Two Philharmonia specials - Salonen, Valade

Hans Zender conducting from memory

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted Wagner, Schoenberg and Bruckner with the Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall while Pierre-André Valade conducted the Philharmonia soloists at the Purcell Room in music by Hans Zender and Philippe Manoury,  Please read here what Marc Bridle said, in Opera Today

Debussy : Heras-Casado Le martyre de Saint Sébastien, La mer

From the current  Debussy series on Harmonia Mundi, Pablo Heras-Casado and the Philharmonia  Orchestra with Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Le Martyre de saint Sébastien and La Mer. A stylish reading,  from a gifted young conductor and one of London's finest orchestras.  I first heard Heras-Casado when he was a student at a Pierre Boulez masterclass series in Lucerne, where he created such an impression that he went on to conduct orchestras like the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Ensemble Intercontemporain.  He's developed a solid reputation and a wide-ranging repertoire, so he's well worth hearing.   This disc, part of a set still in progress, represents good value.  In this centenary of the composer's death the series is worth investigating, since it includes many good musicians, covering the breadth of Debussy's ouevre. 

A poised reading of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune L86,  the flutes leading seductively, lower timbred winds, harps and strings providing lush background.  A good sense of flow, important in a piece which would inspire one of the most famous ballets of all time.  Lovely circular shapes in the strings,  evoking perhaps the movement of a faun langorously turning its body, horn, winds and harps adding detail. 

Many will buy this recording, though, for Le Martyre de saint Sébastien L124, a four movement orchestral suite.  The first tableau, Le Cour de Lys, begins with tentative stirrings, executed with clear precision. Something is stirring. Sonorous strings and winds murmur. Though Sébastien is a saint, the imagery is erotic. Debussy and his contemporaries were no prudes.  Turbulence in the Danse extatique, the pace agitated yet languid, bright sharp chords shining. For a moment a dark, menaciung rumble before a glorious finale.  The strings elide nicely in the third tableau, The Passion, echoed by darker motifs.  At once a sense of forward thrust and sensual  response.  Particularly lovely winds, colours intensified by deeper, more mysterious undertones.  A new motif emerges, delicate, bright figures meeting somnolent overtones, winds and brass calling forwards.  A particularly beautiful final movement with well shaped long lines, strings shimmering against a hushed backdrop, culminating in triumphant blaze. 

Le Martyre de saint Sébastien here creates a bridge between the sensuality of Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and the vigour of La Mer. Heras-Casado and the Philharmonia capture the variety and textures that give life to this piece : lines comprising multiple, ever-changing figures, always in motion.  The Dialogue between Wind and Sea flows exuberantly. A refreshing, open-air feel,  surgiung and subsiding.  There are dozens of recordings of this piece but this is reliable enough to stand on its own merits.

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Schoenberg Gurrelieder : Salonen Philharmonia, Royal Festival Hall

Schoenberg Gurrelieder at the Royal Festival Hall, with Esa-Pekka Salonen, demonstrating how well the Philharmonia Orchestra has absorbed Schoenberg's idiom. A blazing performance, formidably dramatic, executed with stunning assurance.  Salonen has made his mark on the Philharmonia, through in-depth explorations of the 20th century repertoire he loves so well. After their first Gurrelieder with him in March 2009, I was at an airport where many of the players were talking excitedly about Gurrelieder and the way Salonen worked with them.   Musicians can be blasé (at least on the surface), but these players were genuinely enthusiastic. And they didn't know that I was listening in !

The deep surging undercurrents in the Prelude, lit by bright sparkling figures, seemed almost to vibrate.  Well-defined the strings, harps and horns introduced the dream-like mood, textures gradually build up in sweeping arcs, string lines swelling and heaving.  Perhaps Schoenberg had in mind Tristan und Isolde, or Siegfried's journey down the Rhine. Either way, vast cosmic forces are being invoked.. Or can we hear echoes of Verklärte Nacht writ infinitely larger ? Schoenberg then  introduces the mortals, King Waldemar (Robert Dean Smiith) and Tove (Camilla Tilling).   The parts are tricky to cast, since Schoenberg, in his youth, pits the singers against huge orchestral forces.   Yet voice along doesn't create a part.  Simon O'Neill, for example, doesn't have a pretty voice but more than compensates with artistry and insight.  Waldemar was anti-hero enough that he dares curse God : a Flying Dutchman of sorts. Dean Smith didn't quite have the heft or gift for characterization, so this Waldemar came across in milder form, though the music  around him roared with passion.  Tilling created a refined Tove,   her lines soaring gracefully, serving the part well.  Few Tove's are truly "wunderliche" but Tilling is attractive, as gentle as a dove. Tove is silenced, but the Wood Dove takes her place.

The Wood Dove, a much stronger personage than Tove,  is an Erda  figure, who sees all, and the mood is almost incantation.  .  Michelle DeYoung was ideal,  her rich timbre enhanced by sombre dignity.  The recurring line "Weit flog ich....."  rose forcefully from the surging undercurrents, bringing out the rhythmic flow.  Every good performances helps us think more about the music.  This time I was pondering how the Wood Dove's music might resemble Sprechstimme.  A pity that the "Herrgott ! Herrgott!" part didn't have quite the impact in the Royal Festival Hall as it could have. The front oif that stage sucks voices into the void even if you've got a voice-friendly seat.  On the BBC Radio 3 broadcast, Dean Smith's can be heard with better balance.  In the orchestra, however, the "Herrgott!" chords were magnificent, executed so they seemed to have a metallic quality, like hammerblows striking stone. 

A haunted, baleful  introduction to the final part, when the orchestra seemed to explode with the horror of the apocalyptic vision being described.  Trombones wailed, percussion rumbled, strings evoking a sense of wind and wildness. Waldemar and his doomed knights are riding theough the sky.  Another excellent cameo with David Soar's Peasant. The firmness in Soar's timbre suggested that even a doughty peasant can be so shaken that he must bolt his door and pray.  The Philharmonia Voices were augmented by the male voices of the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.In the relatively small space of the Royal Festival Hall, the impact could have been overwhelming, but under the direction of Aidan Oliver,  what came over was clarity, not sheer volume. Good articulation, the "Holla!"'s wild, the sudden descent into near silence  chilling.  Yet again, the orchestra set the scene. The strings surged, then opened out to strangely disturbing calm, the woodwinds adding quirky menace.   Despite the turbulence around him, Waldemar is alone.

Thus the spooky interlude before Klaus-Narr sings, cloaking the part with surreal horror.  Wolfgang Ablinger Sperrhacke is one of the finest "Character" singers in the business, so this cameo, like Michelle DeYoung's Wood Dove, was a major highlight.  Ablinger-Sperrhacke captured the strange, disjointed rhythms in the part extremely well, the "fool" easily the match of the orchestra.   Perhps Waldemar is the fool, still obsessed by ."Ich und Tove, wir sind eins", oblivious to his predicament.   Thus the brooding in the orchestra before the male choirs returned, textures subdued yet uncowed.  "Ins Grab! Ins Grab!"  A particularly good Wild Hunt of the Summer Wind,  tubas booming, let by high winds, with chamber-like delicacy in the playing.   The role of the Speaker is usually cast with a singer whose voice is past its bloom, but whose musical instincts are still strong enough to declaim with Sprechstimme intonation.  Some of the great singers of the past have done the Speaker so he/she feels like a ghost from the past, revived, like Waldemar and his Knights, a thoughtful insight. Barbara Sukova is an actress with musical nous,  whose voice is still fairly youthful, so her Speaker was different, closer perhaps to Klaus-Narr commenting on the spectres, as opposed to being one of them, which is perfectly valid.  A blazing Seht die Sonne! and the audience in the Royal Festival Hall went wild.  In orchestral terms, this was an outstanding Gurrelieder,  Salonen and the Philhrmonia delivering with insight and understanding. 

Majestic Mahler 3 Salonen Philharmonia Royal Festival Hall

The Third Coming ! Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted Mahler Symphony no 3 with the Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall with Michelle DeYoung, the Philharmonia Voices and the Tiffin Boys’ Choir.  It was live streamed worldwide, an indication of just how important this concert was, for it marks the Philharmonia's 34-year relationship with Salonen.  I  missed the first concert in 1983 when a very young Salonen substituted at a few days’ notice. The score was new to him, but he learned fast, easrning the respect of the orchestra. In 2007, he conducted Mahler 3 again to mark the re-opening of the Royal Festival Hall and its then new season (see here). Shortly afterwards, I was at an airport with members of the orchestra, saying how much they enjoyed working with Salonen, though they didn't realize civilians were listening.  Orchestras are often a hard-bitten bunch, so that was praise indeed.

So I booked Salonen's third high profile M3 with the Philharmonia months in advance. (it goes without saying that these weren't the only M3's)  No regrets, even though it made a long commute on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  The atmosphere in the hall was mellow..  Sitting beside me was a gentleman of 90 who was a junior engineer working on the building of the Royal Festival Hall, nearly 70 years ago.  His eyes were shining, as he described the engineering innovations that went into the structure. State of the art, for the time. I didn't understand the technicalities, but what an honour it was to meet someone as enthusiastic as that.

A majestic introduction, establishing the key motives with intense impact. The horns blazed, timpani rolled, the trombones blasted, evoking the majesty of the mountains,  evoking the metaphysical mountain peaks to come.  Thus the power of Nature, or whatever, versus the individual, in the form of the orchestral leader Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay.  No messing about : Salonen led straight into the fray, rapid marching "footsteps" lit by bright figures in the smaller winds : the idea of setting forth on a brisk spring journey.  Danger lies ahead though, as the sharp attacks on percussion suggest, but the vigour of the ensemble playing suggested vigour and energy. And so the vast panorama opened up before our ears, the long lines in the horns suggesting distance. When the principal trombone, Byron Fulcher, entered, he made his instrument sound like a highly sophisticated Alpenhorn.  The first movement is long and in some hands it can turn to mush, but Salonen observed the structure carefully, so each transit marked a stage in the journey, moving purposefully forward.  Wonderful rushing "descents" the way you feel leaping downhill after scaling a peak.  Peak after peak, vistas stretching endlessly ahead.  This first movement is a work-out. At the end, Salonen drank what seemed to be a whole bottle of water.

The next two movements aren't a respite, but rather a way of looking at other vistas, perhaps from the past.  Memories of sun-drenched meadows and shepherds’ flutes perhaps, but still the pace is fleet. Exquisite playing, so beautiful that it felt painful to know it couldn't possibly last forever, probably the point Mahler was trying to make. A delightfully sassy Comodo, confident and brisk, like a cheeky Ländler becoming a joyful romp.  Pan rushes in, with merry anarchy. But why does Mahler add the posthorn call, deliberately heard from a distance ?  I love this passage because it makes you think.  The panorama here is something so vast, it's beyond earthly vision.

Michelle DeYoung, as magnificent as the mountains. Her voice was rich and moving, but visually. she embodies the majesty in the fourth movement. This does make a difference, because she's singing about Eternity, not merely the experience of man, and it helps when a singer can fill the auditorium with her presence. "Die Welt ist tief, und tiefer als der Tag gedacht".  Earth Mother here is absolutely of the essence.  Another moment which I wanted never to end.  This symphony is a rollercoaster between beauty and loss, despite its overall positive thrust.  Thus the juxtaposition of the eternal Erda and the fresh, young voices of the Tiffin Boys’ Choir an d the women of the Philharmonia Voices  - past and future,  struggle and rebirth.  Mahler's Fourth already looming into focus.  Or Das Lied von der Erde, for that matter.

A lustrous, shimmering final movement, the Philharmonia strings drawing their lines so they seemed to search out beyond earthly horizons.  Yet note the quiet tolling, as if a bell were being rung, marking the passage of time. Excellent balance between the different string sections, creating a rich mass of sound that seemed to vibrate like the very pulse of life.  Perhaps now the "individual" has reached a place beyond human comprehension. The violin soared, pure and clear, soloist leading the ensemble  still further onwards.  A hint of the "Alpine" melody and then crescendo after crescendo, echoing the structure of the First movement.  At the end, the purity of the flute, quiet pizzicato "footsteps" and the return of the trumpet, horn and trombone themes.  Structure matters so much in the interpretation of this symphony and Salonen has its measure.  MGM last moments, but in a good, spiritually rewarding way. 

Nordic Innovation : Philharmonia Salonen Kuusisto

An adventurous start to the Philharmonia Orchestra's 2017-2018 season with an imaginative mini-festival "Nordic Music  Days" curated in part by Esa-Pekka Salonen.  For this opening concert, darkness fell on the Royal Festival Hall, and from the gloom the Arctic Lights of the Aurora Borealis glowed in vivid colours  above the orchestra.  A wonderful introduction to a very creative programme.  Salonen conducted Sibelius Symphonies no 6 and 7, and two works new to London audiences, Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Aeriality and Daniel Bjarnason 's Violin Concerto commissioned for the soloist Pekka Kuusisto.  
Every Finnish musician has Sibelius embedded into their psyche.  Father figures are wonderful things, but you need to become yourself, just as they did in their own time.  Thus when Salonen returned to conducting Sibelius in his late 30's, he could approach the master with fresh perspectives.  Salonen's Sibelius can be bracing, as original and as uncompromising as Sibelius was himself in his own time.  Salonen's Sibelius series at the Barbican, many years ago, was a shock to some, but like clear, pure Arctic air, it was extremely invigorating.  
Sibelius famously compared his Sixth symphony to "pure, cold water" as opposed to the fancy cocktails popular in the 1920's. It springs, as if from some deep  source of primal inspiration.  Here, it flowed freely, the Philharmonia capturing its unique modal harmonies. Thorvaldsdottir’s Aeriality (2011) might also connect to Nature. Figures bubbled up from depths, breaking into sparkling outbursts.  My partner commented "Jón Leifs", the Icelandic Sibelius, who turned landscape into music.
Pekka Kuusisto is one of Nature's originals, too. His love for music is so intense that he communicates enthusiasm not only through his playing but through his personality.  The first time I heard him, he looked like Puck, and his personality  radiated musicality.  He introduced Rautavaara's The Fiddlers with great insight, explaining the role of fiddlers in Finnish culture, and demonstrated techniques. Kuusisto is what music education should be. One Kuusisto is worth a thousand pretentious suits dumbing things down.  Kuusisto genuinely loves what he does and that's what shines through.  
Bjarnason's Violin Concerto is also quite unlike the average violin concerto.  Kuusisto bows odd angles as if settling into some kind of symbiotic bond with his instrument. A pattern gradually emerges, but what are we hearing?  Wailing sounds, whistling, like the exhalation of a wind instrument connected to strings and bow. The woodwinds were playing, but Kuusisto was singing along !  In his black jacket, not unlike the costumes medieval fiddlers used to wear, it seemed as though an ancient figure had materialized on the RFH platform.  The piece seems to move in stages, almost like a ritual, the violin taking on different identities.  At times, Kuusisto played oddly grotesque sounds which defy description, from which snatches of melody start to coalesce.   Sculpting music from rough wood, I thought. Very organic! Using different techniques, Kuusisto seemed to transform his instrument into other, more esoteric instruments.  Sometimes, perhaps we heard a  lute, sometimes a kantele.  I swear I heard an erhu at the end. Overall, the piece flowed extremely well, as if a world of stringed folk instruments were playing together in strange unity.  

And thus to Sibelius Symphony no 7, a work so audaciously original that Sibelius, always hard on himself, might have found difficult to surpass.  It is monumental: wild and craggy yet meticulously structured.  A good performance, spoiled as it reached its climax by mindless premature applause.  

Salonen Stravinsky Philharmonia Myths Perséphone

Esa-Pekka Salonen's traverse through Stravinsky with the Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall is such a remarkable series that it should itself be commemorated, since it's much more than an ordinary series of concerts; it's a deeper analysis of the themes in Stravinsky's work. We've had Rituals, Tales (more here) and Faith (more here), and now, Myths, depicting Stravinsky as a man of the theatre in the widest sense of the word.  Apollon Musagète (1927), Orpheus (1947) and Perséphone (1934), all three examining the role of myth in drama.  

The myth of Orpheus is so central to western culture that it has been retold in different forms for millennia. and for good reason : it deals with the inevitability of death, which defeats even love. Orpheus cannot bring Eurydice back, but his life continues, his mission to create music. Death defeated by art: a powerful concept.  Salonen and the Philharmonia began with Orpheus, created for Balanchine in Hollywood, but  Apollon Musagète is by far the more innovative. Greek theatre was austere - no fancy sets, no costumes, nothing to distract from the fundamentals of drama.  Indeed, Stravinsky thought of this as a " ballet blanc" where the dancers would be dressed almost identically in white, reminiscent perhaps of Greek robes.  Concentrated intensity: the focus on abstract expression through music and dance.  Apollon Musagète adapts the pared-down elegance of neo-classicism to the cool, clean lines of 1920's modernism.

Scored for 34 strings only, the palette is limited so the refinement of form is unclouded. This music is so precise that one hardly needs visuals. The first violin enters like a dancer, swooping and sweeping. The line is languid but elegant, defined with delicate decoration. The concept of physical movement is defined in the music itself. Curving movements, swooping and sweeping, diagonals, lines that break off to return again with fuller force. Trios and solos intertwine. The violins here are dancers, violas, celli and double basses their corps de ballet. As the music circulates, it becomes more and more rarified, shimmering with lightness, defying the concept of gravity.  Apollo and his muses elevate into infinity. This is "classical music" in the true sense, its austere grace closer to the spirit of antiquity as well as to the clean lines of 1920's aesthetic.  Strikingly modern yet eternal, at the same time.

Both Apollon and Orpheus were choreographed by Georges Balanchine, so the two pieces form a nice pair, though Apollon shone by far the brighter.  Superbly poised performances, and particularly well delineated long lines lit by sprightly figures. Easy to visualize flying footsteps and the graceful energy of dancers.

Stravinsky's Perséphone is an odd piece, part oratorio, part neo-classical, an odd mix very much a piece of the 1930's, a relatively underappreciated period in music drama.  Andrew Staples and Pauline Cheviller operate like chorèges, narrating and speaking for characters,  supported by orchestra, choruses and dancers.  Thus the idea of duality is embedded into the piece: reflecting shifting balances. Perséphone is the privileged daughter of Demeter, the goddess of fertility, but her promise is cut short because she's abducted into the underworld.  Thus the interplay of darkness and light, graphic writing and stylization, death and life. Salonen's lively touch animates the piece, so the orchestra acts as "chorus"   Listen to the mournful bassoon.  Recently I heard a performance of this work where the conducting  was moribund, so lifeless throughout that it was painful to listen to, which demonstrated the absolute importance of spark in the orchestra. What's the point of a piece about rebirth and renewal if the music remains frozen? Thank goodness for Esa Pekka Salonen, an instinctive Stravinsky conductor who understands the idiom!

In a piece like this, it's not enough to rely on surface appearances.  Instead, we could concentrate on essentials: the music itself.  Thus Perséphone connects to the austere concept of neo classicism as an abstract approach to art, rather than to literal theatre. Thank goodness we were spared cod attempts at comic-book staging.  Perséphone works on its own terms, as music, and needs musically authoritative interpretation.  Staples sang with authority, infusing his words with character, and Cheviller spoke as if every word meant something: enthusiastic and enraptured at times,  wistful and frightened at others. The Tiffin Boys Choir and the Philharmonia Voices were superb, creating the atmsophere and mystery, absolutely essential to meaning.  Salonen and the Philharmonia resurrect Perséphone from the dead. Spring returns! 
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Blazingly relevant Mahler 1 - Salonen, Schoenberg Dutilleux

Prom 32, Best Prom of the Year so far, Esa- Pekka Salonen conducting Mahler,  Schoenberg and Dutilleux  with the Philharmonia Orchestra.  An exceptionally good performance, even by the high standards we've come to expect from this orchestra with a conductor who has stretched and developed them over the years. Superb playing, but also superb programming, typical of Salonen's intellect.   Everyone does Mahler  Symphony no 1 these days but how many conductors would dare  present it in the context of Schoenberg A Survivor from Warsaw and Dutilleux The Shadows of Time ?

Of all Mahler's symphonies, the first allows for the greatest range of interpretation. The way a conductor approaches it can reveal as much about himself as it might about the composer.  Salonen's Mahler 1 dazzled with blinding brightness, but with purpose. In Beethoven Fidelio, the prisoners are suddenly let out from the dungeon into the sunlight, and sing the glorious chorus O welche Lust, in freier Luft den Atem leicht zu heben ! It's glorious, but also tinged with defiance. The prisoners know, and we know, they aren't going to escape, but for one wonderful moment they defy the darkness and raise their voices.  Florestan is  "Der Edle, der für Wahrheit stritt" (the noble spirit that strives for Truth), but the prisoners are, too, in their own way.

In this sense, Mahler's first symphony is an exuberant break for freedom,  a statement of intent. The very first motif shone, and the trumpets rousing the orchestra to life.  Nothing somnolent in this awakening : alert, tight focus.  Ging heut’ Morgen übers Feld : Mahler is striding, confidently out into the world.  The tiniest details were marked with clarity : an important observation since in the grand scheme of creation, all forms have their place. Consider that if you're a prisoner about to be extinguished.  You're not overlooked.  Confidence, but not brashness :  "Nicht zu schnell"  but striding forth with firm footsteps.  The Ländler section danced gracefully, a lovely contrast to the invigoirating brass figures that cut off with the haunting "funeral march"  apparently suggested by Moritz von Schwind's How the Animals buried the Hunter  Death fells the hunter, and power structures are reversed.  The theme Auf der Straße steht ein Lindenbaum. These quotations from Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen are important and Salonen knows why they count. The image of a linden tree might seem sweet, but its perfume reputedly had supernatural powers. Fall asleep under a Lindenbaum and you may never wake up. Salonen created sensuous textures, but kept the pace flowing. What a mix, sorrowful drones, graceful waltz figures and the tread of footsteps, fading away, tumultuous crescendi and  reflective themes. Mahler is looking backwards and looking forwards, in a sophisticated way.  Sometimes this complexity can be muddied, but the Philharmonia are such good players that they can define the different textures with absolute clarity.  How that final fanfare blazed, glowing all the more forcefully because it connected so well to what had gone before. Strengthened by the spirit of Wunderhorn, Mahler can set off on his mission, whatever obstacles he might face.

"I remember only the grandiose moment when they all started to sing, as if prearranged, the old prayer they had neglected for so many years – the forgotten creed! ! David Wilson-Johnson, the narrator, spoke in Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw, with which the Prom began.  As the prisoners are facing death, they spontaneously remember what the prayer stands for.  They may be killed but their spirit will not be extinguished. Like the prisoners in Fidelio but in much worse circumstances. Gas chambers and in freier Luft den Atem leicht zu heben ,a juxtaposition too horrible to contemplate.  But confront such things we must or they could happen again.   Salonen is a brilliant Schoenberg conductor and the Philharmonia Voices and orchestra did the piece justice.  Salonen is also an admirer of Henri Dutilleux The Shadows of Time, which he has conducted many times.  The piece also refers to war and specifically the deaths of children like Anne Frank.  Salonen again understood the importance of lucid texture in the piece, letting its multi-coloured harmonies shine undimmed.

Mahler Symphony no 1 is heard very often - often "too" often - but Salonen and the Philharmonia made it feel utterly different, new and relevant. I'm not going to forget this experience in a long while.

Pelléas et Mélisande Aix - dream but not a dream

Pelléas et Mélisande at Aix en Provence : orchestrally stunning and vocally top notch. But something was missing.  Debussy understood Maeterlinck's use of symbols : images deliberately created to unsettle and disorient, to deflect attention away from the surface to things unseen, lurking in the depths. Hence the references to towers and dizzying heights above the ground, and to silent ponds and open oceans, to caves and underground passages, to death and to constant danger.  Pelléas et Mélisande fascinates because it's elusive. This production will appeal to many because it's lovely to look at but it's not Pelléas et Mélisande, but Mélisande The Opera.

But who is  Mélisande, and why is she in Allemonde ?  Barbara Hannigan is such a celebrity these days that the whole production seems designed around her, which is fair enough. She has remarkable strengths, and it would be a waste not to make the most of them.  Hannigan's Mélisande is feisty, physical and extremely strong,  a manifestation of female sexuality, which is indeed, a part of the role : those towers and caves are there for a purpose !  Hannigan's looks also play a part, and she gets to disrobe and romp about in nude coloured undies an awful lot : hers is a body that works out a lot in the gym, and is almost androgynous, like Diana, the goddess of the hunt and of the moon, another of the many symbols in Maeterlinck's original play.  Mélisande as hunter and killer: the dramaturge, Martin Crimp is onto something more complex than Mélisande wan and wraithlike as a child of the moon.  Nearly ten years ago. at the Royal Opera House,  Angelika Kirchschlager portayed Mélisande in much the same way and was the saving grace of an unevenly focused production from Salzburg that was never revived.  But there's a lot more to Mélisande than this production suggests. I loved Martin Crimp's Into the Little Hill and Written on Skin for George Benjamin (more HERE and HERE), so I have a lot of respect for his insight into this opera. But this time the balance between poetic fantasy and literal narrative goes awry.

Pelléas et Mélisande isn't an opera in the usual sense. It's deliberately non-naturalistic, and the narrative non-literal.  Katie Mitchell directs the opera as if it were a dream sequence in which Mélisande acts out sexual fantasies. Hence the wedding gown in which she appears in the first scene.   But those who do know the opera would focus more on the greenery that surrounds the bedroom.  Golaud is out hunting, when he spots Mélisande  alone, in the middle of the forest, by a pool.  Anyone up to speed with mythology would recognize she's a variation of the eternal Loreley. And Loreleys don't wreak havoc. It's not personal.  Perhaps Mélisande loves Pelléas, but the libretto  fairly explicitly suggests that their relationship is more  a pact between innocents.  Stéphane Degout is probably the best Pelléas around these days, so wonderful in this role that it is a shame that he, too, is reduced to a prop in order to emphasize the role of Mélisande and her dreams.  There's a charge between them but it isn't necessarily sexual. The libretto suggests that Pelléas needs to get well away from Allemonde if he wants any sort of future, and Mélisande represents the world beyond, and the unknown.

Golaud gets jealous because he doesn't have the wit to understand that not all relationships are self gratification; things might not be the way he assumes.  Laurent Naouri has done Golaud so often that he's brilliant, authoritative yet also sympathetic, much too complex a personality to be a mere figment of Mélisande's imagination.  When Golaud and Pelléas descend into the suffocating caves beneath the castle, they are undergoing psychological trauma.  We know from the script that the sea lies beyond, but in this production Degout and Naouri are trapped in the bowels of the castle.  The staircase, nonetheless is a good visual image, for it's twisted, rickety and possibly unsafe, so the set makes the point quite effectively. For Pelléas, there is no escape.


Allemonde is not so much a castle as a state of mind: It's cut off from its hinterland, the peasants are starving and roaming about in revolt, Yniold is terrified when he ventures out to play. None of which we see in this production, though  Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra are brilliant at creating non-visual imagery, for those in the audience who pay attention to music.  Under Salonen, the orchestra has developed way beyond the usual parameters of a symphony orchestra. The challenge of opera serves them well. This was a performance so vivid and impassioned that I was glad to listen, since the playing spoke much more expressively than the staging.  Degout and Naouri have the parts so fully characterized that they acted properly, their bodies extensions of their voices.  Mitchell directed Hannigan to move in trance-like  stylization, valid enough in theory, but deadening in practice. The silly eyeliner Hannigan had to wear didn't help, either, suggesting slut rather than half-human vixen.

Franz Josef Selig sang an excellent, virile Arkel,  and Sylvie Brunet-Gruppuso sang a nicely down to earth Geneviève, both of them common sense counterfoils that emphasised the bizarre nature of this Mélisande's dream world.  Altogether a very good Pelléas et Mélisande despite the one-dimensional interpretation and over-emphasis on Hannigan's thing for nudity which is wearing thin these days. She can sing, so she really doesn't need to make an exhibition.  The dream concept might be valid but it doesn't do the opera, and other singers, justice.  Less sex, please, but more mystery.

See also the review in Opera Today by Michael Milenski.

Faith - Salonen Stravinsky Late rarities Philharmonia

Thank goodness Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia have chosen musical intelligence over bland routine in their Stravinsky series "Myths and Rituals". In "Faith", this third concert in the series, at St John's Smith Square, Salonen chose a programme of relative rarities from Stravinsky's late years.  Much is often made of Stravinsky's conversion to serialism, but this is a red herring. Music is not made through systems  In any case, this was an era in which the very idea of systems was being challenged by different and experimental styles.  Salonen dispenses with received opinion and refocuses on the music itself.  In this way, he demonstrates how late Stravinsky connects to early Stravinsky, to the sounds he would have absorbed as a child in the Russian Orthodox church.  Just as he re-invented primeval ritual in The Rite of Spring and Oedipus Rex, Stravinsky returned to something fundamental in his psyche. Far from being isolated,  Stravinsky was creatively re-inventing ritual much in the way Messiaen was doing in France at much the same time. An intriguing  re-assessment of Stravinsky's true genius. When Stravinsky and Boulez met, they got on well. Robert Craft wasn't happy. Perhaps the time is now ripe for a reappraisal of Stravinsky's late work in the context of his own past and in the wider European context from which he came.

The Requiem Canticles (1966) follow the form of a Catholic Requiem mass, but don''t expect clouds of perfumed incense. Instead sharp chords, crashes of timpani. Trumpets blare and the bass (the superb David Soar) intones.  Flutes and brass are supported by xylophone, vibraphone and tubular bells - a combination fairly typical of music of this period.  From this otherworldly mystery, rises the  mezzo Hélène Hébrard. Astringent austerity, far more sincere than conventional sentimentality.

Then, Introitus in memoriam T S Eliot (1965). Low mournful rumbles, a steady processional pace, segueing into In memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954) where the tenor (Allan Clayton) is haloed by the choir (The Philharmonia Voices). Then a dirge for trombones and strings, winds and brasses, before the tenor reappears, singing short eloquent phrases.  Two short pieces, which fit together well, like epigrams.  In contrast, Mass (1944-48) much larger but not necessarily as coherent.  The choirs sing the words "Kyrie Eleison"  and "Miserere" against an unadorned background, . Bell-like sonority in the voices. David Soar's voice rings out with priest-like  authority, and the "Sanctus"  (Allan Clayton) sounded like public prayer  The piece sounds "Stravinskian", which is fair enough,  but it's a Mass observed from outside, rather than felt from within.  For Stravinsky faith seemed to mean mystery and ritual, as opposed to theology.  It's place in this programme served to highlight the more genuine faith of the  Requiem Canticles  and the vibrant originality they represent.

In contrast, Stravinsky's Elegy for JFK (1964), for solo voice and four clarinets,  is far more effective.  Its haiku-like economy of expression  makes the piece poignant, without artifice or maudlin excess.  Perhaps it's too personal and intense for big performance spaces, though it works fine at St John's Smith Square with its unfussy architectural elegance. Cantata (1951/2) is more public performance friendly.  The vocal line is clear and easy to follow, the tenor part largely unadorned as are the sections for female chorus  Later, the tenor, mezzo, chorus and orchestra combine in odd mock polyphony. "Christ ! Christ is my Lord!" .The seven sections describe the journey from death to afterlife. The texts are in early English,  just obscure enough to stylize form from direct meaning. Rather like Oedipus Rex sung in Latin. Or a Mass, for that matter.  Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten have much in common, and not just W H Auden.

This Salonen Stravinsky series is so much more rewarding than yet another bland traverse of the famous blockbusters.  Salonen and the Philharmonia treat audiences like grown ups who can think for themselves and don't need spoonfeeding.  Long may they stand for artistic integrity! Please also see my review of the concert "Tales" (Les Noces, Renatrd and Mavra) HERE.

Salonen, Stravinsky Tales Les Noces Renard

 

More superlative performances in Esa-Pekka Salonen's Stravinsky series with the Philharmonia Orchestra. This series is much more than a series of concerts. It reaffirms  Stravinsky's place as a man of the theatre.  So much of Stravinsky's early work was choreographed for the Ballets Russes, so it would have been too obvious to present works as "ballet" because they all are!  Instead, Salonen chooses, provocatively, to group works by underlying theme, reinforced where necessary with dancers, actors and visuals. This programme featured "Tales" – Renard (1916), Mavra (1922 ) and Les Noces (1923), works which emphasize Stravinsky as story teller, bringing together orchestra, dancers and singers to tell a tale.  For my review of the concert "Faith" of late Stravinskt raities, please see HERE.

The story in Renard is universal, known in many languages and dating back to the early Middle Ages. The Fox is, literally, an "underdog", a wild creature who lives by his wits.  Thus Stravinsky's  jaunty, stabbing rhythms and repeated words, like "Kuda, kuda, kuda!" which lead to a more plaintive passage, not all that far away from pious plainchant: notice the voice sings alone, the winds and brass joining in only when the voice is in full flow. Then a drum roll and staccato woodwind.  "oh ho ho ho" the voices sing in quirky goosestep, pitted against cajoling, curving lines.  Perhaps Renard's descendants include Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen, but Stravinsky's fox is more sinister.   The cimbalom adds mystery. A high voice sings  "Chut, chut, chut!". The lower voices shout "Oh ! oh ! Oh!". The Fox, with his waving legato,  wiggles away. The orchestra marches in quirky quickstep.  An energetic, idiomatic performance - nothing prettified.

No mistaking Stravinsky's Mavra (1922) for a large-scale opera in the grand Rusian manner: it's a tightly scored chamber miniature, whose plot pokes fun at overblown sensibilities. A woman mourns– the cook can't keep the kitchen in order. The fact that the cook's dead seems a minor rritation in comparison.  The pace is fast, requiring deft touch and disciplined performance – no room here for approximation.  When the daughter sings, her lines are undercut by tuba and trombone, blowing raspberries.  She's no heroine, she wants a live-in boyfriend, not a cook. Although Mavra is a comedy, it's not funny.  Perfect diction, presented with aplomb, from the singers, from the Mariinsky Theatre .

in St Petersburg, 

Highlight of the programme, though, was Les Noces (1923) in the version for four pianos, played by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Tamara Stefanovich, Nenad Lecic and Lorenzo Soulès.  Four pianos, centre stage! That alone provides a theatrical touch. In unison the four pianos beat out ferocious staccato, reminding us that the piano is a percussion instrument, prone to violence as well as to lyricism. In Les Noces, we can even hear vestiges of the Rite of S[ring where the virgin is married to the Earth Spirit.  Thus the bass voices, whose singing suggests the chant of Orthodox prayer, and the shrill near hysteria in the female chorus. Now the pianos become individual, wayward against the monolith of voices.  Seven years ago, Les Noces was performed at the Proms, but it was a tame affair. Here, the pianists, the singers and the orchestra gave it a powerful edge of savagery.  Driving cross-currents, vocal lines that suggest defiance, even violence.  Towards the end, female voices become assertive, while the male voices interject.  Maybe at this wedding the guests get carried away by drink and dance.  But Salonen and the Philharmonia demonstrate that, as so often in Stravinsky, the angular, jerky edges suggest something darker. The pianos play figures that sound like bells, but without melody. When they disintegrate into silence, you're left wondering "What does that really mean ?"

Kaufmann saves Meistersinger, superb Salonen Stravinsky

All quiet on the Live Front, but a glut of good listening links online. For starters :

Wagner Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - live from Munich :  Jonas Kaufmann is a dream Walter von Stolzing, giving depth and maturity to the role with his now slightly darker timbre.  Definitely an interesting take on the part.   That Prize Song is so ardent that it's not the work of someone new to the game.  Kaufmann is such a singular Walter that this is worth hearing for him alone.  Any new Die Meistersinger is high profile, especially when it is in Munich, so close to Nuremburg and also to Bayreuth, so perhaps I was expecting too much.  At this level, no performance is ever going to be bad, but I would have preferred something less generic. Because Kaufmann is the Bayerisches Staatsoper's greatest asset, you'd think they could have created  the whole thing around him. He's not a typical Walter, but that could have been an ideal opportunity to rethink things musically.  It's not as if the opera is unfamiliar, is it ?  We could cope with something unique, making the most of  Kaufmann's distinctive timbre. Walter Koch is a good Hans Sachs, but everything needs to be stronger and more individual not to be eclipsed by such a powerful Walter.  Despite listening carefully twice over, which takes 10+ hours,  I can't get specially fired up. Meistersinger should be much more than generic. Meistersinger opens the Glyndebourne season on Friday. Munich ought to win hands down; But who knows ? Michael Güttler is conducting. Although he's relatively unknown in the UK, at 50, he is no ingénu and has a reasonably solid background. Please see my latest article Interpreting Meistersinger : Glyndebourne, Munich.

Stravinsky : Myths and Rituals :  Esa Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra continues a fascinating season devoted to Igor Stravinsky.  As usual, Salonen's in-depth explorations with the Philharmonia go far beyond simply presenting "greatest hits". The concert on Sunday May 15th is now available on BBC Radio 3.  It includes Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1947 version). .  Salonen does wonders, bringing out its quirky originality. In the last few weeks I've been immersed in Boulez's recording of the 1920 version. What a joy to compare the two,and with two conductors who really understand.   On the radio, we miss out on the choreography specially commissioned for this performance of Agon, which is a pity since the work is usually heard without the context of dance, but the playing is so vivid, you can use your imagination.  A stunning Rite of Spring, too. On Sunday 21st,  Salonen and the Philharmonia will be doing Oedipus Rex with a good cast and a semi-staging by Peter Sellars.  Not being a Sellars fan, I think I'll stick to the live broadcast.

More to come : Matthias Goerne : Mahler Early Lieder orch.  Berio, Heinrich Schutz from Regensburg, English Song Weekend and much more

Hindu Hillbillies ? Messiaen Turangalîla-symphonie, Salonen

Messiaen Turangalîla-Symphonie, with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia, Royal Festival Hall, London.  A magnificent performance, infused with true insight into the whole  trajectory  of Messiaen's output.  Turangalîla is a strange, exotic beast, quite unlike anything else in the repertoire, confusing and contradicting easy assumptions.  Salonen, however, is one of the best Messiaen exponents of our time, and understands the idiom well. This was a performance of great insight.
 
When Turangalîla premiered in 1948, one writer  referred to its “fundamental emptiness… appalling melodic tawdriness…..a tune for Dorothy Lamour in a sarong, a dance for Hindu hillbillies”. He had a point. If ever there was music in Technicolor, this is it, complete with cinematic swirls of the ondes martenot.  These days, when we hear the ondes martenot, we don’t associate it with cutting-edge Varèse, but with Béla Lugosi. They don’t even make movies like that anymore.

Perhaps Turangalîla suffers from having been premiered in the wrong time and place. In 1948, Messiaen was largely unknown in the United States, so Koussevitsky's commission was very high profile indeed. The premiere was given by Leonard Bernstein, who probably relished the Hollywoodesque extravagance of the piece.  Although Bernstein didn't work with Nadia Boulanger, her influence over American music was overwhelming.  Boulanger and Messiaen both worked in Paris but occupied completely different spheres. Boulanger believed that music stopped with mid-period Stravinsky. She was a forceful personality,  idolized without question by her largely American (English-speaking) students. She despised |Messiaen, who ignored her, The Great Divide between European and American approaches to music was thus entrenched and continues to this day.

Salonen met Messiaen, learning the music direct from the scores, and from Messiaen's  favourite student, Pierre Boulez. For this London  performance, Pierre-Laurent Aimard played the all-important piano part, he too a great Messiaen interpreter closely and personally associated with the composer.  They were joined on this occasion by Valérie Hartmann-Claverie, who studied ondes martenot with Jeanne Loriod.  Now that the Loriod sisters are gone, and Boulez no longer conducts,  there can be few more authoritative performers than these.  There will be two more Turangalîlas this year, at the BBC Proms and at the Three Choirs Festival, but Salonen, Aimard, Hartmann-Claverie and the Philharmonia will easily be the best.

Instead of milking  Turangalila's lurid psychedelic effects for their own sake, Salonen emphasized its startling energy. From the first bars, great structural forces are at play as in Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (more here). This isn't coincidence, for Turangalila deals with time and the transcendance of time. Hence the wild, volatile piano part.  No room for fuzzy approximations here: Aimard's passages flew with lucid savagery. The "male" voice, and the "statue" theme  express a vivid life force which can neither be contained nor extinguished. Against this the "female" of "flower\ themes of Claverie's ondes martenot, yielding seductively and langorous.   Turangalîla was conceived when Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod fell in love. Their love was forbidden by the restraints of their religion, so found expression in the zany, extra-terrestial nature of this music with its exotic "Peruvian" and gamelan flourishes, all part of the French fascination with non-western traditions, which Messiaen was to explore further, visiting Japan and the Far East. The ostinato operates like a heartbeat: throbbing with intense, erotic exhilaration, finding release in the sighs of the ondes martenot, taken up by lovely, circular shapes in the strings and winds.

This exoticism isn’t there for decoration, but stems from Messiaen's profound belief that all things reflect God’s bounty, even extra-marital love. Turangalîla. is a celebration of life, of love, and of creation in all its glory. Getting an orchestra of this size to move as a single organism takes some doing, but is also part of meaning. Diverse as the world may be, all things exist in purposeful union. Salonen's diamond-hard precision sharpens the impact.  Every note counts, even the tiniest. Messiaen was a devoted bird watcher who could pick out the individual song of the smallest birds amid the cacophony of a dawn chorus.  This insight, too, underpins Salonen's use of contrast. Many instruments play at the same time, but they don’t blend, as such. Instead the shapes come from precise stops and starts, clearly focussed decelerations and accelerations. We stop and listen to the silences, as we should, in nature, and in relationships. .

The ten parts of the symphony unfold in connection with each other. Tender chantes d'amour alternate with passages of extreme fervour. The subject may be love, but the idiom is a kind of religious ecstasy, beyond the comprehension of those who don't understand the zany logic of altered states. Fluttering notes, like the fluttering of wings, or post-coital heartbeats, then, shimmering veils of sound that cast a magical glow, like enchantment.  Turangalîla is a thing of beauty, its gossamer whimsy concealing great strength. Again, the importance of clarity and purity, and the definition which Salonen, Aimard, Claverie and the Philharmonia brought to this performance.  Aimard's playing of the more whimsical passages was glorious, as if he were teasing the orchestra , inspiring brightness of tone in the percussion, followed by great waves of sound.  Some hear in the sassy passages, echoes of Cole Porter (Love for Sale)  but Messiaen's images are far more audacious. The interweaving of themes, the alternating moments of dense sound and quiet  passage suggest something surprisingly organic, as if we were experiencing the creation of the cosmos itself.  But then, Turangalîla is so explosive, and so liberating that it is an act of creation  One can imagine, perhaps,  the stars shining in the universe and the large, angular sections, the shifting of tectonic plates, ideas which Messiaen would develop throughout his work. The final section, Modéré, presque vif, avec une grande joie:is a kind of apotheosis. The orchestra plays in unison, the lovers are united with each other and with God and Nature in glorious sublimation. Listen to the blaze of that  last coda!

Messaien and Loriod didn't have children (apart from favourites like Boulez, Aimard and |George Benjamin)  but their relationship led to the birth of some of the most remarkable music of the 20th century, its quirky, creative freedom  contradicting silly notions that modern music follows rigid rules. True artists don't operate in schools, like fish, or sheep,  but like the birds Messiaen so loved, but thrive as distinctive individuals. 

The programme began with Debussy Syrinx (Samuel Coles, principal flute) and  Debussy La damoiselle élue with Sophie Bevan,  Anna Stéphany (mezzo-soprano) and the ladies of the Philharmonia Chorus. The text is based on Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Blessèd Damozel.. The love there is forbidden too, but poisoned. No doubt Debussy, with his fondness for  Maeterlinck would have been aware of Rossetti raiding the grave of his beloved to retrieve his poems, tainted by the bodily fluids of death.  Not something Messiaen would have contemplated.

Listen again on BBC Radio 3

Three Choirs Festival Hereford 2015

The full programme for the 2015 Three Choirs Festival, this year at Hereford, has been announced.  Many juicy nuggets and surprises, reflecting Artistic Director Geraint Bowen's  lively approach to this unique and ever-developing Festival. This year, the combined choirs of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester will be joined for the first time by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment,  supplementing now regular visitors like the Philharmonia Orchestra. The OAE will be able to expand the Festival repertoire in imaginative directions.

As always, the "big" events in the Cathedral form the foundations of the Three Choirs tradition. This year's first evening concert, on Saturday 25th July, features Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, (Please read more here).  Sarah Connolly. Peter Auty and Neal Davies, with Geraint Bowen conducting the Philharmonia. I recommend going early to Hereford, to take part in the Opening service (Purcell and Handel), because Three Choirs is more than just a music festival; it is also a celebration of religious faith, which defines the whole spirit of the Festival. Go, whatever God you adhere to, because faith and hope connect all religions.  Plus, you'll be able to attend Roderick Williams' afternoon recital "Song of the Hero". Williams will be singing Elgar's Sea Pictures for baritone and piano - unusual, and surprisingly powerful. It's been in his repertoire for some time (e.g. at the Oxford Lieder Festival). He'll also be singing lesser-known songs by Vaughan Williams and Howells and a new commission by Rhian Samuel. This is an important concert, and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3. (date unknown)

On Sunday 26th July, Olivier Messiaen Turangalîla-Symphonie - a truly spectacular celebration of life, love and nature. , not something which one might associate with staid English church traditions, but a deeply felt, spiritual work, nonetheless. Messiaen was extremely devout, and an organist, who played at Mass almost every day for many decades.  It will be interesting to hear how the symphony fills the space in this Cathedral. Certainly, the sound of the ondes martenot will carry well.  Jac van Steen conducts the Philharmonia with Steven Osborne (pianist) and Valerie Hartmann-Claverie (ondes martenot).

"Requiem for 500 years"  on Monday 27th, a good concert of very early music with the Orlando Consort, followed by a talk on Agincourt, the decisive battle which separated England from France, 700 years ago. This is Arthur Bliss Day, too, with a rare performance of his Morning Heroes, a song symphony from 1930, in memory of Bliss's brother who died in the Great War. It's narrated by Samuel West, and conducted by Andrew Davis. On Tuesday "Three Centuries in one afternoon", continuing the theme of historical context, and Bach St Matthew Passion in the evening. On Wednesday, we move forward to 1715, with a concert built around Vivaldi The Cuckoo, wildly popular in England at the time, performed by Italian baroque specialists La Serenissima. In the evening, Beethoven Missa Solemnis. At Dore Abbey, Roy Strong presents "Poets and Princes" an entertainment on the English Monarchy, followed, ironically, by a talk on the Jacobite rebellion. The keynote concert that evening will be Carl Neilsen's Hymnus Amoris, coupled with William Mathias (d 1992) Lux Aeterna. Verdi Requiem on Friday night. The Festival concludes with "The Gathering Wave" a community participation event. Lots more - plays, talks, visits, chamber concerts - peruse the programme, looking for the hidden gems.

Pelléas et Mélisande Salonen - smooth or sharp?

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande at the Royal Festival Hall. Over the years, South Bank concerts have been let down by the choice of singers and choirs, but this time we enjoyed an almost ideal team of principals: Sandrine Piau, Stéphane Degout, Laurent Naouri and Jérôme Varnier.

Sandrine Piau created an unusually luminous Mélisande. Her background is in the baroque, though she's adventurous with art song and modern music as well, so her "white" timbre is almost ethereally refined. Her voice rang out pure and clear. This Mélisande felt supernatural.  Perhaps she's an elemental. Not all Lorelei inhabit riverbanks. Some live deep in the forests, enchanting huntsmen. Think Schumann and Heine. Piau's voice is at once transparent and opaque. Her tones sparkle, like light on water,  yet her poise suggests the impenetrability of a mirror which reflects back rather than reveals what lies within: a very good interpretation of who Mélisande might be. The dense forest in Act One isn't physical. Seductive strings, but chilling winds, in every sense.  It's a psychological jungle into which Golaud has strayed. Mélisande's first words are a warning. "Ne me touchez pas."  Piau's looks  also enhance meaning. While she sings of hanging her long blonde hair down from a tower,  we see the gamine of a grown-up Yniold, a boy child sung by an adult woman (Chloé Briot). Suddenly this throws the role of Yniold into greater focus, raising troubling new mysteries. Mélisande, for all her passive loveliness, wreaks havoc on those around her.

Stéphane Degout is the Pelléas of choice these days, so ideally suited to the part that all others pale in comparison. His Pelléas is uniquely complex. When Mélisande leans into the pool of the blind men, Degout's voice takes on a heady mix of horror and excitement: this Pelléas is thrilled by darkness as well  as shiny surfaces. When Pelléas plays with Mélisande, his voice sounds plausibly youthful, yet one senses, too, that Pelléas is  hypnotized by an ardour he can't quite articulate. When, at last, he declares his love, Degout sings with firmenss and authority. If Pelléas survives, he'll emerge a hero, because he has self-knowledge.  If he survives, that is.

Laurent Naouri sang Golaud to Natalie Dessay's Mélisande for Louis Langrée at the Barbican three years ago. His dynamic with Piau is of course different. If anything the dynamic between Naouri and Degout is even more striking. Sometimes Golaud is depicted as a brute, to emphasize the contrast between the brothers, but in many ways they are halves of  the same personality. Naouri is insensitive, but a caring, decent man, captured by forces way beyond his control. When Naouri sings La nuit sera très noire et très froide, his voice opens outwards, creating a sheen of sensitivity.  This is the "Pelléas" aspect of Golaud's personality. Perhaps he might have been more like Pelléas, but, as Mélisande notes, he's turned grey before his time. It's the Allemonde effect, established long before we even reach the palace.

And what is Allemonde?  The very name suggests that it's a metaphor for something much bigger than a castle.  Why is the atmosphere so stifling?  Why are the peasants in the countryside dying?  Jérôme Varnier shows why Arkel is much more than the marginal figure he's sometimes depicted as.  Arkel is the king, the grandfather, a survivor.  Something's very wrong indeed, and it has happened under Arkel's watch. The strength in Varnier's voice and the forcefulness in the vocal writing suggest that Arkel isn't quite the weak old man we might assume. "The last time I kissed you was the day you came", he tells Mélisande. What do we really make of that?  The better the opera, the greater the possibilities of interpretation. Performances like Varnier's remind us just how fascinating Pelléas et Mélisande can be.

Salonen and the Philharmonia are very good, and very good together, and Debussy is a Salonen signature.  Thus I was surprised by the bland over-refinement of this performance. Perhaps the marketing gimmick "Paris City of Light" hangs too heavily, for the "light" in Pelléas et Mélisande is an unhealthy, unholy light, not the sparkle of champagne  and good times. At noon, the sun parches and saps the will. The pool is enticing because it's cool and shadowed. Throughout the opera, Debussy switches between extremes, in order to dislocate and discomfort. Like Yniold, we should be afraid of losing balance. Smoothing out the contrasts might sound nice, but goes against the spirit of the music.  Pelléas et Mélisande may seem beautiful on the surface but surfaces are deceptive. Salonen and the Philharmonia are perfectly capable of producing more bite, but that bite might be too unsettling, given the naffness of the semi-staging (David Edwards)

The lighting (Colin Grenfell)  is wonderfully atmospheric and works well with the music, but why the narration, which consists of diverse chunks of Maeterlinck badly thrown together.  The opera itself is so good that it tells its own story. In principle, narration is fine, but this specific narration was delivered with an archness that was embarrassingly cringeworthy.

Three Choirs Festival - Elgar, Rasch, Germans and British

The Three Choirs Festival, which began more than 300 years ago, is the oldest music festival in the western world. Instead of competing, the choirs of the cathedrals of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford  came together to share their faith through music. That sense of co-operation is very much a part of Christian tradition. As Jesus taught "Love thy neighbour as thyself". If only people could live by that concept, whatever their faith. Conflicts breed when people can't get that simple, basic tenet into their heads.

The Three Choirs Festival is much more than just a  music festival. Fundamentally, it represents the best of Christian values. Thus the Three Choirs Festival decided to mark the outbreak of the First World War with a special programme "Reflections on 1914", bringing together British and German musicians and composers. I wish I'd been there (though I greatly enjoyed Elgar The Apostles the following evening (review here). Fortunately, the programme can now be heard on BBC Radio 3 here.

Baldur Brönnimann specializes in new music, so he revealed  Elgar's Spirit of England  in all its true magnificence. The piece has suffered from the more belligerent aspects of Lawrence Binyon's texts, and from worthy but unquestioning performance practice. Binyon equates war with Spring and regrowth. England  "fights the fraud that feeds desire on Lies, in lust to enslave or kill, The barren creed of blood and iron," Brönnimann instead emphasizes the innate optimism in the music. Whatever the "spirit of England" might be, it can be glorious and idealistic as well as bloodthirsty.  Brönnimann emphasizes the innate glory of the music. Brönnimann's Spirit of England applies to all men (and women).

 Brönnimann brings out the forward pulse, highlighting the economy with which Elgar builds up textures so they feel alive and sprightly. Slow hushed moments give rise to soaring themes (great woodwinds!). "We shall remember them!" sing the choirs and Peter Hoare, the soloist, sings  They have not died in vain if they're remembered in a performance as glistening and passionate as this. "Age shall not weary them" was truly expressed in the freshness of the playing of the Philharmonia Orchestra. Such clarity, such purity, surpassing the revered recordings of the past, setting new standards. Using a tenor instead of a soprano helped, too. Peter Hoare's voice is still youthful enough to suggest the soldiers who marched off, never to return.  While a female singer suggests Boadicea, a male voice is more personal and direct, making us think of the real people who sacrificed all for "the spirit of England".

Matthew Trusler was the soloist in Ralph Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending. This is a work so beautiful that it transcends time and place, evoking powerful responses in all who hear it.  Usually I'm fixated on the violin part, but this time, the lushness of the Philharmonia's playing added a marvellous veil of poignant mystery.

The Three Choirs Festival is very English, but Torsten Rasch grew up in a similar tradition. He was a boy chorister with the Dresdner Kreuzchor, which produced Peter Schreier and Rudolf Mauersberger (lots about them on this site too). Rasch's music embraces wider genres.  He emigrated to Japan as a young man and has worked in theatre, film and multimedia.  Read more about him here.  Loosely based on British Evensong which combines song with readings, Rasch brings together the words of poets from opposing sides in the war - Georg Trakl, Edward Thomas and the Dymock poets, finding common ground, so to speak, particularly in the Latin passages.. Rasch's music is modern enough to sound unworldly, but accessible enough to feel dramatic. We hear intimations of conflict in jarring, expansive passages that disintegrate into dark rumblings, yet also bell sounds and subtle pastoral. At Worcester, people who'd heard it told me that they'd been quite intrigued. I especially liked the way the music seemed to revolve like the movement of a sphere.

 A Foreign Field is a Three Choirs Festival Commission, but it's also being shared with Chemnitz, a city heavily bombed in 1945 by the British.  In 1918 savage reparations led to to the Second World War. In 1945, the Marshall Plan broke the cycle of hate, rebuilding a new Germany which is now a force for peace.

Thus the importance of conciliation, and the guiding moral spirit behind the Three Choirs Festival. Just as the Three Choirs Festival is about more than music, Torsten Rasch's A Foreign Field represents idea as well as sounds. Roderick Williams, Peter Hoare and Yeree Suh were joined by the Three Choirs Festival Chorus, the Chorus of the Three Cathedral Choirs and singers from Die Kantorei der Kreuzkirche, Chemnitz, in a highly symbolic coming together. Thus it was all the more offensive that a chorister was reported as having impersonated Hitler and made joking references to Auschwitz, (here). Whatever the situation, this isn't funny. Even though Christians forgive, there is far too much casual, unthinking nastiness about to simply ignore such things. It's not just one individual but a mindset that goes largely unchallenged.

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

Jubilation - George Benjamin South Bank

"Jubilation", the title of a South Bank semi-retrospective on George Benjamin and the title of his 1985 work for large orchestra and massed chldren's ensembles. Jubilation opened the Sunday Night concert at the Royal Festival Hall. Almost certainly the young George Benjamin himself must have attended concerts here at some time. As the various school choirs and ensembles filed onto the platform, my heart leapt with joy that a new generation would be able to take part in a musical experience  like this. The audience was filled with family and friends, and some very young siblings indeed. So well behaved that they were a credit to enlightened parents. Even if the very little ones cried, that was fine. When children are brought up like this, they learn to listen, not only to music, but to themselves and to others.

Jubilation mixes "difficult" music with the freedom of music even those without much formal traing can join  Quite complex sections with unusual instrumentation blend with a recorder band and vocal ensembles, whose variety allows each a special voice, not submerged in the mass. The big minus was that Jubilation wasn't immediately followed up by Ringed by the Flat Horizon, a strikingly advanced work written when Benjamin was only 19. That should have stunned the students, some of whom were in their teens, too, and perhaps spur them on. The photo shows George Benjamin aged 16, Myung-whun Chung aged 23 and Olivier Messiaen. Would that these youngsters had such enlightened teachers! When teachers impose their own limitations, they destroy the creativity that proper teaching should inspire. Benjamin shows what can be done with an open mind. Hopefully, these youngsters will learn from him and from their enlightened parents.

Benjamin knows how to communicate. "You've heard Ligeti", he told the students. "It's the scariest music in 2001 Space Odyssey". Even if Kubrick was before their time, they got that new music doesn't have to be difficult to respond to emotionally.  "It's very slow, like it's underwater", he said, describing Ligeti's Lontano.  Instead of describing his Palimpsests (2002) in technical jargon, he explained what palimpsests are, so the idea of cross and counter layers in music is easier to visualize in a vividly non abstract way. This is one of Benjamin's "greatest hits". perfectly accessible even for those who don't normally listen to new music.

Benjamin also made Ligeti's Double Concerto for flute and oboe sound fascinating. "The bass flute is a monster!" (or words of that effect), so the work can be heard as drama, the different voices of the different flutes (Samuel Coles) conversing with oboe (Gordon Hunt) and the Philharmonia Orchestra.  A pity that the programme was planned so the gaps between pieces were inordinately long. Music like this weaves its magic when you're properly paying attention. When the gaps are filled with noise, movement and trivia, the spell is broken.

The previous evening, Nicholas Collon conducted the London Sinfonietta in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in a much more focussed programme that highlighted Benjamins's more chamber oriented music. Flight (1979) for solo flute, (Michael Cox) inspired by the sight of birds soaring afloat, and Antara (1987) where panpipe sounds are expanded and developed by computer ((Benjamin's stay at IRCAM). These blend with flutes played in  vibrato-free "medieval" style, then growing in sophistication. "Deep, growling trombones" and metallic perecussion "invoke the real power of computerized keyboards- huge sustained microtonal chords , sweeping glissandi, ....all derived from the original pan-pipes" says Benjamin in his articulate programme notes. "At the largest climax the orchestral anvils in a myriad of metallic sound ...towards a coruscating but tranquil conclusion".

From panpipes to Ligeti's Horn Concerto where the soloist (Michael Thompson) is supported by a team of other horns (rather like a South American pipe ensemble), and then to Benjamin's Duet for Piano and Orchestra (2008), soloist Tamara Stephanovich, closely associated with the dedicatee Pierre-Laurent Aimard., who played it at the Proms in 2010. It's s a different kind of concertante, where soloist and orchestra don’t interact in the usual way, but observe each other, so to speak. Then, with a punchy crescendo, it’s over. Benjamin’s music often sounds pointilliste, like detailed embroidery, but here there’s sharpness in design, and clarity of direction. Listening this time, I realized how muscular Benjamin's music can be.  One oif the highlights oif next year's Royal Opera House season will be Benjamin's first big opera (100 minutes, full orchestra) Written on the Skin. I adore his Into the Little Hill (see more HERE) but have been worrying if Benjamin, a notoriously fussy writer, could produce for the big house.  Hearing the inherent drama in his Duet for Piano and Orchestra, I'm pretty confident Written on the Skin will be good.

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Odd that Gillian Moore didn't mention the Queen's Jubilee in her opening speech, particularly as the South Bank is so closely identified with the optimism that marked the Festival of Britain and the Queen's coronation.  What a very different place this country is now. The Thames still flows past the South Bank, but was used recently for full scale military manouevres to "protect" the Olympics. Fortunately Moore was wise enough not to make too much of the Cultural Olympiad business, which claims credit for many things which would have happened anyway, even the Proms.