Kathleen Ferrier - new film by Diane Perelsztejn

A new film about Kathleen Ferrier exploring her life and her music is now out.  Diane Perelsztejn's film moves briskly through Ferrier's early life to the triumphs of her career, which will be familiar, but are presented in a fresh way.  There are new things too, dealt with for the first time, and new, analytical material. Read the full review by Claire Seymour HERE in Opera Today :

"The final stages of the film deal with Ferrier’s personal relationships, and we learn about her relationship with Rick Davies — the significance of which has not been previously well known due to the media’s respect for the singer’s privacy and Winifred restricting access to the diaries — and with her father. Her fatal illness is sensitively depicted, revealing the humour and courage (she continued to perform despite the pain caused by her breast cancer) with which she bore discomfort and adversity."

"Contralto Natalie Stutzmann insightfully analyses the strengths and appeal of Ferrier’s voice, remarking its ambiguous combination of “the colour of the chest voice usually found in the male voice with the clarity of the female voice”, and the beauty and length of her breath. But, whatever her technical strengths, it was the way her relaxed, earthy contralto communication so naturally that struck her devotees, for whom she was the ‘girl-next-door’, bringing classical music to an entirely new audience.

Wexford Opera season, Opera Today

Interesting report on the Wexford Opera season 2012 in Opera Today HERE.  It's too long to quote, but please read as you won't often get Cilea's L'Arlesiana, Chabrier's Le Roi malgré lui and Delius's A Village Romeo and Juliet in one sesssion.  Do take time to read the article - very detailed and thoughtful !

Wartime Elgar The Longed-for Light SOMM

For Novemvber 11th and for the forthcoming centenary of World War One, a prescient new release by Siva Oke's SOMM label The Longed-for Light : Elgar's Music in Wartime.

Elgar was a a public figure, from whom the Nation expected support at a time of war. He had no choice but to echo the sentiments of the time .Within two weeks of the declaration of war, Sir Henrty Wood conducted Land of Hope and Glory, requisitioning it forever as a work of belligerent patriotism.  On this CD, we have another work conducted on that same programme, Sospiri op 70 (Sighs) is very different. A graceful violin line, harp and organ suggest peacefulness.

More unusual is Polonia op76 (1915), since Poland didn't yet exist except as part of the Austrian and Russian Empires. It's an iunteresting exercise which blends themes from Chopin and Paderewski in a mix of grand orchestral music, mazurkas and marches. This piece could be also do service for memorials to the Second World War, and to the thousands of Poles who escaped to England after 1939.

Elgar's Fringes of the Fleet was a smash hit at the Coliseum London, when it was a music hall, long before it became the home of the ENO. In similar stirring vein is Carillon op 75 1914, based on a poem by Belgian poet Emile Cammaerts. The grand orchestral sweep, with its evocation of church bells and bugles, is bizarrely cheerful but defiant. "Sing, Belgians, Sing! Although our wounds may bleed, although our voices break, louder than the storm, louder than the guns, Sing of hope and fiercest hate!"  Simon Callow declamation is perfect.. He describes the burial of dead children with tenderness, but spits out words like "Hate!" with vehemence.  We need that blustering  because it recreates the mentality of 1914, with the violent revanchisme. We must face this, unpleasant as it is, because that was the extremism that would lead to Versailles, reparations and  revenge from the other side.

Une voix dans le Désert op 77 is based on a much more contemplative text by Cammaerts. Hollow drum beats suggest war and the trudge of tired, marching soldiers."A hundred yards from the trenches" Callow speaks in   "there stands a little house, lonely and desperate" The farmer refuses to leave. His daughter sings of larks and of peace, while  soldiers march past. "Not a breath, not a life, not a soul, only a flight of crows along the railway line".  Elgar decorates that phrase beautifully. It's a moment of humour amid the horror, like the farmhouse itself, surrounded by battlefield.

The third Cammaerts setting is Le Drapeau  Belge op 79. "Red for the blood of soldiers! Black, yellow and red !"  Elgar's music moves like a march, so you can imagine the flag unfurled. Callow is magnificent. Irony would be out of order here. He has to sound bombastic, for such was the spirit of the time.

The longest piece on this recording is a ballet The Sanguine Fan op 81. A ballet in wartime? Elegant Elgarian sweeps, delicate lyrical notes ideal for dancing to. Pan, Echo and cupids dance in a glade while humans die. It is escapist fantasy, a coda to the comfortable Edwardian world. For a moment the music darkens with alarming chords, but serenity returns.

Surprisingly, this recording works well as a seamless whole, although the works weren't written to be heard together as such.  Just as the farmer's daughter sings about larks and peace in the midst of battle, hearing pieces like The Sanguine Fan after Le Drapeau Belge reminds us that even in wartime, life goes on  and hope will return.  Whoever decided to place Sospiri and Carissima between the  Cammaerts settings knew what they were doing.  Together the five pieces form a kind of meta-tone poem for orchestra and voices, making the whole greater than the sum of the parts.  Indeed, I think it should be regular performance practice to blend the Cammaerts settings in this way for maximum impact.  On their own the Cammaerts settings are propaganda, almost music hall.  But heard in the context of  other, more characteristic Elgar, they give much deeper insight into how Elgar responded to war. Together with SOMM's superb Fringes of the Fleet (more here ) this recording expands our appreciation of Elgar's wartime works beyond The Spirit of England and Starlight Express.

John Wilson conductsd the BBC Concert Orchestra. Hear extracts from this disc incl Carillon on BBC RAdio 3 from 12/11.

New role for John Tomlinson!

A new role for Sir Joihn Tomlinson up close and personal! A cherished friend had a wondeful time at a recital John Tom  gave at the National Gallery this week and sends a heads up for the next performance on Friday 16th. More HERE.

"To celebrate the 500th anniversary of the unveiling of the Sistine Chapel, Sir John Tomlinson, one of England’s finest basses and pianist David Owen Norris will perform the poems of Michelangelo by Britten, Wolf and Shostakovich. Sir John will give a wonderfully charismatic staged performance of Britten’s 'Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo', Op. 22, Wolf’s 'Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo' and Shostakovich’s 'Suite on Verses of Michelangelo', Op. 145, with David Owen Norris on piano. This is a rare opportunity to hear one of the world’s great operatic voices in an intimate setting, away from the world’s biggest stages."

Wonderful programme, which will suit Tomlinson's voice.  What's more, you can combine the recital with a visit to Michelangelo's works in the National Gallery. To whet your appetite, here's a description of the piano song version of  Shostakovich Suite on the Verses of Michelangelo which Tomlinson and Owen Norris will be performing  HERE.

Oliver Knussen at 60, Barbican Immersion

Ollie is 60! The Barbican and the BBC SO celebrated Oliver Knussen with a retrospective of some of his greatest hits. He came on stage wearing a smart new conducting tunic and what looked like one of those shiny badges you get on birthday cards that say your age. Maybe my eyes were mistaken, but it seemed a typically Ollie touch.

More typical Ollie programming wit. Maybe it was birthday fun, maybe it's Bonfire Night, but the revised programme started with Flourish with Fireworks op 22 (1988/1993),  a joyous 4 minute blast of musical high spirits, perfect for the occasion. References embedded to Stravinsky's Fireworks and to the LSO (A,m E flat, G) and to old friend Michael Tilson Thomas (E, B, B).The even earlier Choral (op 8, 1970-72) dispenses with high strings altogether. Four double basses march against counter processions of trumpets, horns and mournful trombones. Flutes and percussion cry out against the dirge. Eventually the different parts of the orchestra coalesce, not in unison, but in chorale.

In Walt Whitman's verse, dense thickets of phrase and sub-phrase pile upon each other. Parsing this grammar must be like breaking code. For Knussen, that's a challenge. Lines of text like "reck'd or un-reck'd, duly with love" aren't easy to analyse, but Knussen's music makes you feel the meaning. In the Whitman Settings op 25a (1991) density is written into the orchestration, while the high soprano line floats clear above. "I am the Poet of Earth, and the voice of the rain", sang Claire Booth, another Knussen muse.

Martin Owen was the soloist in Knussen's Horn Concerto op 28 (1994/5) . It's almost more horn than concerto, for the horn part dominates, sensually teasing and provoking the orchestra. It's inherent drama makes it one of Knussen's signature pieces. I heard Owen play in one of the first performances of Elliott Carter's Horn Concerto (2006), where the soloist dialogues with different segments of the orchestra in succession. I would have completed this review on Monday after the performance, but news came of Carter's death. It was hard to think of anything else.
Two Organa (1994) is only six minutes in total, but densely constructeed. The first part (Notre Dame aux Jouets) uses only white notes of the diatonic scale. The second adds a secret puzzle: dedicated to the Schoenberg Ensemble, it spells Schoenberg's name in pitches, concealed in dizzying polyphonic fireworks over a deeper pulse of plainchant.

By now it should be obvious that, though it was Knussen's birthday, and dozens of composers and musicans were in the audience, the presence of many others unseen was intensely palpable.  Knussen spoke about Hans Werner Henze who died the previous weekend.  Henze had a home in London for decades and was closely involved with British music, as an influence, a mentor, and as Knussen put it, "a good friend". Then Knussen conducted his Requiem : Songs for Sue op 33 (2005-6). There are Henze connections, but above all, the piece is a tribute to Knussen's late wife, Sue.  Knussen didn't need to explain. Most of the audience know the piece extremely well.

The opening line, “Is it true, dear Sue” is followed by silence, as if an answer were expected, but we know it will never come. It’s poignant without being maudlin.  The piece opens in shrill staccato, expressing tension, but the orchestration flows tenderly, in circular figures towards a kind of calm stasis. The rounded figures felt like abstract depictions of an embrace. This image reflects too in the intimate instrument doublings. This isn't so much a group of separate songs as a curving arc of sound and feeling. Silences, here too, are part of the structure, like white spaces in a watercolour, extending the music into the imagination. As a meditation on someone loved who has passed beyond the physical, these voids are not empty, but charged with memory.

Indeed, there is an almost Ligeti-like stillness in the orchestration, the unadorned vocal line subtly enhanced by hollow, metallic and otherworldly sounds which express a sense of desolation. The poem, by Emily Dickinson, is full of corny lines like “as quiet as the Dew – she dropt as softly as a star”, but Knussen shapes the vocal line with dignity. Surprisingly, there is some emotional distance in this piece which I can’t quite pinpoint either, but which adds a moving elegance to the whole, layering it with a veil of Sehnsucht which makes it universal as well as first-person.

Knussen's Requiem - Songs for Sue fascinates me because it creates a very profound sense of duality.  So many human relationships are built on control or power games, or social convention.  Genuine love, I think, transcends all that. It's based on respect for the individuality of each person, regardless of their relationship to oneself.  If we truly love, we can let other people be themselves.
It's no coincidence that most composers are men, who are often unable to articulate complex feelings in words or actions. Hence composers speak through music.  So many need to hide themselves behind elaborate structures, as if florid expression equated with feeling. Maybe that is the case for some, but I've always had a suspicion of insincere Requiems.

Perhaps the core of  Songs for Sue is the exquisite W H Auden setting, "Time will say nothing but I told you so". "Time only knows the price we have to pay. If I could tell you  I would let you know". Again this sense of dstance, and of feelings too deep to articulate. The phrase "I told you so" repeats many times. Is it reproach? Is it regret?  Sometimes the speaker is Time, sometimes the overwhelmed lover.

The absolute heart of the song pops out, almost unnoticed. Booth lowers the timbre of her voice, creating a direct sense of intimacy. The line “”because I love you” is spoken, not sung. A musician can’t “say” without music, so perhaps this is Knussen the man speaking through the medium of soprano. It's an unbelievably intense moment, but so hidden  that it's easily overlooked.

After this point I cracked up emotionally. This is why Knussen is good.  He doesn't need grand gestures or over-stuffed show pieces  He writes intricately constructed miniatures, but with a distinctive personal voice.  He seems playful but behind the whimsy there's deep feeling.  Songs for Sue prove that there's greater art in supposedly small pieces than in over-inflated  big pieces designed for public display but without real vision.  Is Sibelius Symphony no 7 minor because it lasts only 15 minutes? Size certainly isn't everything.

Knussen's Symphony no 3 (see my review of the NMC reissue here) doesn't sprawl. It's concise. It's another of Knussen's Greatest Hits, but I was still shaking after Songs for Sue and couldn't concentrate.

This concert is being broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 9th February 2013

ENO The Pilgrim's Progress Ralph Vaughan Williams

The ENO production of The Pilgrim's Progress is a historic moment. This is what the ENO should stand for - pioneering good opera in English. This justifies the whole premise of the ENO philosophy.  For sixty years, The Pilgrim's Progress has suffered under the mistaken assumption that it is somehow "unstageable". Yoshi Oida and the ENO prove, indisputably, that it can be brought to vivid life and be restored to its deserved place in the repertoire. As Bunyan sings "This book will make a Traveller of thee". The "end" of the opera is just the beginning.

The Pilgrim's Progress  is a remarkable work that defies classification. Do not approach it as conventional opera, or you'll miss its fundamental originality. Vaughan Williams hiumself called it a "Morality", not quite a morality play in the medieval tradition, but much more sophisticated.
Approach it from  an oratorio background and you're on stronger ground. Yet Vaughan Williams was adamant that it was "essentially a stage piece, and not for a cathedral". These considerations are important, for they affect the way the Pilgrim's Progress can be staged. Vaughan Williams wasn't happy with the 1951 Covent Garden production., but I think he'd be pleased with Yoshi Oida's staging for the ENO because it blends Bunyan's steadfast beliefs with Vaughan Williams's distinctive artistic personality.

The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory, progressing in ritual stages as spartan as the militant non-conformist Protestantism that inspired it. The action evolves in the Pilgrim's soul as he visualizes his journey. Thus the bizarre names of those he meets, like his neighbours Pliable, Obstinate, Mistrust and Timorous. They are not real people but symbols. Oida and his designer depict them holding banners, alluding to the illustrations in typical 17th century religious tracts. Lord Hate-Good and Pontius Pilate are meant to be caricatures, as Bunyan's readers knew their Bible word by heart and understood how it applied to The Pilgrim. Perhaps modern audiences don't make quite the same connection between the Pilgrim's fate and that of his Lord, but again that is absolutely fundamental to meaning.

Bunyan was a non-conformist independent at a time of extreme religious intolerance. He wasn''t  Establishment, he wasn't dutiful Church of England.  He came from peasant stock and probably spole with a broad Midlands accent. Vaughan Williams is making a very specific point by explicitly framing the opera with references to Bunyan and later The Pilgrim in prison. It is not stylistic licence on Oida's part but fundamental to meaning. Furthermore, it's not simply a matter of poet in prison, but the concept that mankind is imprisoned until freed by spiritual awakening. The Pilgrim cannot attain grace unless he dies in faith. Oida's Pilgrim dies in the electric chair. Bunyan refers to a river of death. Electricity is a flowing current, so death is a quick transition, fitting well with Vaughan Williams's musical setting. Visually, the image is powerful because it also suggests the idea of sitting on a throne in judgement, for like God, Bunyan condemns the venal. "If this man cannot stand before the judgement of men, how shall he stand before the judgement of God?" Oida also show the river in a film projection above the stage, a detail which reinforces the depth of his interpretation.

Ralph Vaughan Williams was not Bunyan. He affirms Bunyan's basic principles but moderates them with his music.  RVW's glorious interludes add radiant lyricism, conducted by Martyn Brabbins so that the radiance is almost overwhelming.  Brabbins's understanding of RVW's idiom is profound, sharp and never sentimental. RVW's "pastoralism" isn't bucolic fantasy but "pastoral" in the wider meaning of the word, ideally suited to this piece with its implicit message of faith in the Good Shepherd. The Pilgrim sings" I will walk in the name of the Lord, my strength", and the colours in the orchestra illuminate the words, as if the Lord is walking invisibly with the Pilgrim. RVW's Interludes tell the story so vividly that the orchestra provides much of the drama the text alone eschews. In House Beautiful, the Pilgrim listens to angelic voices "Music in the house, music in the heart, music in heaven".

There are many references to Vaughan Williams's other music, especially the Fifth Symphony, since he laboured over The Pilgrim's Progress for many years. Indeed, The Pilgrim's Progress can e read as Vaughan Williams own spiritual journey. He put his failth in music, not in God. Listen to the entr'acte before the Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains, where the melody is bathed in the simple light of solo violin reminiscent of The Lark Ascending. Oida's staging captures RVW's music with remarkable sensitivity.  The prison paraphernalia (designed by Tom Schenk) moves swiftly, respecting the momentum of the music. Glowing colours of copper and amber, verdigris and subtle shadow : natural earth tones that reflect the music and also the idea of organic change that runs through the whole piece. This is why The Pilgrim's Progress is infinitely improved by visual images.  Most of us have grown up with audio versions. Now my love for this work is enhanced by recalling this production.  Even when Oida slightly  controversially uses film images of  First World War trenches to contrast with "God's straight highway", he is referring to RVW's career. Indeed, RVW seems to have made the connection himself, given the strident trumpet parts that accompany the text. That war was a watershed (his "river"?) for him and he did not forget.
 
This is a much deeper production than one might expect. It is an infiniutely greater homage to the composer than the superficial  ENO Riders to the Sea, or well meaning but limited productions of Hugh the Drover. Oida might even make The Poisoned Kiss work nicely.

Martyn Brabbins is another reason for catching this production, sharper than Adrian Boult, livelier than Richard Hickox. This should be immortalized on DVD.  It would create a new market, especially for those who don't as yet appreciate RVW.  Roland Wood sings both John Bunyan and The Pilgrim, but combining the roles means he is singing for hours on end. It's more conducive to stamina than finesse. A beautiful voice isn't necessary in an opera about a tough minded anti-materialist. It's enough that Wood can to carry it off convincingly, especially considering that there are several other British baritones who would have been outstanding. Wood is valiant, but he's young and doesn't make his ROH debut until 2014. He's worth hearing again, though. Some of the finest singing occured in the minor roles.  Several excellent vignettes - Eleanor Dennis (especially as the Voice of the Bird), with Kitty Whateley and Aoife O'Sullivan, Timothy Robinson, Mark Richardson,  and many members of the cast and chorus in Vanity Fair.

Elliott Carter is dead

Elliott Carter - 11th December 1908 - 5th November 2012. Elliott Carter died at home yesterday, aged 103.

So much about Elliott Carter defies stereotypes. Although he was born into a wealthy New York family Carter was thoroughly cosmopolitan. He spoke French like a native, travelling back and forth between Europe and the US. Growing up in the 1920's and 30's, he wholeheartedly embraced the cultural innovations of his time. He personally knew Stravinsky, Bartók, Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse and many others. He attended classes with Nadia Boulanger but she had fixed views on what composers should do, and Carter didn't. His first major compositions didn't happen until he moved out - literally - into the desert to find his own voice.

He was still writing until this year, redefining what he called his "Late, late style".  He used to joke that he only wrote miniatures after the age of 100 "because I might not have time to finish". Some people don't find themselves creatively til late, and some never find themselves at all, but Carter kept developing and refreshing himself.

At Aldeburgh, even the non-musical townsfolk talked about the 100-year-old composer, still playing the piano and taking animatedly with Pierre-Laurent Aimard about works in progress.  That vivacious personality, that chirpy voice! When he was a mere 97, he attended a Barbican Total Immersion, partying up to 2 am with the orchestra, then starting rehearsals the next morning at 10, then flying off to Paris. A dear friend gave me an introduction and gave me a tip: "Don't go up to him, too many admirers around. But go to Virgil and say that I sent you." Sure enough, Carter was surrounded by the head of the BBC and many other household names. Virgil said "X wants you to meet ....". Immediately Carter bursts into a huge grin, and shoves the VIPS aside. I was a complete stranger but his friend meant so much to him that he welcomed me as a friend too, hugging me and giving me a kiss. That was the kind of man he was, totally open and sincere.

Carter couldn't make the 2010 festival at Aldeburgh where one of his premieres was performed. I was sitting behind Virgil and Oliver Knussen. "Do you think they'll let me take a photo for Elliot?" asks Virgil. "I'll GET them if they stop you," says Ollie.  Carter and his wife Helen lived in the same New York brownstone for many decades as the neighbourhood changed around them. A friend used to see them out for walks, but respected their privacy too much to interrupt. They were inseperable.  Once someone phoned up and demanded to speak to Elliott. Helen relayed the message. "He's busy just now." "Don't you know how important I am!" raged the caller. Well, yes, actually, that's why Carter wasn't impressed. Everyone has fond memories of the Carters. who doted on other people's families and were always generous with their time.

Elliott Carter was born a day after Olivier Messiaen. Two immense pillars of western music whose influence reached far beyond what they did on their own. In so many ways it seems that the world is entering a  selfish retrograde cycle, much of what we've learned the hard way through the 20th century erased. It's like the Taliban wrecking ancient monuments. All the more we need to honour Elliott Carter for his music and for his eclectic, open-minded joy of living.

Yoshi Oida - Curlew River

 

Tonight at the ENO - Ralph Vaughan Williams The Pilgrim's Progress.Yoshi Oida directs.(MY REVIEW IS HERE). That's seriously important. As I wrote in April about the ENO 2012-13 season, The Pilgrim's Progress is "not an "easy" opera,  and needs a director who understands stylized allegory. The reason that this will be important is the choice of director, Yoshi Oida. Oida is astoundingly sensitive. His Britten Death in Venice was exceptional. (read more here) It ran within a month of the ENO Deborah Warner Death in Venice. Two drastically opposite approaches.Warner's was high on glossy fashion shoot glamour, Aschenbach relegated to the sidelines in every way. Oida's approach was psychological, with Aschenbach foremost, action happening around him and in his mind."

This is absolutely pertinent to The Pilgrim's Progress, since that too is more allegory than opera,  Expect a "storyline" and big numbers and you'd be stumped. If anyone can pull this spiritual saga off, it's Yoshi Oida.

So take the opportunity to watch Yoshi Oida's production of Benjamin Britrten's Curlew River from the Aix en Provence Festival. In Curlew River a boy has been kidnapped and probably murdered. His mother, maddened by grief, searches for him but cannot cross the river on her own. Emotionally, this is one of Britten's most traumatic pieces, for the feelings are so raw that it's hard to concentrate. Anyone who thinks Britten wasn't traumatized by the loss of innocence has no idea about Britten at all. Oida's staging is so stark that you're hypnotized by the sheer horror of the psychic dilemma.  This seminally important production of Britten's Curlew River is now available for download on Classical TV. You might have to pay to view, but it's worth it.

Han Suyin 1917-2012

Han Suyin has died. Everyone's heard of her novel, Love is a Many Spendoured Thing,  because it was turned into a hit movie in the 1950's.  Read the book, the movie is pure Hollywood. But Han Suyin was far more interesting as a person than as a writer.  Her novels are autobiographical, rather than works of fiction. Indeed, one of my aunts who knew her personally said that one of the characters in Love Is a Many Spendoured Thing was a composite based on several Hong Kong doctors they both knew, including my uncle.  Her books are therefore a form of highly subjective social commentary.

To people in the west, Han Suyin symbolizes China. In fact, she wasn't Chinese but mixed race and very westernized. She wrote in English, not in Chinese. To Chinese people in China, she'a an anomaly.  There are plenty of Chinese novelists, but  Han Suyin was different, sometimes trying too hard. You can read the outlines of her life anywhere on the web and read her formal autobiographies, especially the early instalments like A Mortal Flower, and Destination Chung King. (Her accounts of her parents lives aren't first hand so a little highly coloured)  But from me, you'll get a more individual perspective.

 For me, Han Suyin was an example of someone growing up "between" cultures, always alert to cultural clues people in mainstream societies take for granted without noticing. "We always have to negotiate," a prominent Eurasian woman of her generation told me. "We are interpreters all the time". And she didn't mean just language. One thing for sure, being Eurasian means always being the outsider.

 In colonial times, mixed-race people were considered degenerate, quite literally "mongrels" and "lesser breeds". Remember Madama Butterfly? Many assume that mixed-race children came from prostitution when in fact this was most certainly not the case. What kind of handicap is that to live under? But because Empire depended on the bluff that white people were somehow destined to rule, any contagion with the natives was politically dynamite. The downside of being Eurasian was that Eurasians were always under pressure to prove themselves worthy. On the other hand,  that gave them "hybrid vigour", as my father used to say. 

 Nowadays there are hundreds of thousands of Chinese growing up in the west, largely cut off from the experience of growing up in a community where everyone is rooted in Chinese culture. When children grow up, they want to be like their peers, so it's hardly suprising that cultural dilution is pretty much the norm today. This new generation has a whole new set of identity issues to develop, and many more options. Having Chinese DNA does not make anyone Chinese in the deepest sense of values and mores. "Bananas" people joke, "yellow on the outside, white on the inside". Since it's almost impossible to completely penetrate a culture as complex as Chinese, there aren't any reverse bananas.

So how do foreign born and raised Chinese develop their identity? Having a Chinese face does not automatically make anyone Chinese. That's not a value judgement. It's realism. People respond in the way the culture they grow up in teaches them to think.  If they grow up in large communities with a common background, and know the language, that helps. But not everyone is in that position. I thought I had myself figured until I went to the west as an adult, and it threw me off balance for years. That I think is the challenge Chinese growing up outside Chinese society need to tackle. What is identity, after all? Do we create our own as we go through life? Are we fated to be "outsiders"?  That's not such a bad thing because conversely, you're not bound by what others expect you to be.  Face is not destiny. There will be lots of different ways, personal to each individual. Han Suyin found her own way, controversial as it was. Others will find their own.

Faith in Food - Oliver Knussen's Sendak operas, Barbican

The closer you are to your Inner Child, the more you get from Oliver Knussen's Sendak operas, at the Barbican Theatre. Remember being a kid, wide-eyed with wonder listening to crazy stories? Maurice Sendak's stories are surreal: they defy logic. Yet their anarchic mayhem connects to something deep in the psyche. "NO EAT!" screams The Baby in Higgelty Piggelty Pop!, "NO EAT!!!!!". A bundle wrapped in lace asserts its dominance. Nurses who cannot cope get eaten by The Lion. Sendak appeals to kids because he subverts the power structure and releases primal feelings. A man playing a pig hands out ham (!) sandwiches to the real audiences. "Faith in Food" says Jennie the Dog, but faith in fundamental sustenance rather than something handed out free by a stranger. 

Jennie the dog tries to make Baby eat an egg by telling a silly story, just as mothers have done since time immemorial. Baby's not fooled. Just as the Lion is about to swallow them, Jennie finds the courage to stand up for herself. "I want to be in the Mother Goose World Theatre!". It's the Magic Word she thought she didn't know. By confronting her own needs, Jennie is able to break the cycle of silly games. In Castle Yonder, Baby at last grows up, nurtured by emotional fibre, not vanilla pudding.

Although Where the Wild Things Are is by far the best known of Maurice Sendak's stories, and the selling point of the Barbican Knussen Double Bill at the Barbican, it's fairly straightforward, by Sendak and Knussen standards. A kid dresses up as a wolf , releasing his base instincts and gets into trouble. So he runs off to Where the Wild Things Are. The monsters grin and look benign but the kid knows that if he stays, they'll consume him. So home he goes and peace is restored (by the smell of warm food). Strangely enough, my own children were immune to the delights of this Sendak story, while most of their friends wewre transfixed.  I don't know why because they weree addicted to Sendak's In the Night Kitchen, where bakers making the morning bread tumble through the sky and  a child in an aeroplane made of dough saves the day. Maurice Sendak is upstaged in every way by Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, a much darker and more sophisticated tale (read more about the Glyndebourne production HERE). Knussen's zany, cheerful music makes his opera fun but doesn't stimulate the deeper levels that are in Higgelty Piggelty Pop!. 

Nonetheless, it's an entertaining experience, and would have been more so had Ryan Wigglesworth kicked more spirit into the Britten Sinfonia. At Aldeburgh, the playing was livelier, laced with manic dementedness, which added spark. (read more here)  At the Barbican they were rather Better Behaved which doesn't work quite so well with subversive music like this. Wigglesworth always looks impeccably immaculate, but he's much more fun when he roughs up. Nonetheless, the children in the evening performance listened avidly, wide-eyed, sitting forward, taking everything in with a sense of wonder. What a pity that a small number of adults behaved like philistines, yawning and sneering loudly. What were they trying to prove? That they were cleverer than kids? At least the kids haven't lost their instinct for magic.

On the other hand, there's a lot in Higgelty Piggelty Pop! that alert adults would get more than kids. The reference to the Mother Goose World Theatre is crucial, for it links to an undercurrent about theatre and illusion. Is opera a grand form of Mother Goose? We all need fantasies to sustain our prosaic lives. That's why we need music and opera or we'd shrivel up and die, emotionally, I think.  This is where  Knussen asserts himself above Sendak. He writes in wry references, like snatches of Mozart, baroque and even Barber Shop. In her despair, Jennie the Dog sings mock-operatic arias of exaggerated desperation. Then the tree sings back to her. It's an ash tree. Knussen sets its words with great portent. The World Ash Tree, like the Mother Goose World Theatre, Jennie the Dog and Sieglinde, both searching for the way out of their dilemmas. 

Are the multiple mock endings a sly reference to the ending of Don Giovanni ? It's also a way of linking "reality" opera to the stylized cardboard theatre games children used to play with long ago. Could it also be typical Oliver Knussen with his fondness for repeats? But could it on the deepest level be like the way adults and children play together? Even small babies like peek-a-boo games where they think something's over and it pops up all over again. Even pre-verbal children instinctively like illusion and role playing. Parents put on funny voices, and make nonsense sounds, playing wth pitch and tempo. They say "Boo!" and the kid bursts out laughing. I imagined Knussen reading Sendak stories to his little daughter, the "Muse of Higgelty Piggelty Pop!" and making her squeal with delight. Children need fantasy if they are to grow up open minded and creative. As do we all.  Deprived of that child-like sense of wonder, we'd be like The Baby screaming "NO EAT!"

photo : Lucy Schaufer as Jennie, credit : Mark Allan, courtesy Barbican Centre. 

Hans Werner Henze and Oliver Knussen - Undine

Oliver Knussen retrospective at the Barbican this weekend, but Hans Werner Henze's death last weekend still haunts me. Henze and Knussen have a lot more in common than one might assume. Both of them Wunderkind, with wide-sprawling careers. Henze was more prolific as a composer, Knussen  has been busy as conductor and general guru. Both of them connected to Aldeburgh. Henze, thinking Auden and Britten were still friends, naively sought Auden's patronage. It was good for Henze's art but not so good for his prospects with Britten. Henze's prospects on the big money US market were effectively doomed by his Communist ideals. Knussen';s career took off when he went to the US.

This week I've been listenin again to Knussen conduct Henze's ballet Undine (Ondine). Music for ballet  is different to music for theatre or for the concert hall. Music for ballet has to allow for the physical demands of dancers. Balletomanes come to see dancers : for them music is often secondary. So a composer must write bearing in mind the limitations of the human body. Dancers can't float up in the air indefinitely. There have to be breaks for them to rest and regroup.  Hence the episodic nature of ballet music, which has to allow for sequences that display the skills of the dancers. The episodes have to be long enough to give choreographers something to work with, yet not be too long or complex that dancers can't cope. Ballet music, one may say, follows the body not just the mind. 

 On audio such moments may drag but the drama is in the dancing itself.  Which is why seeing a ballet helps you connect between music and visuals. Henze was still only 30 in 1956 when Ondine was written, but he'd already written seven ballets : Ondine was the breakthrough that established him in the genre. The ballet was commissioned by Sir Frederick Ashton to showcase Margot Fonteyn.

Henze’s music thus focuses on images of water, tides and waves, for the sea is Ondine’s element. She’s supernatural, so her music is magically lyrical. When she dances in the waterfall, the colours in the orchestration shimmer around her. In comparison, scenes that take place on land, especially in Act 2, are relatively earthbound, but that’s the essence of the plot. Palemon dies, but Ondine lives on, immortal. The music flows so seamlessly into dance that you can almost see semi quavers enacted in movement. Every note reflects in dance. Pizzicato becomes en pointe, the interplay of piano, harp, and celeste become intricate ensemble. The guitar part is more than mere “Italianate colour”, for Henze loves the instrument and has written more for it than any modern composer. Seeing Ondine in performance shows just how good a composer Henze was and is. Sir Frederick Ashton and the audiences of 1958 found the music difficult, but Henze, a devoted balletomane, wrote intuitively for dance. Now the music poses no problems. Instead, we can appreciate how it respects the physical demands of ballet. Despite the undulating, wavering beauty of the scoring there are firm undercurrents and a strong dramatic pulse.

The water spirits form a circle, their arms undulating, like a giant sea anemone, moving with the ocean tides. Graceful as the image is, it’s also powerfully muscular, underlined by the depth and energy of the music. Sea anemones look delicate, but they’re strong, a lot like ballerinas. I learned Ondine from the audio recording conducted by Oliver Knussen. Now the image of the ondines in the corps de ballet will remain with me.

The sets were designed by Lila Di Nobili, who also designed the British premiere of Elegy for Young Lovers at Glyndebourne in 1961. Sir Frederick Ashton wanted to pay tribute to 19th century ballet tradition, so the set is lushly romantic, complete with proscenium arches, like a cherished museum piece. Against this background, the dancers seem all the more youthful and vibrant. I quite like the tension between Ashton's retro vision and Henze's irrepressible inventiveness.

Paul Spicer - Ireland Delius part songs

When Paul Spicer conducts English choral music, it's worth paying attention, because he's one of the finest interpreters in the genre. Siva Oke's SOMM label has just released the first major collection of part songs by Frederick Delius and John Ireland. Paul Spicer directs the Birmingham Conservatoire Choir in performances that will be hard to surpass.

This weekend, the Royal College of Music is hosting a major symposium on John Ireland (read more HERE). Ireland taught at the RCM and left an impact on English music. Speakers include Paul Spicer, Bruce Philips, April Frederick,. Recitals, too, and masterclasses. What a pity the conference clashes with the Oliver Knussen Sendak operas at the Barbican! But this reassessment of Ireland is timely. His songs, like Sea Fever and The Vagabond , have always been part of the repertoire, but his part songs are less well known. Indeed, he wrote very few after his mid 40's.

Yet Ireland's songs show character. In Heraclitus,(1924),  Ireland embeds the idea of a man mourning his dead friend into the very fabric of the song."They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead".  High male voices lead, shadowed by low. "For death. he taketh all away, but them (memories) he cannot take". The low voices rumble, as if they were ghosts. Ireland deploys voices as he might deploy instruments in an orchestra. Beautiful parting in songs like Immortality (1942) where the vocal parts intertwine attractively. Ireland sets text imaginatively. In The Hills, written for the Coronation in 1953, key words leap gleaming out of the text : "golden", "flowers", "sun","enduring", so when the last lines return to a mood of calm repose, images of brightness light the darkening timbre.

Ireland was one of relatively few British composers with whom Benjamin Britten consorted.  Perhaps they shared a common interest in Elizabethan poetry. The charm of The Peaceful Western Winds (1896) written when Ireland was still a student, lies in its uncomplicated simplicity. Choruses of "cuckoo, cuckoo" in Spring, the sweet spring (to Thomas Nashe), and tinkling laughter in The Laughing Song (William Blake) suggest innocence determined to triumph. Three carols, Adam lay ybounden, The Holy  Boy and A New Year Carol reflect this steadfast belief in prelapsarian purity.

It's interesting to hear John Ireland's part songs together with those by Frederick Delius. Delius almost seems to be subsuming text and meaning in some of these part songs in order to create a wash of impressionistic colour. As abstract sound, they are attractive, as if Delius were using voice as a form of instrumentation. The voices of the Birmingham Conservatoire Choir ring cleanly. By keeping textures so clear, Spicer makes them sound like a carillon of bright, shining bells.  Indeed, the finest songs in this collection are wordless vocalise.  In Two Songs to be Sung of a Summer Night on the Water, a glorious swathe of "ahhhhh....." is followed by a tenor soloist singing "la la la", vaguely reminiscent of a nursery rhyme. It's a tone poem for unaccompanied voices, more effective than I can describe. Similarly, Delius sets Tennyson's The Splendour Falls on Castle Walls, emphasizing the "echoes, answer, echoes, dying, dying". There's a market for music like this when it's done with such finesse.  Refined and very calming. More details on the SOMM site.

Ollie Alert - Knussen at the Barbican

Tomorrow at the Barbican - Oliver Knussen Total Immersion. Actually, it started this morning with the high level conference (more here). Tomorrow Knussen's zany, anarchic but magical double bill based on Maurice Sendak, Higgelty Piggelty Pop! and Where the Wild Things are. Read about the Aldeburgh performances HERE to get a taste of what to expect.  Photo shows Claire Booth battling demons - credit Eamonn McCabe. Netia Jones's staging captures the zany, whimsical spirit infinitely better than the lumpen, overly literal Glyndebourne production many years ago, which I've just seen. You DON'T need large adults in animal costumes to act the Wild Things because the Wild Things exist in the kid's imagination. In any case, Sendak's drawings are visually part of the experience. Sendak was involved with the Glyndebourne production but he was not a theatre person. Netia Jones is. Her projections move like magic and light, and the adults who do sing are recognizable "not" caricatures but people transformed..

Netia Jones's stagings are good because they don't burden the music with excess baggage. Her Before and After Life was fascinating because she combined three works by Tippett, Britten and Finzi. Each of them so very different, yet she intuited the common threads that link them. Read what I wrote about the London premiere in 2010 HERE.  Coming up next year, Netia Jones is doing a staging of Kurtag's Kafka Fragments at the Linbury where seating is so tight I can't go unless I get an aisle seat and they're sold out already.  But it is top of my must-do list because I'm so passionately into the piece, having written about four different performances. I can imagine Jones doing it intelligently. Read about the András Keller  and Juliane Banse performance at the Wigmore Hall  HERE. There are levels in the piece which only come through abstraction, which I think Netia Jones can access better than most.

George Benjamin Written on Skin - Amsterdam

George Benjamin's Written on Skin is making its way across Europe. It's presently in Amsterdam, where Jim Sohre caught it :

"Written on Skin was that all-too-rare treat, a compelling new piece of writing that spoke with its own affecting voice, performed by a peerless cast and band, matched by an enthralling stage production that served to make for a potent evening of musical drama. Here’s wishing it many more successful first nights and an enduring presence in the repertoire."



"I shall not soon forget the coup de theatre at opera’s end as the misused wife flees her murderous spouse up a white staircase extending into the loft, running to leap to her death, pursued by the rest of the cast, all in excruciatingly. Slow. Motion. Ironically, this is one of the few instances where the production fails the script since it calls for her to leap but be suspended mid-air, but then who has ever seen Brűnnhilde ride Grane onto the pyre? (So there.) Never you mind, it is spell-binding nonetheless."


Read the full review with production photos in Opera Today HERE

Arditti Quartet Wigmore Hall Rihm Saunders Abrahamsen Clarke

Wild weather outside the Wigmore Hall on Halloween Night, but the Arditti Quartet sparkled, revitalizing what has been a relatively bland five months in London music (with a few notable exceptions).

Brisk start to proceedings with James Clarke's String Quartet (2002-3) in place of the scheduled premiere of Clarke's 2012-5 for two string quartets. The JACK Quartet were due to join the Ardittis for this, but Hurricane Sandy intervened. No worries, since Clarke's String Quartet was commissioned for the Ardittis in the first place.They played with brio, relishing its zany, almost-but-not-quite anarchic delights. Ecstatic audience reaction.

Hans Abrahamsen's serene String Quartet no 4 (2012, UK premiere) was somthing of an odd man out in an evening of musical bourrasque, but I loved it. It's beautifully constructed in four movements, starting in a pitch so high it seems ethereal. Abrahamsen calls this movement "hoch im Himmel gesungen".  Arditti's bow scarcely seems to move, but amazing sounds emerge. Ashot Sarkissjan shadows the first violin, ghost-like, adding depth. The earthiness of folk melody, translated in graceful refinement.  A jam session for samisen and koto? Cello and viola (Lucas Fels and Ralf Ehlers) reinterpret the first movement in rumbling low pitch. Pizzicato reinforcing the idea of samisen and ancient instruments.  "Big black raindrops" says Abrahamsen in his notes. Joyous purity, good-natured poise.

"Fletch" refers to the feather placed on the end of an arrow to stabilize it in flight. You don't need to know this to follow Rebecca Saunders's Fletch for String Quartet (2012, UK premiere) since so much of her music moves like physical form. Great forward thrust and balance, purposeful.  Even her programme notes sound musical  "....this elemental sonic gesture is an up-bow sul point double-harmonic trill, often with fast glissando, crescendo-ing rapidly out of nothing to fortissimo....surface, weight and feel are part of the reality of performance. The weight of the bow on the string the differentiation of touch of the left-hand finger on the string...feeling the weight of sounds is an integral part of the composing process.... being aware of the grit and noise of an instrument, tracing the essence of the fragments of colour within a confined and reduced palette of timbres and exploring the physical gesture which creates a fragment of sound"  Anyone who still thinks modern music isn't emotional needs to hear Rebecca Saunders. Her music moves sensually, as if it were a living being, alert, sensitive, eclectic.

Before Hurricane Sandy, the Arditti and JACK Quartets were planning to play Mauro Lanza's Der Kampf zischen Karneval und Fasten for octet ( 2012, UK premiere).  One can imagine what that might sound like! Instead, the Arditti Quartet played Wolfgang Rihm's String Quartet no 13. Explosive attack at times, vigorous.  A deliberately deceptive ending to further throw you off balance, in a nice way. Listen to the August 2012 performance at the IMR HERE.


photo :  Zé Carlos Barretta from São Paulo, Brasil