John Adams Nixon in China Prom 72

Because John Adams was conducting his own opera Nixon in China at BBC Prom72, it was one of the season "musts". Any opportunity to hear a composer conduct his own work shouldn't be passed up for the obvious reason that he's the ur-source. On the other hand, composers don't necessarily have objectivity. At the culmination of  the BBC's week-long focus on Adams, objectivity wasn't an issue. Besides, this music works when you give yourself up to the whole experience uncritically.

Nixon in China isn't history. It's curiously distorted even as an outsider's view on events. Kissinger, for example was the prime mover, not Nixon, and certainly not the venal molester Adams depicts him as. Why does Adams mount this vicious, irrational libel?  The very fact that Kissinger didn't get an injunction against this opera speaks volumes. This should be  a clear warning to anyone who thinks this is an opera about modern events. It's not. Nixon in China is a work of such political shallowness that it's pointless to consider it as normal dramatic narrative.

Rather, it's a musing on events  from the perspective of those who have no idea what's going on. "Who are our, our, our..... enemies? Who, who, who are ......our friends?"  Nixon and his entourage might as well be visitors to the Moon, for all they understand about China, or indeed about themselves. "The old, cold, Cold Warriors piloting towards the unknown". It's fashionable to knock Alice Goodman's libretto, but it's a great deal more subtle than you'd assume. Mao Tse Tung mumbles about cranes and cod philosophy. But as Goodman shows, he's weaving mumbo jumbo, while remarks about China's "Manifest Destiny" surface, a sharp dig at US political theory towards Native Americans.

The opera evolves in a series of tableaux - Mao on the sofa, the banquet, the visit to a commune, the ballet. The Chinese are putting on a show that the Americans can't penetrate. The original staging, by Peter Sellars, was so literal that it replicated photographic images of the events, down to minutiae like Mao's spittoon. It reinforced a fixation on irrelevant superficialities. It was  maddening because there is more to this opera than even Adams realizes, I suspect. If Nixon in China is about non-comprehension, the music fits the mood perfectly. Clues, clues, clues, repetition, repetition, repetition.  It's the way the mind turns data over and over, in the hope of somehow making sense oif things.

Perhaps the Proms semi-staging helped because it freed the opera from Sellars' simplistic barriers. In the abstraction, our minds can process for ourselves. This performance showed why there's such a lack of differentiation between the setting of the male parts. You can  recognize Gerald Finley and Alan Oke because they're so familiar but you don't recognize them as Chou and Mao respectively. Robert Orth (Nixon) and James Rutherford (Kissinger) you recognize by voice type rather than personality. Mao is surrounded by a trio of secretaries, and a larger chorus represents the identikit Red Guards, soldiers, dancers. Perhaps Adams is suggesting that the regimentation of the Cultural Revolution applies to Americans too? The machine-like cadences of his music portray conformity to a mind numbing degree, but work perfectly for this concept.

There's more variety in the writing for female voice. Jessica Rivera's Pat Nixon veers dangerously shrill, but that is entirely in character for Pat Nixon. "I come from a poor family" she sings, identifying with the Chinese masses. All her life she's been forced into playing an artificial, decorative role. So when she sees the ballet The Red Detachment of Women, she responds to the dancer who plays the oppressed woman and tries to intervene. To her, the boundaries of art and reality are falling apart. Good for Pat! I thought, though strictly speaking, it's good for Alice Goodman who wrote these words. We don't know what the real Pat Nixon felt. Kathleen Kim sings a sharp Madame Mao, Pat's feistier, nastier counterpart. Kim also sang the role in the superlative Paris (Chatelet) production this year. Read more about that HERE.

The Paris production, the MET revival of 2011 and this BBC Proms concert contrast strongly.  By far the best was Paris, conducted, directed and performed by people outside the Adams/Sellars circle.  This is telling, because the French production approached the opera from a very different perspective.  Less emphasis on unquestioning incomprehension, more emphasis on personality. Through strong casting, the roles emerged as believable characters. Alexander Briger conducted with firm focus, bringing out the psychological dysfunction beneath the OCD-like repetitions. John Adams at the Proms is celebrating 25 years of success. He wrote the opera, so he can afford to indulge. This Prom was a good experience but I ended up listening afterwards to the original Red Detachment of Women (full download here)  It is worrying when you find more depth and colour in a blatantly stylized ballet written for propaganda purposes.  Maybe I'm just in nostalgic mode. But try it yourself. Listen to the rebroadcast of the Proms Nixon in China and then to the anonymous music in the film.  Madame Mao (who was behind the ballet) has the last laugh after all! 

The Zen of Mahler - Um Mitternacht

It is midnight, and the poet awakes and looks upwards to the heavens. But no star is shining. No comfort. No pathetic fallacy  "kein Lichtgedanken mir Trost gebracht".  The only sound he hears is his own heartbeat. "Nahm ich in Achtn Die Schläge meines Herzens; Ein einz'ger Puls war angefacht". Try this sometime, it's frightening to realize that all that keeps you from dropping dead is a piece of muscle.  We don't know what metaphysical "battle" the poet speaks of, except that he knows that it's not up to him; he hasn't the power to change things. "Kämpft' ich die Schlacht, O Menschheit, deiner Leiden; Nicht konnt' ich sie entscheiden Mit meiner Macht"  So he puts his faith in a higher being, ie God, "Hab' ich die Macht In deine Hand gegeben! Herr über Tod und Leben Du hältst die Wacht!" That's the breakthrough, being able to stop trying to control what cannot be controlled. To accept that there are things beyond our comprehension. Zen. In Rückert's case that means Christanity but it applies to all faith. Don't claw and scramble, chill. Faith gets a bad press these days because it's been hijacked by intolerant control freaks, who don't understand what it's really all about.

In the poem,  Rückert repeats the words "Um Mitternacht" at the beginning and end of each stanza, with the insistent regularity of a heartbeat. The song has been orchestrated, but the version for piano song is more private and intimate as befits the situation. Then, when the poet puts his faith in something beyond himself, the vocal line rises "HERR!" Notice how the piano line falls evenly, like an inner pulse. I much prefer hearing a baritone in the part, because most Mahler songs are written for low voice and the poet's perspctive is masculine. Christa Ludwig is good and Gerald Moore is too, but YouTube is pot luck. Ten years ago Matthias Goerne was singing this, so wonderfully that a noted Mahler devotee asked that the off air tape be played at her funeral.  Goerne makes the "Herr!" ring out with intense depth, stretching the word so it fills out, like his whole chest (and heart) reach out. . Incredibly moving.  He's still singing it, and no doubt with even more depth of experience, but he doesn't get the marketing fuss he deserves, but I haven't heard him sing it recently. 

For the full text and translation, please see Emily Ezust's Song and Lieder Texts Page here - fantastic resource.

Morton Feldman meets William Walton - Edinburgh Festival

Morton Feldman and William Walton on the same programme! The Edinburgh International Festival closed on an eclectic note. Juliet Willliams reports :

After the visits of several distinguished guest orchestras, as the Festival drew to a close, Edinburgh's Usher Hall returned its platform to a native group, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. The festival spirit though continued with the appearance of American guest conductor David Robertson. Mr Robertson, who studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London and is known for his interpretations of English music, brought us one piece of this genre, one from his native California and one from New England, in a varied  programme which ably demonstrated the width of his range. He showed a charming and gracious demeanour to performers, soloist and audience alike throughout this demanding concert, indicating finally after taking several curtain calls that he wished to retire to slake his thirst!

Under his baton emerged a shimmery, silken and characteristically West-coast sound, as the RSNO opened the programme with Charles Ives's Unanswered Question. As with Simon Rattle on Thursday with the Berliner Philharmoniker, the two opening works were segued into each other, here the Unanswered Question with Morton Feldman's Coptic Light, which had the effect of illuminating both and bringing a pleasing lightness of touch. The entire first half  was very slow; gentle, graceful, serene with a diffuse sound world. Morton Feldman was a leading musical and cultural figure of the American West Coast in the 1950s and 60s, being closely associated with John Cage (whose music has been performed recently at the BBC Proms this year) but also with practitioners of other art forms such as the painter Mark Rothko: one of Feldman's seminal works is Rothko Chapel, and there is a similarity of mood in their output. Coptic Light  is a shorter piece and – at about thirty minutes - more practical for concert performance, but from the same compositional period. It's quiet, subtle and expansive, but with a slightly melancholy undertow pervading it. 

After the interval, the Edinburgh International festival's music programme closed as it had opened: with  a  big choral work. This was a more straightforward performance than the opening with Delius' Mass of Life: an exciting and dynamic account of the well-known 'Belshazzar's Feast'.

This picked up a  recent Festival theme in that it echoed the theme of vengeance in James McMillan's short opera, Clemency,  which I recently reviewed. Walton's Israelites however celebrate  with shouts of joyous triumph rather than MacMillan's Abraham having an ambiguous struggle with the avenging angels. This thematic connection was highlighted by the use in the programme of Rembrandt’s painting, Belshazzar's Feast, showing the disembodied hand descending to write in Hebrew on the wall of the King's palace.

The brass playing was especially good; where a  'God of Brass' is referred to, there was brass in the gods, a musical pun which worked well in the large space of the Usher Hall. This enjoyable performance with the popular local Festival Chorus received a rousing reception from a generous audience which mixed locals and festival-goers.

Edinburgh International Festival, Usher Hall, Sat 1^st September

Neal Davies - baritone, Edinburgh Festival Chorus, David Robertson, RNSO

The Unanswered Question – Charles Ives

Coptic Light – Morton Feldman

Belshazzar's Feast  - William Walton

Mahler 6th Chailly Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra Prom 69

Have Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra become one of those legendary pairings, like Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic? Certainly in their Mendelssohn (read more here)  but Chailly's account of Mahler's Symphony no 6 in A minor at BBC Prom 69 gave much to consider. After two years of indifferent and often downright disgraceful Mahler performances, at last Chailly and the Leipzigers give us one that sets us thinking.  So much so that I haven't been able to sleep all night, (too much coffee) and am feeling shattered. So this review won't do them justice!

When Chailly conducted Mahler in Amsterdam, it wasn't the easiest fit, since the Concertgebouw Orchestra has such a formidable Mahler tradition, and some of the players needed time to adjust. There are some fine recordings from that period (an exceptional Des Knaben Wunderhorn) but when Chailly moved to Leipzig, something special happened.  Chailly's Mahler is different, so devotees of the Bernstein style for example will be aghast. But so what? Mahler is such a great composer that there's always room for thoughtful interpretation, and thoughtful listening for that matter. No less an authority than Donald Mitchell has such a high regard for Chailly that there's a big section on Chailly in his Discovering Mahler (2007)

Chailly works with the strengths of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, not against it. The ostinato march that runs throughout the symphony enters unobtrusively. No stomping, but a fleet-footed sense of forward movement true to the "energico" marking. Mahler 6 connects to Mahler 3. In both, the suggestion of peaks and open vistas, "mountains" as metaphysical metaphor. (read more here).  The cowbells are somtimes interpreted as souvenirs of Alpine meadows, but Mahler preferred that they be heard as sounds heard from a distance (which alpine cowbells are). Chailly keeps them so muted they are only just audible, creating spatial depth.

The Leipziger's characteristic grace makes the cursive figures particularly seductive. You might hear them as Ruckblick (backward glances), but Chailly makes me think of round shapes as oppsed to angular, feminine ideas as opposed to masculine. Through so much of Mahler we can find this dichotomy. Interpret them as you will. Is Mahler referiing to his muse Alma, or to the "Eternal Feminine", to creative empathy as opposed to negative regression? Warmth comes naturally to this orchestra, offering opportunities to explore this side of Mahler's music more prosaic readings can miss.

In this performance I was struck by the prominence Mahler gives to the harps. They feature before the solo violin passage in the Allegro. Listen to the broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and follow how the harp passages are sharply defined and continue to resurface throughout. The flute solo in the Andante was exquisite, also garlanded by harps. Usually, everyone's listening for the hammer blows and crashing cymbals, but Mahler is making a much more subtle point, and the Leipzigers bring it out more clearly than usual.

Chailly chose Andante-Scherzo. He gives weight to the strings in the Andante, using the "golden" Leipzig glow so the movement feels like a languorous looking back, the repeating patterns nicely burnished. It also gives balance to the symphony, where dichotomy is of the essence. And balance is in the DNA of a Mendelssohn orchestra. Much has been written about the Andante-Scherzo, Scherzo-Andante war, but dogmatism is the enemy of art.  Much moree interesting is why a conductor makes his choices, not what the choice may be. Whatever we might personally think is irrelevant: it's the conductor's decision as artist.

Chailly's Scherzo begins optimistically, but staccato figures return, and the circular figures develop  bizarre turbulence, which then gives way to stillness, so you hear the staccato up close, precisely defined. This performance wasn't particularly demonic, but the irregular rhythmic shifts suggest dangerous imbalance, If the quietness evokes a heartbeat, do these patterns suggest arrthymia?  That may not have been in Mahler's mind but this symphony comes from the same time period when He wrote Um Mitternacht, which refers to a man listening to the beat of his heart in the stillness of the night. "Ein einz'ger Puls war angefacht um Mitternacht". All that separates us from life or death is a single, fragile pulse. Try this one yourself at midnight. It's scary.

Volume increases but the brass are mute. Xylophone, glockenspeil, tam-tam and of course the harps. Chailly makes the orchestra sound like an array of ticking mechanisms. Do these ostinato patterns mark the passage of time? For the symphony draws to its inevitable close. Mahler specifies that the hammer blows should sound hollow, not bright and brassy. No-one has figured the perfect hammerblow but the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra uses a large wooden box and a massive wooden hammer (see photo). Mahler's hero isn't blown away by theatrical furies, but felled by dull thuds. After the first hammerblow, we hear those harps again, plucking that fine, clear melody that suggests open vistas or memory or whatever. The solo violin makes one last entry and suddenly tempi whizz past,  and the opening march returns in tiny rustling fragments, hurtling forward, decelerating.. Then the final hammerblow and the strings play a high, sustained chord. The hero has flatlined, can't be  resuscitated. Or find redemption. That's why Mahler 6 is really "tragic" because unique among Mahler's symphonies, there's no transcendence.

Please read  my review of Prom 69  Chailly, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra Messaien  Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum HERE. 

Photos: Roger Thomas

Messiaen Et exspecto Prom 69 Chailly Leipzig Gewandhaus

Superb Mahler Sixth Riccardo Chailly, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra at the BBC Proms, Prom 69. Such a stunning performance that it would be wrong to do something superficial. Plenty of places to go if you want shallow, but it would pain me. After a year and a half of indifferent to horrible Mahler performances, at last something really worth listening to!  So please come back to this site tomorrow. UPDATE ! Chailly's Leipzig Mahler 6 HERE. In the meantime, I'll comment on Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Messiaen Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum.

This Prom (BBC Prom 69) was unusual because it wasn't loud. No strings attached in more ways than one! The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra have one of the most gorgeous string sections in the world, Without string sections, orchestras are "dead". So Chailly and the Leipzigers understand what Et exspecto means. It was commissioned by the French Government to commemorate those who died in the 1939-45 war, who would never return.

Messiaen's Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum is a companion piece to The Quartet for the End of Time. (read more here).  The quartet was first performed in a prisoner of war camp on broken instruments in freezing conditions.  Hence the spartan economy with which Et exspecto is orchestrated. You don't hear the strings, but you listen "because" they are not there. Chailly and the Leipzigers also respect the long silences Messiaen specified between movements. At first, the Proms audience didn't know what to expect and coughed and fidgetted but then twigged Chailly had his head bowed for a reason. These silences were meant for contemplation. Messiaen, being devout, understood the Stations of the Cross in Catholic practice, each Station a kind of scena to be meditated on before going onto the next. Respecting this silence between movements is part of the progress of the work as a whole.

Contemplation in a work as shockingly dramatic as this? It's perfectly in order for any conductor to go for the overwhelming power of the piece, but the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra isn't brassy and showy like some orchestras are. Volume isn't what they are about. Their Et exspecto was gentle, but from an orchestra like this, violence would not be sincere.  What's more, Et exspecto isn't really about Death but about resurrection. The earth is torn apart by cataclysm, but the end result is eternal life and union with God, or whatever higher force you might conceptualize. Et exspecto is extreme: hence the crashing cymbals and wailing brass. But gloomy it's not.

There is no such thing as "non-interpretation" in any form of music. You can't even look at a score without interpreting how the notes might sound in relation to each other. Chailly's Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum may be different, but he's arrived at it by interpreting why it might be the way it's written. "Music is not in the notes" said Mahler. It's why the notes are put together.
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Here is what I wrote about Messiaen Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum last year at the time of the Tsunami in Japan.  Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum.


Because Olivier Messiaen's Et exspecto resurrection mortuorum is about the End of the World, it's scary to listen to at this time (Japanese Tsunami). But maybe this is, after all, the time to listen to what it really means. There is a deliberate Japanese connection, since Messiaen visited and loved Japan.  He is emphasizing universal spiritual values which apply to all, Christian or not.

Note the orchestration. No strings! The Quartet for the End of Time can be heard as a prototype. Twenty years later, and after nuclear war became a reality, Messiaen goes for maximium power. Massed percussion forms the bedrock of Et exspecto, for it represents the earth itself, ripped asunder by the Apocalypse. Specifically Messiaen uses six giant Asian gongs, more powerful than tam tams. Gongs call the faithful to order. Ritual progression is very much part of this music's structure, so gongs mark stages in its raga-like plateaux. Metallic percussion, too, rather than timpani, for dissonance. Pitched cowbells, and a gigantic set of tubular bells which ring out like an organ, the composer's personal instrument. Against the percussion,woodwinds create birdsong or the sound of wings in flight. Brasses range from small D trumpet to Wagnerian tuba. What would the Final Judgement be without trumpets?  Messiaen wants strident, not resonant.This work is, after all, about waking the dead.

The ritual character of Et exspecto is underlined by quotations from different parts of the Bible. It's a Via Crucis which unfolds in stages. First: "From the deepest abyss I cry, Lord hear me!", which is what Jesus is supposed to have called out in his time of agony. Massive dark chords like tectonic plates, shifting inexorably. The brass like the rumbling of some deep fissure, which explodes into wild, screaming chords and ends in a single, piercing shriek. Hearing this after Sendai is painful. Then silence, extremely important as it marks an invisible, inaudible transit.

In the second section, a moment of calm reassurance, for Christ has risen from the dead. Diaphanous textures, which grow into quirky, jerky angles. The movement of birds, intuitively darting in crazy angles so they can't be caught. As Messiaen the ornithologist would have understood. Birds are fragile, but they evolved from dinosaurs, and survived. Even greater stillness marks the beginning of the third section, but now the tubular bells toll, calling like the bells in a church. The woodwinds describe an even more powerful bird theme - a bird from the Amazon jungle, apparently, which has existed outside civilization. Messiaen is referring to creation itself, connecting the Beginning and End of Time. In Christian belief, an Angel blows a trumpet and graves open. Hence the darkening "earthquake fissure" theme.

Wild,  jerky figures associated with the "birds" start the fourth section, which soon  the percussion explodes. When these gongs crash,  it feels like blinding light, a shocking, flashing thunderbolt in sound. At this moment, I can't help but think of the cataclysmic light of a nuclear explosion. Ironically, it's the Resurrection, start of a new era.

The final movement almost defies description. Powerful ostinato, gongs and blocked percussion, repeated over and over, driving the point in so there's no mistaking its force. Gradually the music turns, like a juggernaut. The image of an eternal wheel, perhaps propelling the music ever forward. Messiaen uses the quotation "And I heard the voice of an immense crowd". It's an immense crowd becauase all who have died in the past have been raised from death and suffering. (That's assuming God doesn't discriminate between faiths). That's why the whole orchestra marches forth in unison. Gradually the pace builds up to an overwhelming climax. It's not a march in conventional symphonic terms but owes its structure, perhaps, to Japanese gagaku, which inspired Messiaen's ground-breaking Sept Haïkaï, written in 1962, soon after Messiaen returned from Japan, and two years before Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum.

In Sept Haïkaï,  the image is a “floating gate”, the torii at the Miyajima shrine in Japan. The red arches stand alone in the sea, as if suspended between earth and sky. It is a gate, but to what? The arches stand amid a panoramic open  landscape. As the weather changes, as time changes, the surroundings change dramatically. Photo by H Orihashi. Read more about Sept Haïkaï HERE.


For Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum means "In expectation of the resurrection of the dead". It's not meant to be oppressive or gloomy. It was commissioned as a memorial to the French war dead, but Messiaen was  having no truck with militarism or even national glory. Instead he comes up with something so unique and so universal he wanted it performed in the Alps. So if the Christian form of this piece bothers you, remember that for Messiaen, God resided in Nature, and mountains were Nature's cathedrals.

Mendelssohn Leipzig Gewandhaus Chailly Prom 67

Mendelssohn loved the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and they revere him in return. Impossible then to miss the Leipzigers all-Mendelssohn Prom 67 at the Royal Albert Hall. When Riccardo Chailly opened their new season in 2005 as Director, they programmed Mendelssohn over and over. It was a statement of intent. Since then the orchestra has surpassed itself,  the legendary "golden"sound regenerated anew. Chailly and the Leipzig Gewanndhaus Orchestra are a match made in heaven, from which Mendelssohn is smiling down.

Starting the Prom with the Overture from Ruy Blas (op 95, 1839) overturns stereotypes of Mendelssohn as "effete".  The Overture was written for a brand new play by Victor Hugo, which Mendelssohn hated. So Mendelssohn writes an overture so punchy it's even more dramatic than the play itself!  Those sharp "footsteps" in the strings, sometimes mimicking guitars, the wild  turbulent longer lines, the extreme fanfares. Mendelssohn creating savage satire, mocking vulgar taste and excess. Chailly and the Leipzigers play with fire and finesse.  This stylish elegance is significant, because the Overture to Ruy Blas can be read as a riposte to Berlioz, to popular fashion, and indeed, to Wagner and Liszt, had he known how they would maul him after his death for reasons of their own. 

Having blown away the cobwebs, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor emerged with even greater purity. Although the piece is so famous, Nicolaj Znaider, Chailly and the Leipzigers made it feel fresh. Exquisite, the distillation of everything beautiful and poignant. When I die, I want the last sounds I hear to be that elusive melody.... so sad and yet so life affirming.  Each time the theme returns, Znaider enriches it, haloed by sensitive woodwinds.  On the BBC broadcast, you can hear Znaider taking breaths, which weren't audible live. This music is sublime, but Znaider's extra personal touch reminds us that Mendelssohn wrote for human beings. This was s a breathtaking performance, truly committed and beautifully judged. An experience never to be forgotten. It was a privilege to be there.

There's more to music drama than Wagner: had Mendelssohn lived, would we be thinking of opera in a different way? Mendelssohn's Overture to The Fair Melusine (op 32. 1833) expresse big ideas, but without words. We don't need to be told, we respond intuitively to the surging climaxes and delicate "water" imagery even if we don't know who Melusine was.   Chailly and the Leipzigers bring out the inherent drama in the piece yet never sacrifice poise to flash. This is drama for refined minds, thinking in abstract terms, yet it's so emotionally potent. The "crashing waves" give way to a single clarinet, which is then supported by winds. The music ends, but our imaginations continue to react.

Mendelssohn's Symphony no 5 "The Reformation", was last heard at the Proms in 2009 (Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra) but Chailly and the Leipzigers are in an altogether more exalted league. No comparison. The Leipzig Mendelssohn tradition is unique. Players may change, but know what Mendelssohn meant to Leipzig, and to the huuman spirit. It is no coincidence that the orchestra was involved right at the start oif the protests which would lead to the collapse of the GDR, and thus to dismemberment of the whole Soviet bloc. The Nazis could smash the statue of Mendelssohn outside the Gewandhaus, but they could not destroy what Mendelssohn symbolizes.

Mendelssohn's Fifth Symphony "The Reformation"  is more uncompromising than the glorious Lobgesang (Symphony no 2) or the delicious Italian (Symphony no 4) but it's spartan for very profound reasons. It was written to commemorate the Augsburg Confession of 1530, where the Holy Roman Emporer recognized that Protestants and Catholics could coexist.  This was a critcial moment in German history, from which in many ways the Protestant German identity arose. Without Augsburg, no J S Bach, or even Meistersinger, for that matter.  Mendelssohn revered Bach at a time when the earlier composer was almost forgotten, so this symphony is Mendelssohn's musical statement of faith. Chailly and the Leipzigers firmly carve out the quotations from  Ein' feste Burg is unser Gott, for this is the foundation stone of the symphony (and indeed of the German musical tradition).  Absolutely rock solid, so the counterpoint  melody seems even freer and more joyous. Note that "dancing" march, another reminder that Wagner owed much to Mendelsohn. 

This performance had undfamilair bits because the edition used was an early version, not heard before in this country. Yet Chailly and the Leipzigers performed it with such committment that the characteristic warmth of their style won over. Beautiful brass - listen for the trombones, trumpets and the contrabass ophicleide pictured above, (not as strident as a tuba). Magnificent flute! With Mendelssohn, always the importance of individual voice, and here this voice was intensely assertive, though graceful. 

Alas, some in the audience saw fit to impose their voices over the music. It's unfair on everyone else. When the idiot shouted Bravo! between movements, it  broke the mood. Chailly took a while to readjust, visibly annoyed. This kind of interruption is barbaric. No one needs to be told that Mendelssohn and these performers are good. All it shows is that the shouter is not really listening, but trying to dominate. Save that for Brown Shirt rallies, please let the rest of us listen to the music.

Please someone at the BBC tell the presenter not to praise this sort of vulgarity (and the silly flag waving hands) because it only encourages buffoons who think they are more important than the music or anyone else.

Mendelssohn's Wedding March for an encore - only two extra instruments needed, and extra horn and cymbals. Although it's wedding music, it's not easy to march down the aisle because the rhythms aren't regular enough. The piece comes from A Midsummers Night's Dream. Fairies and Grecian nobles don't stomp.  Wagner's Wedding music from Lohengrin works better because it gives better cues for bride and groom to troop in procession. Which rather summarizes a few more differences  between Mendelssohn and Wagner.

Huw Watkins In the Locked Room Edinburgh Festival

Huw Watkins's opera In the Locked Room is coming to the Linbury at the Royal Opera House soon. It's just premiered at the Edinburgh Festival. Juliet Williams reports

'In the Locked Room' sets an eternal story of a love triangle on the Sussex coast. It's based partly on a short story by Thomas Hardy and infused with the poetry of David Harsent, who writes the libretto. But the sum here is far, far greater than the total of the parts. This relatively predictable-seeming situation is wound into a gripping psychological drama, further enhanced by its music and staging. The psychological claustrophobia is mimicked by the use of a doll's house to represent the Sussex house where they all live.

Huw Watkins's music subtly enhances the story to further intensify its already powerful narrative. Scottish Opera's mini-series of mini-operas are all well worth seeing, but this is the jewel in the crown. Overstretched City financier Stephen negotiates the use of a seaside home with his wife Ella, who stays at home tending the garden and reading. Stephen becomes more and more wrapped up in his work, and his neglected wife turns for solace to poetry she has found, whch turns out to be written by a mysterious occupant of a room, which is always locked, in the buidling where they live. Ella withdraws further and further into her fantasies about the absent poet, eventually meeting him with predictably tragic consequences for all of them. There's a Shakespearian-style sub-plot where the greater similarity Stephen has with their business-like landlady than with the dreamy Ella is subtly pointed up from time to time.

Paul Curievici (raved in Chelsea Opera Group's La forza del destino here)  as Stephen has the least sympathetic character but a very enjoyable voice. In a generous double bill, this delightful and intense vignette is followed by a slower-moving enactment of the horrors of war. It's an updating of some of the messages of the War Poets of a century ago, and the use of Plato's words, “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” reminds us that this theme too is a perennial one for humanity.

Stuart McRae – a pupil of James MacMillan (whose opera Clemency was reviewed here) - is known for his writing for the cinema, and the music and staging here have strong cinematic elements. 'Ghost Patrol', like 'In the Locked Room' is also in many ways a love triangle situation, but not so much one between a woman and two men (although this is one plot element, it is overall a relatively minor one) but a man torn between his love for a woman on the one hand and the camaraderie and structure of military life on the other. Both Alasdair and Sam are former soldiers having difficulty adjusting to civilian life. Alasdair is apparently more successful than Sam, running a bar, where the action is set, in an unspecified garrison town. The more unfortunate soldier breaks in by night, and the opera opens on a very exciting scene where a man clad only in underpants wrestles with a masked intruder. After a brief struggle, they soon recognise each other though as comrades from army days.

The arrival of the bartender's girlfriend, Vicki, onto the scene quickly reveals though that he too is frequently awakened by nightmares, he too is affected by what might now be termed 'combat stress' or 'post traumatic stress disorder'. Both are torn between missing army life and being haunted by the horrors of war. Vicki, the girlfriend, is a strong and bitter woman, militantly (pun intended) opposed to war. Yet it is never explained why then she makes her life with an ex-soldier. She urges the men to embrace peace and make a new life, but she has only a rather limited life as a pub entertainer, which with further irony involves an act where she dresses up in military uniform as a forces sweetheart of the 1940s (again this device emphasises the timelessness of the opera's message). These unresolved issues, combined with her repetitive and at times unsubtle polemic, make this character less than entirely satisfactory. Jane Harrington, who has trained both as an actress and at the Royal College of Music, is very good in this role, notwithstanding its intrinsic limitation. As before, there is a generally high standard of performances from all the singers and musicians. There's another Edinburgh performance tomorrow (2nd September) on the final day of the Festival, but it's sold out and has been for some time. There's another chance to see this programme in Glasgow, and both operas will be in London later in the year.

Edinburgh International Festival, Traverse Theatre

'In the Locked Room'

Huw Watkins – music, David Harsent – libretto

Ruby Hughes – Ella, Hakan Vramsmo – Pascoe, Paul Curievici – Stephen,  Louise Winter – Susan

The Orchestra of Scottish Opera, Michael Rafferty - Conductor, Michael McCarthy - Director

'Ghost Patrol'

Stuart McRae - music, Louise Welsh – libretto

James McOran-Campbell – Alasdair, Nicholas Sharratt – Sam, Jane Harrington - Vicki, The Orchestra of Scottish Opera, Michael Rafferty - Conductor, Matthew Richardson - Director