Why I could not write up Raymond Yiu's Symphony before now

It's taken me two weeks to write up the Prom where Ed Gardner conducted Britten, Nielsen, Yiu and Janácek.  Listen to the repeat broadcast HERE)  I was busy covering FX Roth (Boulez, Ligeti, Bartók)  and Oramo Sibelius Kullervo, but the real reason was that Raymond Yiu's Symphony moved me on a very personal level.  It's not easy to write about things that still hit a raw nerve, even after half a lifetime. But it's absolutely vital that music like this is being written. Many congratulations to whoever in the BBC commissioned this. It takes courage to programme something like this piece which deals with subjects that do matter and continue to resonate.

Yiu's Symphony, though contemporary, springs from the tradition which inspired Britten and Gerald Finzi.  Literary sources are chosen with erudition, and incorporated with other musical references to create a highly individual and original piece which is not song symphony so much as a concerto for countertenor and orchestra.  And why countertenor?  Andrew Watts will "own" the piece for posterity, since the writing follows the unique qualities of his voice. But other countertenors should attempt it too, and soon, because there are few pieces which apply the unusual timbre of the Fach with such thoughtfulness and feeling.  The countertenor voice is unique,and beautiful for the very reason that it sounds as though it were coming from another plane of existence. It's hyper-natural, transcending ordinary reality. It can express, obliquely, things that can't be fully articulated in a mundane world. There has been a lot written for the voice type in recent years, but Yiu's Symphony is unusual in that the countertenor voice is the protagonist - strong, resolute . As in baroque times, the countertenor is hero.

Yet, crucially, a hero who has lived. "I play not marches for accepted victories only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons", Watts sang. The word "music" recurs, in slightly different forms, sometimes with the last "c" stressed forcefully, suggesting the "k" of old spelling, connecting present to past. The second movement has a descriptive title "String with Cadence multiply Song" which is confusing, but there's no question what it means in purely abstract terms. Sharp rushing series unfold in short cadences, interspersed with incident: sudden flashes of brilliant light, quietly plaintive violin and flute. "Come back, often and take hold of me", Watts sang. The quotation is from Constantine Cavafy and refers to the way memories connect to physical sensations "when the lips and the skin remember and the hands feel as if they were touching once more".

The fourth movement, quoting Thom Gunn's poem "In Time of Plague" refers explicitly to AIDS and the way it wiped out a generation - the talented, the talentless, interesting people and homophobes locked in the closet.  Someone at the epicentre,  who survived, described himself now surrounded by ghosts. The non-vocal writing in this part is sensitively sensual and rather beautiful. There are echoes of Scarlatti (for reasons deeply personal to the composer) and to the music so many danced to in the club scenes of the 70's and 80's.  It all seems so innocent now. Yet there was so much bigotry then that people would cross the street to avoid "contamination". That bigotry might yet resurface: we must never forget compassion and human suffering, in any form. The poem in this section isn't much, but the music is good, and evokes a whole lost world.

The final Adagietto con affecto quotes John Donne "The Anniversarie". The words are simple, and the musical setting dignified and austere, yet warmed by human feeling.  The orchestra rises in crescendo, which then dissipates into delicate textures. Watts sang "Only our love hath no decay".tenderly, rising to a poignant cry on the word "Yesterday".  An exquisite extended coda which suggest moonlight, stars and the triumph of caring emotions.  Afterwards, the lady next to me, who didn't normally do classical music, remarked on its beauty. There can be few tributes more sincere than that!

A wonderful Carl Nielsen Flute Concerto (1926) with the effervescent, sensual playing of Emily Beynon, a rather straightforward Britten Sinfonia da Requiem (Op 20, 1940) and a sassy Janácek. Sinfonietta ((1926); altogether a good Prom with Gardner and the BBC SO. We can hear the last two any time, and we ought to hear Nielsen's Flute Concerto more often, but it isn't every day we hear something as singular as Raymond Yiu's Symphony.

Photo: Roger Thomas

O Fortuna Carmina Burana Prom 69

O Fortuna ! As the Wheel of Fortune turns...... The BBC Concert Orchestra is Cinderella in the stable of BBC orchestras, relegated to workhorse gigs, TV dramas and the resolutely anti-intellectual fare the Proms (and the BBC in general) seem to be descending into. Then along comes Carl Orff Carmina Burana (1936) at Prom 69.  Real music, and vividly realized. Carmina Burana is a strange beast, a pseudo-medieval extravaganza mixing vulgarity with piety. Everyone knows Carmina Burana, even if they think it's the sound track to TV ads and satires like THIS. 

Because it's so familiar, responses  are coloured by "TV thinking", superficial, ill informed and kneejerk, like the cliché that Orff didn't oppose the Nazis, except in his dreams. But Orff was a conundrum, a complex person who concealed his inner life even - and perhaps especially - from himself. The joyous barbarism appeals on a primitive  level, connecting to primal emotions. One could draw a direct line between Carmina Burna and what was, arguably, Orff's greatest gift to mankind, his Schulwerk and legacy of expressive music-making in circles way beyond the western classical music mainstream.

Carmina Burana is brutal, because the Middle Ages were brutal. If you were lucky you got high on ergot and died by the age of 40. Dionysian riot probably meant even more to grim lives. The picture left is Breughel, The Battle between Carneval and Lent. Eat, drink and be merry for Lent is coming and with it, hardship. And you might not be around by Easter. Orff was no intellectual, but on an intuitive level he may have made the connection between the dark side of the Middle Ages and the madness of theThird Reich. There was a lot of "medievalism" in music in this era.  Think Frank Martin, Walter Braunfels, W A Hartmann and Arthur Honegger. Perhaps we too are living "at the End of Time", fighting off the Apocalypse with mindless hedonism.

And so, back to Prom 69, the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Keith Lockhart. This performance played to the BBC CO's strengths, bringing out the cinematic qualities in the piece. The "big numbers" could have come straight out of Hollywood, the brass blazing and the big drums booming. I was even more impressed, though, by the faux-lyricism of the quieter sections where the orchestra played quietly, and the choruses twittered the "meadow" songs prettily, like birds in a Rudolf Ising cartoon. A poisoned Spring! This was far more chilling in many ways than simply forcing the rhythms for effect. Delightfully vernal "antique" trumpets, and violins sounding like lutes.
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 Best of all, though, was the singing. Benjamin Appl sang the baritone part  withe brightness and natural colour: a genuinely interesting voice intelligently used. I learned the piece from Fischer-Dieskau, who was wonderful but a bit uncomfortable . Drunken boor wasn't his style. Thomas Walker sang the Olim lacus colueram well. By the end of the Tavern sequence, everyone's pissed, singing parodies of "normal" song.  Just the right touch of inebriation. After that, can we take the Minnelied courtliness at face value? And what are Communion bells doing here? What is being consecreted or sullied, as the case might be?   Orff's pulled another fast one.  "Tempus est jocundum". Lovely singing by Olena Tokar, but the moment doesn't last. Yet again we're thrown back on the "mob", the brusqueness of the music for baritone (not a "boy") and massed male voices. "Venus, Venus, Venus" they called, a testosterenoe fix heralded by the big timpani and the return of O Fortuna. The wheel has turned. with a chill.  The BBC Symphony Chorus and the London Philharmonic Choir did the honours, assisted by the Southend Boys' and Girls' Choirs.

Before Carmina Burana, Guy Barker's The Lanterne of Light. Everyone writes for Alison Balcom these days because she plays so expressively, but the piece itself is a bit pointless; perhaps if it had stuck to one or two Deadly Sins or done them all with more compression?  Not really enough to sustain for  too long.

Vulture Wally

Die Geier-Wally, or "Vulture Wally", the novel from 1875 by  by Wilhelmine von Hillern (1836-1916). It's  best known to many from the opera La Wally (1892) by Alfredo Catalani. I've been watching the film version, made in 1921, a smash hit in the post-1918 era. Perhaps it was popular because it portrays a woman who can't be tamed -- a free spirit whom the inhibitions of society cannot restrain.  Wally represents the "New Woman" of the modern world. The photo at right comes from the frontispiece of the 1921 reprint of the novel.  

Die Geier-Wally is not a true Bergfilm like Arnold Fanck's Die heilige Berg, made only 5 years later, technologically and artistically a far greater work of art, but it's interesting and apparently much closer to the novel than to the opera. Walburga Stromminger was a fearless teenager, a tomboy as tough as a mountain goat. The villagers on the alpine valley don't like a vulture, which might presumably attack their herds. Wally  volunteers to go get it. She's lowered down a steep cliff by rope and beats off the giant bird (2 metre wing span) with a dagger. The vulture fights back because it's guarding its nest, so perhaps it wasn't an evil spirit. Anyway, from thence Walburga is known as Geier-Wally, or Das Geier-Mädchen, the Vulture Maiden. In the film, she's next seen making her First Communion in a pretty dress, with a fancy cake and flowers ,  conventional feminine conformity. But then she climbs a tree, most unladylike. She also falls hopelessly in love with Bären-Joseph, who's killed a big bear that was supposedly a danger to the community. Wally's father, the Höchstbauer, is the richest man in town and wants Wally to marry Vincenz Gellner. Wally, who can chop wood better than a man, accidentally knocks Gellner out, and is thrown out of the house by her father. She 's also mad at Joseph who seems attracted to an outsider, Afra, so she storms off to live alone in the mountains, like a Berggeisr or mountain spirit of legend. Only when she's driven by desperation does she seek the company of humans.

When Old Stromminger dies, Wally returns as lady of the Höchstbauer manor. She's dressed in fancy velvets but has no illusions about the people around her, who once were so happy to condemn her. A bull runs amok and Joseph is gored trying to tame it. A village celebration is held. In front of everyone Joseph dares Wally to resist a kiss. The pair stalk each other until Wally collapses.  It's a cruel prank, for which Wally wants revenge. Gellner chases Joseph into the hills, where he falls into a ravine. Guilt-stricken Wally descends into the abyss and saves him. Afra, it turns out, is his sister. Wally and Josph embrace, lovers at last. Consider the psycho-sexual and violent undertones  and the element of class war ! The Romantiker wasn't "romantic".  Wilhelmine von Hillern must have been an interesting person, though she lived an ostensibly upper middle class existence.

What's also interesting about this film which was made by Gloria-Filme Catalani in Berlin, is that Henny Porten, who plays Wally, was also,part of the production team. Unlike the director Ewald André Dupont and designer Paul Leni, who both ended up in Hollywood, Porten remained in Germany, making movies for UFA to protect her Jewish husband. Both survived the Third Reich. Leni's designs add a lot to the film, for he chooses dizzyingly Expressionist angles to accentuate the steepness of the mountains, and the predicament Wally faces. Although the interior scenes are detailed to the point of claustrophobia, the mountain scenes look "modern" in that Leni sets up shots of white snow background with jagged trees and rocks - virtues of B&W, which colour can't quite emulate.

George Butterworth 100 years ago today

One hundred years ago today, George Butterworth was still alive. On 5th August 1916, his body lay dead on a battlefield in the Somme.  He was leading a party of men on a sortie up Munster Alley, when  shortly before 4.45 am on 5th August 1915, he was shot in the head. The best authority on Butterworth remains Michael Barlow's biography "Whom the Gods Love". This an invaluable source, much of it  drawn from family letters (now in Oxford)  and material at Cecil Sharp House. Curiously, though, there's little in his book on Butterworth's war record, since her relied on papers collected by Butterworth's father.  Since  nearly everything about officers in the 1914-1918 War was documented, I went to the War Office records thinking his details would be easy to trace. Then  I hit a brick wall. No Lt. Butterworth! No wonder Barlow was stymied

Next step, then, was to go to the list of medals which are carefully documented.  There, I dound that Butterworth had enlisted as "Kaye Butterworth!"   He'd only been awarded one Military Cross, not three, but that's still an important achievement since MC's are not handed out except in exceptional cases.  Although I didn't access the main regimental records, which aren't in London, I did find the original War Diary of Butterworth's Regiment, which is a moment to moment record of what was happening in battle, written down verbatim as the action was happening. War Diaries are primary material. They're sent to higher command behind lines so the generals can follow what's happening on the front line. Sometimes these diaries are written on scraps, sometimes in pencil and sometimes they're stained with mud and darker substances.  And here is what I found :

2.53 sent following message to Lt Butterworth at B Company "Send a strong bombing platoon up Munster Alley to hold and block". Note owing to our artillery shelling our front line Lt Butterworth cannot have received this message until after 3.45 am

3.40 received from Lt Clarke "we must have reinforcements at once...the men I have got are being kept there by revolvers". 3.41 gave Lt Batty message for Lt Butterworth to reinforce Munster Alley with one platoon at once.

4.19 Forward observation reported that our party at Munster Alley was being heavily bombed but we were apparently holding our own. 4.43 (Brigadier sent 25 men from another unit to relieve)

4.45 Lt Butterworth killed.

Casualties 5th August : Lt G S Kaye-Butterworth, Lt N A Target killed, 2nd Lt Rees
and Batty wounded. Other ranks : 4 killed. 18 wounded, 3 shell shock, 5 missing. 

(Note: the unfortunately named Lt Target featured in the Diary many times. He seems tto have been a charismatic fellow who had been awarded a Military Cross in June. He was much admired by the Brigadier and the man who wrote the diaries. Butterworth would have known him too.)

Plenty on Butterworth on this site, please explore.  Including

Complete Butterworth Song Book (Mark Stone)

A Jonquil not a Grecian Lad - Butterworth Songs (Roderick Willliams)  

The  photo at the top shows the officers of the 13th Durham Light Infantry  The man circled is supposed to be Butterworth.It's possible since we know the Kinora films and Morris dancings stills that Butterworth was short and self effacing. Below, Butterworth second from left, in 1912.

Prom 64 Søndergård BBCNOW

At Prom 64, Thomas Søndergård conducted the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Like many organisations, orchestras can go throughout a period in the doldrums. Something interesting has been happening in Cardiff.  The BBC NOW are sounding reinvigorated and refreshed. Their Prom in July under Xian Zhang (read more here) showed them in excellent form. Under Søndergård, their  Chief Conductor, they're even livelier, as shown in their Carl Nielsen's Aladdin Suite, (1919)  incidental music for the play Aladdin. Did the original play include dance?  The music suggests a kind of kinetic energy that demands physical expression. The BBC NOW played with such muscular animation, that the piece seemed to levitate, infinitely more interesting than the rather generic images evoked in the titles.

Thus we were prepared for the explosion that is B Tommy Andersson's  Pan. What a showpiece this is, making full use of the Royal Albert Hall organ and the sense of occasion that is the essence of the Proms.  Grand fortes suddenly transforming into delicate ppp's, from which a solo violin emerges, lit by bell-like sonorities, introducing a lovely flute melody. This is Pan, doing his individualist thing, surrounded by nature. Yet Pan is part man, part goat, and symbolizes animal instincts. So the music rises to riotous crescendo, the organ (David Goode) dancing joyously with the orchestra. Gosh this was good fun, and very well executed too. On a First Night, this would have knocked the audience out, in a good way.. Pan is a welcome change from the corporate mediocrity that curses so much newly written but not new music at the Proms

The BBC NOW's new, punchy liveliness paid off handsomely in Nielsen and Andersson but worked less well for Mahler's Symphony no 4. This symphony isn't, as once described, a "vision of heaven for Catholic omnivores". The text refers to physical,pleasure. food and plenty, but the protagonist is a dead child.  Please read my article "Why greedy kids in Mahler 4" here.

This symphony is so very different in character from Aladdin and Pan that Søndergård  and the BBC NOW took a while to get into their stride. There wasn't much sense of direction in the first movement, though the demonic sforzando quirkiness in the scherzo was  well defined, as were several incidental details. There's no reason why this section shouldn't sound jolly, as it's marked behaglich. The soloist, Clara Ek,  has sung this many times with Bernard Haitink, who also favours the womanly warmth of Christianne Stotijn.  Ek's vibrato enriched her performance but I would have preferred something more elusive..

San Francisco Symphony Tour

From Juliet Williams in Edinburgh

The visit of the San Francisco Symphony under their principal chief conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, was one of the highlights of both this year's Edinburgh Festival and the BBC Proms. It has been a very enjoyable opportunity for British audiences to see this distinctive orchestra perform live, and a welcome return visit for a conductor who has been pivotal in recent London concert-going years. The Edinburgh performances were thoroughly enjoyable and the classical repertoire featuring Yuja Wang as soloist sold out, but – perhaps with a more familiar venue, or more time to acclimatise – the London performances had the slight edge in all the works repeated there.

Beginning the tour in Scotland, the opening performance in Edinburgh (Thurs 27^th August) showcased a work commissioned for the orchestra's centenary in 2012, John Adams' Absolute Jest. This work pays homage to Beethoven and in particular the late quartets, which are heavily quoted. However it creates a very new musical experience by having a string quartet – here the  - St Lawrence Quartet – performing with full symphony orchestra. No one player is a soloist in the conventional concerto sense, nor even in the way that the solo parts of a double concerto are distributed; the quartet is collectively one but many-layered voice, which passes the melodic lead between the orchestra and itself as well as between its players. Hence the work looks forward as well as back; it creates a new musical experience in its form; it is modern in its sound world and it pays homage to one of classical music's most important figures. It is a very fitting piece for the orchestra's centenary. San Francisco Symphony have also recorded this piece.

This orchestra is to my mind heard at its best in minimalist works. It has a glistening, shimmery sound which is uplifting to the listener, hopeful and expansive. Whilst the Adams commission brought this out more than any other work on the programme, it was also brought to the fore in the expansive later sections of the second movement in Tchaikovsky's Fifth, which was performed to close the second Edinburgh concert and was a surprise highlight of the tour.

The Adams commission was given context by the performance also of  Beethoven's own work: in Edinburgh, his fourth Piano Concerto in which Yuja Wang was the flamboyant soloist and in London the Eroica symphony too. Ms Wang was very popular with the Edinburgh audience, the Usher Hall was filled to capacity and she received rapturous applause. She joined the San Francisco Symphony again in London on August 31st, this time to give a very enjoyable account of Bartok's Second Piano Concerto.

Perhaps the highlight of the entire visit though was the performance of  Mahler – of whom Michael Tilson Thomas is a noted interpreter – his first ('Titan') symphony forming the second half of the first Edinburgh concert and being repeated on Sun 30^th August at the Proms, when it was also broadcast live on Radio Three.

The first of the London performances included Boston-based pianist Jeremy Denk playing more of what he has described as 'bad boy pianism', the idiosyncratic Henry Cowell concerto. Denk described Cowell as the 'San Francisco-born wildboy of the keyboard' and his piece as, 'a violation of the piano'. Cowell is to be BBC Radio Three's 'Composer of the Week' soon, which should illuminate further his unusual life and work for those who would like to find out more about him. Bartok's influence is clear in this concerto, which therefore was put in context by performance of Bartok's own work the following evening, much as with the Adams commission and the Beethoven works. The piano part also at times evokes Rudzewski's writing for that instrument.

No American programme would be complete without Ives, and his ‘Decoration Day’ from 'New England Holidays' opened the second evening in both venues whilst 'The Alcotts' from 'Concord' was Jeremy Denk's encore. The first of the two concerts was opened by a particularly enjoyable account of Schoenberg's  Theme and Variations (Op 43b) – possibly the best live performance I've ever heard of this particular piece.

Triumphant Triumphlied Brahms Prom 62 OAE

Brahms Triumphlied triumphed at the all-Brahms Prom 62 at the Royal Albert Hall,  London, with Marin Alsop, the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment, the Choir of the Enlightement and soloist Benjamin Appl. Brahms's Triumphlied (Op 55, 1872) was written to mark the first unification of Germany, and the defeat of France, which hitherto had dominated the European balance of power. The British weren't keen either, since the new nation competed with British industry, trade and naval control.  The 1914-1918  War was a direct result of this rivalry. Triumphlied wasn't ever going to be popular in such circumstances. But no nation has a monopoly on nationalism. Now perhaps we have the historical perspective to hear the piece in context and appreciate its merits.

The first unification of Germany marked the fulfilment of the Romantic dream of a nation no longer torn apart by hundreds of warring states. Significantly, Brahms chose his text from The Book of Revelation in the Bible, focusing on Chapter 19, where a vast multitude gather to celebrate a cosmic marriage (unity) . Hence the jubilant Allelujas and the punchy, optimistic rhythms. Brahms is celebrating hope after struggle. The different threads in the chorus and orchestra interweave, like garlands.Beautifully precise part singing.  In Revelation, a white horse appears in the skies,  with eyes of fire, bearing a horsemen who represents the King of Kings. Out of the tumult, the solo baritone's voice rises, clear and forceful. Despite his youth, Benjamin Appl already has a huge following. I've kept missing his appearance, but now I can hear why he has impressed so many. He doesn't have much to sing in Triumphlied, but he makes those moments ring out gloriously. Listen to him next at the Oxford Lieder Festival in October.

Brahms Alto Rhapsody (Op 53, 1869)  made an interesting contrast to the Triumphlied.  Here Brahms chose his text from an excerpt from Goethe Harzreise im Winter. The soloist, this time a mezzo soprano (Jamie Barton), is again surrounded by large orchestra and chorus, yet the mood is desolate. The solo part is much more dominant, moving slowly and purposefully over the forces behind her. Jamie Barton has one of those big voices that impress. She won the BBC Singer of the World in Cardiff and the Richard Tucker Prize more recently. She has a nice, rich voice but needs to work on her diction. The Alto Rhaspsody is one of the finest vehicles for resplendent mezzo and contralto voices. Kathleen Ferrier, Christa Ludwig, Janet Baker,  Brigitte Fassbender, and Alice Coote  (First Night of the Proms 2009) set almost impossibly high standards for any young singer. 

Framing the Triumphlied and the Alto Rhapsody were  the purely orchestral Academic Festival Overture and Brahms Symphony no 1 in C minor.  The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are a n excellent orchestra, and Brahms is a composer Marin Alsop usually does well.  Last year at the Proms, they did Brahms German Requiem together. Like the Triumphlied and the Alto Rhapsody, the German Requiem predicates on the singing. The non vocal [pieces in this prom didn't quite come alive,  but we should be glad for the Choir of the Enlightenment.

Tanglewood Mahler 8th Andris Nelsons - livestream

Now available on livestream here, Mahler Symphony no 8 at Tanglewood. Andris Nelsons conducts the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra.  The set of soloists is so good that it will remembered for a long time: Erin Wall, Christine Goerke, Mihoko Fujimura, Jane Henschel, Klaus Florian Vogt, Matthias Goerne, Ain Aigner and Erin Morley.  Most of them are Mahler 8th veterans but Goerke, Goerne and Vogt stand out. This is seriously luxury casting. I think it's Goerke's role debut, but she's so good that she's bound to make it part of her repertoire.

Nelsons conducted the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. No youth orchestra will ever have the finesse of a professional orchestra of seasoned players, but in the open air ambiance of Tanglewood, youth and freshness are an advantage. I loved watching the concert on video, seeing how intently the players were performig, and putting their hearts into what they were playing. As Claudio Abbado has said, music-making begins with love. If these young players love what they're doing, they are well on the way to becoming good musicians. The choruses, too, were "homegrown",  again not at all a disadvantage. Very few large choirs are fully professional, and what these singers may lack in polish they make up for with enthusiasm.  Twice, when I've heard Mahler 8th live, the performance came awry because some of the choruses drifted apart from the others and the conductor. This symphony is notoriously difficult to conduct so it's a credit to all that they listened to each other and to Nelsons.

The tag "Symphony of a Thousand" was invented by concert promoters , not by Mahler himself. Although vast forces have impact, musical considerations come above all else. Mahler himself said "“So far I have employed words and the human voice …….to express symphonically only with immense breadth......But here the voice is also an instrument…….used not only as sound, but as the bearer of poetic thoughts”. I've heard this symphony twice at the Royal Albert Hall, and once in a sports stadium nearly twice the size of the RAH.  What matters is how it is performed.   Numbers aren't as important as quality. The old saw "Never mind the quality, feel the width" applies. Here, the balance sounded right, so one might contemplate "poetic thoughts" without being overwhelmed.

On the live audio-only broadcast, the First Part and the Second Part were separated by an interval. I was quite shocked, since there isn't supposed to be an interval.  The silence between the parts is structurally important,  serving as a  limbo state  between the "earthly" aspects of the first part and the much more spiritual conclusion, limbo inn this case referring to the transit from death to afterlife in Christian liturgy, a sort of "clearing space" so things move on. The silence doesn't have to be defined, but it has to be palpable.  Significantly, there are no voices in the first part of the second part. Ideally we should listen and intuit our own "poetic thoughts". When Nelson's conducted  his legendary Mahler 8 in Birmingham in 2010, he conducted it without an interval  So why the interval at Tanglewood ?

What  I liked about this performance was its friendly atmosphere.  Again and again, the text refers to light, and to thoughts rising upwards, beyond the restraints and preoccupations of the temporal world.  When the Mater Gloriosa appears, way above the stage, she represents a higher level of existence, more luminous and humane. This  Tanglewood Mahler 8th bodes well for the future.

San Francisco Symphony Michael Tilson Thomas Mahler 1

From Juliet Williams in Edinburgh

The visit of the San Francisco Symphony under their principal chief conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, was one of the highlights of this year's Edinburgh Festival and part of a programming strand featuring American music and musicians.

In the opening performance, they showcased a work commissioned for the orchestra's centenary in 2012, John Adams' Absolute Jest. This work pays homage to Beethoven and in particular the late quartets, which are heavily quoted. However it creates a very new musical experience by having a string quartet – here the St Lawrence Quartet – performing with full symphony orchestra. No one player is a soloist in the conventional concerto sense, nor even in the way that the solo parts of a double concerto are distributed; the quartet is collectively one but a many-layered voice, which passes the melodic lead between the orchestra and itself as well as between its players. Hence the work looks forward as well as back; it creates a new musical experience in its form; it is modern in its sound world and it pays homage to one of classical music's most important figures. It is a very fitting piece for the orchestra's centenary. San Francisco Symphony have also recorded this piece.

This orchestra is to my mind heard at its best in minimalist works. It has a glistening, shimmery sound which is uplifting to the listener, hopeful and expansive. Whilst the Adams commission brought this out more than any other work on the programme, it was also brought to the fore in the expansive later sections of the second movement in Tchaikovsky's Fifth, which was performed to close the second Edinburgh concert.

The Adams commission was given context by the performance also of Beethoven's own work: here in Edinburgh, his fourth Piano Concerto in which Philadelphia-educated Yuja Wang was the flamboyant soloist; in the two-centre UK tour taken as a whole, the Eroica symphony too (Proms, Mon 31^st August). Ms Wang was very popular with the Edinburgh audience, the Usher Hall was filled to capacity and she received rapturous applause. Her musicianship was further displayed in an excellent Queens Hall recital earlier in the week with Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos. She joins the San Francisco Symphony again in London on August 31st, this time to play Bartok's Second Piano Concerto.

 

Perhaps the highlight of the entire visit, though, was the performance of Mahler Symphony no 1 – of which Michael Tilson Thomas is a noted interpreter – forming the second half of the first Edinburgh concert. It is to be repeated this evening (Sun 30^th August) at the Proms, and is very well worth making the trip to hear. If you can't do that, it's broadcast live on Radio Three. The London performance will also include Boston-based pianist Jeremy Denk playing more of what he has described as 'bad boy pianism', the idiosyncratic Henry Cowell concerto.

No American programme would be complete without Ives, and his ‘Decoration Day’ from 'New England Holidays' opened the second evening. The first of the two concerts was opened by a particularly enjoyable account of Schoenberg's Theme and Variations (Op 43b) – possibly the best live performance I've ever heard of this particular piece.

Shockingly modern - Sibelius Kullervo Oramo Prom 58

Why did Jean Sibelius suppress Kullervo (Op7, 1892) ?  There are many theories why he didn't allow it to be heard after its initial performance, though he referred to it fondly in private. Sakari Oramo considers Kullervo "a masterpiece", and, at Prom 58 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, conducted it with such conviction that there can be little doubt about its unique place in Sibelius's output, and indeed in music history. Kullervo is such a remarkable work, so shockingly original that Paavo Berglund revisited it fifteen years after his original recording,. Neeme Järvi brought yet more new insights. There have been many other  performances since, but Sakari Oramo creates an interpretation  of great depth and perceptiveness. 

From a hushed opening, the Allegro Moderato grew with ever increasing impatience, as if it were an Overture to an opera, for a quasi-opera this is. One cannot underestimate the impact of Wagner and his"forest murmurs", though even at this early stage in his career, Sibelius was iconoclastic, deliberately seeking a new sound world. Unlike Wagner who re-imagined Norse Legend, Sibelius heard living oral tradition at first hand. Kullervo comes alive with the rhythms of the Kalevala, with its strange, primitive pulse and shamanistic repetitions.  Hence the short, sharp intervals in the brass and winds, and the driving pizzicato in the strings, creating a sense of tense, ritualized movement. Even to our ears accustomed to Stravinsky, Bartók and Janáček, Kullervo still sounds raw and primeval. Yet it was written twenty-one years before The Rite of Spring.  

I've often wondered if Sibelius himself realized how daring Kullervo was and, being a worrier, pulled back, as he might have pulled back from the enormity of his conception for the Eighth? Once, Sibelius performance history presented the composer in sub-Tchaikovsky terms, which really doesn't do the composer justice.  Kullervo resets the balance so we can think ahead to the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies and their audacity and inventiveness  It is, unequivocally new and individual, the mark of a true genius.

In Kullervo, we can hear the origins of tone poems like Nightride into Sunrise and Lemminkäinen Suite. and reflect that the tone poems are much darker than mere portaits of Nature and myth.  Thus the lucid detail of Oramo's conductng, which emphasizes the sophistication that lies beneath the ostensible savagery in the piece. It's not simply folk tale for grand orchestra but an experimental approach to dynamics and relationships. The contrast between emotional extremes and the tight, staccato-like figures creates abstract narrative tension. Oramo makes the orchestra "sing" as if we're hearing Kullervo's nervous heartbeat, pulsating with frustration.

Kullervo is also a musical act of defiance, written as it was at a time when Finland was  resisting efforts by Russia to curb its freedoms. This adds context to the figure of Kullervo himself, a child born into suffering. One can appreciate Kullervo without knowing the Kalevala, but it does enhance meaning. Runes XXXI to XXXVI give Kullervo's background. He's cruelly mistreated by an uncle who stole his patrimony. He's tortured and sold into slavery. When he meets the maiden, he rapes her because he wants what she represents, yet, raised in cruelty, he doesn't have what we might call "social skills". Dreams of his long-lost mother have kept him going , so when he discovers that the woman he has violated is his sister, he suffers such guilt that he must offer his own life in appeasement.

Johanna Rusanen-Kartano sang Kullervo's sister. She's a very good dramatic soprano, with the intensity to remind us that the girl, too, has had a traumatic past, lost in the woods while hunting for berries. Her story is as tragic as her brother's.  Rusanen-Kartano's lines were  rapid-fire tongue twisters, delivered with absolute precison and bite. Later her lines curve sensuously,but even in these beautiful moments, she retained a mysterious quality as if the girl had been led into the forest by evil spirits, represented perhaps in the clarinets and pumping woodwind around her. Waltteri Torikka sang the baritone part. He didn't have quite the assurance of, say, Jorma Hynninen, but he can express the vulnerability that lurks behind Kullervo's brutishness. If his voice didn't project well, live, in the cavern that is the Royal Albert Hall it sounded better on broadcast.  There's potential in this voice.

In Kullervo, the choir (the Polytech Choir augmented by the men of the BBC Symphony Chorus) operate like a Greek Chorus commenting on proceedings and adding ballast to the orchestra. These choral parts are difficult, for the lines flow with little pause for breath, relentlessly moving the action forward. The Finnish language, too, poses problems. Every vowel sound must be articulated, and there are vowel sounds one after another in succession, cut across with stinging sibillants. "Kullervo, Kalevon poika, sinisukka äijön lapsi,". For the Polytech Choir from Helsinki, the lines flow seamlessly, yet are energized by high testosterone punchiness.  We can hear the fast-moving sleigh, complete with bells as it rushes "noilla Väinön kankahilla, ammoin raatuilla ahoilla". Yet these rhythms also suggest violence, the relentless course of fate, and lets face it a fairly explicit description of sex.  I was fascinated by the way the choir varied their emphases, dropped to whispers and rose to full volume,and the variety of subtle expression. 

We hear the BBC Symphony Orchestra all the time, so we take them for granted, and forget how good they really are. The Alla marcia (Kellervo goes to war) isn't difficult for players with these technical skills, but they played  with energy and vigour. Oramo marked the end of the battle with a long silence, soon the voices of the male choirs returned, ghost-like.  Muted large brass, tuba and trumpets muffled, bassoons sighing, clarinets.rising like smoke on a battlefield. While Kullervo begins characterized by hard, angular sounds, and breaking off painfully into silence, the final movement, Kullervo's Death, is an andante. The timpani were beaten in slow march, placed at a distance from the rest of the percussion, cradling the orchestra, perhaps, in the kind of embrace  Kullervo never knew. Sibelius  didn't set the last lines of Rune XXXV but he and his audiences would have known the moral with which the saga ends. It is a warning that children should not be abused or mistreated.  

Starting with a very good En Saga (Op 9, 1892 rev 1902), this was by far the most-focused and well performed Sibelius this season,  making up for a patchy, disappointing and over-rated symphonic cycle in earlier Proms. . 

This review also appears in Opera Today

Please read my other pieces on Sibelius and Kullervo (including the Ballet in Helsinki this spring).

Prom 55 F X Roth SWR SO Boulez Ligeti Bartók

Photo : Roger Thomas

At Prom 55, François-Xavier Roth  conducted the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg in their first - and regrettably last - appearance at the Royal Albert Hall.  The orchestra is being disbanded, merged into the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. When bureaucrats win over musicianly excellence, even in Germany, it's a blow against art.  Those who stand by watching the BBC being dismantled, from within as well as from without, would do well to ponder. The SWR Symphony Orchestra isn't just another orchestra. It was founded by Hans Rosbaud in 1946, as a statement of faith in the renewal of Europe after the barbarism of the war years. Its demise is thus one of the many symptoms of the anti-intellectual, destructive fundamentalism that's sweeping the world over. .

At the end of this Prom, Roth stood in front of his musicians, declaring his appreciation for them, and for the tradition they represent. It was a gesture of defiance, yet tinged with sadness. Roth is going on to head the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne, another of the less famous but distinctive orchestras that make German music great. I'm not sure what will happen to his players, who are individually infinitely better than some heard recently. The Prom was also a tribute to Pierre Boulez, whose conducting career was launched by Rosbaud, who summoned him to Baden-Baden. He's lived there ever since. When Roth conducted Baden-Baden's concert for Boulez this January, the presenters and audience looked visibly moved.

Nothing routine or sloppy in this Proms performance. Pierre Boulez "....explosante-fixe" (1985) scintillated because Roth and his orchestra respect the music enough to create it properly. With his background in baroque, Roth knows the connection between baroque and new music. Please read more here.  One of the hallmarks of the French aesthetic is lucid intelligence. Think Descartes, Moliere, Voltaire. Complex elaborations need clear basic foundations.  Debussy's swathes of subtle  colour sparkle because he understood the importance of clarity. It's no accident that Boulez was perhaps the finest Debussy interpreter of all.  

The original  "Mémoriale ...explosante-fixe" was written to honour Stravinsky, but the larger 1985 version also honours Debussy. The soloist is now surrounded by two other flautists and a small ensemble, so we can hear the purity at the soul of the piece. This is one of the relatively rare pieces where Boulez extends his palette with electronic effects, but these didn't come through as effectively as the "acoustic" playing, perhaps because I was sitting in the wrong place. Impressionist painting shines because colours are carefully defined by light, not muddied.  "....explosante-fixe" is impressionistic in that individual units are clear, the rainbow created by good players for sensitive listeners. Sophie Cherrier combined technical excellence with sophisticated élan. I thought of Pan, surrounded by purity, an image behind the original Mémoriale and in Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.

The technical excellence of the SWR Symphony Orchestra made György Ligeti's Lontano shimmer, like "music from another planet".  Like Ligeti's Atmosphères, this reached mass audiences thanks to being "borrowed" for the movies. So nuts to the myth that audiences are hard wired not to cope with new music! I got hooked on Ligeti when I heard 2001: a space odyssey, hypnotized by the music, ignoring the movie. Lontano was premiered by the SWR SO, whose players remembered the importance Ligeti placed on precision. The textures are so complex that they benefit from the careful attention Roth and his orchestra gave to them.  Roth marked the invisible bars, showing how the music doesn't simply end when the players stop. The silence evaporates into the ever more rarified resonances of the imagination. 

It's a mistake, I think, to expect  Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra to sound quaint and folksy. In 1940, the composer was looking back on his past well aware of what was happening in the Europe he'd left behind, and in the  right wing extremism in Hungary, whose government aligned itself with Hitler. At this Proms performance the SWR SO played it so well that they brought to the fore the atmosphere that Bartók might well  have intuited: the end of civilized culture.  This isn't a concerto for orchestra for nothing, since the interactions between the different parts of the orchestra suggest the importance of relationships and cross-connections.  Roth and the members of the SWR SO listen to each other: their starting point isn't their own playing but precision and attentiveness . Boulez conducted Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra many times.  Ten years have not dimmed the memory of him  conducting it at the Royal Festival Hall with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.. Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned for the Boston Symphony Orchestra by Serge Koussevitsky. As the present BSO embarks on a new future, they might do well to listen to Roth and the SWR SO.

Top and bottom photos: Roger Thomas

Kavakos, Yuja Wang Edinburgh Festival

From Juliet Williams in Edinburgh

Edinburgh had the honour today of a return visit from the virtuosic Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos, who so excelled in the Szymanowski second violin concerto in 2013 with the LSO under Gergiev – a truly electrifying performance. Today he played the three Brahms violin sonatas with pianist Yuja Wang in this morning's Queens Hall chamber recital (also broadcast live on BBC Radio Three and available via the iPlayer).

The consecutive playing of the sonatas displayed the progression of the composer's work in this form; the first being at times sunny in mood and at other times wistful; the second anticipating the arrival of a loved one; the third with more dramatic tension and on a larger scale, in four movements not three. All are warm and lyrical  and draw on extracts from the composer's songs. Kavakos is a remarkable performer and it was a delight to have the opportunity to see him live here again. He particularly excelled in the allegro amabile opening movement of the second sonata and in the adagio of the Third.

Ms Wang's talents came more fully to the fore later in the performance and most especially in their encore, the Brahms scherzo in C minor from the F-A-E sonata, where she displayed considerable panache and flare. Her playing was also showcased to advantage in the third, playful movement of the dramatic third sonata which closed the concert. She will join the San Francisco Symphony on Friday in Beethoven's 4^th piano concerto, and I am looking forward to seeing her perform as a soloist. Further reports will follow here. They are also performing together at the Proms on Monday 31^st August, this time in Bartok's 2^ndpiano concerto. Leonidas Kavakos and Yuja Wang have recorded these sonatas  by Brahms together on the Decca label. Today's performance can be heard again on the BBC iPlayer for thirty days.