Aldeburgh Rattle CBSO Mahler Messiaen

This year's Gala opening evening at Aldeburgh sold out to top, top level Friends within moments. Thousands wanted to hear Simon and Mrs Rattle back with the CBSO, his old band, Aldeburgh regulars for many years.  The choice of  programme was daunting : Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde after Messiaen's Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum. Could any contrast be more extreme? And in a small auditorium like the Maltings at Snape ?

Messiaen dreamed that Et expecto resurrectionum mortuorum could be performed in the mountains of the French Alps, booming across vast valleys. It's probably the most monumental piece in the whole repertoire and can even raise the roof at the Royal Albert Hall. At Snape, it's a wonder Health & Safety didn't intervene. Anyone with migraine or inner ear problems is probably still suffering. 

I've been writing about Messiaen and about Et expecto resurrectionum mortuorum  for years, so please look up this link HERE which leads to other links, so you can keep exploring. Rattle conducted a good Messaien Et exspecto at the Barbican earlier this year, but at Snape sound considerations did make a difference, which you can even hear on the BBC broadcast.

More interesting was Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde.  When Magdalena Kožená first started singing Mahler, she didn't seem like a typical Mahler mezzo. On the other hand stereotype delimits.Nothing in the rule book demands dark-hued sobriety. Indeed, as Claudio Abbado showed in Berlin, translucent, shining textures emphasize the uplift in the music. There Anne Sofie von Otter's singing was pure and deeply committed. Diva doesn't sit well in a piece whose whole message is transcendance over worldly pettiness. Kožená's voice is prettier than von Otter's but she hasn't quite the same fierce sense of character. On the other hand, it was clear from this performance that she wasn't herself: her chest sounded constricted. Pacing herself carefully to conserve her reserves, she couldn't let go as she would probably have done in better circumstances. 

Michael Schade has sung the tenor part in Das Lied von der Erde many times: nothing spectacular but also nothing wrong, either. Fair enough, considering that this was the gala opening of a non-Mahler festival and no-one was nit picking. Rattle and the CBSO were the draw and fans would not have been disappointed.

Magdalena Kozená Wigmore Hall

Last week Magdalena Kozená sang at the Wigmore Hall. Delightful  programme of baroque love songs, "Lettere amorose". Two recitals to meet demand! I didn't go but sat outside, listening to her rehearse.  Everyone's heard her many times, but she seemed more radiant and animated than usual, like she was having a Really Good Day!  She's on a roll - catch her Mélisande from the Met on BBC Radio 3 afternoon programme online til Thursday. Not bloodless at all, but vigorous and exuberant, which fits the part well.  Luminous conducting from Simon Rattle - Pelléas et Mélisande is one of his keynote works, as anyone who heard him in 2007 at the Royal Opera House and in Berlin will know. (Even better in Berlin seems to be a trend, too). Pelléas is Stéphane Degout who impressed in ROH Roméo et Juliette. He's doing a very interesting French recital at the Wigmore Hall on Thursday.

Read more about Kozená's recital here in Opera Today. "Kozená reminds us that she “grew up with this music”, joining with a lutenist to perform these secular songs while studying at Brno University and revelling in the creative freedom the music, with its lack of strict notational instructions, allowed her. She and Private Musicke certainly achieve their intention to take us back to the popular origins of the songs.......:

.....“It comes from a time when there was no equivalent to our divide between classical and pop music; it was simply the music everyone heard and sang.” Certainly, she and her colleagues convincingly conveyed the universality of the sentiments and the ‘naturalness’ of their expression. Indeed, at times, the emotional intensity combined with imaginative liberty was astonishingly reminiscent of the modern-day rock concert, as the music seemed to capture and, by turns, ease, intrigue and bewitch the souls of the listeners in the Wigmore Hall."

Martinů and Bělohlávek Prom 15 2009

Jiří Bělohlávek continues to work wonders. He's changing the face of music in Britain. Not since Kubelik in the late 1940's has there been a conductor who understands the syntax of Slavic music because he is a native speaker. It really does make a difference. He's also good because he's prepared to bring more of the repertoire into prominence. It helps, too, that he knows everyone and can bring in good musicians that we might otherwise miss. Read about his Janacek Prom 2008 Osud, his recording of The Excursions of Mr Broucek and the wonderful Martinů Julietta with Magdalena Kozena.

Take note. Bělohlávek will be conducting the biggest ever series of Martinů symphonies ever heard in Britain later this year at the Barbican. In New York, Alan Gilbert will be weaning audiences onto the composer too. This Prom was a taster for the future. Here's a review by my friend Douglas Cooksey (read his report on the Risor Festival in Norway) who doesn't like Martinů as much as I do but writes better.

Bohuslav Martinů : Juliette, Kožená

Many works by Martinů will be performed in this year’s commemoration of the anniversary of his death, but it would be hard to equal the impact of this performance. Much of its success was due to Magdalena Kožená, whose presence illuminated the whole opera, even though her moments on stage were fleeting.

A man arrives in a strange village where nothing seems quite right. The villagers have no memories to bind them to reality, so things unfold without sense or connection. But what is reality? The opera’s subtitle is “The Key to Dreams”, which implies a search for meaning, whether or not it can be unlocked.

From the orchestra emerges a lovely, haunting melody. The man thinks he’s heard it before, connected to a vague memory - a beautiful woman ? He’s determined to pursue the dream which seems to fade as fast as it unfolds. The woman is Juliette, shining bright and golden, “like a star in the firmament”.

Deeper the man goes, into a dark forest, where he meets a Seller of Memories, who sells photographs of exotic places. The man buys into the images, convinced that they show his past with the woman he’s searching for. Eventually the man finds himself in The Central Office of Dreams which people enter and leave when they sleep. On ferme! warns the nightwatchman (who was also the Seller of Memories). Wake or you’re forever trapped! But Juliette is such a powerful, seductive dream that the man would rather remain in eternal limbo than lose her.

Bohuslav Martinů’s Juliette materialized at the Barbican, London, in a new edition of the urtext, using the French version the composer wrote on his deathbed in 1959. He lived most of his adult life in France, so it’s perhaps poignant that he should return to his masterpiece in this way.

Hardly any staging was needed, for the action unfolds like a dream, utterly adrift from rules of cause and logic. Indeed, what narrative there is lurks in the music. The orchestral writing is densely vivid but at critical moments the density clears and a solo instrument takes centre stage. At first, it’s an accordion, then horn, clarinet and oboe, then a particularly evocative melody on piano which surrounds Juliette’s entries. It’s like in dreams where a single image comes into focus, like symbolic portent. Each time Juliette’s music returns, impressions deepen and become frustratingly familiar. Have we heard it before ? And where ? In dreams, the mind fixes on details and follows their trail. Martinů uses allusions from music as tantalizing clues. There’s a snippet from L’Histoire du Soldat, just before the Fortune teller scatters cards. Then, a quotation from L’Après-midi d’un Faune, evoking a mood of frustrated love and longing. The villagers lack memory so can't find meaning : the composer uses memory to extend it. Similarly, Martinů uses off stage noises and singing. Even when asleep, the mind hears what’s happening “outside” so to speak. At any moment the dreamer might be woken, the dream shattered. It’s psychologically astute, building dramatic tension into the very fabric of the music.

Jiří Bělohlávek has a specially sensitive feel for this elusive, mysterious music, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has heard his Janaček or Dvořák. This performance was as good as the superlative Excursions of Mr Brouček last year, which he conducted with the same forces, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Singers. This production was also directed by Kenneth Richardson, who made such magic with the concert staging of Mr Brouček. Richardson’s intelligent, subtle style achieves great things by simple means. The forest, for example, is created by light and shadow, yet feels impressively alive.

Kožená was outstanding. Visually and vocally she glowed. While all the cast was good, she was exceptional, for Juliette is in an altogether more exalted league than ordinary mortals. Kožená’s fees might normally exceed the other singers fees put together, but here she was utterly worth it, for her presence embodied all that Juliette stands for. The role is so important that the whole opera rests on how well it is realized. Kožená has long championed Martinů’s music, so this magnificent performance was a great tribute.

William Burden sings Michel, the protagonist. It’s a long, demanding role which he carries off with aplomb. Also familiar to those who loved Mr Brouček was Zdeněk Plech, who made the relatively small role of The Old Arab/Sailor so interesting that you wished the composer had developed it further. Roderick Williams sang no less than four roles, including the pivotal Seller of Memories. He acts as well as he sings, and is certainly one of the brightest young British stars of his generation. When will he get the profile he deserves ? Andreas Jäggi’s Clerk was suitably tense and manic.

There are only two available recordings of Julietta, and the classic version is nearly 50 years old. Let’s hope this performance, which was recorded by the BBC, will make it to CD/DVD. Bělohlávek’s recording of Mr Brouček won the Gramophone award for best Opera in 2008, so perhaps this new Juliette will do the same.

This performance will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Tuesday 31st March, available online for a week.

Read the original on Opera Today:

http://www.operatoday.com/content/2009/03/magdalena_koena.php

Photo is by Pepe Araneda,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pantherman/2221071934/