Bartók Stravinsky Salonen Infernal Dance 2

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

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

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

Should the young be banned from classical concerts?

Stephen Hough in his blog raises the question, should the young be banned from going to classical music? His logic is sound. When you're under 25 you're genetically programmed to not do what the older generation want you to do. So you do the opposite. So in theory if the young are banned from concerts and opera, they'll rush in droves. It's evolution. Even in societies that seem frozen in time, change happens beneath the surface. The Amish, for example, allow their teenagers to rebel as much as they like, so when they come back, they've committed freely.

It's human nature to want what you can't have. The trouble with classical music is that it has an image problem in the West where it's associated with status, class and wealth.  In Europe at least there's always been much more participation in the arts and more access, so the stereotype isn't quite as strong. The trouble with linking classical music to social statrus breaks the very idea of what music is - free expression, artistic integrity. If Mr and Mrs X want to be seen in their fur coats, they want material that confirms them in their sense of certainty. Yet throughout history, art has always embraced innovation. Horror at Victor Hugo, scandal at the Rite of Spring. Change doesn't have to be radical, but change inevitably happens. In places like China, Japan and Korea, attitudes to classical music connect more to a general idea of Bildung, ie self improvement, which is why every kid has Grade VIII with their acne. It's not the music alone, but the idea that you can learn and develop, rather than stay the same.

So what if young people like Radio 1 instead of Radio 3? So what if they spend as much on Lady Gaga gigs as they would at the Royal Opera? It's their choice. People come to things in their own time. Silly gimmicks like encouraging people to applaud only make the "problem" worse because they trivialize the real reason why music and the arts appeal to us.  Which is that music and art raises our horizons, enabling us to reach spiritual and emotional levels we might not otherwise access. Art is aboutt listening to what someone else has to say. As you engage with it, you're changed in the process.

Which comes back to Mr and Mrs X.  Or even more worrying, young people who are senile before their time, who follow mob opinion and safe positions instead of finding their own way.  Young bigots are worse than the old, but that's all part of the process of growing up. Some never do, alas. Status divisions matter less when society is a ongoing continuum of development. Classical music, like all good art (there's ersatz art, too) is exciting when it's a means for learning about life. My dad used to say "Stop learning and you die". Maybe we do now live in a world where everyone already knows everything instantly. But for those who don't, there's always music.

Brian Ferneyhough Full Focus

Brian Ferneyhough is one of the most innovative of living British composers. But because he's spent most of his life in continental Europe and the US he doesn't get the recognition he deserves in the UK.  Coming  up are several different major events which could redress the balance.  Ferneyhough's been labelled "New Complexity" but labels like that shouldn't put anyone off.  In 2005 I took my son to Shadowtime. The kid could not believe his ears. Then I noticed my Fernyhough CDs had been "borrowed", which proves open minds, open ears.

First, Ferneyhough's String Quartet no 6 with the Arditti Quartet from Huddersfield on BBC Radio 3 on Saturday 12th repeated online for a week. Read about the Wigmore Hall performance  last week.  This programme will also include Rebecca Saunders's Murmurs and Wounds 1, 2 and 3 from Richard Barrett. .

On 23 February, Brian Ferneyhough- a Symposium at the Institute of Musical Research. Click link for more details. Heavy duty but should be stimulating . Look at the speakers, who include Ferneyhough himself. A film of the Arditti Quartet playing String Quartet No 6 at Donaueschingen, and a concert in the evening.

Then Ferneyhough Total immersion  at the Barbican on 26th February, Saturday. It won't be as deep as the IMR symposium, but worth attending. It starts with Colin Still's film about Time and Motion Study !!, which is very well made and sensitive. Quatuor Diotoma do the lunchtime concert, but the evening concert is extremely important. Larger works for orchestra (conductor Martyn Brabbins) Book now if you haven't already - follow this link.

Up north, at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, there'll be a Brian Ferneyhough Day on 28th February. Two concerts, open forum and Ferneyhough in attendance.

Then another concert on 7th March at Kings Place - the Elison Ensemble do Time and Motion Study I and II.. Circle this, too! A few years ago someone asked me who should feature in a Total Immersion. "Ferneyhough" says me. "Too difficult" says they. But it's come around at last, and we'll all celebrate.

Thomas Hampson NEW Mahler Des Knaben Wunderhorn

Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn changed my life. Back in 1968, I heard the Fischer-Dieskau and Schwarzkopf version. I knew nothing about composer, genre, language or even western culture but I knew it was something I could not shake. Thomas Hampson's lived with Mahler and DKW just as long. Although he's grown older, if anything it's enhanced his depth of emotional engagement. He is the foremost Mahler singer of our time. This new recording is special because it reflects geunine Mahler scholarship, which Hampson has supported all his life.

The Fischer-Dieskau/Schwarzkopf recording was popular because it treated the songs like an extended  duet between two "characters". I've still got nostalgic feelings for it, but forty years of reasoned research into Mahler's practices have restored the songs to their original function, as commentaries on different and more universal human situations. Not an "act".  Even Das himmlische Leben and Urlicht, marked for female voice in their repective symphonies, can be transposed for baritone, as Hampson demonstrates. Hampson brings an extraordinary new depth to these songs. His voice may not be as lithe as it was when he was singing with Bernstein, but he's developed so much  that there really isn't any competition with the past. There's also no comparson with the  recording of Wunderhorn songs with Geoffrey Parsons. This more mature Hampson is singing with  the emotional power that comes from having fully experienced life. Incredibly well-judged phrasing, well-defined nuances, elegance, dignity and committment.

It helps greatly that Hampson is supported by the Wiener Virtuosen who play with exquisite clarity, so they create the "Kammermusikton" Mahler was so desperate to achieve.  As Hampson and Renate Stark-Voit (who's dedicated her life to Mahler research) say in their notes, Mahler wanted to create "a contrast between the lean-toned, chamber-like textures of the strings and the relatively lavish scoring for the winds and percussion....in this way the relative weightings of the instruments grouped around the singer achieve an altogether merciless transparency".

Merciless is the operative work. Bucolic as the Wunderhorn source poems may seem, emotionally they're sophisticated, not sentimental. Mahler had no qualms about changing the texts to sharpen meaning. He's not "setting" text but using it as a tool. Hence the unfussy, musically alert assertiveness of Hampson's singing, which works with the orchestra in equal dialogue. These songs aren't "voice with accompaniment" so much as miniature symphonies, where voice and instruments operate together. "A Kaleidoscope" as Hampson says in his Youtube promotion.

Meaning, too, is a Hampson speciality. Not for him the published order of the songs, which reflect nothing as the songs were composed separately over ten years. Instead he orders them by theme, linking Das irdische Leben with Das himmlische Leben and ending with Urlicht. The sequence brings out deep meaning. A child is starved and dies. Another child has reached heaven where no-one will starve because they believe. (Please read my post Why greedy kids in Mahler 4)  Starvation is a metaphor for faith, fortitude in times of struggle. It could be an image of an artist who doesn't get recognition on earth, but might in future. "My time will come" as Mahler said. But Urlicht anchors the theme firmly on a spiritual plane. The believer is so certain of what he needs that even an angel cannot change his path. Ich bin von Goot,  underr weider zu Gott! And listen to the punchline, where Mahler refers to light, illuminating the way to another state of life. Light and darkness, directional thrust, all ideas that pervade Mahler's work throughout.With this superb recording, you'll hear why the fashion for Mahlerkugeln isn't Mahler. (see also my post on Hampson's DKW DVD)

Magdalena Kozená Wigmore Hall

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

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

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

Kurtág's Ghosts - Wigmore Hall

György Kurtág plays the sweeping glissandi in his Perpetuum Mobile. The page is marked with sweeping curves, not conventional notation. Yet the simplicity's deceptive - hear the humorous trill! This is one of the miniatures in Játékok, hence the whimsy and sense of cryptic allusion.  Music has to be fun to be creative. Paradoxically, real freedom comes from mastering technique and figuring what a composer's trying to do. This is the composer himself playing.

Last week I attended Julian Philips's Kurtág workshop at the Wigmore Hall. Anything Philips does is interesting. He's a composer and teacher of composition, so he knows what goes into the process of writing and performing  He's formidably knowledgeable yet also a fluent, natural communicator whose enthusiasm lights up whatever he's discussing. He's a worthy successor to the Wigmore Hall tradition forged by men like Graham Johnson and Eric Sams. If I could go to everything he does, I would. Last Wednesday's workshop was full of insight, and the audience were good too, asking real questions Two of Philips's doctoral students, Edward Pick and Rebecca Miles, played excerpts of Kurtág and one of Pick's own works. Nothing dumbed down here, utterly fascinating

I skipped workshop 2 on the social context  The best source on this subject is Rachel Beckles Willson whose two books on the subject HERE and HERE are absolutely indispensible.  If she'd been giving the workshop it would have been ideal as she knows the composer well.  Also read  Richard Steinitz's work on Ligeti.  There's a lot around on the subject.

But I will definitely not miss workshop 3 on Wed 9th. Rolf Hind will be there, talking about Kurtág as a person. Who a composer is does affect his music  and the way it's interpreted. We've been fortunate that Kurtág has often appeared in London and at Aldeburgh, but there's nothing like hearing someone like Rolf Hind who has worked with him. Kurtág is a charismatic person, but elusive.  I've seen him reduce a singer to tears because she couldn't manage his idiom.  Marta, his wife, broke in and admonished him. Marta and György are so close it's like watching symbiosis, even though they're each very individual. 

The workshops are followed by a concert, "Kurtág's Ghosts", with Marino Formenti, a bracing collage of fragments from Bach, Machaut, Boulez, Schumann, Stockhausen and Kurtág himself   The idea of playful montage is very Kurtág and reflects his thing for embedding references into his work. If you can't make it, there's a recording and an excerpt below. But there's nothing like being there live.  Connections! Connections! Pierre-Laurent Aimard , a keen adventurer in the field of collage-montage,, once said "You need to hear patterns", ie, how ideas adapt.  Don't forget, on 18th Feb Kurtág's Kafka Fragments. If you didn't like the Dawn Upshaw version at the Barbican, do not despair! Juliane Banse and Andras Keller are the real thing, the finest exponents of this masterpiece 

Thomas Hampson Mahler Des Knaben Wunderhorn DVD

Without knowing Thomas Hampson's Mahler, you can't really know Mahler. Hampson's just recorded a new version of Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn with the  Wiener Virtuosen. It's very good and I'll review it later. But to put the new CD in context,  remember Hampson's DVD version from 2002.  It's based around a live performance in Paris, but what lifts it beyond the league of yet another recital is that Hampson and Wolfram Rieger, his pianist, talk about what the songs mean. This DVD is a masterclass in what Lieder (and Mahler) is all about.

Hampson goes straight to the heart of the Wunderhorn ethos. The poems were collected from oral folk sources by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim. Folk origins, but shockingly deep. Their almost revolutionary impact is hard to appreciate today. These were songs of ordinary people, not church and state. They express a feisty, almost subversive, individualism. They explore psychological issues and magic, long before the concept of the subconscious was formulated. What we take for granted today as "modern" in many ways stems from the Wunderhorn spirit with its irreverent independence and psychological depth. As Hampson says "we must never question the beauty, value and indigenous right of human beings to think and to hold their own beliefs". "Song literature", he says "would be infinitely less rich without these songs, which have so many musical possibilities."

Hampson groups his recital into themes and talks about each in turn. The first part refers to "Fables and Parables of Nature and Man". The poems make mordant comment on human nature, disguised as the actions of birds and animals. Lob des hohen Verstanden has a competition between a cuckoo (who keeps time but isn't inventive) and a nightingale (whose song is complex though elusive). A donkey decides on a whim who'll win. Hampson spits out the donkey's hee-haw with bitter irony. Again the wilfulness of nature (and other people) comes through in Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt. The saint preaches to some fish, who make a show of listening, but immediately go back to their own ways. Mahler's notes indicate "with humour" on the piano part but satire was not lost on him. "This piece is really as if nature were pulling faces and sticking its tongue out at you" (said Mahler)  "But it contains such a spine-chilling panic-like humour that one is overcome more by dismay than laughter". 
 

War, loss and death are recurring themes in the Wunderhorn saga. Hampson calls some of these "negative love songs" for they are neither optimistic nor sentimental. Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz, with its march rhythm just slightly off-beat, resolves in the evocation of trumpets and drums, the tragedy understated. Hampson and Rieger immediately launch into Revelge, that most nightmarish of songs, where a lad's serenade to his love is a parade of skeletons, marching in formation in the dead of night. Rieger's playing is manic, horrific, the moments of glorious melody sounding even more grotesque in context. Hampson spits out the words, like a protest at the barbarism of war and its toll on human life. "Tra la lee. Tra la ree" is no lullaby here, but a mocking protest. Fischer-Dieskau didn't do it like this: in comparison he sounds almost too accepting. Rieger's staccato playing is almost like a volley of machine-gun fire. As Hampson notes, the music evokes a mad "Drang", of Stravinsky-like fervour, the Grim Reaper gone mad. With our modern ears, it's like a forewarning of the slaughter of the trenches. Der Tambourg'sell, which follows, seems all the more tragic in its surrender to death. 

The last part of the recital is sub-titled "Transcendence of Life". Hampson's vivid description of Lied des Verfolgten im Turm is brilliant. He refers to the picture by Moritz von Schwind, showing a huntsman imprisoned in a tower. Meanwhile a row of elves are busily trying to saw down the bars on the window to help him escape. "Gedanken sind Frei" is the dominant phrase in this song, thoughts are free, ideas and imagination empower us to break out from circumstances. A revolutionary concept, even now. The "female" voice urges conformity to enable survival. The "male" voice, perhaps the voice of the artist, seeks triumph in the purity of ideas. There is another dialogue in Wo der schönen Trompeten blasen, a mysterious equivocal encounter between the living and the dead. Hampson and Rieger also pair Das irdische Leben and Das himmlische Leben – earthly and heavenly life. For Hampson, the mother and starving child are both victims of the brutal process of life that chews people up, not so different from the soldiers mown down like wheat in the battlefield.

This DVD is a superb introduction to Mahler, to Des Knaben Wunderhorn and to Lieder in general.   Listen to how impassioned Hampson is when he speaks of human rights and dignity, and of the need to stand up against oppression.  The year after this DVD was made, Iraq was invaded. Thomas Hampson  had the courage and integrity to protest. Real Lieder singing is about meaning, however painful,  not about singing quietly or prettily as some believe.

Faust Feast, Oxford

"In the basement beneath the rolling Quad of Trinity College, a scholar is preparing to offer the devil his soul in exchange for absolute power".

A major festival of Faust related plays, concerts and films take place now in Oxford. Few places could be better posed for true Faustian atmosphere - gargoyles, medieval colleges, cobbled alleyways and above all, ancient libraries, filled with arcane and ancient wisdom. And, one might add, Faust-like scholars buried in books. But some of the "nerds" that have haunted these halls have gone on to unimaginable things and often they don't have to sell their souls. Tim Berners-Lee, for example, who created the World Wide Web, who was at Queen's.

Two versions of Christopher Marlowe's Faust. One by Creation Theatre Company takes place in Blackwell's Bookshop, next to the Quad at Trinity. Imagine, the reality of a bookshop famed for its erudiite stoock, but actors wandering about. Very apt. "Ile burne my bookes!"

Another staging of Marlowe's Faust runs from 9th to 13th February in Corpus Christi College auditorium. Arthur Kincaid directs and acts as Faustus. A true town and gown production, half students, half normal locals. Interesting too, that these productions will use slightly different editions of Marlowe as well as different settings.

Goethe's Faust gets a much welcomed outing from 24th to 26th February in Queen's College Chapel with the Eglesfield Players. A modern translation, staged in a chapel, with a chorus in the cast, the production will "bring all the dramatic (and comic) potential without losing sight of its academic and religious debate" and its resemblance to Oxford life over the ages.

George Lord Byron's epic Manfred gets a reading by professional actors in New College Chapel on March 27.  Manfred of course inspired Schumann, but it's not a piece that lends itself easily to the stage, so hearing it read by people who know drama should be a good experience.

There's so much Faust-inspired music it's hard to imagine it in one concert - Mahler, Busoni, Berlioz, Gounod etc. So see what they do on 5th March at Corpus Christi. The films are Istvan Szabo's Mephisto based on the novel of Klaus Mann and Faustus a ten-minute art piece shot in Merton Chapel.  They're not showing F W Murnau's classic film Faust, but you can watch that on this site  in FULL DOWNLOAD. For more information contact the Oxford Faust Festival on email oxfordfaustfestival@gmail.com. Prices are low, and the Films are free but this is such an adventurous project, it's worth making an effort to participate.

Berlin - Symphony of a Great City DOWNLOAD

Berlin : Symphony of a Great City (1927) is showing again in London this weekend, but here is the FULL DOWNLOAD. It's also available on DVD, which is worth getting as it's a cleaner version with music, because this is a film that you can watch over and over again without getting bored - like a symphony! It's not a film in the usual sense of a narrative motion picture. Instead the very concept comes from abstract music. Multiple, diverse images are used like themes in music.  They're layered and juxtaposed like musical ideas. The images are grouped in several main "movements" that as a whole follow a trajectory from morning to night. A snapshot of the life of the city. Please read my analysis of this wonderful work HERE, describing the structure and individual images some of which aren't readily obvious.

The idea of film as music wasn't unique, since early audiences were often more used to music than movies, and several early films unfold as "movements". The full title of Nosferatu is Nosferatu : eine synfonie des Grauens, "a symphony of horrors". This, too, is available in full download on this site. But Berlin : Die Sinfonie der Grossstadt develops the idea on a grand scale. Because it's abstract, much more detail is possible, and more possibilties of interpretation. Like music! The Director, Walter Ruttmann (1887-1941) also made experimental films, bypassing actors and plots. He used technolgy as a pa[nter might, exploring the possibilties of light, shadow and movement for their own sake.  The process dictates the form. Please see one of Ruttmann's early Lichtspiele HERE. They were made in co-operation with Hanns Eisler, who wrote music to be played live as the films were screened.  So again, the concept of music combined with film before the technology to make sound movies was even possible.
Plenty more on this site on earlty art film, Eisler, Weimar etc and many full downloads.

Snowbound Clevelanders jam in pizza joint

More mozzarella with your Mozart? Thanks to my friend Bruce Hodges, whose blog Monotonous Forest carries this story.   As everyone knows half of the US is enjoying arctic conditions, while much of Queensland was underwater or stormed on. The Cleveland Orchestra couldn't fly out to Chicago where their next scheduled concert was cancelled because of snow, so they jammed in a local pizza restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan, instead. And then who should turn up but Pierre Laurent Aimard, doing impromptu Brahms on a rinky tink piano! Read the whole article by following the link above.

4 premieres - Arditti Quartet Wigmore Hall

Four premieres in one concert! The Arditti Quartet are pioneers. Over the last 30 years, they've led the resurgance of new works for string quartet. Because they're technically superlative, composers can write  knowing they're capable of almost anything. Performers spark off composers and vice versa. Every Arditti Quartet recital I've been to over the years has something challenging, and many include major new works in the canon.

Any new work by Brian Ferneyhough is a milestone. The Arditti Quartet, who have worked with the composer for nealy 30 years, introduced his String Quartet no 6 at Donaueschingen late last year, so this Wigmore Hall recital was much welcomed. Seventeen years elapsed between Ferneyhough's Fourth String Quartet and his Fifth, premiered by the Ardittis at Aldeburgh in 2006. Only four years later, Ferneyhough's again breaking new ground. The energetic sense of adventure is still there but textures are more transparent. A whirlpool of tiny fragments, scattering skittishly in multiple directions. Brief clearing, and brief moments when the four players are playing in confluence. There's a wonderful slow passage which Irvine Arditti plays so expressively that you hold your breath in wonder.

Ferneyhough (always worth quoting) says that the idea of this multiplicity was to "create an unpredictable tangle of conflicting materials and time frames....leading to a sort of mirrored or negative hierarchy of material". Listen for yourself,. It's hard to take in all at once, but it's so intriguing it pulls you in.


Dai Fujikura's Flame (2010) is a Wigmore Hall commission. It employs similar ideas of small fragments, flying, combining and separating. Big, percussive pizzicato beginning, dying down for a moment when the players strum  their instruments for resonance. Almost romantic and very visual. Fujikawa remembers watching a campfire as a child, seeing flames rise and embers fall. "The composition" he says "evolves into a slow motion arco rendering of the pizzicato and its reverse. The audience loved this - new music isn't frightening when approached with this sense of adventure.

Hilda Paredes' Canciones Lunáticas (2009) are based on three poems about the moon by Pedro Serrano. The piece begins with low, windlike emanations from the strings, for the first song depicts the moon suffering, unprotected in "the slaughterhouse of the heavens" as it crosses over "a landscape laid waste". The second song describes los lunáticas , "the moonstruck" who have to be locked away so they don't wander off beguiled. The last song is a tantalising miniature, where the moon, having "broken free", dances "sola en el prado".

Surreal and otherworldy : ideal for countertenor, though I think it might be transposed for soprano. The piece was written for Jake Arditti, so perhaps the family tradition will continue. Just as the string players use many techniques, so does the singer. At one stage he puts his finger in his mouth to make round, whirring sounds, immediately replicated by strings. The effect is quite amazing. A voice, after all, is a wind instrument! Many sibilants in the vocal line, stretched and sharpened so they cut. Voice as percussion?  Small tight vocal  outbursts like pizzicato, a big, arching "O" like the sound of a cello.

The recital began with James Clarke's String Quartet no 2 (2009). It was a good choice, as the piece introduces some of the ideas that appear in later works, but is readily accesssible. In most other programmes it would  have impressed but Ferneyhough is simply in another vstratosphere bfrom anyone else.

Please note, there's A Ferneyhough Total; I,m,mersion at the Barbican in March.  Also an important Kurtag Focus at the Wigmore Hall in February. I've been to the first part and will write more on Sunday.

athletic Fo Shan Lion Dance

Fabulously energetic lion dance in one of the temples in Fo Shan (Fat Shan) in Guandong province, up river from Macau. The men doing these dance are unusually athletic which is why they're so fast and have such stamina. Look how they leap up the tables and hold each other aloft! And the lion movements are so cute - like when it "wipes" its eyes. Fo Shan is where the great Kung Fu masters of the past came from, so there's a tradition there of ultra-fit young men for whom this is minor recreation. Fo Shan is also centre of the Shih wan pottery industry, where figures are glazed only on the clothes, not the head and hands. These are still mass produced today, but in the past there were collectors pieces made by artists, All round South China, these figures are used as roof decorations in temples. So it's rather apt that this dance takes place in a temple.

Kung Hei Fat Choy - Macau Chinese New Year

First day of Lunar New Year! Kung Hei Fat Choy as they say in South China. "Happiness and Prosperity". Watch full screen for max impact. This is a tour of the famous parts of historic Macau as the city gets ready for the New Year. See the old man at 1.55, he's carrying a bag from the famous Chinese pastry shop just behind him. The clip below shows a parade of lion dancers walking from St Paul's Church ruins, into town, followed by people dressed as animals of the zodiac and other lucky figures, like the god of Longevity. Then, the ultra long dragon! At first it looks like sheets of coloured cloth draped along each of the steps but gradually as the procession progresses, it turns out to be a very, very long dragon, hundreds of men. Interesting mix of Catholic heritage and Chinese tradition. The Jesuits who built the church in the 17th would have loved it. Pity the video's so poor and they don't show the elaborate dancing that happens when they all reach the main square. There's plenty on Macau on this site, so please search.

Elisabeth Meister - in depth interview

Elisabeth Meister is appearing tonight in Mozart The Magic Flute at the Royal Opera House, London, I think she's wonderful as anyone following this site will have noticed. Read about her superlative Constanza in Handel L'isola dishabitata HERE and her Fox in The Cunning Little Vixen HERE. Because she was in the Jette Parker Young Artists scheme everyone's heard her in small roles but now in The Magic Flute, take special notice! But who is she as a person, apart from being formidably talented?  It matters to me who singers are as well as how they sound, because what makes a true artist is infinitely more than voice alone. So read a really good, in-depth interview in Opera Today  with Elisabeth Meister and enjoy!


photo credit : Wadey James

ENO Lucrezia Borgia Vivid Hybrid

For the full, formnal review, please see Opera Today. Belcanto and modern film, completely different aesthetics.

At last the ENO experiment of using directors from fields other than opera has been totally vindicated. Mike Figgis isn't an opera director but he is an innovative film-maker, so he knows what makes good drama. And few stories could have more dramatic potential than Lucrezia Borgia. Incest, blasphemy, violence, sex - far more scandalous than the tacky Anna Nicole Smith. Mike Figgis hasn't just directed Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, he's transformed it. The original opera is there, intact, but it's framed by short filmed passages that add background and depth. The films don't intrude, but enhance.

Frames are a recurring theme throughout. Gennaro (Michael Fabiano) and Orsini (Elizabeth DeShong) talk framed by a proscenium arch. Later Lucrezia (Claire Rutter) and her husband Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara (Alastair Miles) appear on an ornate, golden throne. It's stunning. But look carefully, it's a giant version of the tabernacle on a Catholic altar, which opens to reveal sacred objects. Lucrezia's father was the Pope. The Duke's court looks magnificent, but it shields sinister secrets. It's horrifying, yet done so subtly it might be missed. (Which is exactly how these folk keep power.) Boxes within boxes. The filmed parts grow from the ideas of concealment inherent in the story.

Yet Donizetti seems more concerned about Gennaro. Cesare Borgia and Pope Alexander VI don't even appear in the opera. Yet why do the Borgias cause such fear and hate? Doesn't Gennaro wonder who his father is?  His friends are out for vengeance but are easily distracted. Even when Gennaro is fleeing for his life, he stops so Donizetti can write delightful comedy arias for cross-dressing Orsini. So much for dramatic logic! There's hardly any psychological depth.  Maybe it's easier just to blame women for everything without going into the whys. Perhaps that explains the opera side of this production.  Movements are stiff and artificial. The stage is flatly one-dimensional. Artifice, not reality. The scene where Gennaro's friends gather is based on The Last Supper. Which it is, for them. Gasps from the audience, but why not? Themes of betrayal and poisoned chalices run through this tale. Shocking as the scene may be, it's a lot less sacrilegious than the Borgias were.

Significantly, Figgis is presenting the opera "as is". Those who hate Regie have no business complaining here. Figgis is under no delusions that anyone can become an opera director overnight. That's refreshingly honest, since good opera direction requires some musical nous. (Figgis is in fact a musican). Instead he does what he does best, by making the films that fill in the background, and give depth to the characters. The depravity of the Borgias was too much for Donizetti to depict, and would not have got round the censors in his day. Figgis goes for the jugular. As his actresses prepare for the film, they talk about historical incidents, such as the brutality of the 16th century sex trade and the vicious punishment of Jews. You flinch, but you should. The films also act as Lucrezia's memory. She relives the birth of Gennaro, and the murder of a young servant, which is so brilliantly filmed that you wish Figgis would make a full scale movie.  Before she marries the Duke of Ferrara she's got to prove she's a virgin, which everyone (includimg the Duke) knows is a humiliating farce. These films allow the director to expand upon and comment on the opera without doing much to the original at all.

Innovative as this approach is, it probably wouldn't work with a less stylized opera. Nor, perhaps, one more expressive orchestrally. Claire Rutter is impressive. She's easily got the most rewarding part to sing and she makes her presence felt. Michael Fabiano sings more convincingly than his role allows. Elizabeth DeShong, Alastair Miles and supporting singers are good, too, but this isn't the most demanding of operas.

The translation doesn't help. At times it felt that the singers were obeying their natural sense of line and intonation, but drawing back to fit the text. That's a problem with English in general, which isn't as melodic as Italian. The overall sound of an opera communicates, not just words. Some horrible rhymes that tried to be funny but weren't. Orsini's lines, though, were so wacky that they worked in an anarchic way. "Let's respect the protocol, and not indulge in alcohol" and "Chianti! the wine of Dante!". DeShong's delivery was so lively that I realized at last what Orsini's role in this opera might be. The silliness is deliberate, like whistling in a graveyard. Donizetti didn't do all that much about Lucrezia but thanks to Mike Figgis and ENO, we can approach her story in parallel ways.

Another interesting thing about this approach is that it makes the production portable. It can be recreated in different houses and revived at different times. Joint productions are the way to go in this age of austerity and this one transports readily at minimal cost. This raises the possibility of the opera being sung in Italian (since the film is in Italian) It's good enough to experience more than once. Artistically and financially, this one pays off. A better version of this piece will appear shortly in Opera Today. Please check that site, where there';s a FULL streaming download (in Italian), libretto, discography etc. Useful resource!
Photo credits: Stephen Cummiskey 2011, ENO. Details embedded.