Aris Argiris sings Escamillo , ROH Carmen

Aris Argiris makes his debut at Covent Garden as Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen. But this is unusually high-profile. The Royal Opera House is having this Carmen filmed in 3D digital technology, which is higher grade than the current 2D high definition.

Such a debut would put pressure on any young singer, but Aris Argiris, the 35 year old baritone, is resilient ..."Escamillo is a Toreador, he’s not afraid”, says Argiris. “He gets charged by bulls all the time, so he stays calm, even when José pulls a knife on him. His job is to fight bulls, not to kill men. It’s not worth his time. He thanks Carmen for saving him, but actually he’s already getting up. Next minute, he forgets about the duel, and thinks ahead, inviting everyone to the next bullfight.”

“Escamillo is a big star, all around him people are singing “Vivat! vivat!”, so he has to give them the kind of show they want. Why do people like watching blood, danger death? I don’t know. But Escamillo gives them a thrill. Both he and Carmen are the centre of attention, they have to give their public a dramatic image, so they both have these wonderful arias. So Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre is Escamillo’s Habanera”.

“But Escamillo knows that in the bullring, he is alone with the bull. Real Toreadors are very young”, adds Argiris, “Seventeen, maybe 21, but they have to be young, like footballers, because they have to move fast. They can’t grow old or the bull kills them”. The aria is full of thrills, but also “un œil noir”. Someone, something is watching the Toreador. Is his fate love? As Carmen sings, love is a wild bird that cannot be trapped. And bulls have dark eyes too.

“Escamillo acts like he doesn’t care, but he is a deep person. Carmen too, acts like a devil, but there is something more in her. She is a bit like Don Giovanni, everyone wants to be with her, but everyone gets hurt. So she’s a challenge to someone like Escamillo who shows no fear. The moment they see each other, the whole atmosphere changes, even though she pretends to be haughty. The meeting is fatal, because it’s the beginning of the end for Carmen”.

“What they feel is ursprunglich, it comes from deepest parts of the soul. At this moment, nothing else matters, they can’t think rationally or about consequences, it’s pure instinct.”

“Their love duet must be the shortest love duet in the whole repertoire, only a page and a half. They sing in unison, but it only lasts a moment, like their love, which will end too soon. There’s nothing like it between Carmen and José”. In the middle of the interview, Argiris bursts into song, he’s so moved. “Listen how it ends with a modulation. It cannot go forward because their love will not go forward. It’s amazing how Bizet writes it, it’s deliberate. He’s telling us that this love cannot be fulfilled. The moment is short, but it’s so important, and it’s cut with strange harmonies from the orchestra.”

“And look”, Argiris adds, “how Escamillo shows his love for Carmen to the whole world, without fear. She was a gypsy and was a smuggler, but now she is the Toreador’s Lady, and she has the best seat on the horse. She is someone important. Yet at that moment of triumph, she is killed. So it’s not an accident that, when Carmen dies, the Toreador melody is heard again. In the distance Escamillo has killed another bull. The crowd cheer, but he has lost, because he has lost Carmen”.


A longer and more detailed version of this will appear shortly in Opera Today. First Night is tomorrow. Read more about Argiris here. He's a nice guy. .PLEASE READ THE REVIEW HERE and on Opera Today soon

Charlie Chaplin's Burlesque on Carmen

So yoiu can appreciate Bizet'sr Carmen at the Royal Opera House, here's Charlie Chaplin's 1915 take, Burlesque on Carmen.  Because it's a vehicle for the Little Tramp, the star is Charlie's Don José and his merry dealings with Lilas Pastia. And the men dressed up as a mule! Edna Purviance's Carmen doesn't get much to do except repeat her usual role in Chaplin films.

53 000 homeless in fire

Another video about the fire in Hong Kong in 1953, which made 53,000 people homeless overnight. Look at the shot of the hillside, the houses glowing, They're burning. What pictures don't tell is the howling of the wind, fanned by flames, and the showers of embers that burn what they land on, even at a long distance. Fires can break out anywhere, even where you think you're safe, not just on the main front. And the smell, which lingers for weeks. And of course, the people, running. No way to get fire engines in, the houses join on one another, few paths and narrow.  Only water supply is standpipes which melt in the heat. Nowadays people moan about material things. Then, they had a different perspective.

The new Bachtrack

Bachtrack is an interactive site that lets you search for events in many different ways. I use it a lot to keep up with what's happening.  It's also expanding, with news, views and other features. See the link on right, or go HERE. It's a very useful site. It's just been redesigned. Read more :

"At Bachtrack, we've been following the video-on-demand world for a while
and we think the time's now right for classical music listeners and opera
fans to take a serious look at this technology, which lets you watch
fabulous concerts and opera in your home at a time that suits you. It's
essential to have the right equipment and set-up, but if you have, the
experience is remarkably close to being at a live event and is in some
ways even more intimate. The prices are reasonable - just a few dollars or
euros for a screening."

"We have started by partnering with the two organisations with the highest
quality and most substantial offerings: the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
and the Metropolitan Opera. There's a new "On-Demand" area of Bachtrack
in which visitors can use our first class search mechanism to find what music is available from these world famous performers and go straight to the right place on their sites to play it."

Nadir and Zenith ENO Pearl Fishers

"Fabulous" means "derived from fable".  "Fantastic" means "derived from fantasy". This new ENO production of Bizet The Pearl Fishers at the Coliseum, London, is fabulous and fantastic in the true meaning of the words. It's true to the meaning of the opera, too, because fable and fantasy are ways of telling hard truths, disguised in sugar coating..

The world Bizet conjures up in The Pearl Fishers is deliberately, provocatively, over the top. Mass murder and sacrilege! Storms and steamy sex! But it's OK, they're only barbarians. Bizet's glorious tunes further disguise the deeper levels in this opera, so cleverly that it can be dismissed as simplistic schlock. Patrons can sit politely in their boxes, unaware of the real scandal before them.

Extravagant plots need extravagant music and extravagant staging. But this production fills the prelude with a dark, mysterious wash of blue. Gradually, from the gloom emerge two figures, who seem to "swim" effortlessly, suspended in space. Immediately, you know this production, by Penny Woolcock and her team, will be different - and dangerous.

Nadirs and Zeniths permeate this whole opera.  Turbulence is an integral part of this music, torn as it is between dynamic extremes. Bizet's writing movie music before movies, but he's not simply being decorative. The music surges like ocean swells. It's magnificent because the ocean is magnificent, but those soaring crescendi crash downward and shatter. The villagers live at the ocean's edge, but their temple is built high up on the mountain. One moment the choruses are ecstatic, the next they're savage and fearful. The vocal parts rise to dizzying heights, then suddenly change course, throwing most singers off course, however well prepared they may be. Treachery is written into the very soul of this opera, not just the plot.  .

 The villagers are poor, and their lives can be destroyed at any time. Poor as they are, they support an elaborate temple and a non-productive priesthood, which keeps them downtrodden.  Extremes, too,  of squalor and excess. The villagers think that keeping the gods happy will keep them safe.  But when the village is burned and the children die, it's their own king who has done the dirty deed. Bizet tarts the story up in fancy dress, but it's not au fond all so far from France a few years after 1848 and on the verge of the Paris Commune.

The Pearl Fishers sounds delicious, but packs a lethal punch.  There are plenty of villages like this in the Third World, as director Penny Woolcock knows. And they don't all have to be exotic and rural. Indeed, suffering often lies side by side with excess. Hence extremes of vulgar display contrasted with simplicity.  The villagers never know when they might lose all they have, so they make the most of what they've got.  The  villagers in this production steal electricity from the main grid, as people do in the Third World all the time. They want to watch TV and enjoy material goods, and who can blame them? But trailing long cables over water is dangerous, and people get killed all the time.

Dick Bird's set designs surge and move, as restless as the sea (and the music).| He uses simple devices like backcloths for the sea and film projections, combining modern and old. He also extends the dichotomy in the opera by juxtaposing  fake oriental fantasy with recognizably realistic detail. The villagers live in huts built on stilts over the water, which move with the tide. At night, small lights twinkle, so the squalor is transformed, like the fairy lights in the temple. But perhaps the real masterstroke in this production is that it treats the villagers as human beings, not mere ciphers in the background.

This village is a real community, where everyone lives on top of one another, in the most intimate way.  Zurga is one of the people, but elected king.  Leila's probably a village girl, also chosen to perform a function for communal benefit. Usually, Pearl Fishers focuses on the big star numbers, but in many ways, the real stars are the villagers, who somehow keep surviving, whatever Nature throws at them. We listen for the glamour arias, but, like the ocean, what's beneath the surface is more profound. The choruses carry through the idea of sudden, swerving extremes. At one point the villagers are pious, at another, the crowd turns savage. They'll do what their leaders tell them.

Another good reason for listening to the orchestra in this production, rather than jsut the singing. Rory Macdonald understand the dynamics, bringing out the constantly shifting turbulence in the orchestral parts.  It's not nearly as "pretty" as the songs floating above it, but that's the point.

Quinn Kelsey's impressive as Zurga. Dark bass baritone voices often aren't the most sympathetic, but Kelsey animates his singing with sensitive acting,  and the flexibility flows through to his voice. He's able to create a well-rounded Zurga in the best way, for somehow he conveys the mysteries of Zurga's personality, which go deeper than just words. Bird designs Zurga's tent so it's like an oyster shell, gnarled and forbidding on the outside, delicate, soft and tender within.  Kelsey sings Zurga's long arias in Act 3 so thoughtfully that you feel Zurga's torment. This is a Zurga who is brutish because he's inarticulate and can't understand his own feelings. He wants to do the right thing but he's hamfisted emotionally, ad ends up wrecking the whole village. But he's not a bad man. He's a hero in his own way because he faces his inner demons, even if his solution is characteristically inept.

Alfie Boe's Nadir is a good counterfoil to Kelsey's Zurga. I must be the last person in the world not to know who he is, but that's OK.  I listen to  what he does, not what the media present.  He impressed me a lot as Kudrjáš in the recent ENO Katya Kabanova, almost stealing the show. .Nadir isn't as deep a role as Zurga, but that's exactly why it needs a singer who can do freshness and energy.As Zurga says, he's giving his life for Leila and Nadir, that they may live if he can't. Boe is a natural communicator, who makes things interesting. (He was brilliant in Jenufa, too. Since this was written, he's pulled out of opera. Congratulations to the woman who kicked up a fuss because he cancelled some performances. With a fan base that wants consumer product not music, as an artist he's doomed)

ENO's budget doesn't run towards Maria Callas and megastars of that ilk, so it's unfair to judge anything they do by the standards of recordings. Leila's an extremely demanding part, requiring extreme range. Tackling Leila's always a technical feat, so Hanan Alattar's attempt was valiant.

The Pearl Fishers is not an easy opera to stage because it's so exaggerated, and frankly corny.  But Penny Woolcock and her team have genuinely thought it through and found its true depths. This is a very perceptive production, which vindicates the ENO's ideas of bringing in directors from different forms of art. (It doesn't always work.)

One of the more subtle images shows two tourists gawping at the natives, as if they were zoo animals. A small detail, but extremely telling. Tourists only see picture postcard travesties of real life. They think they "know" because they've condescended to spend money and consume. But you can't buy into a culture like buying a T-shirt. Who are the "barbarians" here? This perceptive production shows that we can chose whether we want to be "tourists" with Bizet, or try and think like natives.

Here is a much snappier review in OMH Music.

The Pearl Fishers Fire real life

Amazing Pearl Fishers at ENO tonight. Bizet knew little about the Third World, but his imaginary pastiche rings surprisingly true. So many extremes in this opera, Nadirs and Zeniths all over! On one level it's over the top kitsch, on another remarkably realistic, a constant flux between one reality and another. This New ENO production of The Pearl Fishers, at the Coliseum in London, directed by Penny Woolcock, and with set designs by Dick Bird,  really brings out the churning paradoxes that make the opera so turbulent.

For the review, please see HERE. 
 
What might not come across unless you've travelled a lot in the Third World is just how well observed this production is. Things really do look like that. People really do festoon dangerously long cables to get illegal electricity supplies.. At night, clusters of small lights, constant movement (especially villages on boats). And fires! From cooking stoves, from dangerous wiring. At any moment all can be destroyed. This clip is from a huge fire in Hong Kong in 1953, when 53,000 people were made homeless in one night. This was a big one, but smaller fires happened all the time. I was in a few -- very vivid memories. Plus typhoons, landslides, floods.. Every year. Believe me, this ENO Pearl Fishers is authentic. I've actually lived it.

What's more poignant is that, every one of those people had difficult lives even before they wound up in squatter villages. They were ALL refugees, even middle class and well educated, and they end up in shacks made of cardboard. Sometimes they'd been refugees from one place to the other for the previous 20 years. This affects the way people think. People criticize excess, but for people who are used to everything changing at a moment's notice, it's necessary. To understand the Third World, you have to understand what makes the people. (lots of Chinese movies on this site, not escapist kungfu but about society and people).

Bizey with Bizet

Three Bizet operas in one week, and another planned for October at the Royal Opera House. A great opportunity to reflect on what Bizet might mean to us now.

Imagine my shock when I went backstage  at the Coliseum for the ENO production of The Pearl Fishers and saw the set. Stilt houses, almost exactly like the fishing village where I spent a lot of my childhood. Serious karma.

Read what director Penny Woolcock says about ENO's Pearl Fishers. HERE. "At its heart is the love triangle. Such things cause pain and destruction. Then, there's the struggle between the villagers and the ocean. These people are very poor. They live in flimsy dwellings and are at the mercy of storms. And the burning of the village. If you think of the villagers as real people, with children, it's dreadful! So we're taking the story seriously, bringing out the dark undercurrents".

In Bizet's time, the exotic was a mask for feeling and ideas that might not be so easily expressed in polite society. Transferring extreme passions to alien cultures, which weren't "civilized", made them less dangerous. Leila's a sanctified virgin, who has to be veiled - cloistered - because that's how the local religion works. She's a prisoner to the system. Zurga burns down the village - mass murder for the sake of love.  And against this horror, exquisite, diaphanously beautiful music.That's Bizet's masterstroke,  Those who will be lulled see only the surface. Those who see beneath hear the real depth and power. "Manche schöne Perle in seiner Tiefe ruht" as Heine said. Pearl Fishers dive deep, they don't mess about in tide pools.

And what about Carmen? She's a femme fatale of a different order, violent and untamable. Nothing like nice Parisian ladies in Bizet's time (at least not in public).  Maybe her hypnotic allure stems from her being such a rebel. Maybe the men would like to be like that themselves, but they're too repressed. In the Opera Holland Park production, Carmen grabs men by the balls, quite explicitly.

What does Carmen really, really want? Freedom, whatever that might be. Again, brutal violence, theft, murder, treachery and S_E_X, all against a backdrop of gorgeous music.  Like the interlude just before the criminals return from killing the people on the ship. It sounds like a hymn, but we know what's just happened.. Carmen's a nasty slut, and ends up dead. But somehow the "Carmen spirit" lives on. Mousy Micaela doesn't get Don José but she's travelled among brigands and survived.  Arguably, Carmen lives on and becomes..... Lulu!
Please also see Janacek's Dangerous Women 

Coming up in June - multiple Bizet

June is one of the busiest months in the year for live music in England.  It's also the most beautiful month, when gardens burst with peonies, poppies, delphiniums, clematis and roses!  Everything comes into bloom at once before the drought that can come in summer, musically as well as horticulturally.

In London this first week in June is Bizet Immersion - two Carmens and The Pearl Fishers at the ENO. I'm really looking forward to the latter, because it's completely different to the cliché of "pink, glitter and kitsch".

In Bizet's time, the East was an exotic amalgam of fantasy, which served a deeper purpose. People then needed "The East" to disguise their longings onto. At long as something is set in unreality, be it fake-orientalism or fairy tale, it's easier to deal with troubling things like sex and the subconcious. Composers used it as a cloak for musical experiment. Listen carefully to Bizet, how adventurous he is, playing around with ideas, made palatable because he coats them with "other".

Tonight, I will do a full preview of the ENO Pearl Fishers production. Last week, I went behind the scenes of the production, met the people, saw the sets, etc  A lot of work goes into bringing productions to life, and it's team work, moreover. The myth of director's whim doesn't exist very often in reality. Please see my interview with the director, Penny Woolcock HERE.

Today, I'm off to the dress rehearsal of Carmen at Opera Holland Park and on Saturday Carmen at the Royal Opera House. Should be interesting! It is so much a part of modern culture. Everyone's Carmened since they were about three years old, they just didn't realize it was "classical music". Here's a link to a film clip in Mandarin, brilliant take off by the ultimate Modern Girl, Grace Chang.

Combine gardens and music and head for the English Song Weekend in Ludlow,  Shropshire. It's unique, and held only every 3 years. Fantastic ambiance, perfect setting, good music, good talks and excellent company. This is the best season ever and I was seriously planning to go but so much else gets in the way. I know I shall regret.

Glyndebourne continues, it's magnificent, an incredible achievement because it was founded from one man's vision. It's Britain's Bayreuth but with a wider focus. Garsington, too, mixes opera with gardens and picnic. I'll be at Rossini Armida, but also Britten Midsummer Night's Dream, which will be wonderful in the Garsington open-air setting, as night falls outside. Stars courtesy of the Universe.

Then, there's Aldeburgh. Aldeburgh has always been "European" in outlook, because Britten identified with European composers like Shostakovich, Mahler and so on, much more so than the Cotswolds crowd.  That's part of what makes Britten unique, he's English but "not" English at the same time, in a creative way. With Pierre-Laurent Aimard as Artistic Director, this distinctiveness will grow. Read my analysis of Aldeburgh 2010.here. Pierre Boulez is coming, in person, to talk.He doesn't turn up at any old "local" festival, but he does for Aldeburgh, and for Aimard. Great countryside, beaches, food and gardens too.

Another really important mini-festival, if you can call it that, will be the Theresienstadt Terezin Weekend at the Wigmore Hall. Curated by the Nash Ensemble, it features music from composers who were in the camp, but it will also be a kind of remembrance as they'll be doing films, talks and something on Hans Krasa's children's opera Brundibar. Some of the people who performed the original, in Theresienstadt, as children, may be there. Reunions like these can be quite poignant, you almost feel you shouldn't be intruding on privacy, but Theresienstadt music means a lot and must not be forgotten.

Wolfgang Holzmair will be singing. Read about his recording of Theresienstadt music HERE and about Anne Sofie von Otter's concerts and CD. There is a lot on this kind of music on this site, because it means a lot to me.  I'll be writing more about the music at this particular weekend later, so keep coming back.  If the only thing I can do is to make this site a resource for suppressed music of all kinds, it's small recompense.

Also, the Spitalfields Music Festival in London, a gritty part of the East End now trendy: Rumplestiltskin from Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. And the City of London Festival, held in private Guildhouses, real medieval Guilds but members don't ply their trade in the same way now.

At the Barbican this first week, two important concerts - Daniel Harding and Thomas Adès, and Kabuki at Sadler's Wells. That's just week one, lots else elsewhere.

Piano for left handed pianists

Left handed people think with their left hands, so playing a"normal" piano means leading with the hand you don't use so well. Nowadays there are left handed scissors, left handed cups etc, so why not left handed pianos?  A lot of left handers learn to adapt to a right handed world so well they don't even realize where their natural facilities lie. One test is to copy script with both hands separately. If there's little difference, you're either naturally ambidextrous, or a left hander who's learned to use your right. Please follow this lovely link to Geza Lozo's site, and pass it on to left handers everywhere.  You never know who it might help!

He sells scores too, classical and even pop, which use the same notes, but reversed so they're easier to follow. Follow this link for a video of Loso's son playing a left handed piano.

The postman knocks....

The other day, my postman delivered a parcel from a big European opera house, complete with fancy logo and wrapping.  "Fantastic stuff, opera!" he said, "I'm hooked!". He told me he'd been watching Tony Pappano's series Opera Italia on BBC TV4 which can be watched online, on demand, everywhere for 2 more weeks, and a new one coming up soon. With a recommendation like that, how could anyone resist? So I hurried to watch. Yes, my postman is right!  This really is wonderful. Pappano's a natural communicator, he makes you feel how he feels, draws you in and makes you care almost as passionately as he does. He communicates. So what if "clever folk" already know the material. Pappano's enthusiasm makes you want to delve further into the subject. In the long term that's much more important. Recommended!

In complete contrast, steer clear of the Wagner show also on offer. I watched that because there was a publicity shot of Alice Sommer Herz, but didn't get that far as I switched it off, thoroughly sickened by Stephen Fry.  Here, the presenter is the subject, which itself is irrelevant except as it promotes the presenter's ego. "Oooh" says Fry, "I can't believe it, they're letting me play Wagner's piano" Honey, it's high profile BBC TV, of course they'll let you. But that can be excused.

Far worse is the crass exploitation of the Holocaust. Everyone's interested in that subject, so as long as you create a connection, you get viewers, even if the actual product has marginal connection. Sorry, but to me it's immoral to use the dead for personal gain. Maybe to others this is OK, but to me it's not.

If this had been a serious look at how Wagner connects to Hitler, it would have been reasonable, but this was just cynical exploitation.  Barely above the level of dirty minded Nudge nudge, wink, wink, count the money as it rolls in. I've long admired Alice Sommer Herz, so I couldn't bear to see her used like this. Perhaps what she really said was heavily edited.  A friend watched to the bitter end and said that Alice had said things like "I wouldn't sit thru 5 hours of Wagner",  and "You listen, I won't". Alice is 106 years old, she's heard it all before. She's still sharp as a tack, and has no time to waste. Most revealingly, when asked if they'd played Wagner in Theresienstadt, she snapped, "We didn't have a Wagner sized orchestra". At one stroke, Fry's pander is punctured.

Mahler plays Mahler piano

Who's that pianist? Gustav Mahler himself playing Mahler in piano transcription. This is the first movement of Symphony no 5.  It's a historic moment though it might not have seemed so at the time. A German company called Welte Mignon invented a new process for recording sound, that was much better anything else at the time. To publicise their new system, they got famous composers to play their own music. So on 9th November 1905, Mahler sits down and does his thing.

He recorded four pieces, Mahler 5/1, Mahler 4/4, and two songs, Ging heut morgen übers Feld and the early Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald.  Before radio and recordings, many people did music at home, so piano transcriptions of everything were standard practice.  Do it Yourself Wagner, for example. People bought scores like they buy MP3s today . That's how composers and publishers made money, and how music spread outside the concert hall or opera stage.  If you play your own, you learn the tunes. Transcriptions were important teaching tools, too, because musicians had to analyze what make a piece work in its essentials.

I've picked M5/1 because it shows how Mahler focuses on a clean, direct line, darkening the tone to suggest the larger forces in an orchestra. Oddly enough, it makes me think of some of his earliest songs, like Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz. Here he is coming out of the Wunderhorn phase, but are Wunderhorn settings so far from his mind?

His tempi are fast, but that's because he's trying to squeeze each piece into the short time frame the technology was limited to.  It's completely wrong to assume that these are any indication of how he wanted the symphonies to sound. What he was doing here was experimenting with technology, not setting down a sacred template for performance practice. He's very free because it's a one-off experiment.

What's also interesting is what it tells us about Mahler. No Luddite, no technophobe. Here he is playing "new" music, written only 3 years before,  for people with the very latest new invention. He was the man who followed up on Freud, took an interest in leftish politics, read about Eastern philosophy, and saw Schoenberg's potential.  Not a backward thinker, but someone who cared about the past because it informed the future.

Welte Mignon folded for many reasons, and recording went back to more primitive methods, which is why recordings of the 1920's and 30's often sound horrible. But Welte Mignon captured a moment, like a snapshot in time. Obviously, copyright has long expired, which is why these pieces keep popping up on CD.

Berliner-Philharmoniker Mahler series 2010-11

The Berliner-Philharmoniker reveals its new season May to May 2010-2011.here. Mahler, of course, but upmarket and with an edge. There'll be many Mahler cycles this year, some "feel the width, not the quality".  The Berliners do Mahler superbly. After all, they're one of the finest orchestras anywhere, and steeped in 19th century Austro-German tradition. Rattle's Mahler is very good indeed, always with personality. This will genuinely be a worthy contribution to the Mahler Year, because the series is so intelligently put together.

For review of the Mahler 1 concert please see http://classical-iconoclast.blogspot.com/2010/09/rattle-berliner-mahler-1-beethoven-prom.html.

The series starts August 27 2010, with the First Symphony, the concert being repeated twice in November, three different performances over three months. Compare and contrast. Next, in February 2011, they'll be doing three performances in three days of Mahler's Third Symphony. It should be good, particularly as they're  doing it with Hugo Wolf's Elfenlied. This  is the orchestral version of the famous Mörike song, but is very rarely heard. Only 2 recordings.  It's a magical, diaphanous song, but works very well even when scored for a Mahler-sized orchestra. This will be a revelation! It should work well with Mahler 3, since both are rhapsodies on Nature. It's Hugo Wolf's anniversary too, but thank goodness the exploitation machine hasn't hit him yet.

Mark 16, 17 and 18 Feb too because Christine Schäfer is the soloist  in Mahler 4. She's wonderful in this, combining fragility with firmness. She's been singing it for years, yet she manages to get something very special. In fact, she's one of my top choices. It's on with Stravinsky's quirky ballet Apollo. 

In April, Mahler 5 with Henry Purcell, Funeral Music for Queen Mary - very interesting indeed, Rattle bringing his early music expertise to the Berliners who in recent years have hugely expanded their core repertoire. Obviously, it will be RIAS Kammerchor doing the honours, but musicians listen, too, and learn from each other. Rattle's motive may be to show how pure and lucid Mahler 5 can be. A few years ago,  I heard Daniel Harding mix Mahler 5 with Rameau. What a daring choice! But it worked beautifully, showing how carefully crafted the symphony is, more chamber music than bombast.

In May 2011, Claudio Abbado AND Maurizio Pollini! Only the Adagio from Mahler 10, but combined with Liszt Totentanz, it makes sense. But M10 looks forwards, too, since Mahler didn't know he was going to die. So The Berliners and Abbado will be playing Berg's Lulu Suite. That's also a thoughtful choice, because M10 is infused with Alma, and in many ways Alma was a  Lulu.

In June 2011, Rattle conducts M6 with Berg's Three Pieces for Orchestra. and Vladimir Jurowski conducts Das klagende Lied. Jurowski's Mahler can be uneven, Again, there's a brain behind this programming, since it matches conductors to works they do well. Jurowski shines in this piece, because it's the closest Mahler gets to Romantic opera (Die drei Pintos doesn't count). Recently I heard Daniele Gatti condiuct DkL, very well, though he's not usually idiomatic in Mahler.

The Berlin Philharmonic has been doing interesting Mahler for years, including Mahlerthons at Easter with Boulez, so they have a track record.  This 2010-11 series will be good because it's designed with integrity, and with genuine understanding of what makes Mahler the composer he is.  LOTS MORE on Mahler on this site - and ORIGINAL too - things you won't find anywhere else. follow labels, search, subscribe

Entartete-Technik Kugelhaus

This is the Kugelhaus, a circular building made of steel and glass, built in Dresden in 1928. Architect Peter Birkenholz (d 1961) Click on the pic to enlarge for detail.  Plans were laid to build a row of them, like a galaxy of planets in orbit. That was the spirit of the age. Very "futurist". Needless to say anything so interesting was denounced by the Nazis as "degenerate". Prince Charles would have loved the way they got rid of modern architecture!  It was pulled down in 1938. The "Arc" aka the Ove Arup building that looms over the A4 is a distant descendant. There's a glass dome in modern Dresden, too, built as a memorial to the Kugelhaus, but it's not quite the same. Read more HERE

Feminist Finnish Jenůfa, Anna-Liisa 1922

Even if you don 't know Finnish or Swedish, this 1922 movie Anna-Liisa, is so dramatic that you can follow the story without words. Anna-Liisa, a nice country girl is about to marry a wealthy hunk called Johannes, in an idyllic Finnish farm by a lake. But she has a secret! Three years ago she murdered her own baby. This is Jenůfa, except that she does the dirty work herself .

The film was based on a play by Minna Kanth (1844-1897) the first great Finnish playwright, a contemporary of Ibsen .She was a feminist, and interested in modern social issues. Follow the link above to find out more about her. Hers was a liberal, artistic and free-thinking milieu that produced artists, writers, musicians and poets who created the Finnish Republic. To really appreciate Sibelius in context, it helps to understand the "Finnish Renaissance".The film is subtitled both in Swedish, which most educated people spoke, and in Finnish, the language of national identity (which Sibelius, among others had to learn as a second language). English text HERE

Kanth wrote the play, Anna-Liisa, in 1895.  This film, by Teuvo Puro and Jussi Snellman, was made in 1922, but is very well shot for its time. They use the background as an essential part of the story. Look at the detail: life in a simple country farm as it was long ago : the fence built with diagonal logs, windows built of shutters to keep out the winter. When Anna-Liisa's kid sister wants to look into her room, she shifts a slat aside. Modern audiences will be wowed by the elaborate spinning wheel, used for making woolen thread. People didn't just make their own clothes, they made the thread. Look out, too, for the well, operated by an elaborate but obviously efficient mechanism. Horse drawn carts and actors who don't need to be taught how to move around them.  Even a wood sauna by the water, and a naked man strolling out. This pure, simple lifestyle represents Anna-Liisa's world. You can almost smell the clean, fresh air and trees.

Anna-Liisa is seduced by a farmhand called Mikko, who runs off to work in a logging camp. In the play, there's be no way of showing what logging involved. Here we see the mighty forests, and logs being floated down the river. Logging is a dangerous business, loggers jump into the river to shift the logs. Understanding this makes you appreciate how much Mikko has achieved by leaving the village, and why he assumes that Anna-Liisa should have to marry him whether she wants to or not..

Anyway, Anna-Liisa gets pregnant and the baby dies, but she keeps her secret from everyone. Yet guilt weighs heavily upon her. Her little sister has a dream (around 33 min) where we see the "dream" girl superimposed on the sleeping girl. In her nightdress the dream girl finds Anna-Liisa dead, by the lake and garlands her with wild flowers. This simple device sets the mood for the real drama. Anna-Liisa sits by the lake, distraught, and suddenly throws herself in, screaming "My Baby!" Along comes Mikko, who drags her out. On Sunday, Anna-Liisa has to marry, but whom? Mikko or Johannes? Marrying Mikko will hide her guilt, but she doesn't love him anymore. But Anna-Liisa's no wimp. In front of the parson and people, she reveals her secret and says she'll take the consequences. And she doesn't marry either man! 

Reynaldo Hahn Le marchand de Venise - download

Reynaldo Hahn's songs are luscious,. They seem to exist in a perfumed world beyond reality. But here is a full streaming download of his last opera,  Le marchand de Venise, written in 1935. Full details, synopsis and libretto included.