Simon Bainbridge, Rebecca Saunders : music as sculpture

The joy of being in cities like London is that there's so much on, you're spoiled for choice. Last Saturday alone there were 6 different good things on offer. The one I wish I'd been at was the Wigmore Hall where the Arditti Quartet and the Hilliard Ensemble played several new works, including Simon Bainbridge's Tenebrae.

This is what the Times, said, "a tough but atmospheric work that appeared to take its cue from the English title — Shadows — of the Paul Celan poem it set. Certainly the use of silence, and of strings to cushion the gentle, overlapping chanting of the voices on eerie chords, seemed to suggest an “otherworld” shadowing the human. I just wished that the voices had something more interesting to do. All the extrovert break-outs came from the strings." The Times is not the place to go to read about new music but at least that helps a bit. I wish I'd been there! Bainbridge is one of the most original current British composers, quite different from the "religious" crowd like Finnissy, MacMillan, Harvey, Tavener.

Bainbridge previously set Primo Levi, extremely well, in Ad Ora Incerta and Four Primo Levi Settngs, so Paul Celan should follow naturally. Indeed, I've always thought of Bainbridge in terms of Paul Celan, so I'm kicking myself for missing this. Last night I was listening to the recording, about which I'll write more later.

Magnus Lindberg said “music is making notes vibrate in space”. There’s also the often-quoted phrase describing architecture as “frozen music”. Hence, Simon Bainbridge’s Music Space Reflection addresses itself to Daniel Liebeskind’s innovative building for the Imperial War Museum North. The music was created to be heard in that building, the audience encouraged to look up and around them, even to move around to appreciate how movement adapted what they heard. The idea, I think, is that the listener can process sound in relation to space, and respond to surroundings in a musical way. I heard it in the flat, conventional auditorium at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which almost certainly limited the experience. There were wide screen projections of images like glass and metal – nothing more explicit – but these were distracting rather than helpful.

The orchestra played in four equally balanced blocks across the platform, amplified sensitively by microphones and speakers in unusual formations, such as above and behind the audience. The resonances were quite bizarre, genuinely imparting a sense that sound was coming from four dimensions, and adding a low, rumble giving a depth of sound not otherwise possible from conventional instruments. It felt as though we were hearing the very pulse of the earth.

The music unfolds against a deep electronic deep reverberation, moving swiftly in different directions, sometimes creating angular dissonances, sometimes rotating in whimsical flurries. Sometimes the sounds turn on a sudden pivot, changing direction as if they were rounding corners. You don’t need visual clues, but you can “feel” glass and metal in the clear, sharp textures, solid forms against transparent. This is very expressive music, though not at all “programmatic”: it’s far too imaginative and quirky. Just as architecture is a means of giving shape to “empty” space, even silence is part of Bainbridge’s concept. At the end, sounds gradually dissipate, but even then, there’s a structure to the way they fade into the computer-enhanced hum, so understated that only sensitive ears can pick it up. In nature, too, there are many sounds almost imperceptible to human ears, but they are there, nonetheless, and affect us subliminally.

Driving home I listened to BBC Radio 3's Hear and Now programme on the Berlin Avant Garde. Quite interesting speakers though I'm not sure about the music. One piece reminded me of many hours spent in an intensive care unit praying the machines didn't deviate from relentless hum because of what that might mean. But forward it to 22 minutes, when Rebecca Saunders comes on. Blauuw, written for the trumpeter Marco Blauuw is a wonderful piece, so listen before it goes off air on 14th.

Music is invisible, but it's created by sound waves and vibrations which are physical phenomena, and affected by where they are made. Saunders's music is extremely physical. She uses sound like probes, exploring the space around it: sound waves expand or retract differently in different environments, subtly adapting to the space in which they are heard. At the Proms in 2009, her Traces was performed. Read about it HERE If you think in conventional thematic development, it seems formless, til you realize that what's she's doing is using music to "feel" a way around ideas, like a blind person might use their fingers to explore what they can't see. It's a whole new way of thinking about music, extremely sensual and physical but in a subtle way that grows out of space rather than existing in limbo. Rebecca Saunders sculpts with sound, the way a sculptor might shape a piece of marble, following the natural form inherent in the stone.

THIS is where I went Saturday night - Britten Sinfonia at the QRH. I went because the programme was very well chosen, designed to showcase Elliott Carter's Dialogues, from 2005, an important work that has been recorded 3 times already as far as I know. It's a very important work in the vast Carter canon, and needs to be known by anyone wanting to understand Carter's work. Performance was good enough, but the last time I heard this live it was conducted by Pierre Boulez, Carter's friend for over 50 years, who's one of the best Carter interpreters of all. The Britten Sinfonia is a good orchestra, but the booklet presentation could have been better.

Der müde Soldat

Ein kahles Mädchen. Heckenblaß entlaubt.
Sie steht am Weg, ich gehe weit vorbei.
So stehen sie alle Reih' an Reih'
und Haupt an Haupt.

Was weiss ich noch von heiligen Gewässern,
was von des Dorfes Abendrot.
Ich bin gespickt mit tausend Messern
und müde... müde von dem vielen Tod.

Der Kinder Augen sind wie goldner Regen,
in ihren Händen glüht die Schale Wein.
Ich will mich unter Bäumen schlafen legen
und kein Soldat mehr sein.

A bald girl, white as a ghost. She was standing in my way. I had to go past. And they were all there, standing row on row, head to head.

What do I know of holy waters, or the village sunset. I've been pricked by a thousand daggers. I'm tired - tired of too much death.

The children's eyes are like golden rain. In their hands glow goblets of wine. I willl go and lie under the trees to sleep and be no more a soldier.

A poem written by Li Po, a thousand years ago about China, translated in the 19th century by a German poet, set as a song by Viktor Ullman in 1943. In Theriesenstadt.  My translation from German

Rite of Spring ballet and design

At the ENO, there's a new ballet of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (read about it in The Times)
Stravinsky's music was revolutionary in 1913, and so was Nijinsky's choreography. It almost caused a riot, as innovation often does. Everything about it seemed "wrong", heresy against all that was sacred in music, dance and design.

Only seven performances were held. The following year the First World War broke out, then the Russian Revolution. Even now the music seems shockingly alien and uncompromising.

Nijinsky's ballet became a tantalizing legend. He changed the whole idea of ballet, just as Stravinsky changed music. Without Nijinsky, we wouldn't have modern dance, from Martha Graham to Pina Bausch and whoever else.

In the 1980's the dance historian Millicent Hodson began a reconstruction based on the drawings and on notes written by dancers who'd seen the original. The reconstruction was performed by the Joffrey Ballet, and filmed. Look how the intricate layers in the music translate into small, semi-independent units in dance. The clip comes from a much later Mariinsky version of the reconstruction (much tighter dancing I think) in St Petersburg. Some of the shots are taken from above, so you can see how the choreography works from different angles. Unfortunately I can't post a clip of the principal dancer doing her solo. She's larger than life, towering above the others (as indicated in the Roerich sketch above). At first she seems as stiff and wooden as an effigy, then she breaks out in the wildest, most athletic dance. Her limbs jut madly, like she's a puppet jerked into motion by some bizarre electricity. Petroushka on speed.

Although Nicholas Roerich's costume and set designs look beautifully "Russian", it's probably arguable that primitive animists didn't do elaborate embroidery. But it would have been way too much for audiences in 1913 to imagine prehistoric barbarians, since they were used to pretty ballet, swathed in tulle and roses. After all, it hadn't been all that much earlier that Darwin's ideas on evolution horrified the civilized world. A hundred years after Le Sacre, we can cope with its disturbing portents. Or can we?

Von Hofmannsthal new book

Sounds interesting, a new book of Hugo von Hofmannsthal writings ed. J D McClatchy. Follow the link to a review in the TLS.

Berlin Furtwängler and the Philharmonie

Another photo from the series of Berlin 1959-1964 mentioned below. This was when the Philharmonie site was on the edge, literally, just in the west but visible from the east. We forget the symbolic importance.

The Berlin Philharmonic was an icon in the Third Reich, too, not quite for the reasons the regime would have wanted. Wilhelm Furtwängler was the subject of de-nazification proceedings because he didn't escape into exile and played concerts in Poland just before it was invaded. I've read some of the original archives, see HERE. Yet Furtwängler also fought Goebbels and won (sort of) which few others dared or could get away with. He went "on strike" for several years, returning to the podium because he realized that the human soul can be more powerful than regimes.


This is the famous clip where he's seen conducting Beethoven 9 for Hitler's Birthday, 1942. It's sometimes cited as evidence that he collaborated. Of course it was propaganda, but in totalitarian states such things happen. It doesn't follow that what's on the surface matches what's in the heart. Anyone who knows Beethoven 9 knows the words, and knows what Beethoven - and Schiller - thought of tyrants. Party goons probably didn't know or care, but for Goebbels, who did know (and knew how Furtwängler felt about him) it wasn't quite so comfortable.

Incidentally, watch the Berlin photo sequence full screen. There's a shot which shows a small, insignificant piece of graffiti, which says "Berlin muss eins sein". Several shots of graffiti with "KZ" scrawled on the wall, in case anyone still doesn't know why people feel so strongly about the fall of the wall. When the wall fell, it was covered in graffiti. It was a political statement. Earlier, graffiti could get you killed.

What the fall of the Berlin Wall means to me

A view of from the Potsdamerplatz along Stresemannstrasse in 1962, Please follow the link as the man who took this shot has a whole series of photos, in two sets 1959/60 and 1962, which can be viewed in photostream. Watch both series as slide presentations - they're very moving.

The division lasted only 40 years, and before that Germany had only been united under Bismarck. But the fall of the wall needs commemorating because of what it stands for.

Once it seemed that the Iron Curtain would never lift. It seemed almost impossible to imagine that the stranglehold of the Soviet Bloc would ever end. When Kurt Masur led the non-violent protest in Leipzig, many held their breath, expecting reprisals to follow. No one had forgotten 1956 or 1968. when tanks rolled in elsewhere. Yet the simple, brave Leipzig stand snowballed. Europe isn't divided in the same way now. Of course there are problems, but it's altogether less insane. The fall of the Berlin Wall symbolizes that things can change, no matter what the obstacles might be. And without violence.

The other day in the UK people commemorated the "Gunpowder Plot" of 1605, an inept attempt by Catholic plotters to blow up Parliament. Relative to that actual danger the plotters presented, it tapped into jingoism and uglier things. When people burn an effigy on Guy Fawkes night they're commemorating hate. So it does matter to remember the Fall of the Wall, because it commemorates another way of thinking and being. It may be fashionable to be cynical, but sneering is a symptom of cancer in the soul. There are still walls all over the world, physical or otherwise, so remembering Berlin - and Leipzig - is an act of faith that might doesn't always vanquish right.

A few weeks after Masur made his stand in Leipzig, the Gewandhaus Orchestra came to the Sheldonian in Oxford for a concert, scheduled months before, in very different circumstances. It was their first appearance outside since the situation had developed. The turmoil was still going on, even then no one dared hope for too much. When the musicians trooped in, the atmosphere was palpable, hundreds of people willing them to know they were supported. They looked overwhelmed, looking all round, at the building, the people. The programme was all-Beethoven, and they played their hearts out.

Oedipus Rex in prehistoric Japan.

Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex is so dramatic it hardly needs staging. Stravinsky wanted the text in Latin, deliberately distancing the text from listeners, to further strengthen the idea of ancient, impenetrable mystery. So a story of ancient Greece, written first in French by Jean Cocteau and back-translated into Latin. Setting this performance in Japanese pre-history extends the idea that this saga is universal.

While most Japanese are familiar with western history, western audiences have little idea at all about other cultures. The Jomon period in Japan lasted from around 14000 BCE til around the time of the Romans in Europe. Relatively little is known about the period, even though it lasted so long, so this DVD, from the Saito Kinen Festival in 1992, is worth watching for this very reason alone.

The cast is superb - Jessye Norman, Philip Langridge, Bryn Terfel, and Seiji Osawa conducts the Saito Kinen Orchestra, who are much underrated. They deserved being in that arbitrary Gramophone magazine list of "best orchestras".

The principals perform inside huge costumes, with enormous false arms and hands, operated inside the voluminous garments. Above their heads tower symbolic heads, with eyeless sockets. It sounds odd, but works well in practice since the principals are larger than life and move with ponderous dignity.

Imagine Jessye Norman at her imperious peak in gleaming white, massive hands crossed against her chest, metal spikes sticking out several feet from her headress. When this Jocasta intones "Do not trust oracles!" she means it. She's overwhelmingly powerful, her voice magnificent. Philip Langridge sings a very good Oedipus, from inside another contraption of a costume. The dancers seem to have stepped right out of an archaeological site. They move with formal. angular gestures. Again, the faces are opaque, hidden by masks that reveal nothing. The effect is a kind of primitive, ritual power. This film, by Julie Taymor, makes Oedipus Rex feel like The Rite of Spring.

The choruses move like a frieze of pottery figures, but each singer is defined individually. The set (by George Tsypin) itself uses many ideas from Jomon art - perpendiculars and flat planes "knitted" with rope and cord. Most striking of all, though, is the narrator, Kayoko Shiraishi. She's dressed in a simple grey kimono but her delivery is so powerful that she almost eclipses Norman's Jocasta. Even though she's speaking Japanese, there's no mistaking the savage ferocity of what she's saying. Japanese audiences will get this Oedipus Rex readily enough. Western audiences should try. Even if they don't, that's OK as the staging is abstract enough to appreciate on its oiwn terms. Interesting detail - this was co produced by Peter Gelb, now at the Met.

Ma négresse

A great Cajun classic by one of the great figures in Cajun music, Nathan Abshire (1913-1981). I had this LP long ago, when I haunted Arhoolie in Berkeley. Is it still there? Just seeing the cover brings happy memories. Cajun music runs in families - there were generations of Abshires, Fontenots, LeJeunes and probably still are today. It figures, this is homegrown music, not particularly commercial. Once I met an oil executive on business and would you believe, he was related and knew most of them well. Amazing karma, as this happened in a bar in a small town in Australia, thousands of miles from anywhere and we're talking things no one else knows. It was 30 years ago. Who was more shocked, him or me? Incidentally, country and western music is huge in Australia among Aboriginals in the interior.

An excellent blog I follow is about Mauritius (but also lots on music and Romania and the Bucharest Festival) a place after my heart where many cultures and genres mix.

Doing himself Justice - Langridge at the Wigmore Hall

Why do we go to live recitals? There is much more to live performance than simply sound. On a recording you can get perfection, preserved forever in one moment, suspended in time. It never changes even though the circumstances in which you're listening change - as you change, yourself. It's not really natural. Live music is an altogether different experience.

Philip Langridge has had a long and illustrious career. His singing has given so much pleasure for so many years that coming to his 70th birthday recital at the Wigmore Hall was like catching up with someone you've cared about for years. Even though they've got a bit grey and don't leap about as much, they're still the same person at heart.

Langridge has nothing to prove. So what if his voice was tight in the first half? Things improved significantly in the second half. Quite likely he was more upset than anyone else. Good singers aren't stupid. I don't have anything to prove either, by nitpicking technicalities. This recital was an exercise in watching how a singer communicates by more than just voice. A friend in the audience noticed how expressive Langridge was, a legacy perhaps of years in opera, which is as much about creating a role as vocalizing it.

More impressive, to me, was that Langridge was premiering a new Birtwistle piece, Vanitas. It's about still life paintings of the 18th century, allegories to show the transcience of life. The lines are elegaic, yet simple and direct, as you'd expect of the poet David Harsent. Birtwistle has set them so they flow languidly, fitting well with Langridge's strengths - fluid and smooth in the lower range, phrases like "curved like an antique vase". Variations created by changes of pace and structure, rather than extremes of register. Birtwistle's lines aren't easy to sing as they swell within lines, rather than following the natural cadence of speech, but Langridge shows how it's part of the strange, unworldly atmosphere of the song.

Vanitas is a good piece, which we'll no doubt hear sung again by perfectly precise voices. But Langridge sang with such restrained dignity that it was very moving. These lines are about the passage of time. They're so subtle that emotional nuance transforms them from sound to feeling.

Britten's Who are these children? gave Langridge many good moments. These songs range from jaunty to fairly grim, giving Langridge a chance to create each one as an individual "event". Then, in the encore, he showed his true mettle by choosing "A tenor, all singers above" from Gilbert and Sullivan's Utopia Ltd. It's a hilarious satire, giving Langridge a chance to send up the whole idea of song. A man who can laugh under pressure and connect to an audience so well, definitely does himself justice! Here's the text - imagine it sung with gusto and exaggerated rubato. Since Langridge's problems were caused by dryness, the lines were heatfelt:

(When a tenor's in love) "It's certain to tell on his singing--
You can't do the proper chromatics
With proper emphatics
When anguish your bosom is wringing!
When distracted with worries in plenty,
And his pulse is a hundred and twenty,
And his fluttering bosom the slave of mistrust is,
A tenor can't do himself justice,
Now observe--(sings a high note),
You see, I can't do myself justice!
I could sing if my fervour were mock,
It's easy enough if you're acting--
But when one's emotion
Is born of devotion
You mustn't be over-exacting.
One ought to be firm as a rock
To venture a shake in vibrato,
When fervour's expected
Keep cool and collected
Or never attempt agitato.
But, of course, when his tongue is of leather,
And his lips appear pasted together,
And his sensitive palate as dry as a crust is,
A tenor can't do himself justice.
Now observe--(sings a high note),
It's no use--I can't do myself justice!"

Cajun Accordion

How about a quiz? Name some classical repertoire that includes accordion. Wozzeck is the only one that springs to mind but there must be more. Click on the photo to enlarge, the guy is soooo cute.

And below, there's a clip of authentic Cajun music. Nowadays everyone knows who the Cajuns are because every restaurant has Cajun sauce and stuff like that. But the real Cajun thing was much too quirky and individual to appeal to the whitebread mainstream until very recently.


Cajun culture is fascinating because it's a hybrid of many different genres - French traditional, African, popular ballads and work songs. There were families where one branch was white, another black. Way back in the 1960's somehow I discovered Cajun music and wanted to go to Louisiana to study it, and its wider links to black Blues and white C&W. A great example of cross-cultural hybrid vigour!

Although Schubert and Mahler won out, along the way I managed to accumulate a huge collection of Cajun tapes and LPs. Stuff way back to the 1920s! I gave them to Oxfam the charity, whih sold them as collectors' items, raising big money for good works. Luckily I saved some on tape. This film clip is good because it shows how traditional music adapts to new audiences.

Gluck, das mir verblieb

Sheer indulgence! Marietta's Lied from Die tote Stadt. It's such an immortal piece. The song infuses the whole opera with a kind of glow. One day perhaps it will be appreciated for what it is, wonderfully balancing on the precipice of the modern. A bit like Strauss, linking past to future. Friends of Korngold père et fils, suggested the novel Bruges La Morte as a good subject. Perhaps they were trying to tell them something? The novel's about a man trapped in an unhealthy relationship that holds him back. It must have been uncomfortable reading, a bit too revealing. for comfort. Not really a surprise then that Julius had so much control over what went into the opera. How much of the libretto and ideas were his? what might Erich have written had he been older and more independent? In the adaptation lies a story. Indeed, it could be the subject of a drama in itself, but it would need to be written by someone with real psychological insight. It's quite deep! Read about the original novel HERE and HERE.

The tragedy of Erich Korngold is that in life and death he was pigeonholed. Far from being "forced" into film music, it was in film music that he found hiis outlet. Film music was a new art form in the 30's and 40's and there was EK in the vanguard. Along with Hanns Eisler. What odd bedfellows they make.

Das Lied vom treuen Lieb,das sterben muss. Ich kenne das Lied. Ich hört es oft in jungen, in schöneren Tagen. Es hat noch eine Strophe --weiß ich sie noch?
The song of true love that must die. I know that song, I heard it often in younger, lovelier times. It has but one verse - do I know it still?

Mußt du einmal von mir gehn, glaub, es gibt ein Auferstehn.
Must you once again depart from me? Believe, the time will come, we'll meet again.

There's a great version of the song by Joseph Schmidt HERE How high and clear his top notes are, even if it sounds like he's holding his nostrils tightly together. Schmidt's an interesting man, I might write more about him.

Wigmore Hall new season

Public bookings for the Wigmore Hall new season began at midnight but by 0015 some were already sold out. So if you want to hear Angelika Kirchschlager in an incomparable Strauss and Wolf concert, or on Schubert's birthday, you'll have to stand in line for returns. Ditto Matthias Goerne's continuing Schubert series. Of three concerts, one's completely gone and the others have very few seats left. By the time you read this they'll probably be gone. Almost certainly Joyce DiDonato and Magdalena Kozena seats are gone, too.

But the good news is that some of the less high profile stuff is actually more interesting. András Schiff will be playing Lieder ohne Worte with several different singers, including Kozena and Juliane Banse singing in Lieder mit Worte. Schiff programmes well, so listen when he matches song with non-song pieces. Mark Padmore continues his residency with concerts til May. He'll be singing Henze's Songs from the Arabian on 25/1. I've heard him sing this before so I hope he's gone deeper into it. This one's on BBC Radio 3 so I'll listen to it then.

Alice Coote and Julius Drake do English songs, and Christianne Stotijn is doing an interesting programme on 25th March. Bernarda Fink and Genia Kühmeier have a very good programme of Dvorak, Brahms and Schumann : Fink is of course one of the doyennes of Dvorak. She may be Argentine but she speaks perfect Slovenian. Measha Brueggergosman is looking glamorous! She was the first runner-up the year the Wigmore Hall didn't award first prize in the Song Competition for young singers. Thomas Quasthoff's back on 19/3 singing Frank Martin's Monologues from Jedermann. The Prince Consort are singing on 14/3 – not the same programme as at the Oxford Lieder Festival but a wider selection of Ned Rorem songs.

For me the big events aren't the fancy galas but concerts with interesting new repertoire. That's why Luke Bedford's near the top of my list. Writing for voice is not as easy as people assume, so when I first heard his Or Voit Tout En Aventure (in 2006), I was amazed that someone so young could write so intuitively for voice. Fortunately, the cycle's become something of a classic aand seems to grow in stature the more it's performed. Bedford (born 1978) is definitely distinctive, so circle 24th January on your calendar, when he'll be speaking and premiering a new work Good Dream She Has. Claire Booth (who's made Or Voit her thing) is singing, with Hilary Summers and Christopher Gillett. Oliver Knussen conducts the BCMG.

Also worth going to is the Birtwistle programme on 24/3 where Claire Booth and the Nash Ensemble do a new, unnamed work and the wonderful The Woman and the Hare cycle, to poems by David Harsent (who wrote the libretto for the The Minotaur). Booth will also give the UK premiere of Elliott Carter's Poems of Louis Zukofsky.

Obviously plenty of piano and chamber music, early music and baroque opera but you'lll have to find that yourself.

The story of Balichão

"To be Macanese", they say, "you have to have a bottle of Balichão in the fridge". In the fridge, note, not necessarily in regular use, though once it was as ubiquitous as soy sauce. Balichão is a delicacy of pulverized shrimp, fermented in salt for many months til it becomes a semi-liquid, lilac paste. Those who love it wax lyrical because it adds a certain piquant kick to anything you eat. Often it was used in cooking dishes like Balichão pork. True devotees ate it neat, on rice.

Balichão looks meek but comes with a long heritage. Once it was made in many Macau households but it's a lot of work to make so certain families with the right equipment became suppliers. Shrimps and other crustaceans and I think chili are ground together with salt water and salt in a huge stone urn with a wooden stick. The mix is sealed and left to ferment for many months, then bottled and distributed to friends and relatives. A community project. I met one of the last Balichão makers whose mix was specially prized because it was so good. Her stone urn and mallet had been in use for 300 years.

Then one day the mallet broke. It''s not something you run down to the shops to replace. Eventually, a museum tracked down what the implement was - a worn-down oar from a traditional sampan, those small boats you see in old photos (there aren't many around today). The museum tracked down an old ship maker who managed to identify it as an antique style, obviously made from a better-quality wood than used in his time. Even if a new mallet was carved to order it wouldn't have been quitre the same because something in the wood gave the family Balichão a distinctive flavour no one else c0uld match. Rather like yoghurt gets started with a batch of old culture. Nothing like good bacteria.

Balichão has a long history. Someone once wrote a paper on the Balichãos of Asia, tracing them along trade routes from China to Europe. Haam ha is the Cantonese version. The good ones, I was told, are a thickish purple paste, though now it's more watery and pinker. In Vietnam and Thailand, there are similar versions, which like haam ha are useful substitutes. Apparently the Romans used to make a similar paste, and use it in the same way. That makes sense, as shrimps are plentiful in coastal places, but don't keep unless you preserve them. Who knows when and by whom Balichão was started but when you eat it, it's like linking to other cultures, other times.

Balichão pork is or was Macau soul food. Pieces of pork were marinated with garlic, tamarind and a bit of Balichão which gave it a bite. My father used to make it, it was delicious. It was always served with a glutinous rice cooked with spring onions and pressed into a mould.

The best Macau cookbook is Cecilia Jorge's "Macanese cooking : a journey across generations" ) published by APEM Associcão Promotora da Instrucão dos Macanese. It's hard to find but it's the genuine article, a communal effort but very professionally produced. A collectors' item! This is the gist of the recipe:

300 gr pork belly with skin (use lean if you prefer but it's not so authentic), 1 tbs tamarind paste, 1 slab Chinese slab brown sugar), 2 tbs Balichão, ginger, garlic, etc. (Tamarind and slab sugar can be found in any decent Chinese supermarket, and use haam ha if you can't get Balichão)

Fry the tamarind paste, Balichão, ginger etc and add the pork (cut in strips), then simmer with the Chinese sugar until the meat has absorbed the juices.

Ultimate Baroque Arne Artaxerxes Linbury

This Royal Opera House production of Thomas Arne's 1762 masterpiece Artaxerxes is Ultimate Baroque, its magnificence designed to shock and awe. Baroque is hyperbole. It's meant to defy reality: artifice as "extreme art". In a sense, the baroque is stunningly modern because it embraces the idea that things don't have to be literal or even logical to stir the soul.

First surprise: the Orchestra of the Classical Opera Company sits on stage in a brightly lit, white pit. they're wearing white too, which dazzles in the darkly shrouded Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House. Gradually your eyes adjust, and from the shadows emerges a truly magnificent golden throne, not like any story-book European king's throne but an intricate golden web, 5 metres high. It references the golden thrones in Egyptian pyramids -Tutankhamen meets the Peacock Throne of ancient Persia. It even looks like a chrysalis, or elaborate butterfly wings. Many of the singer's costumes refer to insects, too, beetles of all kinds from Artabane's metallic thorax to the wide jackets the other singers wear which open out like wings over their trousers.

The costumes (by Johan Engels) are amazing. They look vaguely 18th century yet are made of Japanese brocade and silk, lime green, neon pink, electric blue, colours that rarely exist in nature, with samurai-like shoulderpads and helmets. At once hyper-European, but with a distinctly alien, exotic flamboyance. This is the true magpie spirit of the baroque, an age when Europe discovered that worlds existed beyond anything they'd imagined. It didn't matter if the influences were Japan or Persia, as long as they were exuberant and hyper-real.

The servants are mysterious, some wearing samurai helmets, but often simply swathed in black, like ninjas. This could be a reference to bunraku, the Japanese theatre tradition where puppets "act", manipulated by black-clad puppeteers, meant to be semi-invisible. It could be a comment on how formal and stylized life in Court circles might have been. When the singers collapse emotionally, they fall back, supported by the "ninjas" who become symbols of dark, inexpressible feelings.

The costumes may be hyper-real and the set minimalist, but that reflects the plot. It's so convoluted it's not easy to follow even if you've read up on it. Artaxerxes's father Xerxes is asassinated by Artabanes, father of Arbaces, Artaxerxes's best friend. Both young men are in love with each other's sisters. Father frames son for the murder but son is so pure that Dad confesses the truth. Now Artaxerxes is king he can banish his regicide future father-in-law and all's well. Musically, it's surprisingly spare too, almost chamber-like, instruments simply doubled for volume.

Some of the arias are familiar even though the opera is pretty much unknown. Perhaps it was a kind of "numbers opera" to showcase popular stars. Hence bravura moments where a single word can be held over 12 or more measures, so the audience can wonder at the singer's superhuman powers, even if the music isn't all that inventive.

Very good singing all round. Christopher Ainslie's Artaxerxes wasn't so extreme as some countertenors can be, so he didn't shake the balanceof the ensemble but convinced as an intuitive young man who doesn't do ruthless. Caitlin Hulcup's Arbaces was so convincing that you had to remind yourself she was a mezzo. Elizabeth Watts's Mandane, and Andrew Staples's Artabanes were solid. Steven Ebel's Rimenes was striking, his stage presence mature beyond his actual age.

But Rebecca Bottone's Semira was outstanding. Tiny as she is, she sings and acts with such intensity that it seems to shake her frame. It's Semira who challenges everyone, and it is she who doesn't accept that Arbaces is a killer. Left to his own devices the poor fellow is a bit of a wimp, despite being sweet. Bottone's passionate portrayal was so strong that she was worth watching even when she wasn't singing. Why she was the only person in the cast dressed like one of the puppets hanging in Marsala Zone? I don't know. Semira is a powerful general's daughter not a peasant, and she's pretty hot - Rimenes fancies her and she's going to be queen when she marries Artaxerxes.

This was a new performing edition by Ian Page, who conducted and wrote additional music for the recitatives. Duncan Druce write the wonderful finale, where all the cast sing before the golden throne. The original recitatives and finale were destroyed in a fire in 1808.

Having seen this, I'm now keen to hear the Classical Opera Company and Ian Page in their forthcoming series of Handel Operas at Kings Place in December. Read HERE about it. The Handel opera won't be staged, so much of the amazing impact of this Artaxerxes will be lost. On the other Handel works fine in concert performance.

To read more about Arne and Artaxerxes, read Tim Ashley's article, which is the best and most informative. You can hear sound samples of the opera on the Hyperion site They've got the only full recording. I've written a lot about baroque art and its non-western influences so please follow the links at right on "baroque" and "Macau" or click HERE, HERE and HERE. These are just first thoughts, a more formal piece is here in Opera Today with production picture.

Hexen for Halloween

Ein schwarzer Bock,
Ein Besenstock,
Die Ofengabel, der Wocken
Reißt uns geschwind,
Wie Blitz und Wind,
Durch sausende Lüfte zum Brocken!

Um Beelzebub
Tanzt unser Trupp
Und küßt ihm die kralligen Hände!
Ein Geisterschwarm
Faßt uns beim Arm
Und schwinget im Tanzen die Brände!

(A black goat, a besom broom, an oven spade, a pitchfork, rip us along with lightning and wind, thru the turbulent air to the Brocken (mountain where witches hang out). Round Beelzebub we dance and kiss his claw-like hands. Arm in arm with a swarm of ghosts we brandish torches of fire!)

Strictly speaking this song, Hexenlied, isn't about Halloween in the Anglo-Saxon sense, but it refers to Walpurgisnacht, in the German Saxon sense. On Walpurgisnacht, the night before May 1st, the Devil gathers the witches for a wild party before the coming of Spring when their powers temporarily wane. That's why the song is also called Anderes Mailied, "alternative May song". Here it's sung with great frisson by Peter Schreier, recorded around 1973. Who says Mendelssohn can't write wild and spooky? See HERE for more clips from Schreier's recording with Walter Olbertz. Even after all these years it's my top Mendelssohn song recommendation because it's so lively and animated. It was re-released earlier this year as a boxed set with discussion. There is another Schreier Mendelssohn set with Karl Engel, which is more mellow, but I like Olbertz better because it's so vivid. This is the classic, leagues ahead of anyone else.