Elbphilharmonie Gala - Gilbert connects Brahms and Varèse via Bernstein, Ives and Unsuk Chin

Alan Gilbert with the Elbphilharmonie

The Opening Concert of the 2019-2020 season of the Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, started with typical flourish, Alan Gilbert conducting Brahms's  Symphony no 1 in C minor op 68, Unsuk Chin Frontispiece for Orchestra Bernstein's Symphony no 1 "Jeremiah", Charles Ives The Unanswered Question, and Edgard Varèse's Amériques.  Not a programme for the faint of heart, but executed with great panache! He certainly   seemed relaxed and in his element.  He came to fame conducting the Orchestre National de Lyon and first conducted this Hamburg orchestra, now called the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, 18 years ago. Gilbert has always belonged in Europe, even though he conducts a lot of American repertoire. With the NDR Elbphilharmonie, he can reach audiences who are open minded enough to pay attention.   This programme was also intelligently planned, with enough musical knowledge holding it together, even though it might have seemed sprawling in theory. Yes - plenty to connect Brahms with Varèse !

Johannes Brahms is an emblem of the Elbphilharmonie. Though he went on to fame and fortune elsewhere, he remained at heart a Hamburg homeboy, retaining a no-nonsense North German spirit.  Even in Vienna, that tough Norh Sea/Baltic soul made him individual.  He began working on what was to become his Symphony no 1 when he was twenty-two, completing it twenty-one years later, as he matured. Thus the influence of Beethoven,  Gilbert's approach emphasizing the classical structure and poise.  Horns called forwards, as if reaching out towards distant horizons, before passages evoking hymnal, which develop into fervent anthem, growing richer and more emphatic as the work proceeds. From early Brahms to Unsuk Chin, with whom Gilbert has been associated for many years (he's probably one of her finest interpreters). This was the world premiere of her Frontispiece for Orchestra. It's spiky, bristling with incident. In the second section, Chin's exuberance gave way to stillness, strings stretching languidly, the whole gradually growing  more affirmative - darker, circular figures rolling with forward movement.  Gilbert then conducted  Leonard Bernstein's Symphony no 1 "Jeremiah". This first half of the concert thus formed a cohesive arc - Brahms's first and Bernstein's first, both experimental in their own way, both composers finding themselves, influenced by their backgrounds. Based losely on the Book of Lamentations, the first movement, "Prophecy", suggests foreboding, fulfilled by the second, "Profanation", which is wild and tubulent, unruly figures led by woodwinds, whipped into frenzy by staccato figures and wailing brass.  In the final "Lamentation", the soloist, here Rinat Shaham, intones in Hebrew, her voice rerverberant with vibrato (properly employed).  In the last page, portent is replaced by greater lightness - the voice lighter and purer, textures open ended, with strings shining, supported by winds and brass. A melody (violin and strings) draws the piece to conclusion. 

Chales Ives's The Unanswered Question the first part of the Two Contemplations, is more frequently performed as a stand alone,  as it was here, as "frontispiece" before Varèse's Amériques.  Like so much of Charles Ives’s work, it's extraorinarily experimental, especially considering that it was originally written in 1908 by a composer who rarely got to hear his own music performed.  Though the instrumentation is spare, the work opens out, like a Tardis. There are three separate mini-orchestras, a string ensemble, a woodwind quartet and offstage solo trumpet : a prophecy of Ives's masterpiece, anticipating hs  Symphony no 4.  Beginning and ending in silence is part of the concept - music without boundaries. It's not really a miniature, but leads on to other things. In this case, the pairing with Varèse's Amériques was inspired. This was effectively the composer's opus one, marking his arrival in America, decisively indicating "new worlds".  Here, Gilbert conducted the better-known 1927 version,  rather than the crazier but fun 1921 version Simon Rattle did recently in London.  It's a mistake to think of Varèse's Amériques as little more than noise. There's method in its apparent madness. The cacophonies represent the sounds of modernity and freedom : sounds put tohgether in collage, to create a sense of the teeming energy of a big, modern city (that's where the klaxons come in), Structually the piece operates in large blocks, each section operating on multiple levels, all of them in motion.  Think of skyscrapers, with many storeys, filled with people and machines, below the streets, trains and infrastructure, above, in the skies, moving objects of many kinds. Varèse's Amériques is a seminal work, connecting to futurism, cubism and other innovations in Europe, while breaking completely new ground in terms of music. Its influence cannot be overestimated.  Ives would have been thrilled to have his music side by side with Varèse - both of them prophets unacknowledged in their time.  A bit like Jeremiah !  Listen to the concert HERE.

 

The Sea - F-X Roth, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Debussy Ravel Britten Chin and Trenet

On the ocean !  and François-Xavier Roth reveals more of his many talents. Livestream with the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, conducted by François-Xavier Roth, combining Britten, Unsuk Chin, Ravel and Debussy La Mer and, with a glorious twist, the original 1946 Charles Trenet La Mer sung by Roth himself!  From Roth, always expect the unexpected.  Not many conductors would have the sass to do this, far less to sing it themselves, but Roth can, and did it with such style that the song fitted perfectly well with the rest of the programme. Genre-blending with intelligence - no dumbing down here.

Benjamin Britten Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes set the scene.  The Gürzenich-Orchester Köln doesn't sound like an English orchestra, so it was a good experience hearing Britten in this way - sparkier, less buttoned down and stiff upper lip.  The timpani crashed, the church bells clanged, and the undercurrent in the tide motif pulled with a surge. Wild, dizzying angular lines: wonderfully quirky.  Englishman as Peter Grimes is, he is Everyman, his story universal.  This was "different" but perfectly valid, releasing the repressed "inner" Britten. This grows on you - enjoy the repeat broadcast.

Unsuk Chin's Le Silence des Sirènes premiered in 2015 at Lucerne with Simon Rattle and Barbara Hannigan.  This time the soloist was Donatienne Michel-Dansac, who made the piece an expression of zany humour, very much in the whimsical spirit of Chin's music. This also fits the edginess in James Joyce's text.  Michel-Dansac's voice calls, from a distance, before she emerges on stage.  This Siren seduces by the sheer variety of what she sings. She mutters, whispers, sighs, compelling attention.  Long, high-pitched ululations taunt the dissonant lines in the orchestra. When the Siren triumphs, her victim is dead.  Thus the hollow, sardonic laugh.

Another surprise - Ravel Une barque sur l'océan in its orchestral version, paired seamlessly with Debussy La Mer, which, incidentally was completed by Debussy when he was on holiday in Eastbourne in Sussex. Britten's North Sea coastlines can be bleak, but Eastbourne is closer to the expansive Atlantic and to France.  Not that it really makes a difference, since the sea of Debussy's imagination is an emotional, artistic response to the symbolism of the ocean - ever changing moods, depths, contrasts, driven by vast, invisible forces.  Roth and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln were in their element: a very strong performance, and very rewarding.

Pity about the presentation, though, which apes the hyper-hip vacuousness that plagues BBC Radio 3 these days.  The presenter herself seems a rational person, who could probably develop a more rational style, more in keeping with the quality of this orchestra.    

Tight and taut : Unsuk Chin Alice in Wonderland Barbican London

Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland  returned to the Barbican, London, shape-shifted like one of Alice's adventures.  The BBC Symphony Orchestra was assembled en masse, almost teetering off stage, creating a sense of tension. "Eat me, Drink me". Was Lewis Carroll on hallucinogens or just  good at channelling the crazy world of the subconscious?   Unsuk Chin's take on Carroll, with David Henry Hwang's libretto, emphasizes the madcap mania of the original, where nothing is what it seems and Reason is Irrelevant. This Alice in Wonderland is anything but prim.  It's zany, anarchic and subversive, and also hilariously funny.

With her music, Unsuk Chin builds ambitious architecture, vast grand edifices that stun by their sheer scale. This new version, with Netia Jones's semi-staging and Lloyd Moore's re-orchestration, reveals the strong, basic structure, releasing its manic, kinetic energy.  Jones's direction and designs buzz with wit and colour. Video (Lightmap and Netia Jones) is good at depicting impossibilities, like the vanishing Cheshire cat and his enduring grin. The interplay between video and reality is so good that it's quite unsettling, which amplifies meaning.  The illustrations are by Ralph Steadman: no trace of twee. When the Mouse (Christopher Lemmings) is condemned,  the crowd shout "Disneyfy him!" A fate worse tha death.

Kent Nagano conducted Unsuk Chin's original score in Munich eight years ago, but not all houses have such resources. Thus Los Angeles Opera commissioned a version that's easier to carry off and tour. Lloyd Moore is sensitive to the spirit of Chin's original. By reducing the number of players, especially in the strings, the inherent liveliness in the music is liberated. The choruses (BBC Singers, Tiffin Boys Choir)  are still big, though not quite the 40-60 singers specified in the original  The emphasis is thus on the quality of Chin's instrumentation rather than sheer volume. Chin has a passion for imaginative use of unusual instruments. The score employs "kitchenalia" which means just that - alarm clocks, wind chimes, tweet and crackles and pops. Vivid combinations, such as when the violins  are plucked, extending the sound of the mandolin. In Scene Two, The Pool of Tears, the image of water is created by celli and basses, bowed with maximum depth, creating a drone that's both mournful and mysterious. The Caterpillar sings, wordlessly. He, whose very existence depends on changing shape and form, is represented by a single instrument, the bass clarinet, which, oddly enough, looks like a metal caterpillar. Baldur Brönnimann conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He's a new music specialist,. alive to the quirky possibilities this music offers.

Unsuk  Chin's vocal lines are counter-intuitive to syntax, often also running counter to the orchestra. Text turns to tongue twister. Yet again, that's part of the concept of shape-changing instability.  It's not easy to carry off well, though.  Rachele Gilmour sang Alice in Los Angeles, which is perhaps why she was cast again in London. Andrew Watts sang the White Rabbit, Badger and March Hare in Munich and in LA, and is perhaps the most important countertenor in his field, and the most experienced. He was divine, capturing the jagged edges of his parts with demented aplomb, not only with his unique voice but also with his body language. His White Rabbit camps along, prissily wiggling his large rabbit behind: totally in character. A tour de force.

Marie Arnet's Cheshire Cat was sung with spirit and spice. Perhaps the cat knows that the way to survive in this crazy world is to grin, even when all else fades.  Jane Henschel was in superb form. Her Queen of Spades was gleefully wicked, laced with shrill but well controlled vitriol, and she made it sound like fun.  Dietrich Henschel sang the Mad Hatter, using the metallic tension in his voice to good effect. Impressive Christopher Lemmings Mouse, Dormouse and Invisible Man. Stephen Richardson, a British stalwart, sang the King of Hearts, while the other smaller parts were taken by American singers, from the LA production: Andrew Craig Brown, Rafael Moras and Nicholas Brownlee.

This concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3's Live in Concert on Saturday 11th July at 7.30 pm and available for 30 days after broadcast on the BBC Radio 3 website and BBC I Player Radio

This review also appears in Opera Today, where there is also a review of the Munich production. Please see my other posts on Unsuk Chin and on new music and stagecraft

Unsuk Chin Alice in Wonderland Munich and thoughts thereon

Tonight, a brilliant new version of Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland at the Barbican, London. My review is HERE..

Meanwhile, a link to the review in Opera today of the original production, in Munich in 2007.  Opera Today is an excellent source of background material. This review is informative and  useful. The opera was originlly created for Los Angeles, but didn't eventuate, so the Bavarian State Opera took it on instead, conducted by Kent Nagano and directed by Achim Freyer. A film of this production was shown at the Barbican's Unsuk Chin Total Immersion some years ago. It's the one where the characters are dolls with giant see-through heads. transparent heads. When Alice realizes it's all a scam she removes hers. "Off with their heads!" in every sense. I liked the Freyer production a lot, but was less impressed by the music.

This time round, at the Barbican, my views have changed again .What a difference! The new semi-staging, by Netia Jones, and the new orchestration, by Lloyd Moore, reveal the true depths of this opera. Unsuk Chin's good at building vast grand edifices.  Created for Los Angeles and premiered there last year, the new production clarifies the strong internal structure. The music emerges as an elegant puzzle , rather like one of M C Escher's architectural conundrums, where stairways connect or don't connect, and corridors lead to dead ends or new beginnings.

A lot like the concept behind David Henry Hwang's libretto, where Alice enters a surreal world where nothing makes sense, and every assumption is turned on its head. Or "Off with it! " as the Queen might scream. Much zanier than Lewis Carroll, though it makes one wonder what he was drinking and eating. Not, most thankfully, Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland. Indeed, when the Mouse is condemned, he's sentenced to be "Disneyfied", a fate worse than death.  This time round, the energy is far more manic, and far more surreal.  I loved the crazy humour in the instrumentation (another Unsuk Chin trademark)  Last time round, there was a family complaining that this wasn't the Alice in Wonderland they'd taken their kids to see. This time there was a warning "Not recommended for under 12's". Conversely, perversely, I think under 12's would respond positively to the anarchic ,mayhem.  Pity the show started at 7.30, not, as originally planned, at 7. which meant it ended very late.  By the time most people commuted home, it was way past bedtime. 

Barbican 2014-15 (2) BBCSO plus

There's hope for classical music in London!  The Barbican 2014-2015 season is a lot stronger than it looks at first glance. It's a relief to get away from gimmicks and back to "own curated" series created by musicians rather than marketing men.

To prove the point, the Barbican is hosting a traverse of Carl Nielsen's symphonies, where Sakari Oramo will be conducting the BBCSO.  Starting on 11/10, (running til May)  the Nielsen series complements Rattle's Sibelius series with the Berliner Philharmoniker which runs from 10-12 February 2015. That's inspired programming ! It will be interesting to compare and contrast two of the greatest Scandinavian composers, performed by two of the best bands and conductors in the genre.

The BBCSO is perhaps the backbone of the Barbican because its resources are so big that it can draw on a wide range of conductors and specialities and forms. Plenty of mainstream concerts ahead, spiced up, in BBC tradition, with excursions into new-ish music.  They're doing a John Tavener Total Immersion on 8/10 supplemented with extra concerts by the Britten Sinfonia and the BBC Singers.

Even more important (and more my thing) is the Boulez at 90 on 21 March 2015. Hopefully Boulez will be present, but even if he's not, this will be not to be missed under any circumstances, since François-Xavier Roth is conducting Pli selon Pli, Notation I-IV and VII, Éclat/Multiples and Piano Sonata no 2. Roth is a quirky but very original conductor. I've not heard him do Boulez before but I think we can count on him. Read my account of  Pli selon Pli with Boulez, Hannigan and Ensemble Intercontemporain when they did it in October 2011, which may have beeen Boulez's last concert before his illness. Then on 28/4/15 Ensemble Intercontemporain themselves come to the Barbican conducted by Matthias Pinscher, doing Sur incises, Mémoriale, a Pintscher piece and a Boulez favourite, Debussy Syrinx. Unmissable. Barbara Hannigan is singing two concerts with the Britten Sinfonia on 6 and 7 May.

Wolfgang Rihm was the subject of a Total Immersion a few years ago (read more on this site)  Now he gets a second Total Immersion, based around the UK premiere of his Tutuguri on 31/1. Kent Nagano makes a rare UK appearance conducting the BBCSO which alone will be a draw. Hopefully, Rihm himself will be at the talks, because he's a character.
 
The BBC Singers are another of the assets that come with the BBC's association with the Barbican. This year, they're giving even more concerts than usual and some very challenging programmes too, including a keynote James MacMillan concert on 12/2/15, part of the year-long MacMillan series which also features the Britten Sinfonia. Even  more adventurously, they'll be singing Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland on 8/3/15 in a Netia Jones video semi staging.I thought the original Munich straging (with the big eyeballs) was by far the best part of the opera, so who kmows? We might be lucky if the edition performed is the one by Lloyd Moore, first heard in Santa Fe; the thing with new music is that things take time to settle. For every Barry, Dean or Muhly who gets big money backing there must be many others writing good music that we don't get to hear. But the business has always been this way: it's nothing new.

Joyce DiDonato, Mathias Goerne and Ian Bostridge ensure that  vocal music will be well served this year. I'm also booking quicksmart for Smetana's Dalibor on 2nd May 2015. This was once a huge hit, conducted by Mahler, no less. Jirí Belohlávek returns to the BBCSO with his loyal Prague singers.  Belohlávek brought so much Czech repertoire to Britain that it was a dark day for true music lovers when he quit. Pretty boy pianists are a dime a dozen, but there are very few truly specialist conductors with such a passionate and idiomatic feel for unusual repertoire.

Tomorrow, I'll write about the Barbican's Early Music and Baroque plans for 2014-2015 and the Academy of Ancient Music. Please come back, because the Barbican is proving to be London's greatest centre for this repertoire.

Also see an overview of the Barbican 2014-15 season with an emphasis on the LSO and international orchestras

And a guide to the Barbican's Blockbuster Baroque season coming up

Welsh National Opera British Firsts

Five year series of "British Firsts" at the Welsh National Opera, starting summer 2013, thanks to a £2 million gift from the Getty family, (who are also connected to Garsington Opera at Wormsley)

David Pountney, WNO's Chief Executive and Artistsic Director, says "This series gives us an extraordinary opportunity to re-engage with contemporary opera writing and to transform our perceptions of new music. We hope to dispel the misconception that modern opera is either moribund or incomprehensible to our audiences."

" Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a massive amount of creative energy in the artform and new works are constantly being created all over the world. we can enjoy modern music and modern opera as part of our normal cultural life, just as we enjoy modern cinema, television, books or fashion. It will open the doors to the landscape of the new."

Exciting news, which should shake things up, but nothing dangerously radical. Two of these operas are well known, albeit not in full UK productions.  Jonathan Harvey's Wagner Dream (scheduled for summer 2013) was first heard in 2007 at De Nederlandse Opera. Pierre Audi directed: best possible premiere. When it reached the Barbican in London in January 2012, (semi staged), it was the hottest ticket in town, generating much excitement. Colin Stuart Clarke, a Jonathan Harvey devotee, wrote a thoughtful review for Opera Today, more sympathetic than most. "The vast stretch of Harvey’s available compositional resources was impeccably utilised. Tonal sections made great effect (a lullaby, for example) and yet did not jar in the slightest, instead appearing as just one element in the composer’s palette. The music shares with Wagner’s an ability to take the listener out of temporal time into the composer’s expanded time, and, as with Wagner, the time spent experiencing this piece seemed somehow telescoped, as one became intimately involved with the events and their musical realisation. One one level it felt as if we had been there years; on another, it was a mere moment."

In 2017, WNO will be doing Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland. This, too, was premiered in 2007, in Munich. It was screened at the Barbican London last year. The DVD has been available since 2008. Just as Alice was curious, the opera is curious. Absurdity and silliness can mix well, as Lewis Carroll showed. Chin is highly regarded in some circles, but I felt Alice was too self-indulgent as opera, but was wholly redeemed by Achim Freyer's direction. Alice wears a huge mesh head and meets other giant talking heads-in-boxes. A new edition of the opera was prepared by British composer Lloyd Moore for a US production in 2012. I'm not sure which version we'll hear in Cardiff, but I'm hoping for a tighter orchestration.

More intriguing might be the Edgar Allan Poe double bill directed by David Pountney in 2014. Claude Debussy’s unfinished one-act opera The Fall of the House of Usher has been orchestrated by Robert Orledge, using additional material from sketches left by Debussy. It will be heard with Gordon Getty’s Usher House. Both will be presented in San Franciscxo in 2015. The picture right is Harry Clarke's illustration from an early French edition of Poe's poem.

Quietly under-publicized is Richard Ayres' Peter Pan, planned for 2015. Ayres (b 1965) is a significant British composer but better known in mainland Europe - which is so often the case. Peter Pan is a joint commission between the Komische Oper Berlin, Stuttgart Opera and WNO, which indicates its potential. Peter Pan might well be the surprise hit among these "British Firsts". We shall hope!

photo credit : Thomas Duesing

Unsuk Chin Total Immersion Barbican

Unsuk Chin's music is extravagant. This must have been a shockingly expensive concert to produce. The stage at the Barbican had to be extended to fit the massive orchestra, and the whole middle section of the stalls was closed off for safety reasons. The two intervals lasted longer than usual because there was so much equipment to move. Huge expense, smaller than average audience, even by new music standards. But such is the BBC's commitment to its ideals that this concert went ahead as the high point of a day-long Total Immersion, with other concerts, talks and a film.

 HERE is a link to the review with photo in Bachtrack.