Coming up at the Philharmonia Orchestra

Interesting things coming up with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival, in contrast to the sad blandness that marks the South Bank's antipathy to serious music.  Next for me will be Esa-Pekka Salonen's concert on 19th Feb with Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing Ligeti's Piano Concerto, The complete Debussy Daphnis et Chloé and .Stravinsky's "lost" Funeral Song - read more here about the premiere where Gergiev conducted it in context with Rimsky-Korsakov and The Firebird.    On 2nd March, Pablo Heras-Casado conducts Stravinsky The Firebird complete 1910 version with de Falla and Ravel.  Preceding this an early evening concert with Pascal Rophé featuring Isang Yun whose music isn't heard nearly as often as it should be.

Benjamin Zander returns to London after a long absence on 13th March in an all-Beethoven concert which includes Beethoven 9.  Then Jakub Hrůša conducts Brahms on 23/3 and Dvořák 6 on  6/4. The early evening concert that day features Bent Sørensen who's very good.  Salonen and Pierre-Laurent again on 4/5 and 7/5  first with Debussy and Boulez, then with Bartok and Mahler 6.Veteran Philharmonia emeritus Christoph von Dohnányi conducts Schumann and Mendelssohn on 8/6.  Elgar and  RVW Sea Symphony with Roderick Williams on 29/6.

The Philharmonia's 2017-2018 season kicks off on 28/9 with an unusual concert in which Salonen will conduct  Sibelius 6 with Thorvaldsdottir and Bjarsen.  Since Sibelius so dominates music in Finland, Salonen avoided conducting him until he felt he had something original to express. When Salonen did turn to Sibelius his insights were a revelation. I'll never forget his series at the Barbican a dozen years ago.  Infinitely better that a conductor should approach things like that rather than churn things out on autopilot like some wildly  popular conductors I won't mention.   Equally exciting, Salonen conducts Mahler 3rd on 1st October, which he conducted when the Royal Festival Hall reopened 10 years ago after renovations. What a revelation that was, too, full of energy, light and freshness ! He's conducting Mahler 9 on 30 November, another must go.  Also a must for me, on 8/10 Smetana Ma Vlast with Jakub Hrůša. Lots more, too much to write about. And then it's Xmas all over again.

Hugo Wolf Michelangelo Lieder Stone Records

Latest in Stone Records Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf series is volume 9 featuring Wolf's Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo, with Robert Holl. Holl is a much loved Lieder singer, so it's rewarding to hear him again. Basses have formidably long shelf lives, and Holl's gift for phrasing and interpretation remains worth hearing.  Wolf wrote these songs in 1897, when his health was failing, so in  a sense they are his own "letzte Lieder" inviting comparison with Brahms Vier ernste Gesänge completed the previous year, though the texts chosen differ.  In Wohl denk ich oft,  the poet, translated by Walter Robert-Tornow, compares past to present, Now, he's praised by the world, but fame has come at a price. The last line ruses with a Wolfian flourish, but laced with bitterness.  A slow, penitential  introduction leads into Alles endet, was entstehet.  Holl's autumnal tones contrast with the firmness in Kynoch's piano part, which reinforces the meaning of the song, that if one phase draws to an end, life goes on.  While Brahms finds resolution, of a sort, in love (in a general sense), the text Wolf uses in Fühlt meine Seele  refers to earthly love. Yet as the vocal part ends, the piano part continues, suggesting a kind of afterglow.

Also on this disc are the very early Sechs lieder für eine Frauenstie. Morgentau, written when Wolf was 17, redeems a very slight poem, while in Die Vögel, to a poem by Reinick, the piano part reveals how Wolf's gift for lyrical charm emerged even at this period.  The three last songs in this set, written in 1882, show how quickly Wolf matured. Wiegenlied im Sommer and Weigenlied im Winter are well judged companion pieces and Mausfallen-Sprüchlien is a miniature masterpiece, which Elizabeth Schwarzkopf dearly loved.  Lydia Teuscher sings with pretty clarity, though she doesn't quite catch the menacing subtext Schwarzkopf brings out so well in the phrase"Witt ! Witt!".

There aren't many recordings of Wolf's Gretchen vor dem Andachtsbild der Mater Dolorosa, so this alone is a good reason for getting this disc. The song is  a gentle contemplation that ends with two subtle but important chords that could perhaps benefit from stronger characterization to distance it from the earlier songs, since it comes from Goethe's Faust, and we know the context.  .

Robert Holl sings Der König bei der Krönung and Biterolf from Wolf's Sechs Gedichte von Scheffel, Mörike, Goethe and Kerner.  Although his voice isn't as agile as it once was, he delivers with gravity, which suits meaning. Holl is a king "kampfmüd und sonn'verbrannt" who deserves honour, He is a long-standing stalwart of the Oxford Lieder Festival,so the rapport he has with Sholto Kynoch is very strong. Kynoch adjusts to Holl sensitively, so subtly you'd hardly notice, but adds warmth and depth.  The remaining songs are shared by all four singers, who include Thomas Hobbs and William Berger.  This recording has the ambience of a private, personal recital, being recorded at the church of St John the Evangelist in Oxford, rather than in a more formal studio.  Kynoch's playing is superb, very much an artist in his own right, not just an "accompanist". While the singing isn't megastar quality, this recording is worth getting because it brings out the sincerity in Wolf's music.

.   

Fingal, fantasy and creativity - Schubert and Ossian

Ossian on the banks of the Lora - Francois Gérard 1801

Despite inspiring some of the most sublime music ever written (Mendelssohn) and founding the Scottish tourist industry, Fingal was a fantasy.  Schubert set several texts attributed to Ossian, supposedly a 3rd century Celtic bard.

I've been listening to Loda's Gespenst D150 (1815). Der bleiche, kalte Mond erhob sich im Osten.  Fingal's soldiers sleep, their blue helmets glittering in the moonlight. But Fingal doesn't sleep. He looks toward Sarno's tower (see it in the pic?) . Suddenly ein Windstoß rips down from the mountains. It's the phantom Loda, umringt von seinen Schrecken.  Defiant, Fingal raises his sword. Schwach ist dein Schild, Kraftlos dein Luftbild und dein Schwert. You're a windbag, Loda! The text is heroic declamation - no ornamentation in the piano part, little lyricism in the vocal line.

Fingal defies Loda - Asmus Jacub Carsters 1754-98

Then Loda speaks. Ich dreh' die Schlacht im Felde der Tapfern.....Mein Odem verbreitet den Tod.  Fingal isn't fazed. His phrases are hurled like thunderbolts, Faß die Winde und fleuch! the piano pounds affirmation. Loda advances but Fingal spears him. Der blitzende Pfad des Stahls durchdrang den düstern Geist, and Loda disintegrates in a puff of smoke, and Fingal goes back to his men.  Considering the histrionic potential of this text, Schubert's setting is fairly straightforward. The lines aren't difficult to sing but the song runs around 12 minutes and needs a singer who can do drama without taking the mickey, because the poems were taken very seriously indeed, and were, in many ways, the germ from which grew the whole Romantic revolution .

In an age before widespread media coverage, Scotland and Ireland were wild, unknown regions, beyond civilization.  The Ossian poems captured the imagination because central Europeans could project their own concepts onto an exotic template.  Fingal and Ossian served a function like the gods of Classical Antiquity, as depicted in the 18th century blended with the concept of idealized Primitive Innocents, as in Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  Even if Mendelssohn realized that the poems weren't authentic, by travelling to Fingal's Cave, he was making a pilgrimage of sorts  to the source of an imaginary world where things could happen beyond the bounds of convention.  Names like "Carric-Thura" and "Sora" and "Comhal" thrilled, precisely because central Europeans didn't know what they meant, because they sounded wildly exotic.

This song is unusual because it's not strictly speaking by James Macpherson but by  Edmund, Baron  von Harold, born in Ireland, but resident in Düsseldorf from a very early age. When the craze for Ossian swept Europe, von Harold might have spotted an opportunity to "translate" yet more manuscripts that weren't lost so much as non-existent.  Indeed, it seems that von Harold didn't actually speak Gaelic, so his sudden discovery of Dark Age documents is improbable.  Fingal and Ossian represent the creative spirit, precursors of the 19th century fascination with strange lands and myths. So Loda was an apparition? Loda, Fingal and Ossian served a purpose even if they were fantasy. 

Paris en fête : How to make classical music fun !

How to make classical music fun without dumbing down! Paris en fête,with François-Xavier Roth conducting Les Siècles at the Philharmonie de Paris this week, broadcast live HERE.  Proof that "education" without genuine excellence is counter-productive. This should be compulsory viewing for bureaucrats and audiences who think culture must be forced down grimly like it were poison. Please read my article End the Missionary Position in Classical Music !  This concert was so good that I've listened several times over; presumably many in the audience want more, too.  Roth is a wonderful communicator, whose enthusiasm inspires because he believes in what he does: he doesn't play games and doesn't ever dumb down.

Carmen, first. But "Who is Carmen?"  asks Antoine Pecqeuer,  another born communicator who doesn't need hype to do what he does. Carmen is popular the world over because she's a personality. Carmen lives forever: self centred Don Josés will never understand.  Thus the essence of what opera should be: human emotions in universal, infinite variety. Which is why small minds do get art.  As Pecqeuer reminded us, Carmen bombed at its premiere because it was ahead of its time. Isabelle Druet talks about Carmen so unaffectedly that the Habanera seems an extension of the personality.  Part of the fun, too, is that the Choeur des Grand Ecoles is bigger than you'd ever get on an opera stage. 

Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Délibes, Berlioz, Offenbach, a programme of pieces familiar to French audience  but with a twist to show that French repertoire is not parochial - the Bachannale from Samson et Delila. Pecqeuer talks about French tradition, from Lully to Boulez, and Roth expands. Dance is the foundation for rhythm,  structure and inventiveness. Thus, Un bal from the Symphonie fantastique.   From Berlioz, instrumental experiments and sophisticated colour.  "What does Paris mean to you?", Pecqeuer asks the audience, many of whom are young children. "Le pain" says one, totally matter of fact.  Then, the overture from La vie Parisienne, and the Infernal Gallop from Orphée aux Enfers. By now the audience are really getting into the spirit.  The Infernal Gallop, "the can can", yet again, this time with the audience singing along, Roth speeding up the tempi. Everyone's exhilarated, high on the thrill.  Is classical music elitist or dull?  No way!  Those at this concert will come away feeling that music is a vital part of life.   

Jansons, BRSO Philharmonie Paris : Mahler, Sommer, Rachmaninov

Live from the Philharmonie de Paris, in the Grande Salle Pierre Boulez, Mariss Jansons conducts the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. in a programme they'll be touring in six cities in Europe in the next few weeks.

Highlight, for me was Mahler Kindertotenlieder. Gerhild Romberger substituted at short notice for Waltraud Meier, but I was pleased, since Meier, though she's greatly loved, isn't quite what she was .In this repertoire, Romberger is superb, wiyh the sensitivity that marks a true recitalist. Kindertotenlieder deals with painful  emotions. Can there be any grief more difficult to deal with than the death of children?  The poet, Friedrich Rückert, lost two children in very short succession. He wrote from personal experience when he described looking downwards "auf die Stelle, näher nach der Schwelle, dort, wo würde dein lieb Gesichtchen sein. Wenn du freudenhelle trätest mit herein". Although the songs are so familiar that moment still knocks me out.  You don't make up details like that unless you've been there.  Yet what is striking about these songs is their sincerity.  No overblown pathos but instead an unselfconscious directness evident in the sparseness of the scoring.

As a group, the five songs of Kindertotenlieder form a prototype symphony. Meaning is thus embedded into structure. The children will not develop into adults, the cycle will not grow, but remains suspended in miniature. A solo oboe sets the plaintive tone, colours added with utmost delicacy: glockenspiel, for example, at once child-like and fragile.  Kindertotenlieder is not theatrical.  Romberger's well-modulated delivery evokes the images of darkness and light which suffuse the cycle. She sings with an inwardness that imparts her words with grave grandeur.  The turbulence in the final song is disturbing: symphonies shouldn't end with scherzo-like violence!  But then, neither should children die. Note the piling up of sibilants : Saus, Braus, Haus. Then a kind of transcendence. "Von keinem Sturm erschrecket, von Gottes Hand bedecket."  Rounded tones, tenderness, voice and orchestra cradled in a kind of lullaby.  

Before Kindertotenlieder, Jansons conducted Vladimir Sommer (1921-1997),  Antigone: Overture to the Tragedy of Sophocles (1957).  It's certainly turbulent, strings whirling like demented Furies, the winds screaming long planes of sound that shatter into frantic staccato, trumpets blazing forth.  It's dramatic, as the subject would suggest. Yet single instruments like clarinets and oboes fly above the storm, bassoon and muted trumpets leading into a quieter phase.  Purposeful blocks of sound, the call of a flute, later a small solo trumpet, muted.  An explosion of timpani, a single woodwind, then silence.  Since Sommer is new to me, I  checked out what I could,and was mightily impressed by his Vocal Symphony (1958) for contralto, speaker, choir and orchestra.  

Jansons concluded with Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances (1940)  By turns, colourful, spooky, rich and nostalgic, this brought out some very fine playing from the BRSO. This performance is also available on BR Klassik. 

Stéphane Degout : Poulenc Ravel Saariaho

Stéphane Degout (photo: Julien Benhamou)

Stéphane Degout at the Wigmore Hall, London, in Poulenc and Ravel with Cédric Tiberghien, joined by Matteo Cesari (flute) and Alexis Descharmes (cello) for Saariaho. Thanks to rain and traffic chaos, the house wasn't sold out, as it should have been, but those who attended were there because they can recognize genuine quality. We were well rewarded - excellent programme, delivered with idiomatic stylishness. Degout is one of the most distinctive voices of his type around, the ideal Pelléas, for example, and Tiberghien is a star in his own right, as well as song accompanist. Dream Team .

Poulenc and Apollinaire featured, starting with the much loved early songs from Le bestiare (1919) where serious thoughts are disguised beneath playful images. These songs are funny, but also wistful. "Est-ce que la mort vous oublié, poissons de la mélancholie? " So much for the image of the golden carp, cavorting in unthinking bliss.  Apollinaire's elegant insouciance acts like armour plating, protecting the soul from the cruelty of the world.  The door to the hotel in Montparnasse (1945) is decorated with plants that will neither flower nor fruit.  There are "raies sur lesquelles il ne faut pas que l'on marche" - thresholds that must not be crossed.  "O, bon petit poète un peu bête trop blond " . Degout shaped that wonderful short phrase, bringing out its ironic anguish. the poet is pretty, and means well, but will always be a tourist, living on the surface, never connecting to reality. There's much more to these songs than charm, Degout brought out their painful undertones. 

Degout and Tiberghien let Apollinaire himself speak, playing a recording of the poet himself reciting. A tiny fragment, preserved on grainy tape, a ghostly but powerful presence.  "Joy and Melancholy" said Degout, "what Poulenc liked in Apollinaire". Thus we listened to the Calligrammes (1948), epigrammatic miniatures that seem torn from greater dramas beyond our knowledge.  In Aussi bien que les cigales, the piano part evokes the stultifying heat of the Midi. where people seem hypnotized by complacency. "Que vous ne savez pas vous éclairer ni voir" sang Degout with a poignant mix of anger and sorrow.  Lest we, too, be lulled by these moments of direct confrontation, Degout and Tiberghien launched into the livelier Quatre poèmes de Guillaume Apollinaire (1931)  and Banalités (1940). In photographs,  people pose and smile, masking whatever might really be happening. Apollinaire and Poulenc create snapshots, freeze framing human experience in tiny, concentrated fragments. It's up to the sensitive interpreter to develop them into wider scenarios.  Alors, Avant le cinéma, where the text plays with words like "cinéma", "ciné" and "cinématographie".   Degout paused, briefly, to highlight the irony.  "Aussi, mon Dieu faut-il avoir du goût"   ie, some folks don't care about what's really going on as long as they can be seen to have taste.  

Alexis Descharmes, the cellist, introduced Kaija Saariaho's Cendres (1998) for alto flute, cello and piano. Saariaho's aim in this piece was to create musical tension by "sometimes bringing the instruments as close together as possible in all compositional aspects (such as pitch, rhythm, dynamics, articulation, colour), sometimes letting each of them express the music in their own most idiomatic way". The result is a well-balanced flow which generates colour and movement. The flute cries: is it the wailing of a wild bird  ? Elaborate patterns in the piano part, the cello part full of invention.  The piece is lucid, yet elusive by turns. Hearing Cendres in context with Poulenc and Apollinaire underlined the idea of listening simultaneously on different levels.  The joy of mixed programmes like this which stretch the listener's experience!   

Then, just as we began to appreciate the emotional sophistication of this programme, Degout and Tiberghien switched away, elusively, to Ravel.  Chansons madécasses (1925-6) made use of the same forces as Cendres, Degout singing withn the same ensemble, so Ravel seemed to evolve out of Cendres as if a strange, exotic creature was being conjured up by magic. Nahandove, "L'oiseau nocturne a comencé ses cris".  Delicious  sensuality, yet also a tease. Degout emphasized the menace in the second song Aoua!, where the innocence of the islanders is betrayed . "Méfiez-vous des blancs, habitants du rivage".  Promises poisoned by slavery and death.  Just as Poulenc ended Calligrammes with a warning about complacency,  Ravel ends with the image of an island girl who doesnt think about much beyond her immediate self.  In  Histoires naturelles (1906),  the peacock, the cricket, the swan , the kingfisher and the guinea-fowl are beautifully observed nature portraits, yet they share something in common with the creatures in Poulenc and Apollinaire's Le bestiare because they are also oblique comments on the human condition.  

Please also see my piece on Poulenc Apollinaire Les Bleuets

Decoding Chinese New Year

Today, the first day of the Lunar New Year, heralds the Year of the Rooster. Let's hope it's not  a cock-up like last year.  To bring good luck, people surround themselves with auspicious images, like plum blossom branches, tangerines, and calligraphy.  Symbolism everywhere !  Fish, fruit, boats and babies - all harbingers of prosperity.  But sometimes the symbolism can be more subtle, particularly in situations where being oblique is safer than being direct.

The poster at left shows infants carrying a jade object. It was made soon after the overthrow of the Qing Emperors in 1911.  The jade object is a ju-i, a sceptre carried by monarchs, symbolizing power.  The phrase "holding the ju-i" means taking responsibility.  So when the toddlers, symbolizing hope, hold the sceptre, the message is "celebrate the new Republic".  A hundred years ago, illiteracy was common, so learning was spread through folk arts like this, with symbolic meaning. New Year posters are a kind of narrative tracking  the dreams of ordinary people, mostly poor and disadvantaged. Fat kids mean there won't be famine, multiple babies mean that some, at least, will survive.  When little girls are depicted, as well as, or in place of boys, the message is the New Woman, a symbol of modern China and equal rights.  Later still, the infants are shown holding cars, spaceships and radios, new symbols of modernization and prosperity.  Of course there are propaganda elements, but for ordinary people such things meant hope. Nowadays people are so materialistic that they forget how things might have felt from the perspective of the poor.

Below a poster which I had trouble "reading" but which a friend decoded. This time the baby sits playing with valuable antique objects, way beyond the reach of humble peasants. Bonsai, porcelain, peonies, lap shek and ornate carved stands - the preserve of the rich and educated. The boy is playing with a tray garden, similar to Japanese symbolic gardens where the universe is depicted in simple sand and stone.  The kid has a red mark on his forehead, a Buddhist mark of good fortune.  What we're seeing then is a celebration of traditional cultural values.  But what's he got by his genitals (in peeing distance) ? As my friend pointed out, a car, a train and a helicopter, hidden among the pavilions.  What do these symbols mean, in this context ?  There were many good reasons for Chinese people to be wary of western and Soviet encroachment.  So perhaps the poster means, "Don't rush to discard your own heritage".

Sadly this poster must have been made before the Red Guards  demanded the abolition of all culture. "Smash the Olds" was their slogan, the denial of the past, and all learning, to serve the political agendas of their present.  "Alt facts" before the term was invented. Some things don't change, east or west. 

Henry-Louis de La Grange, a heartfelt personal tribute

Henry-Louis de La Grange (26 May 1924 - 27 January 2017) 

Henry-Louis de La Grange died this morning. He was such a vivacious personality, so full of positive energy, that even though he'd been unwell for a long time, it just doesn't seem possible that he's gone.  His monument will be his encyclopedic scholarship on Gustav Mahler: a lifetime's  devotion in the service of knowledge.  Mahler interpretation would be in the dark ages were it not for HLG's insights into Mahler the man, his ideas and his influences. Yet HLG was also a Renaissance man, fascinated by many subjects, always open to new perspectives. Whole books could be written about him, and his family, yet HLG was always self-effacing. Despite all the honours around him, what meant most to him was receiving his honorary doctorate for services to others. There will be many public tributes, but for me, HLG was a very special person because he always cared about other people, no matter what their standing in the world.  His unselfishness and idealism made him what he was.

HLG's father, Amaury de La Grange, was an early aviator and later a Senator who campaigned for aeronautical innovation. He was a minister in the French government in 1940, detained by the invading Nazis until 1945.  HLG's mother, Emily Sloane, was an American heiress, who threw herself passionately into the artistic milieu of early 20th century Paris.  HLG had a  photograph of a toddler in a sailor suit, hidden behind coats behind his bedroom door. "Man Ray", he said, "my mother commissioned this when Man Ray was unknown and penniless." The kid in the photo was HLG himself.  The family's chateau in the Nord was appropriately bequeathed by HLG's father, becoming in 1962 a pilot training school named after Amaury: the family believed in noblesse oblige, the idea that a person's true worth depends on how life is lived.  Returning to Paris after the war, HLG studied with Alfred Cortot (and became Cortot's executor). His Damascus moment, however, was hearing Mahler's Symphony no 9. From then on, Mahler, though not to the exclusion of other pursuits. Forty year later, the Mediatheque Musicale Mahler acquired the manuscript of the symphony.  It was kept in an underground storeroom, behind many iron security doors. A few of us were invited to view it. Everyone wanted to have a close look, but I held back. My reward was being above to see HLG's face light up with unalloyed bliss as the volume was brought out and the pages  opened.

HLG was a gregarious man, who made everyone feel special: that was part of his charm. But he was also a very private person, who didn't reveal himself easily. On HLG's 80th birthday, he was in his living room when his secretary, Anne, came in.with a phone. "I don't take calls here," he said.  "You will take this one," she said. "It's Elliott". Elliott Carter.  Next thing a jovial voice came from the other end of the line: "How are you doing, young man!"  Some years later, HLG wanted me to meet Elliott Carter so he wrote a letter of introduction, in the old fashioned way. Carter was surrounded by BBC big wigs etc. but he pushed them aside and kissed me heartily. "Any friend of HLG is a friend of mine!" A whole world of graciousness that seems lost today.

Although HLG was a celebrity, there were only 100 people at his 80th birthday party, not at all a big public bash, and these included his personal staff, including his cook.  Guest of honour was Pierre Boulez. They'd been close friends since the late 1940's even before Domaine Musicale days.  Boulez's Mahler came direct from source, long before HLG's books were published, long before Boulez's recordings were made. Neither man was given to surface appearances: both had that French thing for white-hot intellectual intensity, a trait which Mahler himself seems to have had too, even though he wasn't French.  Incidentally, it was at that party, over Le Chatelet. overlooking the Seine, where I caught an equally private side of Boulez. A difficult piece had been commissioned for the occasion, which required great technique. Afterwards, the young musician and I were chatting, half hidden in an alcove. Who should pop up but Boulez, making a point of congratulating the young player and offering encouragement.  No one else was there, but the player and me, we'll never forget.

So much more, but HLG was so private. But I owe him. Without his kindness and support I would not be doing what I'm doing today, in several ways.  He was a father figure to me and a mentor. Sometime back, I was invited to the Paris launch of Jason Starr's film For the Love of Mahler . I couldn't go and the DVD didn't play region 2. But  a dear friend got it for me, and I wept.  It's a wonderfully moving portrait of HLG, exactly as he was, someone so unique that there'll never be anyone like him again.

Aldeburgh Music Festival 2017

The roof at the Britten Studio, Snape

The 2017 Aldeburgh Music Festival marks 70 years of the festival, and 50 years at the Maltings. How time flies. Roger Wright has been Executive Director since September 2015, and management has gone from strength to strength.  This year, there's no Artistic Director as such, though there's a team for Artistic Planning. Snape is now a thriving centre with grand plans.

This year's keynote opera is Britten's A Midsummers Night's Dream, keynote of the first season at Snape, which premiered at Aldeburgh's Jubilee Hall in 1960.  The staging will be directed and designed by Netia Jones, so look forward to an imaginative presentation.  Her staging of Oliver Knussen's Sendak operas, Where the Wild Things Are and Higgelty Piggelty Pop! were brilliant - read more about them HERE.  A Midsummer Night's Dream is magical, ideally suited to  transformation by lighting effects and video  illusion. This could well be the best Aldeburgh opera staging in years.    Soloists include Iestyn Davies, Sophie Bevan, and Matthew Rose.  Ryan Wigglesworth conducts. Tickets will disappear fast - Friends booking starts today, public booking on 7th February.  Don't wait.  On 22 June, there's a screening of the Hollywood film version with music by Erich Korngold, on which please read more HERE. 

La Voix Humaine (15th to 17th June), Poulenc's setting of Cocteau's monodrama, a tour de force for solo soprano, here performed by Claire Booth. Intriguingly, this will take place "in a private house near Snape", a suitably atmospheric setting, in a semi-staging by David Pountney. Another must! Again, please read more HERE.  Britten's "Vaudeville" The Golden Vanity, a morality tale about an outsider at sea, gets a rare outing on 17/6, heard with Britten's The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard  and other new shorts, performed by Camblata, young adult male voices of the National Youth Choir.

Countertenors and Benjamin Britten, who brought the voice type back into prominence. Andrew Watts features at this year's Festival, with Olga Neuwirth's Maudite soit la guerre, A Film Music War Requiem (UK premiere) with other Neuwirth pieces with the London Sinfonietta  on 10/6 followed by Hommage à Klaus Nommi, a "song cycle like no other – an anarchic, neon-lit encounter between Purcell, Weimar cabaret, bubblegum pop and The Wizard of Oz" and "A Countertenor Song Book" on 12/6 featuring works by Bach, Handel, Olga Neuwirth, Colin Matthews, Tippett, Torsten Rauch and Raymond Yiu.  More Neuwirth throughout this year's Festival, enjoy.

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra visits Aldeburgh again, this time with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla in two conerts on 17th and 18th June - Beethoven 3, Stravinsky Petroushka, Tchaikovsky, Britten and Jorg Widmann. The man himself is playing clarinet (Mozart) with the Belcea Quartet on 10/6. Oliver Knussen's O Hotortogisu receives its world premiere on 23/6 with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, hopefully with Knussen himself at the baton, together with another new work by Harrison Birtwistle, Chorales from a Toy Shop, and pieces by Stravinsky and Jo Kondo.

Plenty of choral music this year, with Vox Luminis,  EXAUDI and others, including a programme with music by Nishrat Khan. The highlight could well be Vox Luminis Purcell King Arthur on 22/6.  As always, lots of baroque and early music, Lieder and piano music - Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piotr Andrewski, Huw Watkins and others. The closing concert will be Britten Billy Budd, from Opera North, with Roderick Williams, Alan Oke and Brindley Sherratt.

Quicklink to the programme booklet HERE.

Metzmacher Elbphilharmonie K A Hartmann Shostakovich

At the Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg,  Ingo Metzmacher conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a programme that might have seemed innocent when it was planned but nowe is disturbingly prescient: Karl Amadeus Hartmann Symphony no 1 "Versuch eines Requiem" with Shostakovich Symphony no 11 "The year 1905", both completed at the height of the Cold War, but with very different perspectives.

The Elbphilhamonie broadcast this concert internationally, online, a harbinger of good things to come. Hamburg invested heavily in the project, realizing that its potential is far greater than for the city alone. While the Philharmonie Berlin is primarily a home for the Berliner Philharmoniker (though other orchestras use it), the Elbphilharmonie could be a game changer, affecting the whole demographic of the business.

This concert also showcased the hall's superb acoustic (read more here).  Anton Webern's Sechs Stücke für grosses Orchester op. 6 (1909) opened the concert. A large orchestra is needed, not for volume, but for extended palette.  Webern sought to express "Klangfarbenmelodie": myriad details of colour and tonality.  Hence the markings "sehr langsam", and "sehr mäßig", unhurried traverses that let the music unfold, revealing subtle shading.  Metzmacher's tempi were by no means slow, but meticulously well judged.  I hardly dared breathe lest the spell be broken. Exquisite playing: a single chord on  harp, muffled drumstrokes, a triplet on bassoon, all perfectly in place and in cohesion. The Viennese are taken for granted in standard repertoire, but here they were revealed as infinitely better musicians than popular cliché might suggest.  On the wide platform of the Elbphilharmonie, there's a lot of space between players, so they're not constrained by being cramped together. They can probably listen to each other for one thing. Sound moves ambiently with this extra "breathing space", quite a distinctive feature of this new auditorium. 

Gerhild Romberger photo Rosa Frank, Vienna Philharmonic

Ingo Metzmacher is the conductor of choice when it comes to K A Hartmann. He's recorded the complete symphonies and with such insight that it's essential listening for anyone interested, not just in Hartmann but also in his period.  Hartmann began this piece in 1936 as a response to the increasing madness of the Third Reich. The first movement is a miserere based on the poem I Sit and Look Out by Walt Whitman. "I sit and look out. upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame"  – men and women suffering, domestically and in war, and tyranny, a famine at sea where sailors cast lots as to who should be killed and eaten that the others might live a little longer.  Yet perhaps the true horror is that the poet can observe but not act. " I sitting, look out upon,/ See, hear, and am silent."  The soloist was Gerhild Romberger, whose powerful, dark timbre articulated suppressed anguish. She's one of the most interesting in her Fach, since she also conveys tenderness and sympathy.  In 2014 I heard her sing O Mensch in Mahler's Symphony no 3 with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra,  truly plaintive, as if she were weeping for the death of the old world and giving birth to the new. Hartmann doesn't set every word in the poem, but his orchestration leaves us in no doubt what's happening. An explosive introduction, a fusillade of trumpets, trombone and percussion: horrors intruding on the isolation of the solo voice.

The second movement "Frühling" references Whitman's When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, mourning the assassination of Lincoln and the American Civil War, but the text is oblique, using the image of a falling star to express the idea of loss.  Hartmann's setting is even less wordy, avoiding Whitman's syntax, which is even trickier in German.  Despite the barrage of sound in the introduction and background, what stands out is the passage where the piano plays quietly, its fragile memory evolving into "starlight" in the strings and winds, the wavering line then taken up by soprano trumpets.  Violin and cello dialogue in the opening theme of the third movement, the piano mediating between them. Gradually, other sections in the orchestra join in – oboes, bassoons and tuba and the strings in succession. The tam tam crashes : reminding us that this relative harmony cannot last.

"Tränen " sings Romberger three times, reflecting the first line of Whitman's Tears.  "O, Wer ist dieser Geist?" she cries, and an apparition materializes in the orchestra, brass blaring, strings screaming, timpani crashing. Romberger's lines growling at the bottom of her register, rise suddenly to the top: she isn't fazed, but totally in control. Again, a quiet passage on piano introduces an unearthly mood. "O, Schatten!" sings Romberger with tenderness.  The shade seems stilled in the light of day.  Metzmacher shapes the long orchestral lines so they pulsate with ominous menace,  gathering strength to strike again.  The night falls. Romberger sings "Tränen", as if falling into hypnosis.  Muted bassoons  then screaming chords of alarm.

Muffled snare drums introduce the Epilogue, a prayer "Bitte", and a return to the apocalyptic traumas of the first movement.  Here the text comes from Whitman's Pensive on Her Dead Gazing, where Mother Earth looks upon corpses in the battlefield. No Valkyries, no Valhalla.  The vocal line is intoned, not lyrical, Sprechstimme, not song.  Then, suddenly, Romberger unleashes her full mezzo power. in a long wail of protest.  Her line becomes incantational again.  "O meiner Toten" she sings. Relentless, repeating figures in the orchestra, then a cataclysmic explosion, the echoes of which carry on into silence. I've written about Hartmann many times – search this site – because in so many ways he's more than "just" a composer but a prophet who intuited the trauma of existence and realized that music is can express human decency even in the presence of evil.  His Symphony no 1 (completed in 1955 towards the end of a long career) bears the subtitle "Versuch eines Requiem", towards a Requiem because the horrors aren't over, and may yet get worse than we can possibly imagine.  No time yet for the resolution of a requiem.  Much respect to Metzmacher, who knows Hartmann's music so well and why it is vitally important. Congratulations too, to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Elbphilhamonie for having the courage to do this piece when feel-good superficiality might be more popular.

Hartmann's Symphony no 1 and Shostakovich's Symphony no 11 were completed at about the same time in the mid 1950's, but the two pieces are radically different.  While Shostakovich had to be careful not to annoy the Soviets, he was a public figure, unlike the far more uncompromising Galina Ustvolskaya, who had to play along with the regime to survive. His Symphony no 11 is a public piece, which won him  the Lenin Prize and great popularity.  The subject matter is unashamedly patriotic, commemorating the year 1905 and 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.  Metzmacher and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra gave a suitably magnificent account, so vivid and full of drama that you could forget that, at heart, this is cinema music as opposed to, say, reflective art.   Is it a soundtrack to an invisible movie? Perhaps we're supposed to suspend judgement and thrill to the images of violence and turbulence.  But where do such feelings lead? After hearing Hartmann, it's not so easy to blank things out. 

A frosty morning in middle England

Photo credit : Roger Thomas

Wigmore Hall Fortepiano Schubert : Georg Nigl Andreas Staier

The Wigmore Hall complete Schubert song series continued with a recital by Georg Nigl and Andreas Staier.  Staier's a pioneer, promoting the use of fortepiano in Schubert song.  In Schubert's time, modern concert pianos didn't exist. Schubert and his contemporaries would have been familiar with a lighter, brighter sound. Over the last 30 years, we've come to better understand Schubert and his world through the insights Staier has given us. His many performances, frequently with Christoph Prégardien at the Wigmore Hall, have always been highlights.  For this recital, he was joined by Georg Nigl, an Austrian baritone, who once was a soprano soloist with the Wiener Sängerknaben. Perhaps that background shaped Nigl's finely detailed approach, which suited Staier's restrained but expressive style.  In a programme focused on mainly early Schubert, the balance was nicely poised.

Early Schubert, though, isn't always showcase material, except perhaps to devotees, who relish it dearly.  Schubert's Andenken D99 (1814) will always be outshone by Beethoven's setting of  the same poem, though on its own terms it's a delicate piece of youthful innocence.  Nigl and Staier presented a set of six Schubert settings of Friedrich Matthisson (1767-1831) which Schubert set between 1813 and 1814, almost certainly being aware of Beethoven' settings of Matthisson.  Schubert's admiration for Beethoven knew no bounds, but, apart from Andenken, he was cautious enough to set poems other than those Beethoven chose. The  Matthisson songs Nigl and Staier performed included lively spook tales like Die Schatten D50, Geistenähe D100 and Der Geistertanz D116, but the rather more sophisticated poetry of Der Abend (Purpur malt die Tannenhügel.) D108 inspired a lyricism which clearly suggests Schubert's idiomatic style.

Georg Nigl, photo: Bernd Uhlig

The Matthisson settings were followed by six settings of Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty (1748-1760), whom Brahms was to set so well. Schubert's Hölty settings include An den Mond D193, but here we heard the lovely Die Mainacht D194 (1815),  Frühlingslied D398 (1816), and Die Knabenzeit D400 (1816) where the instrumental line dances with cheerful vigour. Staier's playing was meticulously lucid, never over-dominant, and responsive to Nigl, who has an attractive voice but may have been unwell. He looked flushed.  We all get sick sometimes, and singers are no different.  
At moments his voice filled out well.  The words "Freud' ist überall" from Erntelied D 424 (1816) soared nicely, suggesting how Nigl might sound when on form.

With Abschied "Über die Berg zieht fort" D475 (1816) after the interval, Nigl's voice at last blossomed. The song is dear to him, as he said after the recital, repeating it with even greater poise as an encore.  The gentle cadences in this song revealed the richness of Nigl's voice at the lower end of his register. Staier shaped the delicate triplets and firm single chords with plangent finesse.  Staier's recording of Schubert's Mayrhofer songs with Christoph Prégardien , made in 2001, is still an essential choice for any Schubert lover, so it was interesting to hear him with Nigl, who, though a baritone,  has a lighter timbre than many.  Apart from Abschied and Nachstück D D672 (1819), Staier and Nigl performed Orest und Tauris D548 (1817) Erlafsee D685 (1817) and Beim Winde D669 (1819).  Staier also recorded Schubert Seidl settings with Prégardien, so it was a delight to hear him again, now with Nigl, in old favourites like Der Wanderer am Mond  D870 (18126) Das Zügenglöcklein D 871 (1826), Am Fester D878 (1826) and Irdisches Glück D 866/4 (1828). These late songs, though technically demanding, are also easier on the ear than some of the early songs, thus always welcome.  

Nigl and Staier concluded with two settings of Franz von Schober, Schubert's raffish companion, Genügsamkeit D143 (1815) and Schiffers Schiedelied D 910 (1827), the driving "ocean waves" in the piano part sounding rather livelier on fortepiano than they would on some keyboards.  Heavy pedalling makes heavy weather ! The singer shouldn't drown. Neither song is a masterpiece, though they are worth knowing. As a friend observed "Genügsamkeit" doesn't mean "contentment" but a double edged feeling of having "enough" to be happy with, though you wouldn't mind having more.

This review also appears in Opera Today

Simon Rattle LSO Turnage Mahler Barbican

This was no "ordinary" event! When Simon Rattle conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in Mark-Anthony Turnage and Mahler at the Barbican, a statement was being made, of much wider significance than the concert itself.  Consider the context.  Though he formally becomes the LSO's Music Director later this year, their association goes way back. Rattle is perhaps the greatest mover and shaker that British music has experienced since Sir Henry Wood.  His whole life has been dedicated to a love of music that goes beyond conducting, and reaches all aspects of cultural experience.

This concert was mega-profile for many reasons. This was the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Remembering 'in memoriam Evan Scofield' , a joint commission between the LSO, the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Turnage is one of the great British composers of our time, and also international, given his long association with the US and his interest in jazz.  Remembering was written about a promising young man whose life was cut short by cancer at the age of only 25.  Before he died, however, Scofield asked that those who survived him might have the adventures he missed out on. By scattering his ashes, those who loved him could travel with him where he could not have otherwise gone: imagination transcending the annihilation of death. A metaphor for creativity, whose results live beyond their maker.

Rattle and Turnage, when they were young

Remembering is a long way from the wildness of Greek and the audacity of Anna Nicole. It resembles Frieze, but may well mark a new period in Turnage's development. It's a very personal work, since the composer knew the dedicatee extremely well. Turnage and John Scofield, the jazz guitarist, Evan's father, collaborated on many projects, including Scorched in 2004.  Written in four movements, Remembering resembles a symphony. The first movement is fast and angular, with whips of jerky expression typical  of Turnage's funky jazz-influenced style.  Suddenly the pace speeds up and the movement ends abruptly.  Elongated lines mark the second movement, purposefully dragging as if it were possible to hold back time. Metallic percussion, the cool, pure chill of high flutes.   Quiet. ominous rumblings underpin the sharp protests in the scherzo, which cuts out abruptly, like the previous movements, its mood left hanging in the air.  Cello and viola duet in the finale. The pace is elegaic, deliberate, cut by a moment in which the orchestra suddenly flares up with sudden energy, before retreating into passages of great refinement and beauty.  Muted trumpets, elegant winds: ultimately the mood is transcendence, far from the jerky rhythms of the world. Two "hammerblows" struck on tubular bells.  The third is beyond our ken.

It was in context with Turnage's Remembering that the Mahler 6th performance which followed can be appreciated.  Audiences are used to listening from recordings, but musicians hear from the experience of concert performance.  Rattle has been conducting Mahler for forty years,  and was, indeed, instrumental in bringing Mahler to widespread public attention in this country. The LSO have also been playing Mahler since way back, under numerous different conductors.  On this occasion, Rattle and the LSO approached Mahler through the prism of Turnage's Remembering, which being new,  would have taken more rehearsal and study time.

This "Tragic" was tragic, but also non-tragic. The hammerblow didn't cut him short – yet – and he went on to greater heights.  Andante-Scherzo worked well in this performance, reinforcing the idea of memory.  The "Alma Theme" represents happiness, summer, nature, all those good things that make life worth living. When the chill descends, the iciness is all the more poignant, having looked back on what will not come again. A beautifully poised andante, the LSO playing with a tenderness that takes more skill tio achieve than big, noisy outbursts.  If music can be as sublime as this, it can never be extinguished, it lives on forever, whatever happens to the individuals playing it at any given point in time. Thus the grotesque absurdity of death which the Scherzo represents is but a setback on a longer journey. The fierce driving passages, and the wailing brass give way to a macabre dance,and eventually to much sparer figures from which the Alma theme can be perceived, before the screams start again.  The Finale didn't feel depressing, but why should it have to?  I liked the punch with which Rattle and the LSO concluded : more defiance than defeat. Things are not alright when someone dies, but if you know your Mahler, you know that the end is not the end.

Last week, Rattle and the LSO announced plans for a future which gives prominence to new British music. Given that London might miss out on a world-class concert hall, and that Paris and Berlin might supplant London as a centre for excellence, focusing on British music might be compensation, up to a point.  This season at the Barbican sees several premieres of new British work, Turnage's Remembering being the high-profile first.  But whether our politicians like it or not, classical music is a European thing, a  culture of such richness and depth  that it would be churlish to blank it out in favour of insularity.  As Rattle also said last week, the point is that London concert halls just don't have the capacity to do good music justice. It's not just a question of acoustics.  At the Barbican and Royal Festival Hall, players are squashed together like sardines. What the public doesn't see is that backstage working conditions aren't up to scratch, either.  Read my pieces on why we need a world class concert hall in London HERE. 

This concert was also the first full concert-length live broadcast by the London Symphony Orchestra, which has done podcasts before but nothing quite as high profile as this. Through the Digital Concert Hall. which originated in the Rattle era,  the Berliner Philharmoniker reaches audiences anywhere, breaking down insularity, benefiting all who care about excellence.  Musician-led broadcasts are a good way forward, keeping profits in house and breaking the artistic dominance of third parties.  Perhaps equally important, audiences get to listen the way musicians listen, through whole concerts and in context.  Listen to the Rattle LSO Turnage Mahler concert on medici tv and on the LSO YouTube channel (which flopped out for part of the live broadcast).  

Wigmore Hall Sunday Muriel Herbert songs

An opportunity to hear a very unusual programme this Sunday at the Wigmore Hall. The Royal Academy of Music Song Circle presents the songs of Muriel Herbert (1897-1983),  a composer of promise whose career was restricted by the circumstances of her life and times.  Tickets are still available, HERE.

Although Herbert was born into  a large, musical family, her father died when she was 12, leaving the family in poverty. Her mother fell into depression. Yet Muriel started writing music in her teens and was ambitious enough to get accepted into the Royal College of Music in 1917, then in the grip of Charles Villiers Stanford, a man not given to innovation or to female emancipation. In front of all the other students, Stanford made he play, from sight, a Beethoven piano concerto arranged for two pianos. These days that would be deemed intimidation. Luckily, Herbert knew the arrangement well. Then, as now, talent alone isn't enough : women have to be extra capable simply to be able to be allowed into consideration. After her brief, unhappy marriage ended, Herbert returned to England from France, but not to London and spent the rest of her life in relative obscurity.  Fortunately her daughter, the biographer Claire Tomalin, preserved her manuscripts. In 2008, Herbert's songs were recorded by James Gilchrist, Ailish Tynan and David Owen Norris. This is the CD to get, from which I've taken the biographical information.

The Academy Song Circle (Nika Gorič, Katie Stevenson, Nicholas Mogg, Michael Mofidian, Yi-shing Cheng and Michael Pandya) are performing a selection of Herbert's songs including the lovely How Beautiful is the Night (1918) to a poem by Southey. and the  set of Children's Songs which Herbert wrote in 1938, when her own children were young.   Playful songs, setting a popular contemporary poem : songs about tadpoles, Jack Spratt, gypsies. Escapism, or the multitasking of a mother who wanted to write music but had to earn a living and raise children on her own. Or memories?  While Herbert's mother was giving birth to her, the doctor played Schubert,  Brahms and Schumann on the piano in the parlour.  Herbert set modern poets as well as old , like Robert Bridges When Death to either shall come, (1923) which has an early 20's feel.  

The Academy Song Circle perform Herbert's songs in context.  One of her most beautiful songs  Renouncement,, a setting of a Victorian poet,  was written after Herbert fell in love with Roger Quilter, not realizing that he was gay.  How she must have idolized father figures!  The wistfulness in this song masks genuine, personal anguish.  Herbert met James Joyce in her youth, and set one of his poems too, which isn't on this programme. Quilter's own songs are heard somewhat to Herbert's disadvantage as they are major works, like Love's Philosophy and Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal.  Several of Charles Villiers Stanfird's songs are also on this programme, showing that Herbert wasn't dominated by him. He had status, money and power. She didn't. But she did her own thing as best as she was able. 

Mozart 250 Classical Opera Wigmore Hall

Ian Page and Classical Opera reached 1767 in their Mozart 250 project, the ambitious series planned to cover 27 years of Mozart's music and influences. 1767 was the year in which the young Mozart began to write more substantial and ambitious work, so this programme at the Wigmore Hall, London, was a good taster for what is to come later in the series. Read Claire Seymour's review of the concert HERE in Opera Today.  

Coming up next, my review of the latest recital in the Wigmore Hall's complete Schubert song series,  with Georg Nigl and Andreas Staier