Wagner Tannhäuser Royal Opera House

The Royal Opera House itself is the star of this new production of Richard Wagner Tannhäuser. An intriguing twist on an opera that pits orgiastic excess against purity, pleasure against morality. Perhaps Tim Albery's inspiration came from the prize-singing contest. Dominating the stage in the First Act is a fake Royal Opera House proscenium, complete with fake velvet curtains and gold trimmings. It's absolutely stunning. But beware! The fact remains, Tannhäuser is not Adriana Lecouvreur.

For Wagner, Tannhäuser is torn between extremes. Venusberg represents orgiastic excess and abandonment, Wartburg ascetic self denial. Wartburg wins. Venusberg doesn't. If Albery thinks Tannhäuser is a metaphor for opera and for the Royal Opera House in particular, maybe he should get out more and see the real world. Prize song contests aren't just about "singing", as we know from Die Meistersinger. Moreover,  Tannhäuser is even closer to medieval morality tale, though the theology is skewed.

For Wagner (who personally liked velvet and excess)  what is at issue is a new sensibility built on rigorous concepts. Wagner's deliberately distancing himself from Meyerbeer and what he thought of as feelgood, but brainless, glitz. Hence the ballet that portrays Venusberg. It's a pointed dig against the kind of entertainment Wagner rejected, and at the kind of audiences who used to flock to see ballerinas' legs, ignoring the music and drama.  Here it's presented completely devoid of irony. Once I saw a production where the ballet was a bondage orgy, the dancers inhuman beasts. Horrifying yet hypnotic, which is why our hero Tannhäuser was enslaved. If Venusberg was as safe and wholesome as this ballet, he would have long since died of boredom.

Albery's Wartburg is a post-apocalyptic greyness. The Royal Opera House arch lies broken, twisted like rubble in the background.  Visually, though this adds a vertical element to the horizontal flatness. The barrenness is valid, since Wartburg's in a crisis situation. If Venusberg's no fun, Wartburg should be even less so. Physical movement in the First Act is slow to the point of being comatose. At first I thought this was to allow for Johann Botha's disability, which would be laudable, but then remembered that excessively slow movement is a Tim Albery trademark. In Albery's  Der fliegende Holländer (ROH, 2009) , Bryn Terfel spent much of the time appearing to pull a long rope suspended diagonally across the stage. (An echo of this rope appears in this Tannhäuser too.)  Grimness is an Albery thing, whatever the opera or the singer, and often it works. Obviously directors have an individual language, as all artists do, but grim for its own sake can become tedious if it holds up dramatic flow.

Tannhäuser is not a romantic hero. He left Wartburg in a pique and gave in whole-heartedly to Venusberg's excesses. Thus Johann Botha's portrayal is psychologically accurate. Wagner's whole point is that the character is sated, almost destroyed by what he's experienced yet still has a spark of goodness that makes him worth saving. That's why Elisabeth loves him. Why redeem someone who doesn't need the help? Botha's characterization  was much more subtle and true to the role and to the opera than might meet the eye. On the ear, too, he was very good, totally justifying the casting, even if his voice flagged in the final Act. Much better that Botha sings Tannhäuser with a sense of his inner complexes. This is central to the role, and to the dilemmas that face the character. It's a difficult role, and less gratifying because the big showpiece song isn't his, but Botha shows that he's a hero in his own way. Perhaps Wagner knew that the Meyerbeer crowd would never understand.

Tannhäuser might see Elisabeth as the Virgin Mary, but Elisabeth is also a woman with intense passions. Eva-Maria Westbroek's singing brings out the sexuality in the role. Westbroek's forte is bringing personality to the parts she sings, and here she turns an almost stereotype into a fully-formed human being,. A lesser singer would be trapped by the restrictions created by this costume and direction. Westbroek overcomes these obstacles by her innate artistry. Since she can transform dross to gold, her Anna Nicole might make the new show a hit.

Three different people in the audience mentioned that Christian Gerhaher sings like a Lieder singer. This has become such a cliché that maybe it's time to think what that actually means. Gerhaher got mauled by Fischer-Dieskau fans many years ago, so conversely I've listened to him with much greater sympathy than otherwise. I've got most of his records and been to most of his UK concerts. He's an excellent singer, but the smoothness of his line is best suited to roles which reach beyond the fundamental grittiness of Lieder. He's a perfect Wolfram von Eschinbach.  Here his clean timbre creates Wolfram as an idealized symbolic figurehead, not quite of this world even though he was a historical figure.  That, for me, is why Gerhaher's Wolfram was sublime. The character is less important than what it represents. There's no room for Hans Sachs in Der fliegende Holländer, but Wolfram is the embodiment of die heilige deutsche Kunst. something greater than mere mortals.

Semyon Bychkov conducted the Royal Opera House orchestra. Very beautiful, emphasizing the lyricism in the score. The interludes uninterrupted by staging were excellent. Given Albery's valid view that Tannhäuser operates at a critical post trauma turning point, one might have hoped that Bychkov might have injected some crackling tension into the music. It's not a comfortable opera. Wagner declares against Venus, after all.

At the end, another typical Albery touch.  In his Der fliegende Holländer, the Dutchman's haunting portrait was replaced by a toy boat. That's acceptable, as an indication of Senta's fantasist immaturity. In this production there's no papal staff to burst into leaf. Instead a small boy, seated on the same chair Tannhäuser sat in, playing with what looks like a toy Xmas tree. Even if it's supposed to be symbolic, it's absurd. Reductionism can work extremely well in opera, but badly done it turns to trivia.

HERE is the review in Opera Today, with more photos. Please also see my new piece on the interpretation of  Tannhäuser, its meaning and images.  I've since added several more posts on this opera and its characters. Please explore - understanding the opera helps assessing the performance.  It's an opera that's easily misunderstood.  All photos are copyright Clive Barda 2010,  details embedded. Please also see my review of the Wagner Rienzi DVD

NEW La Scala Milan Die Walküre Barenboim

NEW IMPROVED and formal review of Wagner Die Walküre at La Scala  Milan, with photos. Interesting because it's mega high profile (at least in Italy), Barenboim made a big speech and the cast is as starry as possible in theory. Stemme, Meier and Gubanova were so outstanding that if I were a director, I'd build the whole production around them and the insights they bring. Young and sassy! Please read more:

.......Waltraud Meier is one of the greatest Wagnerians of all time. Any opportunity to hear her cannot be missed, for she has created all the roles and understands their place in the grand scheme. Although she’s no longer in the first bloom of youth, her artistry is such that she can create a Sieglinde so ravishing that she seems transfigured. Sieglinde’s past has been too traumatic for her to be an ingenue. so Meier’s interpretation emphasizes the way Seiglinde blossoms as love awakens her, like a parched plant unfurling after a long drought. When Meier sings “Du bist der Lenz”, her voice warms and opens outwards. It’s so expressive that she creates the idea of the world ash tree bursting into leaf despite the barren surroundings."

".....Wonderful as Meier is, even she is outclassed by Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde. Stemme is so lively and vivacious that she completely dispels any memories of historic, matronly Brünnhildes, with metal breastplates, horned helmets and spears. Instead, she’s dressed in what could pass as a modern if quirky evening dress, a blend of lace and bombazine with hints of Goth and punk. The costume (Tim van Steenbergen) fixes Brünnhilde at once in Wagner’s world of political rebellion and in present day ideas of generation conflict."

".....Stemme’s youthful energy and spark highlight her idealism and high principles. She’s not intimidated by Wotan, however much she loves him. Here, already in germination, is the Brünnhilde of Götterdämmerung who will defy death itself to right the wrongs that have gone before. Stemme’s voice pulsates with intensity, and softens with tenderness, her control firm and measured. Stemme’s vigour might have been even more impressive against a more dominant Wotan, but Vitalij Kowaljow was adequate rather than brooding. Nonetheless, of the male singers in this performance, he held up best.

.....Ekaterina Gubanova’s Fricka was superb, elevating the role from a minor part to something far more profound. Usually the role is unsympathetic as our feelings about Hunding are negative, and it’s Fricka who demands that he be revenged, even though he married Sieglinde by force. Gubanova looks and sings with youthful radiance, connected more to the idea of growth and refreshment than to barrenness and drought. After all she stands for moral principles, just as Brünnhilde does. Wotan defiles marriage by scattering offspring everywhere, destroying many lives. Fricka stands for good, even if she’s stern, as Gubanova’s interesting portrayal suggests.

Please read the full review in  Opera Today

Happy Birthday Elliott Carter, 102

Courtesy of Harrison Parrott here's a clip of Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing Elliott Carters Two Diversions/2

Hugues Cuénod and the art of singing

"I don't know if the world is farce but it is true that I always like to laugh and be surrounded by funny and imaginative friends. At the same time, all that I retain in my life is directly connected to those solemn moments like singing the Evangelist....and then the amusing things. I forget everything that is boring or puritanical, I think that nothing in life is really serious and that one must go through life as best one can, without thinking oneself important"

In wit often lies wisdom. Hugues Cuénod didn't have a booming, imposing voice but he used it intelligently. A piano doesn't play itself, nor a violin. Same too with voice. Physically muscles produce sound but what turns sound into art is the soul of the person within. Often we hear technically proficient voices but if the lights aren't on inside, so what?  Real singers whatever their level, aren't machines.

Hugues Cuénod shows what makes a true artist. He didn't make his Met debut til he was 85 but the Met wasn't the centre of his world. Paris was, or perhaps London, but in his heart, maybe he never really left Vevey in Switzerland where he was born and died 108 years later, adored by the local townsfolk. This the same young man who brought Monteverdi, Cavalli, medieval and baroque singing into the 20th century. He was one of the greatest Bach interpreters and  knew every composer, performer and significant artist in his time from Stravinsky onwards.  He mixed with high society, yet never let it go to his head. First and foremost he was an artist, with a sense of wonder and adventure. That's perhaps why he sang Krenek's Jonny spielt auf in 1928 when it was still edgy. When he did Bitterweet with Noel Coward they both knew how close it sailed to the wind with its gay undertones. And he was happy to be part of the 30's crooner duo Bab et Babette.

What else can singers today learn from Hugues Cuénod?  "I would say first of all to take music seriously and not try to advance too quickly......Above all, I believe it's necessary to acquire extra-musical culture and to profit by having other activities of a refined nature". He was working on Ravel Don Quichotte à Dulcinée with a young man. "I told him to go look at (a painting by Daumier) for half an hour so he could understand why his interpretation was not satisfactory.....That's the kind of advice I'd like to give. Go to museums, read, don't restrict yourself by working only on your music and your exercises. Take half your time for study and use the other half to see the world...Al that is of the utmost importance for having a balanced and interesting life."

"I am content with little, and turn to advantage all the tiresome things  that happen to me.  I  remember uniquely the good moments of my life, and I believe that my existence could be summed up by a completely secular trinity : the gift of music, the gift of idleness and the gift of being kind and agreeable with my friends"

Flashmob Messiah

So it's Christmas, and The Messiah will be enforced everywhere. Must be Hell if you don't believe, or aren't Christian or whatever, and it turns the cultural scene into a desert. But Messiah fixation has relatively little to do with religion.  In fact the commercialism that "Xmas" means today has nothing to do with a baby in a humble stable who went on to smash the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple. I'd suggest merchants needed moneychangers and business is part of life, but Jesus's point is that some things are beyond commerce. Same principles apply to other things than religion. Like art.

Anyway. the Messiah thing, done with warmth and humour can be genuine in the right situation. Fifteen million people have seen the youtube sensation of a flashmob in a food mall where the "shoppers" suddenly start to sing, popping up among the crowd. The singers aren't Evangelists, and they aren't doing it for money or self promotion, just for the joy of singing. I love the clip because it's unpretentious, filled with joy and honesty, which for me anyway is the real spirit of belief of all kinds. Imagine to be eating Arby's gunk and someone next to you turns into an angel! "My God" is the word, whatever God or non-God you follow. Out of the banality of life, something magical. That's why flashmob Messiah is so much fun, it's simple, not silly. Joy for the sake of joy. Please pass this on, it's better than a Xmas card.

Needy the Sword : live La Scala Die Walküre Milan

"If Wagner had been a butcher, he would have made ideal hamburgers, 20gr beef, 30gr pork, 50 gr....." said Daniel Barenboim in the live broadcast from La Scala of Wagner Die Walküre. Wagner, he explained, blended his ingredients well. But that wasn't the big news of the evening. Outside the grand Teatro alla Scala, protestors demonstrated against cutbacks. As the President of Italy and his entourage sat in a royal box decorated with several thousand roses, Barenboim, never one to be shy of facing controversy, stood up to say how he worried about the future of culture in this current economic chaos.Perhaps Wagner might have chuckled though he very nearly caused Bavaria to collapse with his own demands. On the other hand, Barenboim is right. Culture is very much part of a nation's economy. Money spent on the arts enriches everyone long-term.
PLEASE SEE NEW IMPROVED FORMAL REVIEW HERE
The cast certainly were grand luxe. Rene Pape was due to sing Wotan, but pulled out. John Tomlinson didn't sing Wotan, which was probably just as well. He sang Hunding, a short part and far less demanding. Tomlinson's Hunding wasn't a brutish old bandit but genial, like an addled old rock star, complete with ponytail. Still, everyone loves John Tom, so it hardly mattered. Pape's replacement was Vitalij Kowaljow, a young Ukranian bass who held up the male side adequately. Simon O'Neill, however should have pulled out as Siegmund. "Schwester!" he screeched, and from there he went downhill. Perhaps he's 'pushing himself too far too soon. He's also not visually expressive, so he can't fall back on acting when his singing goes haywire.

O'Neill's Siegmund could not be by any stretch of the imagination a twin to Waltraud Meier's Sieglinde. Even though Meier isn't in the first flush of youth she's phenomenal. What she emphasizes is Sieglinde's fundamental goodness - a Wagner role which isn't after something, as Meier said. Sieglinde's suffered too many traumas in her past to be an ingénue. Instead, Meier makes her blossom from within the moment she sees her brother. The years seem to melt from her voice as it warms and opens out. Meier is experienced enough to understand the undercurrents in the opera better than any director, even most conductors, for that matter. O'Neill's Winterstürme wichen is dry and barren.  Meier's Du bist der Lenz unfurls like a parched plant given water. He cries Ein Quell, his thirst quenched by a drink, like Hunding's nightcap. Sieglinde's needs are deeper. In this production the disparity between Siegmund and Sieglinde is so extreme as to make one wonder if they might be mother and son, adding another twist to these dysfunctional family relationships.

But even Waltraud Meier is outclassed by Nina Stemme's Brünnhilde. She, too, has the ability to glow from within, her voice a wonder of colour and brightness. Historic Brünnhilde probably relied more on volume than subtlety. Stemme's voice is far too lively and supple to fall into the wings and horned helmet cliché. She gives Brünnhilde personality, which seems to stem from intelligent interpretation. One of the reasons Die Walküre is fascinating is that it's an example of generation conflict: teenage rebellion Valhalla-style. Brünnhilde's her father's favourite because she's so like him. Yet because she's principled and idealistic, she fights back. And she's female, too. The 19th century wasn't nearly as stuffy as it's assumed today. Stemme's feisty, even sexy, helped by a wonderful costume, part bombazine and lace, part bondage Goth. All the Valkyries are stuningly dressed in outfits with bustles that resemble wings - another witty take on 19th century style. Opera singers don't always have supermodel figures but the designer (Tim van Steenbergen) makes each one look kinkily glamorous and individual. It seems to show in their singing, too. 

Ekaterina Gubanova's Fricka is another twist on convention. Fricka may be the goddess of marriage, implying formality and convention, because she upholds Hunding. Yet Gubanova portrays her as young and passionate, the "good" side of marriage often overlooked because our sympathies lie with Sieglinde. Wotan moans because he prefers fooling around scattering offspring round the realm with disastrous effects. Maybe Fricka has a point. Gubanova's spirited perrformance inspires all kinds of new perspectives on the Ring.

Director Guy Cassiers speaks about ideas like "metal and water",  paranoid gated communities and the European Union but these aren't followed through. Hunding's house is well conceived because it's a mirror walled box of light surrounded by menace. One might argue that it's a suburban Valhalla since Hunding is a bandit and cheat, like Wotan, Alberich and most everyone else. But the idea isn't followed through so its impact fizzles out. The vertical tubes of light which portray the forest in Act 2 are decorative but add no meaning and the idea of Valkyries flying off a video collage with images of the fountains of Milan is cute rather than profound. Alas, the magic fire in Act 3 is just plain silly. Cassiers is right in saying that it's up to the listener to turn images into meaning but if there's no clear point of view behind the images, there's nothing to build on. Still, this set is much cheaper that Lepage's Das Rheingold at the Met, and Cassiers does seem to have thought through relationships and motivation. This cast isn't cardboard and most of them can sing.

Last but certainly not least: "Needy the Sword". Nothung!  The name is almost impossible to translate but what it means is "What you need", "Needy" means the opposite, because it's demanding and selfish. No-one in the Ring is "needy" except possibly Mime and Gutrune. They all scam but they don't whine. But the mistranslation in the subtitles was hysterically funny. The translators don't have anything to worry about, not even howlers like "blackguard wooer" It lightens the mood and makes us think. It's an unexpected bonus !

Hugues Cuénod 1902-2010

Hugues Cuénod died on December 3rd, aged 108. He knew everyone from Mary Garden (Debussy's muse) to Heinz Hollinger and many young singers too. He socialized with princesses and superstars, but it never went to his head. Elegant proportion one could say. Perhaps that's why he kept his mind sharp until the end. In Chinese there's a saying, someone knows how "to be a person". He was one, not fooled by circumstance. Bizarrely, I kept thinking of him on Monday and spent hours listening to his music late into the night. I didn't know the news til I came home late on the 7th.

Cuénod deserves a big tribute. Later I will do a piece with new pictures, so please come back to this site. Click on the search button at right, several clips and other bits about him.

In the meantime, this is what I wrote on his birthday last June.


Aged 10, Hugues Cuénod attended a concert celebrating Camille Saint-Säens's 78th birthday. Saint-Saëns played  piano with Ignace Paderewski,while Felia Litvine sang. That was 1913. This weekend, Hugues Cuénod reaches his 108th birthday. He still lives in Vevey, in Switzerland, where he was born. He's frail now, sleeps a lot, but still has his wits about him.

Cuénod's famous in the Anglophone world because he made his debut at the Met in his 80's. But the Met isn't the world. Cuénod trained in Vienna and Paris in the 1920's, singing whatever amused him - operetta,  Mozart, Krenek's Jonny spielt auf in 1928, and "Negro spirituals" which he learned from a black American tenor, and recorded in the 1930's.

He didn't hear Pelléas et Mélisande til 1922, but knew many of the people involved with it, including both Mary Garden, Debussy's choice for Mélisande, and Georgette Leblanc, Maurice Maeterlinck's mistress, for whom he'd written the libretto. LeBlanc told him a story about how she and Maeterlinck were canoodling in a park when her husband appeared. Maeterlinck shot up a tree to hide. The scene went into the opera!

Cuénod sang Bach with Vincent D'Indy (in French) and knew the severe, "Protestant" Bach tradition in Geneva. He met Nadia Boulanger in 1934, just when she needed a singer to illustrate her teaching of Monteverdi, thus making him the first "modern" Monteverdi specialist. Boulanger was no purist, playing piano rather than harpsichord or fortepiano, and with heavy-handed gusto, but they made Monteverdi exciting and fun.  He also sang Cavalli and other early operas.. Without Hugues Cuénod, the baroque revival of the 20th century might not have happened so quickly..

Yet, as Cuénod cheerfully says, he's never taken life too seriously. Boulanger was notoriously demanding. Igor Markevitch, also a Vevey boy, and friend of both, called her "Herr Doktor" behind her back. Cuénod could defuse situations with his easy, laconic humour.  He, after all was the man who could croon like Jean Sablon so well that he formed a duo with a soprano, called Bob et Babette, to sing French language pop songs. There's a great photo of them in 1937, looking so wholesome and sweet it's almost a joke!

Cuénod also knew  Noel Coward, whom he described to an  interviewer as "an English Sacha Guitry". They did a thing called The Green Carnations which was so openly gay, even Coward was worried how it might go down. Maybe the public didn't twig. When Switzerland allowed gay marriage, Cuénod was one of the first to take advantage, marrying in his late 80's. They're still together, after 40 years.

 Of course, Cuénod knew Stravinsky, their circles connected in many ways. Stravinsky wrote Sellem the auctioneer in The Rake's Progress for him, a short but characterful role, making the most of Cuénod's dramatic strengths. (one of his favourite roles was the Stammerer in Smetana's The Bartered Bride). Everyone in the business went to the premiere, and Cuénod's opera career blossomed better than any agent could have dreamed. That's how he was asked to sing The Captain in Wozzeck at La Scala with Tito Gobbi.

Cuénod also became an enduring fixture at Glyndebourne.. He was also a regular at Aldeburgh, for many years. Britten wanted him to sing duets with Peter Pears, but it didn't work out because their voices and styles were too different. "Harnessing a horse with a steer", said Cuénod, discreetly.
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Photo credit : Charles Sigel

Handel Alcina Barbican - new review

As promised, here is a link to the formal review of the Barbican Handel Alcina in Opera Today, one of the biggest opera sites on the net, dedicated directly at opera specialists. Different approaches (mine's here) dovetail and thus reach a much wider potential audience. That's good because it breaks down preconceptions of what baroque should and shouldn't be. Expanding the potential market, making everyone happy. The photo shows Inga Kalna who sang Alcina with Minkowski and Les musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble. Wow! Who says baroque should be boring?.

Andreas Scholl sings Cowboy

Andreas Scholl and Philippe Jaroussky at the Barbican tonight. Together they can be even better than on their own because of the rapport. Normally I don't listen to BBC Radio 3 drive time, but last night Scholl was interviewed.  When Scholl first  burst onto the scene no-one could quite believe what an amazing singer he was, but what was even more amazing was his personality. More than 20 years later, he's still the same genuine, down to earth fellow. Listen to the interview. Scholl is what they call a "whole person". The interview can be heard online, on demand until next week. Scholl shows what it means to live. The singing follows naturally. Which is why I've used this clip. Or "not". :-)))

Padmore Lachner and Kynoch Brahms

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Monday's lunchtime concert at the Wigmore Hall features Mark Padmore and Kristian Bezuidenhout. He's singing Schumann songs and Liederkreis op 24, but the big treat will be Franz Lachner Lieder. Lachner may not be major league like Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Loewe, all his contemporaries, but he's interesting nonetheless. Peter Schreier recorded an entire disc of the songs of Conradin Kreutzer. It's not bad, but Kreutzer who? As Schreier said at the time, "You appreciate the peaks better when you know the valleys".

Everyone's heard of Lachner, who was displaced at Munich by Richard Wagner. Lachner was prolific, and his choral and chamber music have enjoyed a vogue for some time. The classic recording of Lachner's songs was made by Christoph Prégardien and Andreas Staier many years ago, so it's good to hear new versions. Angelika Kirschschlager  sang some recently, also at the Wigmore Hall.  Please see my earlier piece on Lachner and his Sängerfahrt op 33 cycle from which these songs come.

Padmore has chosen five Lachner songs. Die einsame Träne derives from Schubert: explicit musical special effects. Not a deep song but a good introduction to the composer because it shows his relationship to the master. Padmore follows this with songs that show more of Lachner's individuality. Listen out for Im Mai set by Schumann seven years later at the start of Dichterliebe. Lachner's lyrical circular patterns expand. Singing them must make your  heart soar. The fullness and promise of Spring. I love the piano part, which evokes a lyre - some shepherd playing in an Arcadian landscape? Great song.

Das Fischermädchen uses the same Heine text as Schubert used in Schwanengesang. What might Heine have further inspired in Schubert had Schubert not died too soon after discovering the poet? Schubert's Das Fischermädchen has powerfully erotic undercurrents. Lachner's is relatively prim, but pleasant. Padmore sang it at the Holywell Music Room in Oxford not long ago, bringing out its virtues.

Die Meerfrau is altogether fiercer stuff. Pounding ostinato, creating tension. Sirens are lovely but they lure men to their deaths. What's interesting about Lachner's approach is that he seems to  sympathize with the siren, as if he intuits that she can't help what she does. Sexuality runs through Lachner's Sängerfahrt, written as an engagement gift to his fiancée. It shows how unprudish Germans were even though they were chaste. Anxiety, fear of the unknown, but fundamentally healthy and positive. If Lachner lived today, he's probably be happily naked on the beach. Even more psychologically explicit is Ein Traumbild, which starts as a romantic wet dream, but as the incubus pulls the dreamer to her breast, he recoils in horror. Just in time, the cock crows, he's saved. Fabulously dramatic.

Get to the Wigmore Hall if you can at 1pm. If not, it's being broadcast on BBC Radio 3 live and will be online and on demand, with a repeat on Saturday (and another 7 days' listening after that. Padmore is planning a recording, which will be much welcome.  Hoho ! Listening to the nbroadcast I note the BBC p[rewsenters quoting me on Lachner. More important, though, there will be a broadcast of Angelike Kirschschlager's concert mentioned above, Monday performance on Three available online and on demand for 7 days. Read about it on the link in para 2

If in London, also get to the Purcell Room at 7.45 for Brahms Complete Violin and Piano Sonatas. Sholto Kynoch is one of the most gifted young song pianists around, but he's also established a strong reputation in chamber music. His Messiaen disc is very good indeed. He'll be playing at the Purcell Room with Alda Dizdari. The other night I was having a quick dinner at Le pain Q when I looked up at a South Bank publicity screen. There she was, fantastically glamorous  I've heard Kynoch and Kaoru Yamada many times, but not Dizdari. Since Kynoch works with partners for their musical abilities, not their looks, he and Dizdari should be interesting.
photo credit : Marco Borggreve

Handel Alcina Barbican Minkowski - first thoughts

"I used to be a rock." "I used to be a bough." "And my Dad used to be a lion" cry the cast of Handel's Alcina, at the Barbican, London. They're all in modern dress but they're totally convincing. Everyone who comes to Alcina's island is bewitched. When she gets bored with her lovers they get recycled into beasts and objects. As one does. Being an ocean wave might not be a bad thing. Just try staging it.

Mark Minkowski brought Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble and a good cast from fully-staged productions in Vienna and Paris. Given the convoluted plot, cross dressing and shape shifting, I wondered how it would translate to concert staging. No problems  This performance was so vivid that it was easy to enjoy even if you don't speak Italian.

Anja Harteros was unwell, but replaced by Inga Kalna. "She sang this with us before" beamed Minkowski. His reputation for being a good person manager is well deserved. Kalna's voice is lighter than Harteros's but she used it well. Her Alcina is well meaning. She just has this thing about  changing people. When Kalna sings Ah mio cor, she lowers her voice and sings quietly, so you feel how very lonely she must be, growing old (as even sorceresses may) worried about losing Ruggerio though chances are he'll end up a tree in more ways than one. I liked Kalna's showpiece adventures up and down the scale, an elegantly musical form of wailing, perhaps. One remembered then she was supernatural.

Vesselina Kasarova was outstanding as Ruggiero. She's a born character singer, unusually expressive physically as well as vocally. She's obviously womanly, but she lowers her range almost to a growl, strutting like the sexy butch warrior  Ruggiero must be. It's hilarious, yet done with subtle wit and style. Later when she sings the Tigress aria, she manages to convey the muscular, tense movements of a wild animal. Her voice is agile too, expressing the tension and readiness to spring one might expect from a tigress protecting her young, poised to spring in case of danger. Impressive, considering she's wearing a cocktail jumpsuit, high stilettos and a wonderful necklace with what looks like a belt buckle.round her neck. Whoever picked this deserves a medal as it connects Ruggiero's predicament with that of the tigress. They're collared. Kasarova looks like Poplavskaya, but more agile and irreverent. One of my friends who has a good track record spotting new talent is much impressed with Kasarova. Now I know why. If she appears anywhere near you, go.

Even younger is Shintaro Nakajima singing Oberto. He has a confident, natural presence that will do him good whatever happens to his voice. He's supposed to be lost, but he's dogged singing substantially large arias on his own. This lad is perfectly capable of defying Alcina when she tries to trap him into killing the lion. "But he's friendly" sings Nakajima in a matter of fact voice, as a child does. In Handel's time, the lion would have been great camp theatre.  Here, the focus is on Nakajima's fearless singing.

Alcina is striking because it's scored so deftly. Relatively little ensemble singing, so individual parts are defined, important when roles might confuse.  Brilliantly, Handel emphasizes the turning point in the opera. At last, the charcaters are thinking on their situation, making a breakthrough from the confusion around them.  Two recorders, or a single cello to match female voices, and a delightful combination of harpsichord and theorbo to extend male voice. I also like the sudden silences when singer and orchestra froze for a moment as if by magic, then the orchestra escalating. What a wonderful orchestra this is, so bright and alive. Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble clearly love Minkowski and interacting on stage with the singers - a real sense of dynamic involvement.

A much more serious and sensible formal review will follow but I want to convey the atmosphere of this delightful evening. There were a few people walking out - contemporary music isn't the only exodus-producing genre.  On the other hand if one looks for fun, one will find it. Afterwards the car park attendant (extremely polite, friendly and efficient) asked me what I'd been to. An opera about an island where people get turned into lions, women dress as men, spells and stratagems. "The Island of Dr Moreau".  

He burst out laughing. "I should go, I might like it". And so he should. The Barbican is doing a series of operas around the theme of  Orlando Furioso, which is a fun way to explore the magic, madness and mayhem when this zany bunch of characters are let loose. Why shouldn't baroque be fun?

All with specialist European baroque orchestras and major singers.  Vivaldi Orlando Furioso on 26th March 2011 with Lemieux, Larmore, Jaroussky, Stotijn, Cangemi, Basso and Senn. (Ensemble Matheus/Spinosi). Then Handel Ariodante on 25th May with DiDonato, Gauvin, Phan, Lemieux, and others (Il complesso barocco/Curtis). I've already booked for Vivaldi but Ariodante is likely to sell out fast. And don't forget, Thomas Hengelbrock (Niobe) returns to London with Ensemble Balthasar Neumann in Mozart Idomeneo (June) (Davislim, Tilling, Daletska, Antonnaci)

Die beiden Grenardiere

Another in my sort-of series of soldier songs. Richard Tauber sings Schumann's Die beiden Grenadiere op 49/1. This appeals to me because Tauber's voice doesn't necessarily evoke big butch Grenadiers, but it's lovely here, especially in the final strophes where he lets rip with the Marsellaise reference. Two soldiers from Napoleon's army walk back towards France after the defeat in Russia. They're desolate. Wie brennt meine alte Wunde!, one of them cries. The other's more sanguine, he wants to get back to his wife and kids. The first one's inspired "What do wife and children matter. Let them go beg! Mein Kaiser, mein Kaiser gefangen!  A different perspective. He knows he's dying but wants his corpse to be carried back to France and buried with military honours.

Dann reitet mein Kaiser wohl über mein Grab,
Viel Schwerter klirren und blitzen;
Dann steig ich gewaffnet hervor aus dem Grab -
Den Kaiser, den Kaiser zu schützen!

Loyalty beyond death and reason, but at least he has a dream. Because the poem's Heine, expect a degree of irony,which Schumann picks up on, with jaunty introduction and rousing finale. Below is Ernst Busch's take on the Soviet Song The Sacred War. When we moan about winter, think how else it could be.

The real problem with Alma Mahler

The real "Alma Problem" isn't Alma herself so much as the sentimentalized, indiscriminate way the myth distorts real understanding. It's fair enough that Sarah Connolly should be writing an article in the Guardian, since she's singing five of Alma's songs on Sunday. Publicity like that's OK. What's not so good is that taking the image at face value fuels the myth that Alma was somehow more than she was.  This impacts on music and art history, so before the myth snowballs even further it might be time to be objective and see past the glitz.

Alma Mahler is popular because she's a style icon. Secession Vienna has become so commercialized that it's instantly recognizable on tea towels, posters, etc. Yet the whole point of the Secession movement was to move away from the commercial establishment. Secession ideas started in Munich ten years before they reached Vienna. In Vienna they hybridized with local taste for rococo kitsch and Johann Strauss. Unfortunate the chocolate coating's now turned to cement. But it sells these days where style is more important than substance. Read Waldemar Januszczak who described Gustav Klimt as "a pygmy seen through a microscope".

Alma herself was acutely aware of creating an image. At an early age she learned to use her beauty as a weapon. She grew up in an atmosphere of iniquity, her father figure her mother's lover. Then she pushed herself towards Alexander Zemlinsky, the ugliest man she could find, dazzling him blind. All her life she set out for men she could enslave. She hated Jews yet married them - a power game? Fancying herself intellectual she picked on talented men, then belittled their work. She loved being Mahler's muse and the status it brought. While he lay dying, she carried on with Gropius. Sure, she told Gropius she would stand by Mahler, but he was sick and old. Her last marriage seemed to work, because Werfel knew his place. In her old age, Alma tried seducing young gay men. Warning lights!

Nowadays we know enough to spot the signs. Manipulative, narcissistic people don't value others because they don't value themselves. Alma used sex but she probably didn't really love. Even Anna, her daughter with Mahler, married young to get away. Growing up in a louche household, Alma was steered inappropriatelty towards roués like Klimt. Was she sexually abused?

All the warning signs are there, from early on. That would explain a lot. Alma always seems more interested in pursuit than in relationships, like an animal always springing free before she's caught. Maybe she couldn't really love without strings because she didn't love herself.

Look at the painting above, Oskar Kokoschka's Tempest, now known as The Bride of the Wind, subject of a shallow BBCTV documentary this week.  Crazy swirls all round: The man is stressed, ugly, protecting the woman. But she couldn\t care less. She's blissfully wrapped up in her own dreams.

Then there's Alma's art. Everyone knows that Mahler told her before they married that he wanted a wife, not a competitor. After she was unfaithful, he went overboard to win her back, debasing himself, howling on the floor, in her account. Freud told Mahler that Alma had a father complex, which again gives credence to the sex abuse theory, her absent father and her faithlesss mother. No wonder Mahler compensates, publishing some songs, after revising them, or more likely Zemlinsky's earlier revisons. Fact is, Mahler didn't suppress Alma's art. She continued to take lessons (including with Zemlinsky),  Altogether, fewer than 20 songs, some incomplete. Many women have overcome much greater obstacles. It's they who deserve attention.

Alma's songs have been extensively recorded because they're easy. Stick to good singers like Lili Paasikivi and Iris Vermillion, and Ruth Ziesak if you can find hers, and to orchestral versions (none of them by Alma herself). Connolly will be singing new orchestrations by the Matthews brothers. Don't mistake them for the original piano songs, whatever they might have been before Mahler and Zemlinsky tidied them up.

There are lots of misconceptions. Alma disarmed men by leaning close and looking into their eyes. but she did it because she was slightly deaf. The Schindlers didn't have a "glittering social life", though the Mahlers did, for example. Female sexuality wasn't really suppressed, and there were quite a few much more liberated women about. Dehmel wasn't at all out of place in a world where Maeterlinck, Baudelaire, Paul Heyse and Rilke were read. There were plenty of piano songs being written, and still are, that don't show much response to the 20th century. Maybe that in itself makes them popular but it doesn't follow that they're very good. Read HERE what Zemlinsky said - not complimentary.

There have been lots of books about Alma over the years. Her memoirs, letter and diaries provide material for glamour. There are movies and even a soft porn Austrian musical. Would-be feminists in particular should approach with caution because Alma's not an edifying role model, however much some female writers might want to sentimentalize her. One day perhaps a proper biography will be possible, written with genuine background knowledge placing her in true context. Then maybe we'll discover the real Alma, a wounding but wounded soul (what her name means in Latin). Perhaps we'll appreciate her for herself, rather than what others projected onto her. She deserves that respect, which she didn't ever really get. Even when she was famous, she basked in reflected glory. I don't think it's right that a woman should be remembered just for the effect she had on men, however famous they might be. Just don't get fooled by the hype around the songs! Plese see my other posts on Alma, including THIS.  We're never going to understand Mahler, or Alma for that matter, if don't keep trying to learn more.

Horror death, Schumann and Frederick the Great

It's September 1730, and this is the fotrtress at Küstrin on the Oder. The man about to be beheaded is Hans Herman von Katte, a nobleman but now stripped to his underwear as part of his punishment. His crime? He had tried to help Frederick, Prince of Prussia, later Frederick the Great, escape to England. Whether they were lovers or not (which might explain the brutality) it was an act of treason, since princes are supposed to do their duty. That's Frederick hanging from the window, forced to watch.

I've been thinking of the song by Robert Schumann, Der Soldat. He's setting a poem by Adelbert von Chamisso, based on a text by Hans Christian Andersen,. It's not actually to do with Frederick or Küstrin, though Andersen was conflicted about his sexuality and had delusions that he was of royal blood. Listen to this recording here by Heinrich Schlusnus. The video's from a Soviet film about war - look at the end when the defiant soldier tears open his shirt and presumably shouts "So shoot me then!"

The poem is much  more subtle. To the sound of muffled drums, a man is plodding slowly. The person watching is beside himself with grief. Ich hab' in der Welt nur ihn geliebt, Nur ihn, dem jetzt man den Tod doch gibt! (He is the only one in this world I love, only him, and now he's going to be killed.) The doomed man looks up to God for the last time. Nine men take aim, but only eight fire. Then the ninth man shoots his beloved through the heart. (full text here on lieder.net) It's truly horrific, as traumatic as what Frederick endured at Küstrin, when von Katte willingly sacrificed himself that Frederick might be spared.

Mahlerkugeln Jurowski Mahler 4 LPO

The biggest casualty of this Mahler anniversary year is Mahler himself.  There's money to be made. So Mahler has been repackaged so he can be sold to the mass market. Soon we'll have Mahlerkugeln  - sugary mouthfuls with no nutritious value. You get the sugar kick and think you've consumed the composer. 

Vladimir Jurowski is a man who deserves respect because he has integrity. He's spiritual and a fantastic conductor in his core repertoire - Russians, Mozart, Romantics. So it breaks my heart to see him forced onto the Mahler bandwagon at the Royal Festival Hall. He's been wise to approach Mahler slowly, conducting smaller, non-final works like Totenfeier, Blumine, the Adagio from the Tenth and recently the First Symphony. It's not a bad strategy to ease into a composer's idiom gradually, so Jurowski is no fool. It took Barenboim years to get Mahler at all.

But now Jurowski is expected to do the full blown Mahler thing whether he's ready or not. A disappointing Mahler 2nd in September 2009 and a shapeless Mahler 3rd in September 2010. Tonight's Mahler 4th was heartbreaking. I could go into detail about what didn't work but that's not fair. The London Philharmonic Orchestra is good. They wouldn't normally  play as if feeling their way. The brass players are good, perfectly capable of Mahler's trademark incisive panache. Since the new Royal Festival Hall acoustic favours brass, I don't know why the double basses were aligned across the back of the platform,  The strings in general were generic. We know the leader can carry off the sforzando quirkiness of the Freund Hein theme. This orchestra is just too good to be "walking the part", as they say of opera singers.

The problem was lack of focus, elongated lines, slow tempi, little sense of direction or meaning. . Although Mahler's Fourth seems idyllic, it's a mistake to think it's romantic. Children starve and are massacred. What's the point of a Totentanz if it's not haunted  Freund Hein, the demon violinist, is often depicted as a grinning skeleton. The "restfulness" here is the rest of the grave  But it's not passive. Graduallly, it transforms from a kind of purgatory into heavenly transcendence. The final movement is powerful because it represents triumph over evil.  One good thing in this performance was that Christine Schäfer entered at a point when there's a hint of procession, as if she were emerging out of chaos into light. Kein' Musik ist ja nicht auf Erden. Our music isn't of this earth. The children whose voices she sings died horribly but are reborn on a better plane. (Please see my post Why greedy kids in Mahler 4)

Jurowski conducted  a wonderful Mahler Das klagende Lied  in 2008.  That's telling. For a  conductor like him, who's so good in opera and ballet, a narrative like DkL comes naturally. It exists on its own terms, without cross references to the composer's other work and without the complicated metaphysics that truly penetrating interpretation involves. Jurowski's a Buddhist, (I think), so in theory, metaphysics should be his thing, but Mahler's mindset is so idiosyncratic it's unique. Understanding is gained from insight and long experience. Much of the meaning is embedded structurally into the music, which is why an "architectural" approach often works better than straight loveliness.

Besides, why should everyone "have" to get everything every time? Jurowski probably gets bombarded with the newly-rebranded revisionist view of Mahler. It's hard to resist when all around you are clamouring for it. But I think he's intelligent and independent enough to find his own way into Mahler one day. Just not yet.

It was a mistake to programme Mahler's Fourth Symphony with Britten's Les Illuminations and Debussy Three Préludes orchestrated by Colin Matthews. Stylistically, there's too much of a leap. Christine Schäfer has done both  Les Illuminations and Das himmlische Leben so often she could probably sing them in her sleep. Yet her singing was alert, as if she was quite unperturbed by an orchestra that sounded like it was sight reading. Again, it's not their fault. It's not Jurowski's fault. It's the curse of Mahlerkugelnjahr.
LOTS more posts on Mahler, symphony by symphony