Vladimir Jurowski Prom : Glazunov, and Russian goodies

Vladimir Jurowski - photo : Roman Gontcharov, 2017, courtesy IMG Artists

Vladimir Jurowski conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra in Rimsky Korsakov, Rachmaninov, Lyadov and Glazunov.  Prom 41 worked fine on purely musical terms - satisfying repertoire, by a conductor who excels in this music, though he'd typically spice up the programme with somthing more unusual for his regular Royal Festival  Hall audiences, who are more discerning than at the ROyal Albert Hall. When he moves on, he'll be greatly missed. So more's the pity that the BBC Proms team script prioritized the "Henry Wood novelties" marketing gimmick over and above the music and conductor. Henry Wood was a musician not a "brand". He would not have been amused that his name has been used in vain !

He would have beamed, though, at the performance - especially the Glazunov, vividly executed.  Again, the stupidity of the BBC Proms team's obsession with fake firsts and non-musical tickboxes. Don't they keep up withn the world outside the Proms ? Glazunov, who died in 1936, was big decades ago, and the more recent revival's been around a good 25 years. Lots of recordings to choose from, too, so there's never really been a drought.  Jurowski conducted Glazunov's Symphony no 5 in b flat minor,  op 55 (1895), popular and sccessible because it fits the image of  Russian music as music for the stage and ballet. The subtitle "heroic" expresses it aptly - plenty of nationalist colour, not a lot of introspection. Jurowski, whose forte is sensitive reflection, emphasized the structural logic behind the drama. A darkly brooding first movement, setting the scene perhaps for the "Russian soul" of public imagination.  Wisely, Jurowski focussed on the panorama,  long,expansive lines, unfolding like endless horizons. The quality of the LPO playing highlighted details - excellent smaller-unit sections clearly defined. This sharp focus gave the scherzo character - fast passages spiking up the cheerful main theme. The andante was thus framed in context - a calm walking pace threatened by dark, ominous chords.  This gave context to the final moveemnt, an allegro, but with powerful, assertive purpose - it's not marked "maestoso" for nothing, it's the culmination of a journey through the earlier movements.  Jurowski conducted the animato conclusdion with vigour - the top lines (winds, strings) flying triumphantly over darker undertones (brass, lower strings).  Glazunov's Symphony no 5 works perfectly well on its own terms. There's no need to keep referring to its perceived resemblance to other composers. That's lazy thinking - all composers are influenced by others. The skill lies in appreciating what a composer does on his own terms.

Jurowski has conducted Rimsky-Korsakov, Lyadov and Rachmaninov numerous times, so this Prom was enjoyable, although only a fraction of what he can do given more programming choice.  A delightful Rimsky-Korsakov Mlada Suite, its ballet origins giving it energy and colour.  I  liked the way Jurowski and the LPO created the physicality in the ostinato passages - dancers' feet landing on the ground after cheerful dancing. Alexander Ghindin was the soloist in Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor (original version, 1891). Three pieces from Anatoly Lyadov, whom Jurowski has done a lot of in the past, Baba-Yaga, Kikimora and From the Apocalypse. A nice safe programme redeemed by excellent performance. Musicians winning out, despite the suits of BBC formula. .

Otaka BBC NOW Huw Watkins and Rachmaninov

Tadaaki Otaka, photo: Masuhide Sato, courtesy Askonas Holt

Huw Watkins The Moon at the Proms, Tadaaki Otaka conducting BBC National Orchestra of Wales, tyhe BBC National Chorus of Wales and the Philhamonia Voices.  It's real music, thank goodness, not made-to-order to fit BBC obsessions with non-musical targets. To prepare, Tōru Takemitsu's Twill by Twilight, a very good choice since it worked  with Watkins’s The Moon.  The programme, however, didn't at first seem to cohere. The Polovtsian Dances from Borodin's Prince Igor and Rachmaninov's The Bells on the surface bear little relation to the refined sensibility of Takemitsu and Watkins, but Otaka's performance showed why the two parts combined : bell-like sounds, obviously, but also more, of which, please read below.
Watkins is so well known that he hardly needs an introduction. And neither does Takemitsu, revered by many, including Oliver Knussen. Watkins has established a strong track record, as performer as well as composer.  Read his bio here from Schott,  his publishers. The Moon is a new venture in the sense that he's done lots of work for orchestra and chamber ensemble, but relatively little large scale work for chorus and orchestra. "Inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing this year, my
new work for chorus and orchestra uses favourite poems by Percy B.
Shelley, Philip Larkin and Walt Whitman to explore the sense of wonder we identify with the moon and space. The piece tries to capture our experience of viewing the moon from Earth, and is also somehow about looking back at us here on Earth from above."  Bright, face-moving rivulets of sound - winds used to good effect - , introduce and illuminate the first choral section, where text is set so the words are occluded, in darkness, so to speak, suggesting mysteries. If the setting also evokes ancient hymnal, that, too, is reasonable : man has always revered, and feared, the unknown. I liked the way the highest voices in the choir "took off", so to speak, ascending over the mass. In the central orchestral interlude, bell-like percussion  and clear-toned winds created atmosphere, but there's more to this piece than impressionism. Forceful, dominant chords suggest the power of invisible forces - the moon may be distant and small but it controls the tides of the oceans on Earth. The music waxes and wanes, pulsating with a steady flow.  Zig zag figures (strings) dart : liveliness against a darker background. The instrumentation includes celeste, glockenspiel, and organ, for deeper resonance.  An attractive part for piccolo!  The chorus returned, in full force, before subsiding, slowly to hushed silence. As the voices faded, shimmering, magical bell-like sounds animate the orchestra. An affirmative coda - voices and full throated orchestra, in union.
In Rachmaninov's The Bells op 35, it's not just bells that ring out.  Oleg Dolgov's tenor rang out, magnificently, immediately establishing that the piece is about human beings, at different phases of life, the bells ringing out changes.  Natalya Romaniw (not Romanov, as the BBC had her down) is actually Welsh. She's regal, though not royal, and  a good choice for Otaka and the BBC NOW.  I have no idea how fluent her Russian is, but she sang with great clarity : a strong, operatic performance, bringing out the undercurrents of heroism that infuse the piece, which possibly meant more to Rachmaninov and his appreciation of Russian history than it might have to the poet Edgar Allen Poe. The third movement, The Loud Alarm Bells with its rousing choruses and high drama belong to a distinctly Russian sensibility.  In the last movement, the bells tolled with funereal gloom, for now the bells are iron, mournful and full of portent. Iurii Samoilov's baritone had the near-bass timbre this section needs to come over well.  The BBC NOW didn't need to have a "Russian" sound, Otaka drawing from his players brighter and more magical, even fairy tale lightness, which does, in fact, connect to Russian genres much better than heavy handed noise for its own sake. hence the connection between Rachmaninov, Takemitsu and Huw Watkins!  And so to the fantasy world of Polovtsian Dances from Borodin's Prince Igor.

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John Storgårds Modern Impressionism - Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Tarkiainen

John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Prom 22, with Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Outi Tarkiainen's Midnight Sun Variations. Storgårds kept up standards at the BBC PO during a  fallow period under Juanjo Mena, so it was a bit of a surprise to see he didn't get get named Chief Conductor. Fortunately, Omer Meir Wellber is pretty good, as his Haydn Creation Prom last week demonstated - I loved its flair ! Storgårds remains Chief Guest at the BBC PO. The orchestra was sounding very polished and alert.  

A good Rachmaninov Isle of the Dead. Though this piece is often described as "romantic" it's more Romantic, in the sense that it connects to concepts of Romanticism - symbolism, the unconscious, alternative reality.  Rachmaninov knew the series of illustrations by Arnold  Böcklin, made in the 1880's , depicting an island rising from the sea. Its cliffs are so steep that nothing quite like this can exist in nature : Landscape painting, this is not, by any means.  This is the Island of the Dead, perhaps on the river of Lethe, as in ancient myth, through which the dead are rowed b y a mystery boatman.  The island is uninhabited : the white shrouded figure is en route to the Underworld.  Böcklin’s image was inspired by a dream. Any Freudian will note : images of death, and rebirth together, and a sense of inescapable doom. Storgårds's approach emphasized the mood of strange foreboding.  In the quiet rhythms, one might imagine oars, steadily making their way through the waters,  and in the sudden swell of the strings, the cliffs looming above, the descending figures a reminder that life is fragile.  Though the surfaces in the rock like, Storgårds focussed on the shifting textures rather than the architecture, creating the piece as an almost-impressionistic wash of colours and strange harmonies. It's worth remembering that Rachmaninov was a contemporary of Claude Debussy and of Stravinsky. 

In the context of this particular Prom, though, the connections included Sibelius, particularly his Symphony no 4, with its brooding darkness. After the previous night's all-Sibelius Prom (please read more here) Storgårds conducted the London premiere of Outi Tarkiainen's Midnight Sun Variations. The publishers Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen quotes the composer that the work is "about the light in the arctic summer night, when the northern sky above the Arctic Circle reflects a rich spectrum of infinitely-nuanced hues that, as autumn draws near, are once again veiled in darkness; when Europe’s biggest and most unpolluted wildernesses, the tundra and dense coniferous forests mystified by Jean Sibelius in his last large-scale work, Tapiola (1926), are bathed in countless shades of light. The work begins with a sparkling ray of sunshine: the orchestra radiates and rises, playfully traces its round and goes back to the beginning again. Solitary wind solos soar above the orchestra, softly proclaiming the peace of the summer night to answering sighs from a horn. A new beginning finally emerges in the strings: a chord beating with rugged primitive force that fills the whole space with its warmth. This sets off a pulse of constantly remixing chords that ultimately fires the whole orchestra into action, until the strings break away, ascend to the heights and impart maybe the most important message of all". 

Although it's inspired by landscape, this is as much inner landscape as external. I liked this piece because it works as music on its own terms, from within, rather than created from preconceived concepts.  Undulating swathes of sound, evoking spatial distance, layers of detail, providing texture and colour.  I thought  of Kaija Saariaho, but Tarkiainen's palette is closer to the natural colours of Lapland, than to Paris.  Life there must be simpler and more down to earth.  The swathes of sound swirl, evoking perhaps a sense of parallel reality, where past and present, seen and unseen might co-exist.  At eleven minutes Midnight Sun Variations does not outstay its welcome, a mistake some composers make when they're trying too hard. I like this spareness,like the fragility of life in a tough climate. A surprisingly good companion for Rachmaninov  Isle of the Dead ! 

Shostakovich's Symphony No 11 in G minor 'The Year 1905' is a public piece, which won Shostakovich the Lenin Prize. The subject matter
is unashamedly patriotic, commemorating the December Revolution which was suppressed but entered the political mythology of that Soviet State. There's nothing in principle wrong with propaganda music, but much of the appeal of this symphony lies in the way it plays on emotions to whip up excitement,  and the avoidance of doubt.  With its vivid images, it feels like the soundtrack for a movie.  on closer listening, though, it's as much atmospheric as belligerent. Storgårds approaches it as a tone poem, emphasizes the subtler aspects. Muffled drums, long, flowing lines that could be anything - gunsmoke, the earth,  the Russian "soul", whatever, but effective on purely musical terms. Impressionism on a grand scale . A perceptive approach, different from the technicolor extremes some still associate with Shostakovich, but ultimately more rewarding. 

CédricTiberghien Saint-Saëns, CBSO Franck Rachmaninov

At the Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Karina Canellakis made her debut conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Given that orchestra's knack for finding exceptionally good young conductors to liven up the stable, this concert deserved attention.  Canellakis was a violinist with the Berlin Philharmonic's junior ensemble, the Orchester-Akademie, where she became a protégé of Simon Rattle, like Dudamel and others before. His agents, Askonas Holt, have taken her onto their books, which should launch her career very nicely. In 2014 she stepped in for Jap van Zweden in Dallas.  This concert with the CBSO is so far her highest-profile European gig, broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

César Franck's Le chasseur maudit is a show stopper, almost guaranteed to blast audiences out of their seats.  It's inherently dramatic. A fanfare of horns announces a hunt: but no ordinary, pastoral hunt.  Percussion rings out, suggesting the tolling of church bells in the distance.  This Sunday, though, the Huntsman's off to the woods instead, killing animals.  The tale goes way back in European folklore. Think, for starters, Goethe's Die wandelnde Glock, set by Loewe, and Schoenberg's Gurrelieder and much else Gothic and demonic. Thus the piece ends with a loud sudden bang. It's not a rarity: I last heard it live barely 18 months ago.  It's effects come from its being pictorial: not a great deal of musical imagination needed. Thus it needs more punch in performance to compensate, and here needed more vivid character.

Another surefire crowd pleaser: Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances op 45, also vividly pictorial.  It's as if we see dancers swirl before us, as if in an elusive dream.  Certainly, in this performance the dreamlike quality prevailed,  but there are darker, more nightmarish depths to the piece.  That repeated pounding motif and its quieter echo, can be disturbing.  Towards the end of his life, Rachmaninov was looking back on a lost world, and a life spent in exile, sometimes in creative impasse.  The waltzes can seem haunted. The violin plays alone, for a reason.  The horns can be strident, and the winds can  be sinister.  But for all we know, Rachmaninov might have been writing to soothe himself. The CBSO is a such a good orchestra that it can convince whatever it does.  So, perhaps the fluid smoothness had purpose.  An undemanding though enjoyable performance. Picturesque music sometimes plays itself, though it works best when better thought through.

The highlight was Camille Saint-Saëns Piano concerto no.5 in F major Op.103 (Egyptian) (1896) with Cédric Tiberghien.  Much is made of the "Egyptian" aspects of the piece, since it was written in Luxor, but it is fundamentally an example of Belle Époque syncretism.  For men of Saint-Saëns's generation, European civilization was the height of progress, and that civilization encompassed the world.  Napoleon's conquest of Egypt differed from the British conquest of India, just as French and British colonialism followed different models.  The French fascination with "The East" was long standing : think Les Indes galantes, where the "natives" are Frenchmen in disguise.  Or Lakmé, or The Pearl Fishers.  

Ultimately, Saint-Saëns Piano concerto no.5 is far more than picturesque travelogue. It's not "light music". It's a work of  bold musical inventiveness and originality.  Perhaps that's why the piano part is so strong : the soloist as pioneer, very much the leader. Tiberghien faces the fearsome technical challenges : arpeggios fly with faultless confidence and elegance, and the frequent changes of imagery flow naturally.   Like the Nile, with its confluent tributaries!  Vaguely Arabic motifs blend into harmonies that are "modern" and European. Thundering passages suggest constant flux,with swirling diminuendos and passages of flamboyant brilliance. Nothing backward here, though the references may come from things remembered.  Tiberghien played with highly individual flourish.  Perhaps his enthusiasm invigorated the orchestra, who were playing at their best at this point in the concert.

Prom 15 Transformations Xian Zhang Prokofiev, Qigang Chen, Rachmaninoiv

At BBC Prom 15, Xian Zhang did wonders with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales . Tonight, they seemed transformed, totally energized. electrified with dynamic purpose. They haven't sounded this inspired in recent years. Something good is happening in Cardiff.

Prokofiev's Symphony no 1 in D major burst into vivacious life. The capricious high jinks in the music were expressed with athletic verve, the orchestra so together that they sounded like a single organism.  Zhang is unassuming and down to earth, totally focused on music, rather than on  persona. When the media made a big fuss about the first female conductor to lead the Last Night of the Proms, Zhang quietly said that real equality would be reached when gender isn't a novelty. In any case, we must not forget that millions of women around the world suffer far worse problems than being on a podium. Zhang clearly loves making music. and has the personality and technique to do what she does extremely well.

More transformation came in Qigang Chen's Iris dévoilée (2001), the composer's best-known work, receiving its much belated UK premiere.  Chen's Joie Eternelle, a trumpet concerto commissioned by the BBC for Alison Balcom featured at last year's Proms (read more here).  Iris dévoilée is a far more substantial piece and deserves its reputation as Chen's masterpiece. Unlike so much music written to bridge Chinese and Western music, Iris dévoilée fully integrates the diverse aesthetics so they work together  especially for audiences familiar with Chinese music other than pastiche. Iris dévoilée is real music that stands on its own terms. The 45-minute work evolves over nine sections, each of which describes an aspect of feminity. It's Frauenliebe und -Leben for much grander forces, though Chen is able to recognize that he's a man, observing from the outside. 

The first movement, "Ingenue", describes a very young woman. The pipa, guzheng and erhu predominate, creating a sound world that suggests the purity and intimacy of  Chinese chamber music, traditionally played in private scholarly circles. This young girl is sheltered,  nurtured in purity. "Chaste" describes a slightly older woman, probably married, but still following the virtues of her class and status. Meng Meng sings a manifestation of the Jing role type in kunqu opera, the most refined and ancient of Chinese opera genres (which are all quite distinct).  Hence the elaborate makeup and costume. Chen, however, doesn't write Meng's music in true kunqu style.  Her lines  float and stretch freely, without the underpinning of percussion that gives Chinese opera its characteristic grounding. Instead we hear harps and western strings. Perhaps the "chaste" woman, here, living the life society expects of her, is inwardly trying to fly beyond ?  

 Meng's lines jump away from traditional form. She's still singing in Putonghau while the other two sopranos sang abstract vocalize, which might sound Chinese to westerners but sounds western to Chinese ears. Piia and Anu Komsi (Mrs Sakari Oramo) are highly sought after because they can both reach surreally high tessitura, and sustain lines almost beyond human endurance. Their presence in this performance is luxury casting, for few ordinary singers can do the vocal gymnastics they are capable of.  Meng, good as she is, is outclassed, but that perhaps is the inner meaning of this piece: the transformation of a virtuous  Chinese girl into a diva who transcends cultural boundaries. The Komsi twins make "Libertine" sound positively joyful.

The three inner movements , "Sensitive", "Tender" and " Jealous" are more serene, allowing Chen to write rather beautiful music, in a style that shows his total integration in French style, which has long embraced orientalisme. Chen was Messiaen's last pupil, and the influence shows. Long strident sounds introduce a complete change. A violin plays maddeningly high lines, matched by the Komsis' gravity-defying tessitura. Meng sang again, in a quite un-Chinese wail, while the plaintive sounds of erhu reawaken a sense of melancholy for a lost past. The Erhu is the most "vocal" of Chinese instruments, which when well played sounds like an ethereal singing voice. Here, the soloist, Nan Wang, was very much the fourth voice in the section.  In "Hysterical" , Meng's part becomes an aural tantrum, a manic parody of Chinese opera, 

The final movement , "Voluptuous", enters with high, sensuous violin, the winds and strings creating sensual textures. Meng now sings on her own, in languid, measured vocalise. It's exotic and deliciously alien.She's become one with the Komsis, and it suits her well. They now sang what might be described as caterwauling  fake Chinese. Humourous and gaily subversive. The erhu, pipa and guzheng return, blending Chinese and western elements seamlessly together in perfect, magical integration.

Rachmaninov Symphony no 2 in E minor Op 27 followed. Gloriously played, full of colour and incident, executed with remarkable vif by Zhang and BBC NOW. A superb performasnce to which I can't do justice. Anyone can write about Rachmaninov, so I won't. Besides very few can write reasonably well about both Chinese and western music and their differing vocal values. So that's what I've tried to do.  Lots more on Chinese music, Chinese stereotypes, Chinese opera and unusual instruments on my site. Please explore.

Listen online to this Prom HERE 

Jurowski, LPO, Rachmaninov

From Alex Verney-Elliott

"On Friday the 3rd October at the Royal Festival Hall in London, I heard a brooding mooding account of Rachmaninov's The Isle of the Dead  Op. 29 (1909) eloquently played by the London Philharmonic under the sensitive conducing of Vladimir Jurowski. As I bathed in a sea of agitatedly-serene sensations I suddenly longed to exist in a pre-linguistic state in a sensation of sounds devoid of words longing to live without language and never wanting to speak again,  realizing that not only was there nothing to say but that music and art are able to say what is important and interesting whilst language is always lacking. If only we could leave language and communicate through sensations of sounds outside our language.

The composition was inspired by a black-and-white print of the painting 'Isle of the Dead' by the Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin who described it as “a dream picture: it must produce such a stillness that one would be awed by a knock on the door." Vladimir Jurowski magically made the stillness stormy, made the stillness shimmer, made the stillness shiver.

Jurowski also gave an intensely incandescent insightation of Rachmaninov's 'Symphonic Dances' Op. 45 (1940) with its mellow alto-saxophone melody melancholically moaned by Martin Robertson. Jurowski knows how to sculpt sounds and sow sensations from the tranquil to the turbulent and from the reposed to the roused and ending the performance with a glowing gong that slowly settled into the storm of the arousing arresting applause. Again the mesmerizingly moving music made me want to become pure sound in itself becoming sensation in itself void and devoid of words that wound the world."
Good news - Jurowski's contract with the LPO extended three more years! 

Stravinsky Rachmaninov Rattle Berlin Phil Prom

Surprisingly symphonic - Igor Stravinsky's Firebird (L'oiseau d'or) with Simon Rattle conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker. BBC Prom 64. What a pleasure it was to hear this familiar music played with such elegance and grace! Although The Firebird was written too be danced to, this performance was a reminder that it is also very fine pure music.  Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker dispelled memories of the more raucous suites, concentrating instead on the inherent beauty of the piece. Strictly speaking, music for ballet needs to follow the human body, and the physical capacities of dancers. As an orchestral piece, the music moves in a very different way because instrumental musicians spread the effort between them. With Rattle and the Berliners, The Firebird could breathe on its own, revealing its strange, exotic mysteries at its own pace.

Rattle preceded Stravinsky's Firebird with Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances (1940) which wasn't actually written to be danced to. The Symphonic Dances are an exercise in memory. Rachmaninov was re-imaging the Russia of his youth through the splendour of the ballet. Quite probably the work could be choreographed, but its pulse is fundamentally symphonic.

While Rachmaninov re-images Russian ballet, Stravinsky's Firebird was written for the Ballets Russes. By pairing the two pieces, Rattle emphasizes the Firebird's fundamentally orchestral origins. Six years ago to the very day, Vladimir Jurowski conducted this full Firebird at the Proms, pairing it with Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Kashchey the Immortal. (more here)   Rattle's Firebird dances, but with abstract sounds. The "dancers" are instruments, who create impressions of dance in the imagination.

The strings pivoted en pointe, percussion suggested bright, golden colour. The Berliners are such good players that they make the music move as if it were a physical force, sliding and turning with exquisite grace.  While Jurowski's Firebird emphasized the savagery of Russian myth (ie the ogre), Rattle's Firebird emphasized its idealistic magic. The woodwind melodies rose sensuously from a swathe of shining strings: exotic, mysterious and seductively tantalizing. This Firebird  flew free from the original fairy tale, soaring onto an altogether more elevated, esoteric stratosphere. The woodwind and violin  melodies sounded exquisitely poignant: so perfect in its beauty that it broke my heart, knowing that it couldn't last.

Rattle didn't need to milk up the inherent drama. The Berlin Philharmonic are so good that they respond well to understated conducting.  Rattle isn't Gergiev. That's not a value judgement, since both their approaches are valid. Rattle's dynamics aren't extreme, but they're atmospheric, creating a Firebird of great sensitivity and depth. When the woodwinds theme returned for the last time, warmed by strings and harps, it felt like a kind of apotheosis, a transcendance Mahler would have been pleased with.

Listen to Rattle and the Berliners  in this same programme in their 2014-15 season opener on the Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall.  The Prom performance is more relaxed but equally enjoyable. Such is the magic of the Proms and the Royal Albert Hall!

For their encore, Rattle and the Berliners played the Intermezzo from Puccini Manon Lescaut,the opera they performed at Baden-Baden (reviewed by me here)

Bells and Guns : Rachmaninov Tchaikovsky Stravinsky Gardner Prom 43

Blockbuster Prom 43, sure to be seared into the memory of all who were there. Queues round the block, punters turned away in droves. Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture s such a showpiece that it usually gets played at open-air events, complete with fireworks. the presence  of "Sexy Ed", the charismatic Edward Gardner, and the prospect of big band massed choirs and big orchestras - no wonder the Royal Albert Hall was packed to capacity.

 Musical considerations give way to sheer spectacle when it comes to the 1812. Fortunately the ghost of Sir Henry Wood and his high standards still pervades over the Proms. Hence we heard the original version with massed choirs. The BBC SO Chorus and the Crouch End Chorus balanced volume with finesse, not something easily achieved by party-piece outdoor performances. They were wonderfully hushed and reverential, creating a  suitably "Russian" atmosphere, against which the brass, percussion and cannonades seem all the more shocking.  Only at the Royal Albert Hall can  this combination of circus and music be carried off quite so well.

Rachmaninov's The Bells needs similar extravagance. Edgar Allen Poe’s original poems were substantially changed in the Russian translation of The Bells but that doesn’t matter. Rachmaninov got enough from the translation to create a new, original work that would be one of his favourites. Artists need creative licence: in The Bells, Rachmaninov creates a distinctive landscape, each scena regulated by different kinds of bell sounds. Perhaps the Russia he remembered was like that, where the rhythm of life  was accompanied by the bells of the Church, by folk festivities and so on.  Silvery sleigh bells give way to wedding bells,.Winter turns to Spring. Stuart Skelton (another good reason for catching this Prom) sang the tenor part, and Albina Shagimuratova the part of a happy bride, or perhaps, by extension, a future Mother Russia with dreams of fertility and renewal. But then something goes horribly wrong . In the presto third movement, the bells sound alarm, Do we hear flames and destruction in that dangerously wild orchestration? The choral parts were sung with discipline: even in crisis, the peasants stick together. Stillness, muffled drumbeats. then Mikhail Petrenko's powerful voice intoned, the choruses following as if in procession in his wake. Click on photo below to enlarge. It's Ilya Repin's Religious Procession at Kursk, later the scene of the biggest tank battle in world history. 

Sad woodwinds created pathos, and the sense of real wind blowing away what had gone before . Much will always be made of the techniques with which Rachmaninov creates sounds that sound like bells but are illusion. Upright piano played percussively, perhaps a very private joke coming from a virtuoso soloist turned composer. In this centenary year, our perceptions are coloured by what we know happened to Rachmaninov's Russia after he wrote the piece in 1913. Perhaps that's why, in later years, Rachmaninov would look back on The Bells as a favourite, a sort of musical icon preserving a world irrevocably changed.

Although this Prom was billed as "Russian", Gardner's style isn't  "authentically" Russian.  (I'm thinking of Svetlanov's  recording of The Bells)  National identity doesn't define art. Baiba Skride played the violin inStravinsky's Scherzo fantastique and his Concerto for Violin in D with such feeling and elegance that it didn't really matter whether Stravinsky was Russian or French or a dispossessed Russian living in America. His music is universal, stylish, whimsical and fiendishly difficult at turns.

Please keep visiting my site, always something different. Tonight Britten's War Requiem Andris nelsons - bound to be good. Please see the numerous posts Ive written on Britten War requiem (and on Britten)

Dmtri Hvorostovsky at the Wigmore Hall 2012

The Wigmore Hall 2012-3 season  (read more here) started with a gala of glamour. Dmitri Hvorostovsky attracts patrons in jewels and designer gowns. You could spot the Wigmore Hall regulars, looking out of place.

Hvorostovsky was singing Rachmaninov songs and Shostakovich  Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti, both composers dear to his heart, whom he has often sung in recital. Hvorostovsky's huge bass baritone voice is capable of immense force, which makes him outstanding in operatic roles where the intensity of his singing releases great depths of colour. Hvorostovsky also has the ability to modulate tenderly, which suits the more personal Rachmaninov songs. His three encores at the end of the recital demonstrated  how well he can sing Rachmaninov: a genuinely mysterious In the Silence of the Secret Night, suggesting subtle emotions. During the main programme, however, Hvorostovsky seemed more preoccupied with creating grand gestures like the huge "Da ty" (for you) in Zdes khorosho (How fair this spot, op 21/7 1902), and the flourish "Ya zhdu tebya" (I am waiting for you, op 14/1 1894). Forcefulness and volume appeal to many, but Hvorostovsky is capable of more refinement. The audience was happy, though, applauding every song.

For Shostakovich Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti, (op 145 1974), Hvorostovsky switched into a completely different mode. These songs are best known fully orchestrated, where their brooding majesty can be quite devastating.  Hvorostovsky has made a speciality of this cycle in concert, so it was especially interesting to hear him sing it with only piano for support. It says much for him and his pianist Ivari Ilja that you could almost forget the wailing brass, booming percussion and rumbling dark strings in the full orchestral version.

Heartfelt sincerity in Razluka (Separation), where Hvorostovsky breathes feeling into the long lines. In hushed tones, he reveals his true mastery. In this song the poet realizes that death is imminent, hence the timbre evoking solemn prayer. The savagery of Gnev (Anger) which follows is thus even more brutal.  "For Rome is a forest full of murderers". Hvorostovsky and Ilja are so focused that the driving whip-like violence in the orchestrated version comes over even in voice and piano. Shostakovich references Christ's suffering, so Hvorostovsky's rock-like dignity is well judged. 

The piano prelude to Tvorchestvo (Creativity) can't quite match the hammer blows in the orchestral version, but Ilja beats rough-hewn staccato out of the Wigmore Hall piano, used to more lyrical things.  Then Noch (Night) which connects to Tvorchestvo for Michelangelo was a sculptor, and the serenity he carves into this sleeping marble angel is the work of man as much as of God.  Shostakovich wrote this cycle as he approached his own death, possibly anxious that once he was dead, the Soviets might suppress his music. Hence Bessmertiye (Immortality) with its almost jaunty capriciousness. "No ya ne myortv, khot i opushchen v zemlyu" (I am not dead, though I lie in the earth). Hvorostovsky intones with gravitas, but understands that the critical line rises gloriously, agilely upward "I am alive in the hearts of all who love" Ilja delineates the "shining" motif so it sounds like a balalaika, though it's also suggesting eternal light. Some of the glamour audience left before the Shostakovich songs. It wasn't that they didn't like him. On the contrary, maybe they knew how uncompromising they are, and that Hvorostovsky's interpretation was serious. Hvorostovsky was saving himself for Shostakovich, and it was where his heart lay in this performance. 

A longer version of this will appear shortly in Opera Today.

Manfred Schumann Tchaikovsky Prom 4

Manfred x 2 at Prom 4: excellent idea, programming Schumann's Manfred Overture  with Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony, one amplifying the other. Amplification is the right word because the hero /anti hero Manfred swings between extremes, sees visions of the supernatural, hears voices from nowhere, and has religious delusions. Manfred is the ultimate Romantic hero/anti-hero, regardless of whether Lord Byron created him in his own image.

Romanticism was a revolt against the Age of Reason. Instead of classical elegance, extreme distortions, and obsession with the macabre. Nowadays we'd pin psychiatric labels on many Romantic heroes, but in the early 19th century they represented a revolutionary breaking away from earlier ways of thinking. Instead of Absolute Monarchs, the idea of the Individual making his own rules. Romanticism unleashed the subconscious and electrified European literature, art, philosophy and music.

Robert Schumann doesn't get the respect he's due because the impact of Romanticism isn't fully appreciated. Because he ended up "mad", his later work has been minimized. Yet in many ways, late Schumann is interesting because he's breaking away, experimenting with new forms of expression.

Growing up in Leipzig, Schumann was uncommonly literary.  John  Daverio, the most intuitive of Schumann scholars, felt that text was integral to the music far more deeply than in the sense of word-painting. Schumann liked the shape of syntax, the rhythms of declamation.  Schumann's music drama is "difficult" if we expect it to evolve like Meyerbeer, or even Wagner, with conventional narrative. Instead, it's closer to abstract, conceptual art. Das Paradies und die Peri is pretty much established now, and Genoveva received a major performance in Paris last year (Please read my 2 posts on Genoveva HERE and HERE) Perhaps it's time for a revival of the full Manfred. 

On the strength of this performance, it could work, given playing as passionate as Vassily Petrenko raised from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Romantic music is full of sprites, fairies, witches and mystery Abbots, so Manfred really isn't unusual per se. Think Peer Gynt who travels from Norway to Africa, or The Wolf's Glen in Der Freischütz.  No need for realism. Besides, nowadays we have film. Late Schumann has a lot to offer the 21st century. (Read Daverio on "Schumann's New Way" and on Music drama.)

Petrenko and the RLPO were even better in Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony, which was so good I'm staying up to hear it again on rebroadcast later tonight. Extremely vivid, dramatic, intense. The manic extremes don't endear this symphony to those who think of Tchaik as Nutcracker, but for cussed, curséd souls like me, it's thrilling. A rollercoaster ride emotionally, without the danger of having to "live" such extremes.
The  two paintings are by John Martin, an English Academician, who lived at the same time as Schumann. Note the swirling, circular thrusts of the lines, reality dissolving into abstraction. T he first is where Manfred ascends the Jungfrau and teeters on a precipice, terrifying the chamois hunting peasant. Look how the mountains curve inwards, unnaturally, and blend with the clouds. Lakes as deep and  psychedelic as that? 

And right, the Witch appears in an equally surreal Romantic landscape, also with circular light. The spirits appear as images of light. Caspar David Friedrich's Romanticism is completely different: Martin connects to Turner, and the Impressionists to come.  (Click images to enlarge) 

In between the two Manfreds, Simon Trpčeski played Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 2. Wonderful, free playing. "I get the feeling, it doesn't matter the exact notes in live performance," he says.. This man's a true musician.  Pity about other commentary, though.  The BBC needs to dumb down a bit to reach mass audiences, but to assume we can't relate to Rachmaninov without thinking of movie theme tunes is plain stupid. Maybe for some, but we're not all morons. 
Please see the beautifully written review by Richard Landau HERE.
Listen to the repeat broadcast HERE and HERE

Debussy and Rachmaninoff recorded 100 years ago

Claude Debussy himself playing the Golliwog's Cakewalk ! It's taken from a 1913 recording.. And below is Sergei Rachmaninoff, no less. He's a much better pianist, of course, haha! The idea we can listen to Debussy playing nearly 100 years ago. The Rachmaninoff recording sounds slightly later, but it's still the man himself. By this stage recording technology had passed the experimental stage and was a burgeoning industry. "No Horn" gramophones were introduced in 1908, for example, the Ipod of the time.

Xenakis Rachmaninov sculptors in sound Prom 63 2009

Rachmaninov and Xenakis on the same Prom? The "arch-modernist" and the arch-Romantic? Strange pairing, but whoever made the connection really understands how music works other than on an obvious superficial level.

Everyone knows that Xenakis worked with Le Corbusier, though as an architect he didn't design ordinary buildings, but conceptual structures like the Philips Pavilion. See HERE. (There is a lot on this site about Xenakis, architecture and Le Corbusier, so use the links at right or the search widget). It's important to remember this as Xenakis didn't design with bricks and mortar but with ideas. So there isn't any real transition in Xenakis from creating structures in space and creating structures in sound.

Nomo Gamma takes performance space as starting point, and fills it with sound. Xenakis creates spans of sound which cross over each other from different points in the vast void, forming an intricate network of effects that hold together even though they don't have physical form. Think how bridges are built, spanning emptiness til they create a strong structure. Like the Philips Pavilion, Nomo gamma is a free floating series of small cells which coalesce to form content out of void.

It's an ideal piece for the Royal Albert Hall, for it maximises the vast open spaces. Ninety-eight musicians positioned all over the building, even in the upper galleries. Musicians move, in and among the audience, further breaking down the idea of fixed positions. It's amazingly dramatic, because the audience is drawn into the experience. So much nonsense has been written this year about the Hall's acoustic. In fact there's no such thing as a single acoustic: everything depends on what's being played, and in what position it's being heard. It's a flexible concept. Too often it's used as an excuse for lazy listening. Last year Stockhausen's Gruppen and Cosmic Pulses were heard to magnificent effect: what a tragedy that the composer didn't live to experience them at that Prom!

Xenakis wasn't the first or last composer to experiment with sound as structure but his background makes it easier for people to grasp the concept. It was an astute move to use Nomo gamma as a wedge, opening the door towards greater understanding of ideas in new music. So much nonsense is currently being written about new music as "intellectual" – repeated so often it becomes shibboleth. Judging by the huge applause at this Prom, even extremely cereberal, conceptual theory like this can work if only people actually listen and open themselves to experience.

So the audience lapped up Aïs which followed, where Xenakis deconstructs the idea of singing, giving Leigh Melrose a part that ranged from extremes of the register, disintegrates into clucks made at the back of the throat, then suddenly swooping off into screams that break off as if strangled in mid-flight. It's impressive in performance even though it wrecks a singer's voice. Berio, Nono and others deconstructed voice more effectively than this, but Xenakis is good to hear at the Proms because he was such a fascinating personality, who can make new music approachable even by audiences who might otherwise be scared off theoretical music.

Aïs is also accessible because it connects to concrete images, like the paintings on Greek vases which depict the exaggerated expression of ancient actors - eyes round, mouths frozen in horror and and so on. Indeed, though there's only one soloist, the vocal part is created so it functions like a chorus. Poor Melrose switches from one type of sound to another so quickly that it seems as if there were several roles trapped within one body. Quite a tour de force, but this isn't repertoire designed for human habitation. Rather like some of le Corbusier's architecture (or rather that of his followers). Rebuild the Barbican for human access!

The real surprise of this Prom was for me Rachmaninov's From the Isle of the Dead. David Robertson, an "arch-modernist" to use that infantile term of abuse, turns the old dreamer into a cutting edge master. It's hard to believe that this piece was written in 1909, before the Rite of Spring, before Sibelius 7th. Above is one of Arnold Bocklin's paintings of a dream he had about an Island where death reigns. It springs like a volcano out of a smooth sea, impossibly steep cliffs surrounding a dense grove of trees. It's completely unnatural. There's only one way onto the island, through a narrow crack. A narrow boat approaches, with an upright figure. Any Freudian will note : images of death, sex and birth together. Perhaps why the image is so powerful, it's an archetype.

So Rachmaninov, who was spellbound by the picture, paints music which describes a place which cannot possibly exist in reality. Often this piece is played like a misty impressionist landscape, which it arguably is. But Robertson and the BBC Symphony Orchestra get so much more out of it Suddenly, the craggy cliffs become savage blocks of upright sound, contrasting with the flowing passages whih represent movement, perhaps through light or water. The concept of structures, density and texture, of movement and fixed masses. It's music as architecture, long before Xenakis, even before Sibelius's powerful sculptures of Nature. So now the clichés that parcel composers into niches like tonal/atonal are shown up for the myths they are. Thank goodness for original thinkers like David Robertson who don't stereotype. Not long ago I heard the Berliner Philharmoniker play the same piece. When one of the best orchestras in the world plays on auto pilot, you realize just how important a good conductor is and why the best deserve the money.

An excellent Shostakovich 9, but the shock of Rachmaninov was still too great for me to overcome.

Tonight's Prom feature Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Dialogues for two pianos. The Berliner Philharmoniker have been doing a seaon of Zimmermann all year, so go to their site whee you can still watch and listen. Zimmermann's big masterpiece is Requiem for a Young Poet, which the B Phil has a wonderful download of. Read about it HERE

Russian soul - Ashkenazy Rachmaninov on TV tonight

Brand new film about Vladimir Ashkenazy on TV tonight - ! BBC4TV at 7.30, posssibly also live streaming online. This film was only released on October 1st. Ashekenazy plays Rachmaninov's Corelli Variations, a late piece written in exile. Ashekenazy says this isn't the usual expansive, ebullient Rachmaninov we're used to. Rachmaninov's identity was so connected to Russia that when he was forced into exile, something in him broke. "The Corelli Variations have “idiomatic eloquence”, but the “Harmony closes in and becomes darker”, says Askenazy on the short commentary film. He then plays the main lyrical part, but even this ember of happiness is tinged with melancholy. “There is not a shred of hope”, he comments. The piece was inspired by a legend about a shepherd committing suicide because he lost the one he loved. Perhaps for Rachmaninov, exile was a kind of creative suicide. But it's a lovely piece - listen..

Fortunately exile isn't quite as traumatic for Ashkenazy, but he too feels the pull of the Russian soul. Again, watch the film and see why. Read more here :
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2008/Oct08/Ashkenazy_a09cnd.htm