularly, in the absence of regular programming. 

Iván Fischer Enescu Bartók Mahler 4 Prom 54

Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, BBC Prom 54 at the Royal Albert Hall, with Enescu, Bartók and Mahler with Anna Lucia Richter as soloist.  A provocative start to the programme with just the first movement (of 4) from George Enescu's Suite for Orchestra op 9 (1903), marked "Prélude à l'unisson".  Though the movement itself is short (9 minutes) it contains within itself the themes which the following movements will develop, returning in the end to a recapitulation of the beginning.  It is cyclic, and also an exercise in unison, the instruments in balance, suggesting a serene sense of natural order.  Fischer's choice was inspired, since it enhanced the impact of  Mahler's Symphony no 4 in G major to come, creating another mini-cycle, utterly appropriate given that Mahler's Fourth deals with the continuation of life on a different plane.   Fischer moved seamlessly from Enescu to Bartók Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936).  Patterns, again in the structure, where tranquility is balanced by staccato liveliness.  Good definition of the sub-sections in each movement, emphasizing the inventive variety : particularly attractive balances between the two groups of strings,  the darker voices contrasting well with the brightness of piano and celeste, and pounding percussion.  Bartók is in the lifeblood of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, founded by Fischer in 1983.  Arguably few ensembles do Bartók with as much idiomatic flair as this conductor and this orchestra, but even by their very high standards, this was a superb performance. Fischer was suffering from an eye disorder, but his powers were not diminished.
Plenty of gusto in Fischer's Mahler Symphony no 4, too, taking off with exuberant energy. The sleigh bells aren't there just as folksy decoration.  No cars in Mahler's time, so if you wanted horsepower,  horses were where it was at.  Trains might have been faster, but horses are living creatures, a significant image in a symphony which deals with life and physical enjoyment.

Furthermore, speed alone isn't important, since Mahler marked it "Bedächtig, nicht eilen" not mad rush but orderly but unstoppable progression.  A sleigh ride is a journey,  rather like the cyle of life and death. Thus the transition to the restrained second movement, elegantly defined.   At first the solo violin sings alone, then is joined by other instruments. Again, the symphony in essence.  Everyone dies alone, but hopefully becomes part of a heavenly community.   Some conductors bright out the  malevolence in the violin part, evoking the medieval dance of death.   In this case, however, the malevolence was understated, the violin, as a friend put it,morelike a village fiddler.  That's not a problem, given that many listeners conceive that this is a "happy" symphony, which iut isn't, really.  On the other hand, Fischer marked the chills in the strings so they felt like cold, cutting winds (sleigh-ride imagery again), and also the circular figures that follow, again emphazing cyclic change.  Gradually the movement subsides before the sudden blast of sound, underlined by timpani and brass, that marks what might be the transitional moment, whatever it might signify.  Richness and serenity returned,  clean, high-pitched vibrations emanating into the distance.

No break before the final movement, enphasizing the coherence of the symphony as a whole.  Anna Lucia Richter has a nice, pure tone, but also the sensuality that inspires the child's vison of a heaven full of nice things to eat.  Some commentators have wondered why the child is so decidedly un-spiritual, and questioned the images of killing.  The text, however, derived from oral traditions recorded in Des Knaben Wunderhorn (the book not the song collection), whose audiences would have made connections between the slain lamb and Christ offering himself as sacrifice, and to the children sacrificed in St Ursula's crusade.  In any case, the idea of famine and death can be a metaphor for artistic edeavour : an idea not lost on Mahler who connected Das himmlisches Leben with Das irdisches Leben.  I first heard Richter when she was only 21, singing Hugo Wolf with Christoph Prégardien who has a thing for nurturing young singers.  She had the pure tone that works well with Wolf, but also a feel for the wilder edges of Mörike's poetry. These talents paid off well in this symphony, where a similar dichotomy exists. Richter has come a long way and is now well established. She used to specialize in Mozart, and probably always will, so it was fitting that her encore was Mozart Laudate Dominum, with members of the Budapest Festival Orchestra singing behind her. 

Debussy and Beyond - François-Xavier Roth, LSO Barbican

Debussy and Stravinsky, 1910

On the centenary of Debussy's death, "Debussy and Beyond", with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican,, conducted by François-Xavier Roth.  This was the highlight of an unusually well planned series, examining Debussy from different angles.  Anyone can programme mechanical "greatest hits"  programes, but from Roth and the LSO we can expect much more musical nous.  In "The Young Debussy", we heard the influences that shaped him,  In "The Essence of Debussy", we heard well known pieces and the less well known, like the Fantasie for piano and orchestra,. This series has been challenging because it didn't spoonfeed, but presentedthoughtful challenges   for further listening and contemplation.  For "Debussy and Beyond", there could be dozens of possible contenders, since Debussy's influence on modern music is so extensive. Debussy changed the game, no less.  He paved the way for others, whose music is very diffrent from his own, and continues to inspire. This evening's programme focussed on large ensemble, and on major works that would often be the backbone of most concerts. It lasted nearly three hours, but was so rewarding that time passed all too soon.

Homage to Debussy and also homage to Pierre Boulez, one of Debussy's finest interpreters and champions, who was born seven years and one day after Debussy died.  Much has been written about how Boulez's Livre pour cordes morphed, or didn't morph, over 20+ years, so it's not worth repeating, save to say that  it is "mega string quartet" scored for 16 first and 14 second violins, 12 violas, 10 cellos and 8 basses.  The four main groups are multiplied into many parts, creating intricate polyphonic textures. Onto this a panoply of techniques, for further variety. Yet the whole piece lasts under 11 minutes. It's a model of tightly woven concision - nothing extraneous - precision.  Roth conducted the LSO, so it came over as chamber music, albeit on a grand scale, the players interacting with precison and grace.  Not "impressionism", in the "mood painting" sense of the word, but finely detailed complexity, extending Debussy's tonal ambiguity and chromatic adventure.

Though there's ostensibly little direct connection between Debussy and Bartók, both were pillars of twentieth century music, and cannot be ignored. Many others might have been included, but for practical, logistic reasons, this concert focussed on works for very large ensemble.  Bartók's Violin Concerto no 2  BB117 (1937-8) served to balance the other two big pillars of the programme, Stravinsky's Chant du Rossignol and Debussy's La Mer, with Renaud Capuçon as soloist.. Capuçon's long solo passages were played with style, contrasting well with the striking orchestral backdrop.  Since the LSO has a commendable commitment to new music, this was followed by the world premiere of Ewan Campbell's Frail Skies (2017), another work for very large orchestra including piano.  I'd hesitate to call it a tone poem,  though there are images in the music that suggest the forces of Nature.  Though the title suggests the sky, I thought of waves in an ocean, carrying thousands of minute particles carried in their wake.  The piece moves in cyclic fashion beginning and ending with solo cello surrounded by larger, darker forces, traversing other cyclic patterns along the way.  High woodwinds added lightness, somnolent strings and brass added density.  No young composer could compress as much into a short work as Boulez did with Livre pour cordes, but at least new work is being written, and new composers are finding their way.

Debussy and Stravinsky knew each other well. The photo above shows them together during the 1910 Ballets Russe season in Paris in 1910, when The Firebird was performed.  For this programme, François-Xavier Roth included Stravinsky's Chant du rossignol, loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson's tale about a nightingale and a mythical Emperor of China.  Given that Debussy was fascinated with Japanese and Indonesian culture, this was an inspired choice, connecting Debussy's eclectic interests and the craze for "primitive" non- western art, which made  Stravinksy and Diaghilev sensation. French orientalism, which has a long past, was to stimulate numerous artists and composers, from Ravel to Picasso, to Messiaen and beyond.  Recently Roth and Les Siècles gave a concert in Paris, which iuncluded a gamelan orchestra (read more here).  With Chant du rossignol, Roth and the LSO open out a whole horizon to explore.  In purely musical terms, Chant du rossignol  is also apposite because Stravinsky blends exotic colour with lyricism. The nightingale is no Firebird, but its fragility is its strength.  A violin sings for the mechanical nightingale, its elaborate trills deliberately formal.  The flute sings for the real nightingale, singing with freedom and inventivenss. The Emperor, for all his wealth, cannot compete. The music that depicted him was dark and slow - basses and low timbred winds and brass, and tam tam, against which the "nightingale" shone ever more brightly.   Exquisite detail in this performance, even in small figures, like trombone ellipses and the sensation of breeze (harps, strings, brass) at the very end.

François-Xavier Roth has conducted Debussy La mer so many times that it's practically his trademeark. He's even constructed whole programmes around it (please read more here).   This time it felt valedictory.  After that outstanding performance of Chant du rossignol, it was good to pause and reflect on Debussy and his legacy.  La mer never loses its magic but seems to forever reveal new depths.  The ocean covers most of the planet : different in different parts of the world, but always developing.  A metaphor for music ! 

Rattle 20th Century Masters : Janáček Carter Berg Bartók

One of Simon Rattle's great strengths is creating musically-intelligent programmes. This latest, with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, brought together the final works of four 20th Century Masters - Janáček, Carter, Berg and Bartók.  A few years ago, he conducted Schoenberg's Op 16, Webern's Op 6 and Berg's Op 6 together, showing the connection between Mahler and the Second Viennese School (horrible misleading term).  Rattle's programmes are more than the sum of their parts: they make you think.  They also de-mystify modern music  which is important. Every era was/is modern in its own time, and 20th century music has been around longer than almost anyone alive.  Music is constantly evolving and won't suddenly fossilize.

Sadly, there still are folks who believe that suddenly, overnight, Schoenberg imposed dodecaphony on the world. Such folk often think that Berg's Violin Concerto is a throwback to some ill-defined notion of "romantic" music.  That's musically illiterate nonsense on so many levels that it's shameful. Violins have an uncanny capacity to pull on the heart strings and the piece is very deeply felt.  But it's still modern. Listeners who can't get past the "Memory of an Angel" starting point aren't paying attention.  Berg was in the midst of writing Lulu, and was even personally more loyal to Schoenberg than most. The angel in question was Manon Gropius, whose family were very much in the centre of what was modern and up to date. And, like so much else in Berg, there are cryptic hidden messages, with darker, non-angelic subtexts.  Isabelle Faust has played Berg's Violin Concerto so many times that it's almost her signature piece.  Her approach is dignified, with the depth that comes with emotional maturity.  Genuine, sincere feeling, not the cheap sentimentality that sometimes surrounds reception.  Faust's playing has gravity, its poise informed by restraint, creating a tension which gets far closer to the soul of the piece.  The timbres are occluded, as if in shadow, textures disintegrating gently, as reality fades to memory. Tonality hovers on the point of breaking and then dissolves, when no more can be said.  The quote "Es ist genug", is a reference to Bach. No more can be said.  Berg, even at his most passionate, uses structure with the clarity of a mathematical mind. Puzzles and patterns are integral.  Faust's playing is extraordinarily beautiful because she understands the possibilities of expression that come by extending the borders of form.

Rattle prepared us for the modernity of Berg's Violin Concerto by prefacing it with the Overture from  Janáček's From the House of the Dead and Elliott Carter's Instances.  Carter's Instances was completed in 2012, premiered in Britain by Oliver Knussen. It was Carter's last work, written at the age of 103, ad probably wins the prize for "world's oldest composer composition". But how lively it is, and how inventive. Carter's "Late, late style", as he called it is freewheeling. At his age, he said, he didn't need to prove anything to anyone. For pragmatic reasons his late works are short and epigrammatic but no less inventive for that. In Instances, one can almost hear Carter grinning. 

Janáček's music, with its angular rhythms and quirky discords doesn't fit  into neat little music history stereotypes. Janáček probably didn't know, or care, what was happening in France, Germany and Austria , but like his contemporaries in the 1920's,  he was forging his own original and distinctive path.  When Boulez began conducting Janáček some years back, there were howls of rage from some quarters. But Boulez loved the music for its own sake and he had, in fact, been studying Janáček since the early 1970's.   Rattle forged his own career in modern music, bringing Szymanowski, for example, to public attention long before most anyone else.  Szymanowski might seem "romantic" to some, but his intense chromaticism connects to Debussy and to Bartók.

And so Rattle and the LSO concluded with Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra.  In 1940, Bartók was in a new land, where he hadn't settled  and became despondent.  Once he began writing, though, his mood lifted as if rejuvenated.  Although there are familiar "Hungarian" themes in the piece, it is not fundamentally nostalgic.  Bartók was looking back on his past, well aware of what was happening in the Europe he'd left behind, and of the right wing extremism in Hungary, whose government aligned itself with Hitler.  Rattle brought out the granite-like inner strength in the piece and the firm lines beneath the nostalgia. Perhaps Bartók was drawing on sources in his psyche that went much deeper than folkloric colour. The ethereal opening theme developed until it emerged with expansive confidence. The music seemed to oscillate, highlighting the more disturbing undercurrents in the work.  Rattle negotiated the constant flux in the work, tempi spiriting along as if propelled by winds of change.

Bruckner dances ! Bartók, Debussy - Roth, LSO Barbican

François-Xavier Roth conducted the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican in:Debussy, Bartók, and Bruckner. Roth has a flair for designing thought-provoking programmes that stimulate the mind as well as the spirit.  He's also a good communicator whose enthusiasm inspires listeners as well as musicians - no surprise he's now the LSO's Chief Guest Conductor.

All music is "new" in that good music is original. Hence the value of making connections that enhance the unique qualities of each work.  Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune was a breakthrough. Though we hear it so often, it's bracing to remember that it was written 123 years ago. It defies categories. Its exoticism stretches tonality, its chromatics at once rich, yet clean and modern. Think of fin de siècle art with its curving forms, against chaste backdrops.  The Prélude lends itself to dance because it is sensuous, yet also lucidly disciplined.  You don't mess with dance or it falls apart. No chance of that with the LSO and Roth.

From the familiar to the much less familiar: Bartók Viola Concerto sz 120 with soloist Antoine Tamestit.  A bit of an orphan work,  revised and completed, perhaps to fit conventional taste. But the point is not whether one likes or dislikes a piece so much as figuring out how it works.  Oddly enough, I kept thinking of Gérard Grisey Les espaces acoustiques. Though the pieces are completely different, they both explore the character of the viola.  Hence the combinations: viola, then flutes and oboes, the viola suddenly strident, communing with trumpets, then horns.  There are elements of dance, Gypsy czardas, Scottish reels and even, possibly jazz.  Perhaps I thought of Grisey because Roth and the LSO prefaced Bartók with Debussy, priming me to think in terms of microtonal colour. "spectralism" to use the buzz word.  By this stage in his life, Bartók wasn't in a position to innovate, but we can get a glimpse of what might have been.

And so to Bruckner Symphony no 4. As so often the title "Romantic" is misleading.  It's not romantic in the sense of Hollywood and not even in the sense of Wagner.  Note the instrumentation, which is relatively limited.  Consider the use of horns and rustic imagery.  Aha! Bruckner's doing Weber Der Freischütz, or even Beethoven's Pastoral, even Smetana, in entirely his own way, of course. Thus the passionate tremelos and the sense of physical movement. Bruckner, dancing!  The relatively restrained forces of the LSO keep the textures vigorous and lively. Very well suited to Roth's energetic style.  

Prom 55 F X Roth SWR SO Boulez Ligeti Bartók

Photo : Roger Thomas

At Prom 55, François-Xavier Roth  conducted the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg in their first - and regrettably last - appearance at the Royal Albert Hall.  The orchestra is being disbanded, merged into the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. When bureaucrats win over musicianly excellence, even in Germany, it's a blow against art.  Those who stand by watching the BBC being dismantled, from within as well as from without, would do well to ponder. The SWR Symphony Orchestra isn't just another orchestra. It was founded by Hans Rosbaud in 1946, as a statement of faith in the renewal of Europe after the barbarism of the war years. Its demise is thus one of the many symptoms of the anti-intellectual, destructive fundamentalism that's sweeping the world over. .

At the end of this Prom, Roth stood in front of his musicians, declaring his appreciation for them, and for the tradition they represent. It was a gesture of defiance, yet tinged with sadness. Roth is going on to head the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne, another of the less famous but distinctive orchestras that make German music great. I'm not sure what will happen to his players, who are individually infinitely better than some heard recently. The Prom was also a tribute to Pierre Boulez, whose conducting career was launched by Rosbaud, who summoned him to Baden-Baden. He's lived there ever since. When Roth conducted Baden-Baden's concert for Boulez this January, the presenters and audience looked visibly moved.

Nothing routine or sloppy in this Proms performance. Pierre Boulez "....explosante-fixe" (1985) scintillated because Roth and his orchestra respect the music enough to create it properly. With his background in baroque, Roth knows the connection between baroque and new music. Please read more here.  One of the hallmarks of the French aesthetic is lucid intelligence. Think Descartes, Moliere, Voltaire. Complex elaborations need clear basic foundations.  Debussy's swathes of subtle  colour sparkle because he understood the importance of clarity. It's no accident that Boulez was perhaps the finest Debussy interpreter of all.  

The original  "Mémoriale ...explosante-fixe" was written to honour Stravinsky, but the larger 1985 version also honours Debussy. The soloist is now surrounded by two other flautists and a small ensemble, so we can hear the purity at the soul of the piece. This is one of the relatively rare pieces where Boulez extends his palette with electronic effects, but these didn't come through as effectively as the "acoustic" playing, perhaps because I was sitting in the wrong place. Impressionist painting shines because colours are carefully defined by light, not muddied.  "....explosante-fixe" is impressionistic in that individual units are clear, the rainbow created by good players for sensitive listeners. Sophie Cherrier combined technical excellence with sophisticated élan. I thought of Pan, surrounded by purity, an image behind the original Mémoriale and in Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.

The technical excellence of the SWR Symphony Orchestra made György Ligeti's Lontano shimmer, like "music from another planet".  Like Ligeti's Atmosphères, this reached mass audiences thanks to being "borrowed" for the movies. So nuts to the myth that audiences are hard wired not to cope with new music! I got hooked on Ligeti when I heard 2001: a space odyssey, hypnotized by the music, ignoring the movie. Lontano was premiered by the SWR SO, whose players remembered the importance Ligeti placed on precision. The textures are so complex that they benefit from the careful attention Roth and his orchestra gave to them.  Roth marked the invisible bars, showing how the music doesn't simply end when the players stop. The silence evaporates into the ever more rarified resonances of the imagination. 

It's a mistake, I think, to expect  Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra to sound quaint and folksy. In 1940, the composer was looking back on his past well aware of what was happening in the Europe he'd left behind, and in the  right wing extremism in Hungary, whose government aligned itself with Hitler. At this Proms performance the SWR SO played it so well that they brought to the fore the atmosphere that Bartók might well  have intuited: the end of civilized culture.  This isn't a concerto for orchestra for nothing, since the interactions between the different parts of the orchestra suggest the importance of relationships and cross-connections.  Roth and the members of the SWR SO listen to each other: their starting point isn't their own playing but precision and attentiveness . Boulez conducted Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra many times.  Ten years have not dimmed the memory of him  conducting it at the Royal Festival Hall with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.. Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned for the Boston Symphony Orchestra by Serge Koussevitsky. As the present BSO embarks on a new future, they might do well to listen to Roth and the SWR SO.

Top and bottom photos: Roger Thomas

Prom 53 Shostakovich Orango Salonen Bartók

For Prom 53, Esa-Pekka Salonen brought two works with which he's been closely associated :  Bartók  The Miraculous Mandarin and Shostakovich's "lost" opera Orango 

Since Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra have given many fine performances of The Miraculous Mandarin, (Op 19, Sz 73, 1924)  it was a given that this Proms outing would be good, but it exceeded expectations. Enlivened and emboldened by the manic craziness of the Orango that was to come, Salonen conducted with a wild freedom that lifted the inventiveness of  Bartók to levels that felt almost dangerous. The Miraculous Mandarin is  an audacious work, which horrified its first audiences, and was promptly suppressed, by Konrad Adenauer, then mayor of Cologne, no less. So the impassioned flair with which Salonen and the Philharmonia created this performance, bristling with menace and sexual violence, truly an "Infernal Dance". Sleazy trombones and clarinets, frantic, manic brass and percussion, low brass and winds exhaling strange sighs, suggesting a connection between orgasm and death? 

To bridge the gap between Bartók and Shostakovich, Mozart Piano Concerto no 24 in C minor K491, with David Fray as soloist. Mystery again, with a hint of something sensual, given the dark, rich orchestration, with pairs of  clarinets, oboes, bassoons, horns and trumpets, in this context vaguely reminding me of the "stalking" clarinet duet - or duel - in the Miraculous Mandarin. A bit of Mozartean poise, preparing us for the grotesque of Orango to come?  

And so, at last, to the eagerly awaited Proms premiere of Shostakovich's Orango, which Salonen premiered in Los Angeles and also conducted at the Royal Festival Hall last year, and in Helsinki (in a  slightly different production).  The manuscript was discovered among the composer's papers in 2004. Only the Overture was completed, the rest of the opera existing only in piano score, now orchestrated in a performing version by Gerard McBurney. The piece was written to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Russian revolution, that grand experiment in social engineering. In the grand new era after the 1914-18 war, people placed their hopes in Science and Progress, however loopy the theories might be. Some believed, for example that injecting monkey glands would enhance human virility. Orango is a half-ape, half-human creature,  not so much the missing link  but a new hybrid. A metaphor for the Brave New World ? Shostakovich would also have been well aware of Mikhail Bulgakov's 1926 novel The Heart of a Dog, where scientists give a man the heart of a dog, but nature asserts itself, and the man reverts to dog.  Please read my review HERE of the brilliant ENO A Dog's Heart, created by Complicité and Simon McBurney (Gerard's brother). 

The Overture is patriotically upbeat, driving brass and mechanical rhythms suggesting triumphal march.  "We will dress the land (of free labourers) in the fabric of the Sun." Soviet realism in all its glory. The bass (Alexander Shagun) sings of the wonders of the new era, with its multi-megawatt power stations and infants who can dance. "No bedbugs in Moscow!"  The part is written as if the character were a ringmaster in a circus: Did Shostakovich know of Lulu, which Berg was still in the process of writing? A long semi-lyrical sequence follows, which would have been set for ballet. Shostakovich uses material from his ballet Bolt!, which I've written about HERE. It's rather worrying how dance fits  authoritarian form: people moving in regimented unison, their individuality suppressed. From dance to military displays and marches. Watch Ratmansky's choreography for Bolt! if you can. 

 "This music has grated in my ears for 15 years" sang Shagun, then, leaning towards the conductor,  asks him to "play something gentler, a lullaby". But no luck, the crowds want Orango, and bombastic noise. The trombones blew grotesque raspberries.. Orango (Ivan Novoselov) appears. "He can blow his nose, and play clapping games!" sang Shagun. But of course, he doesn't sing.  Foreigners come to admire the spectacle - another wry comment on the foreigners who admired Stalin at this period. If the plot is sketchy, that's because the opera wasn't finished. We have to make allowances. the music is crude, but then, the subject is crude, and it's possible that Shostakovich might not have got much further.  Orango is not, and can never be, much more than a fragment, but it's a tantalizing one. The plot, potentially, has more possibilities than Shostakovich's football ballet The Golden Age, though the music for The Golden Age is rather good, especially  in the highly recommended recording conducted by José Serebrier.  Orango isn't great art, but the world would be a gloomier place without it.

Bartók Shostakovich Bělohlávek Prom 7

Jiří Bělohlávek made a welcome return to the BBC Proms. Sakari Oramo is a good Chief Conductor of the BBCSO but Bělohlávek was unique. He conducted the BBC SO from 1995, becoming the first non-British Chief Conductor in 2006, and serving in that capacity until 2012. He then decided to concentrate on Prague. Our loss, for Bělohlávek was in a unique position to teach us repertoire we can't claim to know better than he.  He forged strong links between Czech musicians and Londoners, which remain. At the First Night of the Proms in 2011, he conducted  Janáček's Glagolitic Mass, to almost universal acclaim. Please read Mark Berry's review here.  Tonight, Valéry Gergiev will be conducting the piece, in Paul Wingfield's  less familair edition, so the performances will be very different.  When  Bělohlávek conducted The Last Night of the Proms in 2012, he was greeted warmly. He gave the traditional conductor speech, his command of the English language greatly improved. In the past, he'd struggled to read from a script. He ad-libbed comfortably, joked and led audience and performers like a seasoned Master of Ceremonies. Altogether a valediction, and well deserved.

At BBC Prom 7 at the Royal Albert Hall, we heard again what we'd missed. Bělohlávek's traverse of the long, slow first movement of Shostakovich's Symphony no 10 was purposefuL. This is a theme that can test an  audience's patience,  but Bělohlávek shaped its complex structure, showing how its themes unfold. The Allegro was suitably wild. Whether the section represents Stalin or not, this movement shakes up the order of the Moderato that came before. Jazzy influences sneak past. In the Soviet era, as in Nazi Germany, jazz meant subversion. When Bělohlávek conducted the DSCH themes, one could imagine the composer grinning sardonically. Bělohlávek's forte is his ability to suggest warmth and humanity,against all odds. Qualities sadly undervalued in this world.

This thoughtful reading of Shostakovich's 10th pulled the whole programme together. Shostakovich writes in different influences, breaking the monopoly of form. Earlier, we'd heard the.posthumous premiere of John Tavener's  Gnosis, dedicated to Sarah Connolly. The piece makes good use of the special qualities of her voice. Lovely legato, delicious to listen to, but the piece itself amounted to nothing much. At the end, a completely different melody comes in, a direct Mozart quotation, breaking the dreaminess, just as if a window had been opened to let in banal reality. A piece for the singer rather than the song.

Thank goodness for Bartók's Violin Concerto no 2, with Isabelle Faust. She's pretty much the most interesting person doing Bartók's two violin concertos. Indeed, in her hands, the pieces sing as true originals: she did intensive background work into their genesis, notation and interpretation. She's recorded them with Daniel Harding. Bělohlávek and Harding are completely different interpreters, but both bring insight. Faust wouldn't choose to work with them if she didn't understand how they'd work with her. Bartók weaves in themes and styles (even more so in the First concerto), negotiating the extreme technical challenges. What a a variety of techniques, superbly executed, and with exquisite poise.

Mälkki Philharmonia Bartók Neuwirth Prom 42

Susanna Mälkki and the Philharmonia together at the BBC Proms.  A match mde in heaven. The Philharmonia is - I'll stick my neck out - the finest orchestra in London, players of great skill, eager to stretch themselves as artists. Remember their Schoenberg Gurrelieder with Esa-Pekka Salonen at the South Bank some years ago?  Much more idiomatic than Saraste  and the BBC SO at the Proms this week. Susanna Mälkki challenges them and they respond. She is Music Director of Ensemble Intercontemporain and has conducted many of the major orchestras in Europe. At BBC Prom 42, Mälkki and the Philharmonia showed what they can achieve together.

This programme was extremely well chosen on many levels. Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet Suite no 1 set the tone. The programme would end with Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra which incorporates elements of dance and makes a wry dig at Shostakovich. Between them, Olga Neuwirth's Remnants of Songs - an Amphigory (a message that purports to convey no meaning)  All three pieces  incorporate references to other works and genres, enhanced when heard togther. Very subtle, but very brainy. Mälkki's Prokofiev is elegant and precise, as dance should be. No need for slushy fake Romaticism. In dance, poise is of the essence. You don't "approximate". Mälkki made Prokofiev move with grace.


Olga Neuwirth's music is purposeful, and with Remnants of Songs - an Amphigory she shows how delicately she can write. Some objected to her Lost Highway when it came to the ENO Young Vic in 2008 because it didn't resemble the David Lynch movie that inspired it. But that was precisely her point: she was writing music, not illustrating film (review here).  Remnants of Songs evolves from fragments of song. Conceptually it's strong: we process what we hear until it sinks into our subconscious, emerges in snatches, often disassembled. The soloist, Lawrence Power, giving the UK premiere, plays delicate wisps that dissolve as soon as you begin to pin them down. Sometimes almost bare chords against silence, then circular figures that turn upon themselves. I thought of a squirrel scurrying about, storing things away for future retreival. Powers bows angular shapes, and the orchestra concludes the second "song" with a splendid, golden semi-fanfare. Power changes tack, plucking  rather than bowing, and the song spirals up and down the scale, gaining in momentum, til it suddenly ceases. Smooth transits. The orchestra responds with loud, dramatic chords, evoking the film noir. The viola dances exuberantly, and the piece ends with a mood of cheeky brightness. Are we hearing faint traces of Schubert in the ending, as we heard in the beginning? It hardly matters, for Neuwirth is blending whimsy with inventive energy. 

The ethereal high theme that begins Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra develops subtly until it emeges with expansive confidence. Mälkki observes detail carefully, so the music seems to oscillate with light and clarity. This highlights the more disturbing undercurrents in the work. Bartók's music keeps churning and changing, tempi spirited along as if propelled by winds of change. As with Mälkki's Prokofiev and Neuwirth, you hear the spirit of dance. Particularly vibrant flutes and piccolo. Then the tam tams reintroduce memories of Magyar traditions. Bartók knew full well what was happening in his native Hungary in 1943. The eerie "night music"gives way to trumpet calls. Firm staccato, disconcerting tempi changes. Yet, Mälkki and the Philharmonia make this concerto feel affirmative. Bartók isn't going to give in to despair.

photo : Simon Fowler

Szymanowski Third Bartók Eötvös Barbican

Karol Szymanowski's magnificent Song of the Night (Symphony no 3) received a splendid performance at the Barbican Hall, London, with Peter Eötvös conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. 

In February, we heard Vladimir Jurowski conduct Szymanowski's Third with the LPO at the South Bank: gorgeous, shimmering textures, so perfumed one could swoon. It was a pertfectly valid reading and beautiful.  Boulez, however, intuits the savagery beneath the shining surface, and .Eötvös replacing him due to illness, respects this approach. The Song of the Night can only emerge under cover of darkness, when the worldly market place is hushed and "the market of the stars" is revealed. "This night, Leo, and Orion, Andromeda and Mercury shine crimson!"  The 13th century mystic Jalaal'ad-Din Rumi writes about a love so deep that it's cosmic, yet only revealed in secret. Persians knew their astronomy and astrology. "This night, Saturn casts  his malign control and Venus sails in the golden drizzle". The stars are exquisite, but they control fate and cannot be reached by mortal men.Whoever these lovers are, they're not fated to be together except in dreams.

As if shielding the poet in a night garden, Szymanowski uses a huge orchestra to create a lush, exotic atmosphere. Yet note how Szymanowski immediately establishes two separate currents: the dense "undergrowth" in low winds and strings, and high stings screaming alarm. "O nie spij, druhu, nocy tej" (O, sleep not, dearest friend this night") sings the tenor, Steve Davislim. The chorus repeats the dense textures this time, but through by the extreme high tessitura of the violin (Gordan Nikolitch).  Patterns within patterns. Szymanowski's writing Persian art into his music. Throughout this symphony, violin and singer seem to duet, separated by the vast crescendi in the orchestra and choir. A shy lilting dance led by winds, then Nikolitch soaring forth. Pizzicato, sudden irruptions of brass, even a kind of wayward march: a sense of alert anticipation. This night is not restful. The long middle section is full of incident, but then, silence, out of whch Davislim sings, with minimal accompaniment. "This night God and I are alone!". Cymbals unleash crescendi: we are hearing what the poet sees in the universe. The solo violin re-emerges, almost impossibly high pitched and pure. Boulez manages to hint at perverse Baudelairean undercurrents. Eötvös and the LSO aren't quite so unsettling, but Davislim sings so idiomatically that he'd be a top choice as the Shepherd in Król Roger. The parts are linked, for the Shepherd represents danger as well as liberation. Zamilknięciem wiąże język Lecz ja mówię bez języka nocy tej! (surrounding silence ties my tongue but I speak without my tongue tonight) .

The programme was big and Eötvös conducted Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta with more vigour. The first movement was a little too diffuse, though Eötvös delineated the separate subgroups  in the Allegro and Adagio cleanly. Nicolaj Znaider was the soloist in Bartók's Violin Concerto no 2. Almost any companion piece to Szymanowski's Symphony no 3 will pale in comparison, especially since the violin part there is so strange and disturbing. But Boulez chose the programme well, for the concerto is provocative in its own way. The solo part taunts and twists away from the orchestra as elusively as the part  in Szymanowski's symphony. Znaider played with grace and assurance, exploding passionately in the wild cadenza. Utterly apposite to the deeper meaning of the symphony. 

This concert is available online on BBC Radio 3. Listen for Znaider and Davislim, who has exceptional stage presence. Get the recording of Szymanowski's Third on DG with the Weiner Philharmoniker conducted by Pierre Boulez for a more intense performance.  Later this year Valery Gergiev will be conducting all four Szymanowski symphonies, combined with Brahms, not the first composer that springs to mind in this connection. All the more reason to hear what Gergiev does with Szymanowski.  

Tetzlaff Szymanowski Eötvös LSO Barbican

Karol Szymanowski was always "dangerous". Populist music history consigns composers into neat little boxes which don't reflect reality. Schoenberg, for example, is still imagined as the Big Bad Wolf. Szymanowski's  exotic perfumes atre  misunderstood. Szymanowski's neither Schoenberg nor Hollywood, but completely unique. No way was the Polish Communist Party likely to honour a former aristocrat, and a modernist at that. So Szymanowski was assigned, in the popular mind, as some lush byway no-one ventured near. When Pierre Boulez revealed that he'd studied Szymanowski since the 1940's, there were some who were shocked. But Boulez learned his Szymanowski from the scores, not from populist clichés. Listen to his outstanding recording of Szymanowski's Third Symphony and Violin Concerto No 1  (my review here). It's transformational, even for those who've known Simon Rattle's pioneering recordings from the 1980's. (photo of Tetzlaff by Alexandra Vosding).

When the Barbican announced that Boulez would conduct Szymanowski in two concerts, many bought tickets the moment they went on sale last year. Boulez has since had eye problems and had to pull out, but Christian Tetzlaff, with whom he made that remarkable recording, was able to play the Violin Concerto with the LSO. Peter Eötvös, who has known Boulez for decades, conducted. Obviously the LSO and Eötvös are not the same as the Weiner Philharmonker and Boulez, but Tetzlaff was able to turn the situation to good advantage. The recording was for posterity. The Barbican concert allowed Tetzlaff to play with a greater degree of freedom. Absolutely in command, he played even more vigorously, taking risks one might not dare otherwise.  At times, he stressed the angular, edgy aspects of the piece so it felt even more uncompromisingly modern.

As Jim Samson said in his book, The Music of Karol Szymanowski (1981), in the Violin Concert no 1 "the formal scheme is totally unique and represents an ingenious solution to the problem of building extended structures without resorting to sonata form". We can hear the seeds of Boulez's own music being sown in the almost chaotic proliferation of sub groups and themes within the orchestra,  contrasted with extended violin cantilenas, soaring high above the orchestra, so refined and so rarified that they seem to propel the music into new stratospheres. I thought of Dérive 2 and even Dérive 3 and the way Boulez keeps generating multiple and simultaneous layers of inventiveness. Mandelbrot patterns, in music, mathematically precise, yet full of the vigour of natural, organic growth.

Szymanowski used to be described as a kind of Bartók manqué because he only came to Polish folk music late in life, disregarding the fact that he'd long been an accomplished composer attuned to Stravinsky and Debussy decades before. So, with a wicked grin, Tetzlaff launched into Bartók's Violin Sonata no 1/3 the "Melodia", exaggerating the dynamics it so it sounded extraordinarily like Szymanowski. Extreme pianissimo, almost inaudible, but clearly felt, the bow hardly seeming to move. A tiny tap on the wood before sailing off into the kind of wild, high tessitura Szymanowski loved. Tetzlaff's got a sense of humour, turning the Bartók/Szymanowski cliché upside down. He probably wouldn't dare do this in a regular concert, but as an encore, it was a brilliant act of daring.  I was transfixed by his hands and technical control. My friend noticed how the LSO violinists were spellbound.  Virtuosi we can hear quite often. Tetzlaff in sardonic mode is something special. (The photo shows Szymanowski at the centre, with Fitelberg, Szigeti, Roussel, Reiner and Arnold Bax).

Debussy's Nocturnes, with which the programme started, seemed untypically imprecise, almost slack. Possibly  Eötvös knew that most of the audience had come for Szymanowski. Certainly he marshalled the orchestra for the Violin Concerto extremely well, so Tetzlaff's "Boulezian" approach flowed through seamlessly. Eötvös has been conductiung Boulez's music for so long that he has the idiom almost by instinct. Boulez has also made Scriabin's Le Poème de l'extase distinctly his own, but the piece is so well known that it hardly needs his imprint. Here, Eötvös gloried in the lush colours of the music, connecting Scriabin with Szymanowski's eclectic exoticism and oddly enough to the same fire that burns in Boulez. Populat cliché portrays Boulez as cold, but passion burns just as intensely when it's white-hot and pure. If only people would listen to Boulez, instead of rabbiting assumptions!
Eötvös will be conducting Szymanowski's Symphony no 3 at the Barbican on May 8th. Get the Boulez recording. Lots more on Szymanowski (and Boulez) on this site - use labels or search box)

Eclectic Aldeburgh Music Festival 2012

The British don't appreciate Aldeburgh. Indeed, many don't appreciate Benjamin Britten's unique place in British music history. Just as the town faces the North Sea, Britten's horizons were European. The Aldeburgh Festival brought Shostakovich to the west, and the Hesse connection brought German interest. To truly understand Britten's artistic nature, appreciate Aldeburgh for what it is. Britten's vision was English, but eclectic, not insular.

What a pity he missed meeting Béla Bartók, who came to Aldeburgh in 1923, in a concert organized by a teacher in a girls' school. In those days, it wasn't unusual for artists to circulate outside big cities. When I was transcribing Elizabeth Schumann's papers she was organizing pianists and concerts in tiny, out of the way places in England to supplement on her visits to England.  Béla Bartók's visit to Aldeburgh is explored in a talk on 22/6. His music features throughout the festival including three important recitals by the Keller Quartet, who specialize in modern Hungarian composers, and an unmissable recital with Dezső Ránki on 15/6. He's playing late Liszt, Bartók, Hadyn and a premiere by Barnabas Dukay.

Three recitals by Miklós Perényi, a recital and a masterclass with Menachem Pressler, two concerts by Peter Serkin, one with Gabriela Montero and Alfred Brendel, talking about Liszt and illustrating with piano. And of course Pierre-Laurent Aimard himself, on his own and with Matthias Goerne. The Arditti Quartet and Helmut Lachermann, whose music also comes under the spotlight. Lachenmann will be there himself and Ensemble Modern, the great European ensemble who rarely grace our shores. Seriously important figures, attracted to a small seaside town by Aimard and Aldeburgh's reputation.

Oliver Knussen's Aldeburgh connections are impeccable, too. He's a former director of the Festival and still a major presence, and lives up the road! Knussen's Where the Wild Things Are and Higgelty Piggelty Pop! will be this year's opera offerings. They were inspired by the tales of Maurice Sendak, so reflect Knussen's quirky imagination. He read the stories to his daughter, "the Muse of Higgelty Pigglety Pop!". The operas are coming to the Barbican later in the year, semi straged by Netia Jones. Excellent cast, including Claire Booth, Susan Bickley, Rebecca Bottone and others. These are more than "children's operas" (a concept Britten would have loved)  and will remind us how important Knussen has been for music in this country.

Knussen's British but spent his formative years in the US. So it's significant that he's included in his keynote concert Charles Ives' Washington's Birthday as well as a new work of his own.  A rare chance to hear Charles Ives' uncompleted Universe Symphony on 24/6. This is its European premiere, and will be conducted by James Sinclair, Ives scholar, "using every corner of Snape Maltings its airy acoustics and unique idyllic natural surrounds as a single vast performance space".  Interesting to compare the ideas with John Cage Musicircus, the day before, this time with Exaudi.  Every Cage musicircus is different - there's one on March 3 at the ENO, by Cage's intimates.

Perhaps the last thing Britten wanted was to turn Aldeburgh into a theme park for his music, attracting day trippers and English Defence Leaguers after "The Britten/Britain Experience". He'd be rolling in his grave to think of himself and the ethos he loved rebranded in that way. Instead, Aldeburgh honours Britten by reecognizing what he really stood for, which is artitsic integrity and creative growth. Aldeburgh is a Festival for and by musicians.

Real Britten fans know his music well enough to cope with things like Before Life and After, Netia Jones's dramatizations of Britten, Finzi and Tippett with James Gilchrist as soloist. When this was on at Kings Place in 2010, it was excellent, and should be even better at Aldeburgh.  Britten's music doesn't need to overwhelm the Festival, for his ideas pervade the whole Festival, encompassing music, walks, community events, visual arts, early and modern music, film and achitecture. Booking starts this week. Complete brochure here.
Please look at the many things I've written about Aldeburgh in past years, and about the various composers featured. Also tips on food and shopping!

photo: William M Connolley

Sensational Bartók Duke Bluebeard's Castle Salonen Tomlinson DeYoung

Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia brought the South Bank Béla Bartók series "Infernal Dance" to a stunning close with Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle. John Tomlinson sang Duke Bluebeard with great authority. The range suits his voice as it is now, and he's a consummate actor and knows the part from years of experience.  Michelle DeYoung sang an uncommonly perceptive Judit, bringing out the way the part changes as the opera proceeds. It's a demanding part vocally, and she handles the extremes with conviction. It was an honour to hear them, both major exponents of this work.

A tale like Duke Bluebeard's Castle is so psychologically complex that it can't be approached with realism. The castle is a major protagonist, which  "speaks"only through music.  It's the focus through which Judit and the Duke interact  Indeed, the castle could be a projection of Bluebeard's soul. The walls are defence mechanisms. They're oppressive, a metaphorical dungeon that cannot be breached. Yet they weep, for they're trying to communicate.

Thus the brilliance of Nick Hillel's semi-staging.  He makes the castle come alive as a presence. He creates it  through huge angular panels that loom above orchestra and singers much as the castle looms over Bluebeard and Judit.  The panels fitted in discreetly during the first part of the programme (Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Bartók Piano Concerto no 3 with Yefim Bronfman as soloist. At one stage a power brownout threw the platform into semi darkness. Accidental, but enhancing impact). Onto these panels are projected semi-abstract images that convey the spirit of each stage in the narrative. As the story reaches its denouement, some of the panels move apart too, reflecting the final horror. Amazingly sensitive to music and meaning. If ever there was an opera which doesn't support literal "realism" it's Duke Bluebeard's Castle. And Hillel's semi-staging should prove that intelligent staging infinitely enhances operatic experience. Whether a staging is modern or minimal or Regie is utterly irrelevant.  What really counts is how it expresses the opera.

Bluebeard has made a rare foray into the outside world. It's Judit who pursues him, deserting family and home. Like so many women, she intuits his inner depths and thinks its her mission to save him. It's she who chooses to enter. Only part way through the opera, did I realize the meaning of trees silhouetted against a twilight sky with which the staging began. They're thorny, twisted, dangerous. Even before she enters the castle, Judit has a pathological fascination with the forbidden. I also thought of the Oscar Wilde story, The Selfish Giant, where the giant surrounds his tower with a thicket of brambles. Only in that case, the child he tries to lure eludes him. Women are socially conditioned to need to be neeeded, but some problems are beyond human help. Not that that ever stopped brave, idealistic women like Judit. This drama's more universal than some think!

Cogent, concentrated images are projected by film on Hillel's panels - granite textures, drops of water, the idea of blood seeping through to the surface. Solidity and fluidity. It's in the music too. Firm tonality dissolving into ambiguity, dense textures disintegrating into spare lines (listen to the famed Philharmonia harpists). Salonen understands the significance of flux and flow in this opera. Sensuality is hinted at in the richer orchestral passages, for sex is part of the toxic mix at the heart of this strange story. Note how the flute weaves through the darker passages. This feverish eroticism makes the jagged discords even more savage. Although there's little overt action in this drama, the music moves through different tableaux, each distinctly characterized. The door which opens onto Bluebeard's jewel room is depicted by dazzling music. The Philharmonia playing with exaggerated brightness, but Salonen's right. The glow of these diamonds is unnatural. At first Judit is blinded. But diamonds, like granite are hard, and she sees blood seeping through.

As each door is unlocled, the deeper we penetrate. Inside Bluebeard's castle, vast rivers flow, and gardens that thrive without light. Yet there's something good in Bluebeard as well, which might be why Judit was attracted in the first place. The section where Bartók describes Bluebeard's realm is poignant, for he incorporates whispers of folk music to evoke ancient pastoral tradition. It's too easy to overstate folk music in much of his work, but here it's used subtly, not as decoration. Bluebeard's saga probably began in time immemorial. He's a mythic figure. Judit is like Eve in the Garden of Eden, or Persephone entering Hades. Hillel can't stage the panoramic vistas this music hints at, for there's just too much to express, so the panels merely glow in semi-abstract images, so we concentrate on the richness of the score. Again, Salonen and the Philharmonia deliver the surprising warmth of this section and it's riches, far deeper than the treasures the castle has accumulated. In this section, Tomlinson's voice warms beautifully too, showing how Bluebeard is responding to Judit's influence.

But others have tried to reach Bluebeard before."I never want to open the seventh door", cries Tomlinson, (in Hungarian) and the words "never, never" repeat in the orchestra. The scene is so macabre that it's impossible to understand what Bluebeard means when he says his wives have all "become" things like mornings and sunsets, trapped forever im some strange dimension. "But they're still alive!" screams DeYoung, finally realizing the true horror of what might be in Bluebeard's hell. Wisely, Hillel doesn't even try to explain. Now the rock-like panels above the stage disappear, replaced by DeYoung herself in an alcove.  It's moving because we can still see her as human and real, but lost to that part of Bluebeard's soul that wants redemption. Tomlinson's singing now becomes infused with intense sorrow, elegaic in its dignity, even though this may mark Bluebeard's final doom. Tomlinson is singing for Bluebeard. Salonen and the Philharmonia are singing for the castle, for the lost country, for the lost women. Incredibly moving. Get to this production if you can get to Vienna, Dortmund and Paris, where it tours. 

The photo is a chamber in Siroki castle in Hungary, taken by Bathór. Lots more on this site about Bartók, Salonen, the Philharmonia, opera, stagecraft etc. Please explore.

Duke Bluebeard's Castle tours Europe

Don't let the words "multi media or "semi staging" scare you. away. Béla Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle at the Royal Festival Hall is sensationally good. You can hear the broadcast on BBC Radio 3 HERE (online, international and on demand), and of course it's a splendid performance (Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Tomlinson, Michelle DeYoung and the Philharmonia).  But if you missed it live, you've seriously missed something big. This is what opera staging should be - sensitive to score and meaning, expanding musical ideas with visual images. Minimalist? Yes! Spartan? Yes! That's exactly what this story is about. I'll write a lot more tomorrow but in the meantime HERE is a short film clip.

It's touring, too. So lucky people in  Vienna (7th and 8th), Dijon (9th), Dortmund (12th), and Paris (15th November) start booking now!

Sibelius, Bartók, Janáček Prom 9 Elder

With Sibelius, Bartók and Janáček on the programme, Prom 9 could have been explosive. All three composers are noted for their uncompromising independence. Instead, though, Mark Elder and the Hallé presented the Prom with a nostalgic sheen.  Perhaps I should gave read the programme notes beforehand. "The Russians had no time for Finnish nationalism and made strenuous efforts to kill it off". Which is like saying Masaryk was thrilled by Stalin.

On the other hand until fairly recent times, Sibelius was conducted as if he were a  revamp of Tchaikovsky, whom audiences in the west were far more familar with. Although the Tchaikovsky connection made his music popular, Sibelius was unimpressed, complaining to his friend the conductor Simon Parmet that his music was "distorted" and misunderstood.  How differently Adorno might have thought of Sibelius had he known.

Thus, Elder's shaping of Sibelius Scènes historiques Suite no 2 and the Seventh Symphony was part of a long-standing tradition. Just not the tradition we are used to today. So hearing Elder's Sibelius is like going back in time to a more primeval spring where everything's luscious and peaceful, untroubled by war, independence and dangerous modernity.  One reason Sibelius may have entered the "Silence of Järvenpää" was the realization that he couldn't top the 7th, despite his visions of even more remarkable music. But with Elder, we can forget the future and luxuriate in the loveliness of the landscape, which, arguably, is also integral to what Sibelius was.

Bartók's Piano concerto no 3 is curious because it's so very different from his Concerto no 2, one of the most explosive, passionate pieces of the 20th century. (Listen to Cziffra here, playing in 1956).  András Schiff's playing is sublime, elegantly balanced, yet rich with feeling. When this Prom is televised on Friday and Saturday, watch and see how his face communicates almost as fluently as his hands. Schiff knows where this work stands in Bartók's life and oeuvre. The Adagio religioso in particular sounded deeply sincere and affirmative. Like the Concerto for Orchestra, this piece opens out beyond the folksy "Magyarism", onto new horizons far from war-torn Europe, Maybe the composer is trying to cheer his wife and himself, but Schiff gets a sense of inner repose.

Indeed, Schiff and Bartók proved to be the centrepiece of this entire Prom.  Elder's sunny interpretation of  Sibelius 7 and Janáček Sinfonietta thus had a certain, if unorthodox logic. Again the  BBC  programme notes emphasize the joyous, open-air nature of the Sinfonietta, inspired as it was by a brass band on a happy day.  The highly polished Hallé made the sassy, angular opening sound like a rustic band not too bothered about being fierce. Gemütlich, though that's probably not the most tactful term to use, given what would happen in the Sudetenland (Bohemia) ten years later. Arguably Elder's light-hearted Sinfonietta makes a point, but I would much rather have heard the strident, pungent quirkiness that makes it so characteristcally Janáček.  Daniel Harding's Janáček Sinfonietta at the Barbican also made much of the sophitication in the orchestration, so when the punchy coda came, it burst forth even more exuberantly in comparison. After all, Janáček isn't just celebrating a happy moment, but the spirit behind the occasion - the birth of the Czech nation no less. The composer was far too politically astute to think independence would come easy. Summery as the Sinfonietta is, it isn't genteel, and does need to be performed with reference to its background, even when that background means nothing to non-Czech audiences.

Cziffra's explosive Bartók, 1956

It's Hungary, 1956, and the people have been rising up against the Russians. Tanks are rolling in and the revolt is about to be crushed. György Cziffra is scheduled to play Bartók's Piano Concerto no 2. What can he do? This is how he makes his stand. (concerto in 2 parts)

PLG Young Artists at the Wigmore Hall

Where do Big Names come from in the first place?  If we don't nurture the unknown and upcoming, who will be there in the future? Like any healthy organism, music revives itself by growth and renewal.  That's why it's good to support schemes like th PLG Young Artists.and others.

Since its inception in 1956, many Park Lane Group Young Artists have gone on to good things: Thomas Adès, Gwyneth Jones, Thomas Allen, Claire Booth, Mark van der Weil, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Stephen Isserlis and many others. Performance isn't something that can be done in theory. Performers need to be perform live so they get the experience of interacting with audiences.

The Wigmore Hall is an important part of the scheme because it's hallowed ground. On this platform almost everyone significant in chamber music and song has appeared. Just look at the walls with their photos and posters of concerts past. A programme with Poulenc and Bernac appeared near the lift once, for example. One day when the WH gets its archive fully sorted there should be a major exhibition. Also, the Wigmore Hall is bigger than the Purcell Room at the South Bank.  This year there are several PLG concerts running until June. Last Monday I attended the second concert in the series, with Tamsin Waley Cohen and the Piatti Quartet. There were many interesting people in the audience, including José Serebrier (who has mentored Tamsin Waley-Cohen), Anthony Payne the composer and  the singer Jane Manning, herself a PLG Young Artist once, and from whom I and many others have learned so much.

Since I last heard Waley-Cohen play Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in 2007, she's matured a lot, though she's still only 25. This time she played Bartók's Sonata for Solo Violin which exposes a violinist's real skill and stamina. It was written for Yehudi Menuhin, no less and involves demanding technique.  After a tentaive first movement, she collected herself and by the third and fourth movements acquitted herself with aplomb. She negotiated the tricky changes in the Melodia and the wild buzzing flights of the Presto with ease. A piece like this grows with a performer. One day Waley-Cohen will have the confidence to throw herself instinctively into the work. She was playing the same 1721 Stradivarius that Lorand Fenyves used when he played this very same piece at a PLG concert in 1964. Menuhin, Fenyves and so many others. This weight of grand tradition would intimidate many, but Waley-Cohen has courage.  Later she played Richard Causton's Fantasia and Air (2009) commissioned for her, and Bach's Chaconne BVW 1004.

The Piatti String Quartet comprise Charlotte Scott, Michael Trainor, David Wigram and Jessie Ann Richardson. In the first half of the programme they played Beethoven's String Quartet in E flat major op 74. Very well co-ordinated, very well balanced. To their credit the Piatti were interesting and held attention. Again, expressiveness grows with maturity, but with experience these players will develop. They've got the basics right. They ended the concert with Smetana's String Quartet no 1 in E minor.

Bartók Stravinsky Salonen Infernal Dance 2

Second concert in Infernal Dance, the major Bartók' series at the South Bank with the Philharmonia and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Bartók's Cantata Profana (1930) made a spectacular start to this intelliigently planned programme. What a masterstroke to bring in the Coro Gulbenkian under their Chorus Master Jorge Matta! This choir is almost legendary, as its many fine recordings prove, and travels extensively, but its appearances in this country are all too infrequent. With their roots in baroque polyphony, they are technically flawless, yet they bring individual character to what they sing. The voices are extremely well balanced, so instead of a wash of sound, they sound distinctive, like a good orchestra. Combined with the Philharmonia Voices, also among the best in their field, they demonstrated why the choral parts in this cantata are central to its success.

Cantata Profana is based on a legend about nine young huntsmen who go into a forest pursuing stags but are themselves bewitched and turned into their prey. Bartók writes dense textures into the choruses, so the music evokes the mystery of a primeval forest. The father, baritone Michele Kalmandi, begs his sons to return to safety, but the sons have chosen a more dangerous path. The nine sons are depicted as a unit by one tenor, Attila Fekete, but it is the chorus as forest which dominates the whole work. The choral voices murmur menacingly, full of incident, like shadows in the forest. This is where the personality of the chorus pays dividends. Bartók is using the voices like an orchestra. Towards the end, the sons blend back into the forest, as the tenor sings with the choir. Fekete declaims one last glorious phrase, Czak tista forrásból (but from cool mountain springs) which the choir has been quietly intoning and will continue singing after the tenor goes quiet. Fekete floats this exotic last phrase like a muezzin calling across vast distances. It's meant to sound alien because it's coming from another dimension, far from the rules of the father's household. That's why it's "profane" - it uses a Bachian frame on which to hang ideas that subvert conventional piety.

Please see the rest of this review on Bachtrack, the Very Useful listings database.  Also in the programme was Stravinsky, Le Sacre du Printemps. Salonen interprets this so you can hear the relevance to Bartók,, and images of earth. So Cantata profana can be heard in context. Please also read about the FIRST concert in this series HERE.

Jurowski Das Klagende Lied, LPO

Vladimir Jurowski's third Mahler Das klagende Lied with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the South Bank was fun.  This time, it wasn't being recorded, but more relaxed, which is no bad thing with this work, which benefits from a whimsical touch.

The tenuous Mahler connection between the programmes on 26th (reviewed here) and 29th was dutifully marketed in Tuesday's mid concert talk, but the real reason for these programmes was that the LPO had planned to tour Hungary. The trip fell through but the programmes remained. This makes much more sense in musical terms.. The real focus was clearly on separate Austrian and Hungarian traditions. It also makes sense as the RFH debut of Barnabás Kelemen, the energetic young soloist in Bartók's Violin Concerto No 1 .And in programming terms, it reveals a much deeper inner logic, connecting dreams and atmospheric abstraction. Hooray - my faith in Jurowski is confirmed.

For Mahler's Das klagende Lied is almost more tone poem than cantata. Jurowski's wonderful in Das klagende Lied because his attention to detail and fine tuning enhances the Romantic glow.  Indeed, the text is a poem, and the soloists' parts don't exist as "parts" as such. Jurowski gets the atmospheric flow so well that it makes the strange storyline seem plausible. Magic, created from pure music.

Throughout the piece, there are echoes of Wagner, specifically snatches of Das Rheingold and Siegfried's Journey down the Rhine. Das klagende Lied tells of dishonesty and retribution, of young heroes who aren''t completely what they seem. Mahler isn't borrowing in a haphazard romantic way but deftly using the references to expand what he's writing. "Pop up windows" in a sense because they open out onto wider vistas. In essence, he's already exploring the idea of embedding song in symphony. An experienced listener will also pick out snippets that will form Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Mahler's Symhony no 1.

It's a fundamentally different approach to writing music that unfolds as narrative. There are many references, especially in the choral parts, to Carl Maria von Weber, another of Mahler's heroes.  Weber's operas are wonderful as music but not frequently performed as they're not specially stageworthy. The drama is in the music itself. Already Mahler is using musical form as theatre in itself, without needing to go down the opera route. The solo parts are subsumed into the orchestra like extended instrumental colour. The choruses are full of character. Individual pairs of singers stand out from the ensemble, giving depth and connecting with the soloists. Two trebles add an otherworldly eeriness. An off stage orchestra is heard from afar, reinforcing the idea of two worlds co-existing, reality and the supernatural.

Royal Festival Hall acoustics do not favour solo singers. Oddly enough, it helps when they're positioned above the orchestra rather than arrayed in front, even if they have to sing over the orchestra. Melanie Diener, Christianne Stotijn, Michael König and Christopher Purves were very good, but the London Philharmonic Choir augmented by members of the Glyndebourne Opera Chorus, were extremely good. Since Das klagende Lied depends so much on a good chorus, they certainly helped make this performance a success. Less so the positioning of the off stage orchestra. Playing in the Green Bar, sometimes with the doors to the auditorium closed, isn't ideal. No matter how good the players were, the effect was unnatural. Positioning them in boxes is often a better solution.

More on Ligeti, Kelemen and Bartók in a longer, more detailed version of this will shortly appear in Bachtrack, an excellent database for keeping your concert and opera diary up to date.(NOT all Bach!)  If Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony is of interest there's lots on this site about it because I've ;loved it and lived with it many years. Please use search butten, too many different posts.