Monday 18 March 2024

RSB/Brabbins - Mendelssohn and Stravinsky, 16 March 2024


Konzerthaus

Mendelssohn: Symphony no.4 in A major, op.90, ‘Italian’
Mendelssohn: Hymne, op.96
Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments
Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms

Denis Uzun (mezzo-soprano)
Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Philipp Ahmann)
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Mendelssohn and Stravinsky might not seem the most obvious bedfellows, but this Berlin Radio Symphony (RSB) concert, originally planned with Andrew Davis but conducted by Martyn Brabbins, offered pause for thought as well as enjoyment. Both composers had fraught relationships either with Wagner or his music—and, by extension, with that strain of musical Romanticism. (Even Liszt, that most generous spirited of composers, could refer dismissively to the ‘opposition’ as ‘leipzigerisch’.) The nature of their (neo)classicism is far from the same, but it offers an interesting perspective, even when the music performed is not so markedly in that mould. One could certainly spill a good deal of ink in discussing the relationship of the two Stravinsky works here to ideas and practice of neoclassicism. That, you will doubtless be relieved to know, must await another day, but such initial thoughts offered a frame through which to hear the works concerned. 

The RSB played Mendlessohn’s Italian Symphony with irresistible élan, string sheen and sunny woodwind a delight throughout. Brabbins was surely on the fast side for ‘Allegretto vivace’, but many conductors are.  Throughout, he imparted a proper sense of development to Mendelssohn’s writing, nowhere more so than in the featherlight counterpoint of the development section proper, though that certainly continued in the recapitulation. There was Abruzzo-like heat too in a reading full of colour and incident, aptly foreshadowing the processional of the second movement, which similarly benefited from transparent textures and a keen sense of direction. A graceful minuet, replete with trio that went properly beyond it in more than one direction, led to a saltarello both disciplined and wild, its contagion as impressive as its chiaroscuro. 

The op.96 Hymne, ‘Three Spiritual Songs’ (as they are known in the version with organ) plus a concluding ‘Fuga’, received a winning performance, mezzo Deniz Uzun and the Berlin Radio Chorus joining Brabbins and the orchestra. Telling detail could be heard without exaggeration, variety in scoring (the opening of the second, an especially lovely ‘hymn’, setting solo voice against woodwind consort) registering in every case. A lively third, with growing sense of jubilation, revealed once again what a fine chorus this is: ideal in weight, balance, and clarity. Much the same could be said of the concluding fugue. 

Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments sounded as seductive and rebarbative as ever, a perfect objet trouvé that find itself somehow chiselled to still further perfection. Apparently ossified lines suggestive of The Rite of Spring were imbued with radically new life, the performance as a whole splendidly alive: a liturgy in itself, to which we were permitted audience if not participation. If Boulez was an ideal interpreter (celebrant?) of this hieratic music, I could not help but think Stockhausen must have loved it too. At any rate, it made for a splendid introit to the Symphony of Psalms, whose similar strangeness registered visually in orchestral layout (famously, no violins and violas, nor clarinets) before a note had been heard. 

It proved another labyrinth, as full of incident in its way, above all in the first movement, as Mendelssohn’s Symphony. Glorious choral sound was well complemented by the orchestra; if there were occasions when the two threatened to go their separate ways, it never quite happened. More to the point, the inscrutability of Stravinsky’s musical devices – utterly characteristic ostinato in the first movement, the double fugue of the second – proved once again to pass all ‘expressive’ understanding, the composer’s ever-surprising ear made musically manifest. What a strange ‘response’ to the text Stravinsky offers in the words from Psalm 150 in the third movement. He would doubtless have said he was not responding at all, but simply setting them. That can readily become play with words, for ‘expression’ here, if hardly Romantic, was no less powerful for being what it was: quite the contrary. Brabbins took the opening daringly slow, providing all the greater contrast with what was to come. Music seeming at times to circle the worlds of the Symphony in Three Movements and even the Circus Polka never seemed remotely incongruous; roots and essence led to a hypnotic, even sanctified close.


Friday 15 March 2024

RIAS Choir/Kammerakademie Potsdam/Doyle - Mendelssohn, Hensel, and Bach, 14 March 2024


Kammermusiksaal

Mendelssohn: Psalm 115, ‘Nicht unserm Namen, Herr’, MWV A 9
Fanny Hensel: Hiob
Mendelssohn: Ave Maria, op.23 no.2, MWV B 19
Mendelssohn: Hör mein Bitten, MWV B 49
Bach: Cantata, ‘Die Elenden sollen essen’, BWV 75: Sinfonia to the second part
Mendelssohn: Psalm 114, ‘Da Israel aus Ägypten zog,’ op.51

Anna Prohaska (soprano)
Benjamin Bruns (tenor)
Ludwig Mittelhammer (bass)
RIAS Chamber Choir
Kammerakademie Potsdam
Justin Doyle (conductor)

A delightful and enlightening concert from the RIAS Chamber Choir, Kammerakademie Potsdam, Justin Doyle, and an excellent trio of vocal soloists: focusing on Mendelssohn, but also including a cantata by his sister Fanny Hensel and a sinfonia by the family’s musical house god, Johann Sebastian Bach. Mendelssohn’s setting of verses from the 115th Psalm was the first of five such large-scale settings he made for soloists, chorus, and orchestra between 1829 and 1844. It revealed almost equally strong influence from Bach and Handel, the latter in particular occasionally Mozartified. Here, as throughout, the RIAS Chamber Choir proved admirable in every respect: warm, clear, faultless in pitch and diction. The second of its three movements, a duet with chorus, whilst not un-Handelian in its way of duetting, was less obviously ‘Baroque’ on the surface. Anna Prohaska and Benjamin Bruns offered a mellifluous performance, bassoons and more generally orchestral wind pleasingly audible. The ensuing bass arioso was, similarly, beautifully taken by Ludwig Mittelhammer, with a closing chorus, its opening a cappella, confirming all preceding choral and orchestral virtues. 

Hensel’s 1831 cantata Hiob (‘Job’) sets three pairs of verses from the Book of Job. Three trumpets, timpani, and an excellent mezzo from the choir joined the orchestra and soloists on stage. Here, especially in the opening chorus, Bach’s influence was still stronger: in woodwind writing, figuration, harmony, chromatic lines, and more. It is not pastiche: there were pleasing instances to be heard of nineteenth-century colour and, again, Mozartian mediation (perhaps, in the final chorus, the Haydn of The Creation too). But Hensel had certainly learned her Bachian lessons well, as well indeed as her brother. The central arioso, ‘Warum verbirgest du dein Anlitz’ employs all four soloists, the mezzo’s opening question responded to by the other three, followed by a brief reprise of the former. A third, choral movement once again revealed highly accomplished harmony and counterpoint, the assembled forces under Doyle’s wise leadership performing this – and the rest – with relish and understanding. 

Mendelssohn’s responsorial Ave Maria for tenor, chorus, and orchestra (here two clarinets, two bassoons, three cellos, and two double basses) from 1827 seems to me less inspired. I am not sure Marian devotion was really his thing, though this is of course also a very early work (if later than the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture and the Octet). Its central, choral section struck me as more interesting, nimble cello pizzicato offering an uncanny presentiment of the second movement processional from the Italian Symphony. It was, in any case, interesting to hear the piece. 

In the second half, we were in different territory altogether, with far more characteristic Mendelssohn. In the 1844 Hör mein Bitten (or ‘Hear my Prayer’, as most English-speaking listeners will know it), Prohaska brought a welcome sense of drama: not ‘operatic’, but certainly drawing on her rich and varied operatic experience. There were some truly magical passages, not least her sinuous duet with clarinet (partly set against cello pizzicato). With a larger choir and orchestra than one generally hears, as well as increasingly dramatic delivery – overall conception well-shaped indeed – this was worlds away from English cathedral music; it certainly evinced more biting consonants and accompanying verbal meaning. Both have their place, of course, but, closer to a miniature Lobgesang and even to Wagner, here was a splendidly Romantic Mendelssohn, the composer of Elijah and St Paul. 

The Sinfonia to the second part of Bach’s Cantata ‘Die Elenden sollen essen’ received what struck me as a near-ideal performance: warm, cultivated, and welcoming, My only regret was that that was all we heard of the piece. No matter: in Mendelssohn’s 1839 setting of verses from the 114th Psalm, we had a perfect crown to the concert, surveying in each of its four stanzas a different aspect to the composer’s craft. The integration of Handelian antecedents and the world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the second proved a joy, but then so did the simpler questioning homophony of the third, and the glorious jubilation (and struggles) of the fourth. ‘Da Israel aus Ägypten zog’ was always likely to bring echoes of Handel’s Israel in Egypt, but Bach remained as strong a guide. Doyle once again led a fine performance, colourful and directed, in which every word as well as every note told.


Tuesday 12 March 2024

Aimard/RSB/Popelka - Schoenberg and Mahler, 9 March 2024


Philharmonie

Schoenberg: Piano Concerto, op.42
Mahler: Symphony no.1

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
Petr Popelka (conductor)


Images: Peter Meisel



The world’s near-silence for Schoenberg’s anniversary year continues to deafen. Perhaps everywhere is waiting for September, when his birthday falls, and all will be revealed in a flurry of ‘new season’ announcements. And perhaps eternal Friede will descend upon the Erde this Christmas. In the meantime, Berlin, mostly at the Philharmonie, where there is an exhibition from the Arnold Schönberg Center in the foyer, continues to do better than most. Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who is certainly doing his bit, joined the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB) and Petr Popelka for an outstanding performance of the Piano Concerto, probably the best I have heard live—and a match for the best on record.


The opening was unusual: difficult to put my finger (or ear) quite on how, but Aimard’s solo put me in mind a soliloquy, with a melancholy hint of exile. Perhaps it was recently having seen a dramatization of Exil by Schoenberg’s fellow Californian exile Leon Feuchtwanger at the Berliner Ensemble, though I do not think it was only an external matter. Other voices joined from the orchestra, conversationally, also as if recalling, yet with a distinct hint of foreboding. In general, I have not found Schoenberg’s ‘programme’ for the work especially helpful. Indeed, looking at what I wrote in my ‘critical life’ of the composer, I see I went so far as this: ‘Whether the programme is of any help is highly debatable. Schoenberg, speaking vaguely of war, in a way that could readily be made to fit an almost infinite number of pieces of music, described the work’s expressive content as follows: “1. Life was so easy; 2. Suddenly hatred broke out; 3. A grave situation was created; 4. But life goes on.” Perhaps it assisted his overall conception; there is no more reason for us to dwell on it than Schoenberg had found there was, all those years previously, to dwell on Mahler’s for his Third Symphony.’ (For that, I am afraid you will have to read the book!) Mahler’s programmes are another issue, of course, and I tend to feel similarly about them, probably more so; for whatever reason, the programme of Schoenberg’s concerto seemed to speak more readily than I have previously experienced. The performance was not bound to it; it is not a performance indication. It is also highly subject to criticism, were one to take it too literally as about the world; of all people, Schoenberg knew there was nothing sudden about the outbreak of hatred. Yet here, in this performance, these suggestions and their expressive implications proved almost suddenly precise. It is always good to re-learn something one thinks one knows.





There was close to ideal clarity of texture, which certainly did not preclude weight, but rather proved the key to understanding it. Very much like Brahms, one might say. One could hear the extraordinary ear for orchestration, combinations of instruments sounding as if newly invented, not unlike one of Schoenberg’s Bach transcriptions. Ever-transforming in developing variation, the first section built subtly—and, as Schoenberg does so often, for those who care to listen, it danced too. As the mood darkened, increasing rhythmic angularity made its point in performance as well as work. Echoes of the Golden Calf scene from Moses und Aron were stronger, not only in tuned percussion, than I can recall. It was a (controlled) riot, but there was something still more unsettling behind it. We should not be unduly reductive about such matters, but the deceptions of too-ready communication and the fanaticism it breeds stand with us now almost as strongly as they did in 1942. When the orchestra sang what came across as a great song of protest, it was difficult not to think of current predicaments, all the more so as Mahlerian echoes issued from a twilight zone. All the while, Aimard had a pianistic work-out to give Prokofiev a run for his money.


The Adagio section emerged as consequent, then, as its counterpart in the First Chamber Symphony, reminding us of the deep roots of many of Schoenberg’s formal preoccupations. It was just as songful and soulful too, though seemingly still under assault from all around, Bachian string figures weaponised with terror. They spoke from Hell, and they spread. Aimard’s piano part seemed nonetheless to bind everything together, enabling a turn around. It was not easy, but that made it all the more a Schoenbergian triumph of the human spirit, Popelka’s collaborative stewardship of the orchestra as important in that success.


For an encore – I once heard, in another context, Maurizio Pollini give this as one of several (!) – Aimard played the complete op.19 Six Little Piano Pieces, introducing them by saying several people had told him, in their hearts, they hated Schoenberg’s music; he however, loved it. (Imagine saying that to anyone. Why would you ‘hate’ music in that way, let alone some of the most influential and rawly expressive music of the twentieth century? There continues, alas, to be no better place to find freely expressed antisemitism than in Schoenberg reception.) If anything, this proved a conception more heroic still, not only on account of some of the most determined bronchial disruption from around the hall I have ever heard. From the first, heard as if in a single, ever-variegated breath, through a pulverising miniature fourth (its joy is that one cannot become too heavy, its curse that one cannot become heavy enough), to the evocation of Mahler’s funeral bells in the sixth, a bridge to the second half: it was clear-sighted, unsentimental, but imbued with true sentiment in every note and its manifold connections.




That Mahler’s First Symphony had a performance in many ways admirable, if ultimately lacking the volcanic necessity of both Schoenberg works, yet was received with considerably greater enthusiasm by the audience tells its own tale, on which there is no further need to dwell. It certainly suggested that Popelka is a young conductor to be reckoned with, who has already made significant progress in his conception of a work whose difficult corners have defeated many, as well as confirming and renewing the excellence of the RSB. String harmonics, at the opening, imparted a sense of something that has always been there, of Nature – to which (human?) subjectivity had yet to be added, which it was by interjections from elsewhere. The first movement as a whole received a lyrical, characterful performance, which, whilst one should be wary of essentialisation, seemed rather in the line of Bohemian traditions of Mahler performance. Some might have found it too leisurely; for me, there was a keen sense of finding one’s way, perhaps through woodland, and with moments of existential loneliness to match (so long as one listened). Did it sometimes lose its way? I do not think so, though there were occasions when it might have been more clearly traced. That will come, though. And the eight horns of the RSB sounded glorious.


There followed a vigorous, buoyant, ‘naturally’ rustic Ländler: full of character once more, if slightly sectional and just a touch hard-driven at the close of its first iteration. The  trio evinced grace and Schwung, though it might have had greater depth. The reprise of Ländler material was on the brash side: deliberately so, I am sure, though veering a little too close to the ‘orchestral showpiece’ tendency driven by past decades’ Mahler-saturation. The third movement came off better, its opening taken (thank God) by solo double bass rather than the frankly idiotic practice suggested by editor Sander Wilkens of employing the entire section. The mood, as it and Mahler’s writing developed, was nicely twilit. Ensuing stylistic contrasts were well handled and integrated, a hushed, languorous sweetness imparted to the second trio. It was, perhaps, a bit listless, but that seemed to be the point, to evoke a world of dreams, disrupted by the return of Bruder Martin. The final mostly fell into place very well, balance, weight, and momentum well judged, whilst permitting space to enjoy the ride. These are very tricky balances to strike; if at this stage, Popelka’s conception lacked the last measure or two of formal integration, orchestral excellence and compensation offered fine compensation.

Saturday 9 March 2024

Parsifal, Deutsche Oper, 8 March 2024


Amfortas – Jordan Shanahan
Titurel – Andrew Harris
Gurnemanz – Günther Groissböck
Parsifal – Klaus Florian Vogt
Kundry – Irene Roberts
Klingsor – Joachim Göltz
Knights of the Grail – Patrick Cook, Youngkwang Oh
Esquires – Sua Jo, Arianna Manganello, Kieran Carrel, Chance Jonas-O’Toole
Flowermaidens – Flurina Stucki, Sua Jo, Arianna Manganello, Hye-Young Moon, Mechot Marrero, Marie-Luise Dreßen
Voice from Above – Marie-Luise Dreßen

Director – Philipp Stölzl
Co-director – Mara Kurotschka
Set designs – Conrad Moritz Reinhardt, Philipp Stölzl
Costumes – Kathi Maurer
Lighting – Ulrich Niepel
Revival director – Silke Sense

Chorus, Men of the Extra Chorus, and Children’s Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus masters: Jeremy Bines and Christian Lindhorst)
Opern-Ballet, Statisterie, and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin
Donald Runnicles (conductor)


PARSIFAL von Richard Wagner, Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright.
Image: Matthias Baus

Memory plays all manner of tricks: major and minor. I could have sworn I had seen Philipp Stölzl’s Deutsche Oper Parsifal twice before this, distinctly recalling having revisited it. I actually have no record of having done so, and am reasonably sure I would. I was also more enthusiastic the first time I saw it, in 2014, than now, describing it – admittedly for the vocal performances as much as the production – as ‘a Parsifal demanding both to be seen and to be heard’. Now it seems to me that it fulfils its repertory role, but is in looking somewhat tired. What has happened in the meantime? The tempting answer would be Stefan Herheim’s Bayreuth production, which transformed experience and understanding for so many. I myself have thought of it as akin to Patrice Chéreau’s Ring; things can never be the same again. I still do, but in this case the chronology does not fit, Herheim having been seen for the last time in 2012. It may have had a role in raising expectation and achievement across the board. Ironically, a major production from the intervening years, Dmitiri Tcherniakov’s Parsifal for the house across town, has in retrospect a few points in common with Stölzl, perhaps more in terms of appearance than substance, yet it remained by some way the bolder experience. (Click here for a brief comparison of Herheim and Tcherniakov.) Maybe this just needs more time devoted to revival (a well-nigh insuperable problem with repertoire houses). Or perhaps all this talk of comparison is a little decadent, and we should simply concentrate on what lies in front of us. 

What, then, lay in front of us here? In broad terms, Stölzl’s concept, insofar as I understand it, presents Monsalvat as a Templar-like community that has not only become tired, but deadly in preservation of long since dead rituals. Fanatics keep alive certain external forms, albeit in the form of weird tableaux vivants, which tellingly freeze rather than develop. Control, as in the typical secular claims against ‘religion’, is all—of the self and others, bloody (self-)flagellation included. These doubtless just about keep things going, but whatever it may have been that animated the community in the first place, presumably in some sense the Grail or related to it, has long since vacated the premises. Klingsor’s anti-Monsalvat is not merely the same: the cave within clearly hosts a different cult. There is something disquietingly orientalist, if not nearly so blatant as Uwe-Eric Laufenberg’s Islamophobic farrago at Bayreuth, to it; that may, of course, be deliberate, in playing with our conceptions. There is, though, I think, a strong implication that they ultimately have more in common than separates them. And the way the Flowermaidens emerge from the stone, becoming something otherwise through minimal shedding of costumes and clever lighting, is a nice touch. 

Presumably the whole thing, though, is a delusion: anti-religion claiming its title, against Wagner, though in common with many who have admired him. Talk of renewal, let alone that extraordinary – almost always ignored or underestimated – third-act claim of taking Christ down from the Cross, is probably just mumbo-jumbo; it certainly seems to be a lie. When Parsifal returns, Amfortas impales himself on the spear: a way out for him, though not necessarily for those left behind. Perhaps, as I noted last time, Stölzl heeds John Deathridge’s warning against resolution in ‘high-minded kitsch’, for redemption is an alien concept, one that never arises. The problem for me was not so much the grim framing, as the danger that by now the production had become its own ritual, in danger of succumbing to something not a million miles away from what it claimed to portray. 


Image: Bettina Stöß

Donald Runnicles led a performance not so very different – as memory serves – from Axel Kober ten years ago, though probably still more secure. He and the splendid Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper (the chorus too) put not a foot wrong throughout. This was not the sort of performance one might characterise as a particular ‘reading’; Runnicles’s collegial brand of music-making is not about that. Instead, he drew on what is, by now, clearly deep knowledge and understanding of the score to present it as faithfully as he could, neither merely framing nor inciting the action, yet considerate of the competing demands that go towards performance of opera (even, or especially, one calling itself a Bühnenweihfestspiel). If there were times when I might have preferred the orchestra to take the lead more strongly, there is room for various approaches here. 

Runnicles’s musicianship unquestionably allowed the cast, entirely new from ten years ago, to shine. Klaus Florian Vogt’s voice is, to my ears, more suited to some aspects of Parsifal’s character than others. He comes across, like no other, as father of Lohengrin (whilst still tempting Nietzsche’s mischievous question: how did he manage that?) There were a beauty and clarity to line and verbal projection that are not readily to be gainsaid, though ultimately I missed a sense of development. (One might, I suppose, argue that that is less needed in this production than in many.) Günther Groissböck’s Gurnemanz intrigued, not so much because he looked younger than many, but because he acted younger, particularly in the first act, there being a creditable distinction between both portrayals. Here was a charismatic leader, not some old bore, with interesting implications for those who listened and followed, and the life of the community as a whole. Jordan Shanahan proved an unusually likeable Amfortas, although he certainly had us share his pain too. As Kundry and somewhat like Runnicles, Irene Roberts seemed more concerned to bring out the text than present a strong ‘reading’ of her own. This she did with great skill, as did the cast as a whole. What was the problem, then? Perhaps there was none after all, or rather it was mine.


Friday 8 March 2024

Arditti Quartet at 50: Harvey, Milliken, Hosokawa, and Birtwistle, 7 March 2024


Pierre Boulez Saal

Jonathan Harvey: String Quartet no.1 (1977)
Cathy Milliken: In Speak for string quartet (2023, world premiere)
Toshio Hosokawa: Oreksis for piano quintet (2023, world premiere)
Birtwistle: String Quartet: The Tree of Strings (2007)

Irvine Arditti, Ashot Sarkissjan (violins)
Ralf Ehlers (viola)
Lucas Fels (cello) 
Tomoki Kitamura (piano)

On 7 March 1974, the Arditti Quartet gave its first concert at the Royal Academy of Music, music to honour Krzysztof Penderecki on bestowal of an honorary degree. Fifty years later to the day and several changes of personnel later – Irvine Arditti the one constant – the Quartet celebrated at Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal its fiftieth birthday, followed by a reception hosted by the Paul Sacher Stiftung, which also hosts the ensemble’s archive . True to its spirit, here was a mixture of new and newer: two Arditti commissions, Jonathan Harvey’s First String Quartet (the first ever) and Harrison Birtwistle’s The Tree of Strings sandwiching two new commissions from Cathy Milliken and Toshio Hosokawa. 

We do not hear enough of Jonathan Harvey’s music. If that was the case before his death in 2012, it is all the more so now. Reminders such as this can do no harm at all. In a single movement, which, to my ears at least, might possibly have been subdivided into three sections of unequal length, it opened with violin (then viola, then cello) harmonics, melting yet also, like snowflakes, flurrying, becoming stronger: something both fragile and yet primal, the latter especially in the unison melody that emerged and seemed to rule over the Quartet as a whole. It felt like embarking on a magical adventure for composer and performers, the latter tracing and projecting the piece’s expressive contours with typical expertise, as the repertoire piece it must be for them, though without a hint of the routine. Sparks flew later, what in the work of another composer we might characterise here as éclat, but here suggesting something deeper, more fundamental, perhaps even Germanic, acknowledging the composer’s crucial encounter with Stockhausen. Material that emerged from the debris developed in any number of other ways, prior to a third section (?) in which a ghost in the machine, a machine in the ghost, or perhaps both propelled the music on its way. Unifying yet further developing, like the ‘tradition’ to which it perhaps still laid claim, the music yet had no ‘return’ in a sign-off of deft brevity. 

Cathy Milliken’s In Speak immediately sounded, perhaps to state the all-too-obvious, as if arising from different cultural concerns, a proper contrast in programming as well as composition. Almost dance-like at times, with unmistakeable ‘human’ interjections of speech, ghostly whistling, and so on, it seemed to take in a more ‘connected’ world (not that there was anything remotely insular about Harvey) and some sort of dramatic-conceptual stimulus arising therefrom, without that being ‘the point’. There was even, I thought, a hint of celebration. ‘Tradition’, if it still exists at all, has moved on considerably in half a century, not least thanks to the Arditti Quartet. ‘I hear different notes emerging’, ‘punchline’, ‘I dragged’, ‘until he was pushed’, ‘finding the right word’, a concatenation of verbal phrases enabled strings to take over again, in turn inaugurating a slower moving, constantly shifting section. Further musical scampering, almost suggesting a ‘classical’ return of material in ternary form – suggesting, not straightforwardly representing – brought the piece to its conclusion.   

The players were joined by pianist Tomoki Kitamura for Toshio Hosokawa’s Oreksis for piano quintet. Again, this was a very different musical world: not only the soundworld, but procedures, preoccupations, everything. Post-‘impressionist’? Perhaps. Post-Debussy? A somewhat stronger perhaps. But it was not only, or principally, post-anything, however helpful such thoughts may be to gain our initial bearings. Centres of gravity proved very different, lines emerging from them, whilst those centres remained obstinately, strangely alluring. The pianist was not a ‘soloist’, yet had a somewhat different role, seemingly growing from the piano’s different instrumental qualities. (That may sound obvious, but it is far from always the case.) Dreamlike in apparent creation of chords, it built slowly to climaxes that seemed always to be pushed a little further into something beyond. Sliding, slithering lines later seemed liberated from whatever it was that had kept them grounded: new ‘air of another planet’ perhaps? There both are, and are not, new things under our sun(s). Music floated with strange precision, upwards once again, into… 

For the final work on the programme, following the interval, we turned to Birtwistle’s 2007 String Quartet: The Tree of Strings. If one might have found a point of comparison with Harvey’s piece in a ‘frozen’ opening, what struck more forcefully again was the difference from all that had been heard before. There was certainly no question who the composer was—nor how great our loss continues to be. These were not so much musical fractals, as some might musically imagine trees, but rather this sounded as music born of an ancient, far from consoling, ‘then’ as seen, or heard, from ‘now’. Melody, harmony, even gesture were as immediate as in stage works such as Gawain or The Minotaur; there was a similarly keen sense of narrative(s) too, without moving into the realm of representation. Even when occasionally more frenetic, it retained a sense of spareness, of everything counting. A not un-Stravinskian candle continued to burn, even to dance, to rock; yet there was a deeper melancholy that seemed to speak of and from remembered or invented landscapes of a Britain beyond its modern towns and cities (not anti-metropolitan, but rather non-metropolitan) as well as memories of Dowland. (How the composer must have hated the snake-oil-salesmen of ‘Brexit’. How wonderful it would have been to see him give Nigel Farage a piece of his mind, not that Farage would have known what to do with it.) 

Strength persisted, intensified, through techniques seeming to cross the centuries without ever truly being ‘of’ them. Was that a mediaevalism there? If so, it was hardly the point. Compelled, so it seemed, by the music’s inherent drama, the players, one by one, moved from centre stage to new stations around the hall, the spatial quality of the musical landscape confirmed and extended. It was no gimmick, as it might have been for many – was there a less gimmicky composer than Birtwistle? – but rather born of an expressive need. Was there a centre any more? That may be the question of musical, and not only musical, modernity, or at least a question. Does it matter? Others left the hall, Lucas Fels’s cello persisting with gruff integrity that came close to overwhelming. It, or rather this, did matter. 

To read my 2009 interview with Irvine Arditti, ahead of two performances at the Edinburgh Festival, please click here.

Wednesday 6 March 2024

Hercules, Komische Oper, 3 March 2024


Hercules – Brandon Cedel
Dejanira – Paula Murrihy
Iole – Penny Sofroniadou
Hyllus – Caspar Singh
Lichas – Susan Zarrabi
Priest of Jupiter – Noam Heinz
Choral soloists – Martin Fehr, Taiki Miyashita

Director – Barrie Kosky
Designs – Katrin Lea Tag
Dramaturgy – Zsolt Horpácsy, Johanna Wall
Lighting – Joachim Klein
Assistant director – Tobias Ribitzki

Choral Soloists of the Komische Oper (director: David Cavelius) 
Orchestra of the Komische Oper
David Bates (conductor)


Images: Monika Rittershaus
Dejanira (Paula Murrihy), Lichas (Susan Zarrabi)


Handel’s ‘musical drama’ – an interesting term, though we can sometimes make too much of such things – Hercules has never proved especially popular. The composer’s public at the time and for a long while after tended to prefer his Biblical oratorios. Since the revival and, latterly, the craze for his Italian opere serie, they have ruled the roost. Semele, another ‘musical drama’, ‘after the manner of an oratorio’, has fared better since its modern stage revival in Cambridge in 1925. Handel never intended it to be staged, though the librettist (William Congreve) and original composer (John Eccles) had. It perhaps comes closest to Hercules, whose first staging was also in 1925 – the very beginning of the modern Handel revival – though in Münster. Whilst perhaps not the most compelling, dramatically, of all Handel’s works, Hercules, to a libretto by the Anglican clergyman Thomas Broughton, is certainly not the least either. This new production from Berlin’s Komische Oper affords a valuable opportunity, certain shortcomings notwithstanding, for news audience to see and hear it for themselves—many doubtless for the first time, the present writer included. 

In a programme interview, Kosky tells how and why he has long found Handel’s oratorios, to which he reasonably assimilates Hercules, more compelling than his operas. Me too, though we seem to stand nowadays in a minority. One question presented by staging the oratorios (broadly considered), though, relates to how to treat the chorus. Its dual role in participation and commentary dates back to Attic tragedy, of course, as well as holding an obvious point in common with Bach’s Passions. There remains the question of how to stage this, especially when the chorus is being asked to sing some notably difficult music conceived for singers standing with their scores rather than darting around the stage. (Insofar as the Italian operas have ‘choruses’ at all, the music is far simpler, and in general we might consider them simply to be the cast coming together.) One needs an excellent chorus, of course, which was certainly the case. Its singers and their director, David Cavelius, deserve much praise; audience appreciation was rightly enthusiastic on the opening night. Kosky involved them directly in the action where required, including a disturbing scene of largely implicit violence when Iole is brought home (for Hercules, not for her) as spoils of war. There is also mesmerising choreography for the reflective role in which singing and movement combine to evoke and perhaps even provoke the deadly jealousy forming in Dejanira’s fevered imagination.

 

Chorus and Dejanira



For, as Kosky points out, Handel focuses everything not on Hercules but on his wife, Dejanira. ‘Everyone is constantly talking about Hercules,’ as is typical for a hero, or an idea of a hero, ‘but all one sees is one theme – and that is jealousy, which the chorus also sings about at a central point. What is jealousy, what does jealousy do, what is fantasy, what is projection, what is reality? Dejanira spins herself through jealousy into madness,’ in her obsessional belief, quite unfounded, that her husband has deserted her for the foreign princess Iole. Kosky’s suggestion that Broughton probably read Othello strikes me as eminently plausible, and certainly makes its way in here, with a good touch too of Ovid. This unfolds in an unsparing visual environment, situated at the dramatic trisection of antiquity, its eighteenth-century revisitation, and our twenty-first-century revisitation of both. Glaring light and whiteness impart a sense of nowhere to hide. We may not wish to watch at times, but we must—just like those taking part. Katrin Lea Tag’s designs here play a crucial role; indeed, one cannot imagine the action without them. A statue of Hercules, ever present, make Kosky’s point about constant reference when the drama is not really ‘about’ Hercules at all.


Dejanira, Hercules (Brandon Cedel)

We knit our own heroes, Dejanira to extremes, and in this respect Paula Murrihy’s performance must be accounted a striking success. Murrihy has much to do and not only did it very well indeed, but functioned, as she must, as the dramatic lynchpin. As Hercules, Brandon Cedel has a somewhat thankless part, but presented it with conviction and due collegiality, doing just what was required of him to have the apparently strange focus of the drama work. Kosky has an inventive solution, which tightens the bonds of family loyalty further, to the question of the role of the messenger Lichas. Handel made it an oddly large role; that is, oddly, until one knows that it was on account of the popularity of its creator Susanna Cibber. For revivals, it was cut. Kosky elects to make the herald, always sung by a woman, Hercules’s younger sister. It works well, I think, and helps make sense of something that can otherwise seem a little odd. Susan Zarrabi’s heavily accented performance might have been a little much for some English speakers, but it was certainly animated and dramatically committed; we should remind ourselves that German- and Italian-speakers face similar distractions frequently. Penny Sofroniadou’s Iole was beautifully, sparklingly sung, with just as keen an eye and ear for drama, her initial, well-nigh regal disdain for Hyllus, Hercules’s son, duly wounding. Caspar Singh offered a subtle, often moving performance of that difficult role: very much in his father’s shadow, his mother’s too, in need of space to become his own person. The small role of the Priest of Jupiter was well taken by Noam Heinz, from whom I shall likewise be keen to hear more. 


Hyllas (Caspar Singh), Dejanira, Lichas

The one significant drawback for me was David Bates’s direction of the orchestra. Clearly intent on making it sound as little like a modern orchestra as possible – in which case, why use one? – Bates often sounded as if he were presenting a caricature of rebarbative ‘early musicking’. Not only was there no longer line; there were barely orchestral phrases at all, which made for a peculiar contrast with such excellent singing. If it was, alas, too much to hope for even the slightest manifestation of string vibrato. The orchestra doubtless did as it was asked, but lunging extremes of tempo only highlighted the strange assumptions underlying Bates’s performance. Quite how we have backed ourselves into a corner where all manner of explorations are permitted on stage, yet a single, highly questionable idea of ‘correctness’ (or otherwise) in instrumental performance is all that can be allowed, I really do not know. One can only hope that, some day, wiser, more humane counsels will prevail. There are certainly far more alluring Handel performances on period instruments, let alone the all too rare occasions when more properly ‘modern’ readings are permitted.


Hercules, Hyllus

It would doubtless be an exaggeration to describe Hercules as an ‘Anglican work’, but it chimes well enough with a broadly Christian yet latitudinarian outlook. If part of the reason for the work’s ‘failure’ – it received only two performances in its initial run at the Haymarket – was, as has been claimed, its lack of moral and spiritual uplift, then it is tempting to conclude the audience was not paying as much attention as it might. From a modern standpoint, it might all seem a bit clean, the deus ex machina in need of questioning or undercutting. Kosky does not opt to do so too overtly, letting the work speak largely for itself. Yet in continuing his focus on Dejanira, for whom this is certainly not a happy ending, one can continue, as it were, to hear her pain, renewed and intensified by the sounds of rejoicing that surround her.


Sunday 3 March 2024

BPO/Thielemann - Bruckner, 29 February 2024


Philharmonie

Symphony no.00 in F minor, ‘Study Symphony’
Symphony no.0 in D minor

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Christian Thielemann (conductor)


Images: Frederike van der Straeten


Bruckner years seem to come around considerably more frequently than most others. Presumably they do not; indeed they cannot. The sense probably reflects instead the eagerness of orchestras, conductors, and orchestral managements to make the most of any such anniversary. This concert had the merit of performing two works we have less opportunity to hear, what have come to be eccentrically numbered as 00 and 0, in performances from Christian Thielemann, conducting from memory, and the Berlin Philharmonic. I was grateful for the opportunity, though I cannot say they are symphonies to which I shall return in a hurry, not when there is so much neglected Haydn and even Mozart. 

The 1863 ’Study’ Symphony in F minor has had ‘00’ attached on account of its preceding the work known as ‘0’. Written at the end of Bruckner’s studies with Otto Kitzler, it is not unpleasant, but it is difficult to imagine anyone would bother with it if it were the work of someone else. For one thing, like the ‘Nullte’, it seems to last considerably longer than it does. I was convinced, until I looked at my watch, that the programme’s estimated timings had been exceeded. The first movement opened promisingly, sounding surprisingly close to Mendelssohn at times, without ever sounding quite ‘like’ him. Thielemann and the Berliners offered a fine match of (relative) lightness and polish, without sacrifice to heft or underlying harmony. I was put in mind of Thielemann’s way with Elektra, which confounds expectations at many a turn. A charming cello solo in the development section came as a pleasant surprise, and it was a relief to discover, a few awkward corners notwithstanding, that there were none of the blind alleys down which the traditionally numbered early symphonies have a habit of proceeding. The coda at last gave a hint, it not more, of the apocalyptic Bruckner, three trombones and all. 

Schumann was more in evidence in the second movement, ‘Andante molto’, though again without edging too close to resemblance. The lack of memorable material was a problem for me, likewise anything approaching the essential simplicity that is the key to so many slow movements, but those who simply like the ‘sound’ will have enjoyed themselves. Thielemann certainly had it flow nicely, permitting plenty of space for detail. Another lovely solo, this time for oboe (Albrecht Meyer) offered contrast. The more turbulent passages received outstanding playing that never fell into exaggeration. Slightly stronger pre-echoes of mature Bruckner characterised the scherzo, albeit with stronger flavours not only of Mendelssohn but also Schubert. The finale struck me as, by some distance, the weakest. ‘Influences’, particularly those of Schubert and Schumann, were stronger; so was a tendency towards aimless meandering. It is doubtless not without interest for those especially interested in Bruckner; that is the best I can say.    



The D minor symphony of 1869, the so-called ‘Nullte’, is not in any meaningful sense ‘no.0’. It was written between the First and Second Symphonies, but when, in the 1890s, Bruckner reviewed it for publication, he decided against inclusion, nullifying it both with the word ‘annulirt’ on the title page and by amending the number 2 to the sign ‘∅’, erroneously taken thereafter as ‘0’. It certainly sounds, if patchily so, more like the Bruckner we know. The ominous quality of onward tread at the opening to the first movement offered quite a jolt, as did Bruckner’s harmonic language. There was greater consistency of voice and general direction: far from complete, but getting there. It was a thrill, moreover, to hear the tremendous Berlin sound. As time went on, though, the musical argument – or lack of one – simply bewildered me.


The second movement is not without fussiness, even in so accomplished a performance as this, but what we heard was a committed and, at times, involving missive from a world not so distant from Lohengrin. I know Brucknerians resist – with good historical reason – the idea that the composer might benefit from active editorial intervention; perhaps we do simply have to take this as it is. I wonder, though, whether there is room for something to be done to have Bruckner say what needs to be said more directly. The scherzo came across as a much more coherent whole. (Yes, that may well be more readily accomplished for a scherzo.) It also, doubtless not coincidentally, sounded closer to the mature voice of the composer. A Janus-faced trio, ‘new’ harmonies set against a backward glance to an imagined eighteenth century, worked similarly well. The fourth movement offered an inventive, if not always successful, attempt to address the ‘finale problem’ after Beethoven. There is much, perhaps too much, going on, which does not always feel properly connected, although Thielemann’s performance gave connection its best shot. The music stopped and started, as surely it must, but we had an enjoyable and, at times, exciting ride in between. Now may we have some Haydn?




Wednesday 21 February 2024

Le nozze di Figaro, Deutsche Oper, 20 February 2024


Count Almaviva – Thomas Lehman
Countess Almaviva – Maria Motolygina
Susanna – Lilit Daviyan
Figaro – Artur Garbas
Cherubino – Meechot Marrero
Marcellina – Michaela Kaune
Don Basilio – Burkhard Ulrich
Don Curzio – Chance Jonas-O’Toole
Bartolo – Padraic Rowan
Antonio – Patrick Guetti
Barbarina – Ketevan Chuntishvili
Two Bridesmaids – Yuuki Tamai, Asaha Wada

Director – Götz Friedrich
Set designs – Herbert Wernicke
Costumes – Herbert Wernicke, Ogün Wernicke
Revival director – Gerlinde Pelkowski

Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Richter) of the Deutsche Oper
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper
Giulio Cilona (conductor)


DIE HOCHZEIT DES FIGARO von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
Deutsche Oper Berlin,copyright: Bettina Stöß
Count Almaviva (Thomas Lehman), Susanna (Lilit Dayivan), Don Basilio (Burkhard Ulrich)

Next stop on my tour of Berlin’s ‘vintage’ opera productions: Götz Friedrich’s Deutsche Oper Marriage of Figaro, a joy to encounter in itself and a nice sequel to Ruth Berghaus’s Barber of Seville across town at the Staatsoper. Friedrich’s productions are gradually making their way to the great opera house in the sky. When I first came to Berlin, a number of his Wagner stagings, for instance, were still in the repertoire; now there are none. This, from 1978, with designs by Herbert Wernicke – like Berghaus’s designer, Achim Freyer, going on to become a notable director in his own right – is certainly worth catching whilst it is still around. 

For once, I admit it was a relief to see an eighteenth-century society of orders portrayed as it ‘should be’. It is not the case that the drama cannot be reimagined in different settings, nor even that the complexity and hierarchy of such a society need in every case be reproduced (though one loses something if it is not). Yet too often, one gains the impression that a director has simply not bothered; or worse, has not even realised what is at stake. Such is the pathway to vulgar farce. Here, instead, almost everything seemed to fall into place. Not that that necessarily ‘happens’ without a good deal of thought and work, but the impression is important; the world created on stage worked, helped by being in accordance with that created by its librettist and composer, but also enabled to work by them. Even at this remove, there seemed to me no doubt that Friedrich had been involved at every level of this production, had made decisions founded upon musical and historical as well as stage understanding, and that characters and their relationships had been properly considered.

Costumes and their changes were never arbitrary or simply on account of a ‘look’, or even a concept. They had historical meaning and often looked handsome – Cheubino’s uniform, for instance – without being a fetishistic recreation, in which similarly the ‘look’ rather than the drama was the thing. Cherubino’s hiding from the Count actually worked for once; the number of times directors simply mess that up is, alas, all too numerous for comfort. I liked the touch of having the Count assert his manorial authority in front of the house’s customary picture of his ancestors. Likewise the audience room in which the last two scenes of that third act were set. Such attention to detail would chime with many people’s experience of visiting such houses and their estates and would therefore help bring to life the historical record, as well more straightforwardly as making sense of what was said, sung, and done. 

Perhaps more important, the choreography made sense, listening to the music rather than simply disregarding it in the usual ‘modern silly dance’ routines unmusical directors or their associates foist upon opera. (By all means offer something in counterpoint to it, however that may be understood, but at least do the score and its historical context the decency of listening to them first rather than simply skim-reading a libretto.) Scene changes were more frequent than will often be the case now: not only between but sometimes within acts. Current directors would do it differently, no doubt, but different is sometimes just different, not necessarily better or worse. 


Cherubino (Meechot Marrero), Countess Almaviva (Maria Motolygina), Count Almaviva

To questions concerning the opera are to what extent knowledge of the play and indeed of its sequel are expected. At one level, none: many of us saw and loved it before proceeding to Beaumarchais in either incarnation. Did Da Ponte and/or Mozart, though, expect any such knowledge, in the first instance by not having to show something that might have caused trouble with the censor; or, milder still, does one gain further insight from having done so? Here, rightly, the question was left open. No one was compelled to have extra knowledge, but we had both a sense of difference from the corresponding play that suggested purpose rather than mere accident, and one could certainly read aspects of the characters to suggest their lives had developed from the first instalment (even from Rossini after the fact; Paisiello too, I think). Thus when confrontations between Figaro and the Count were less studies in contemporary masculinity than will often, quite reasonably the case, one was led to think of their history together—and, as Friedrich noted in a fascinating programme interview, the fact that the Count is not an idiot, indeed most likely he is a man of the Enlightenment himself, entrusted as he will shortly be to represent his country as the ambassador in London. This, one might say, is him regretting the passing of certain aspects of something he knows to be wrong and attempting to recover them through guile, not through neofeudal reaction pushed to the level of absurdist tyranny. That, after all, is the story being told in the opera, though often one would not know it. The director may or may not have good reason for taking a slightly different line, just as (s)he might for failing to recognise what once had passed between the Count and Rosina, as once we knew here, but it is good to know, and to have suggested to us, that such matters have at least been considered.

And so, if I have been more thrilled by portrayals of Figaro and the Count, I came to appreciate a subtle more placing of them and the rest of the household within a greater social whole. Thomas Lehman and Artur Garbas did not seem to be presenting a modern portrayal and falling short; they were doing something different, as was Friedrich. Lilit Daviyan’s Susanna was not so different from what one might expect, though that is not to say she took anything for granted. Maria Motolygina’s Countess truly came into her own in ‘Dove sono’, a finely yet not fussily coloured account, in which musical means conveyed dramatic ends. Meechot Marrero’s Cherubino was not only dramatically alert but perhaps uncommonly beautifully sung. Michaela Kaune’s Marcellina offered a surprising star drunken turn in her fourth-act aria, for once retained. It was a pity still to be missing Don Basilio’s, but Burkhard Ulrich made a fine impression elsewhere: for once, a reading (Friedrich’s too, of course) that presented him as music master rather than a bizarrely camp caricature as has been recently fashionable. Everyone made a mark as required without overshadowing the rest of the company, down to Chance Jonas-O’Toole’s Don Curzio, whom one actually noticed in the sextet as well as before it, simply (or so it seemed) by virtue of Friedrich having given matters due consideration, as well as excellent singing. 

I cannot be so enthusiastic about Giulio Cilona’s conducting, though on the whole it seemed preferable to what I had heard last month in The Magic Flute. The Overture, hard-driven and with little audible at times other than rasping brass, brought us close in the wrong way to Rossini, as did too much of the first act. If there was little depth to what followed and a few too many disjunctions between pit and stage, especially during ensembles, at least it showed greater flexibility. And it certainly improved, the third and fourth acts more all-purpose ‘light’ rather than motoric. That Friedrich’s production survived and shone is all the more testament to its virtues—and to the cast that brought them back to life.


Monday 19 February 2024

Il barbiere di Siviglia, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 16 February 2024


Count Almaviva – Siyabonga Maqungo
Doctor Bartolo – Renato Girolami
Rosina – Marina Viotti
Don Basilio – Grigory Shkarupa
Berta – Adriane Queiroz
Figaro – Samuel Hasselhorn
Fiorillo – Dionysios Averginos
Ambrosio, Notary – Florian Eckhardt
Officer – Wolfgang Biebuyck


Director – Ruth Berghaus
Designs – Achim Freyer
Revival director – Katharina Lang

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Ido Arad (conductor)


Images (from 2010): Monika Rittershaus

I see that, in London, Jonathan Miller’s 1987 ENO production of The Barber of Seville is receiving another outing. It seems positively modern, though, at least when it comes to years and performances on the clock, when compared with Ruth Berghaus’s 1968 staging for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, first seen a little less than midway between the declaration of the German Democratic Republic and the fall of the Berlin Wall and now past 350 outings. In one of these near-miracles impossible fully to explain, though, Berghaus’s production seems more of our time – I cannot quite bring myself to describe anything, anti-historically, as ‘timeless’ – than many a staging receiving its premiere. It is probably the oldest I have ever seen in the theatre, yet it does not seem like it. Doubtless it has changed over the years; the director who dared to make changes at the Berliner Ensemble, would hardly have wished it otherwise. Some gestures struck me as highly unlikely to have been hers. Still more than usually, then, to speak of ‘Berghaus’s production’ will be a short-hand for a collaborative, changing effort. By the same token, it is difficult to believe that, at its heart, this is not something true, through fidelity and infidelity alike, to her conception. Above all, it provided the foundation on which a delightful evening of Rossini’s comedy unfolded. 

At that heart, I think, is a crucial insight not only into the artificiality of theatre – though that is certainly present – but into the very particular artifice involved in that arch-formalist Rossini. In a passage extracted in the programme, Berghaus exclaims (my translation): ‘Reality! Theatre is not reality and does not mirror reality. Theatre asserts a lfe that is taken from reality. But it is not reality. One must accept theatre as an addition to reality. It is a stage that does not mean the world. … The theatre is an institution that makes it possible to come to terms with reality.’ That is what we see here, not only in outcome but in construction too. Returning, via Brecht yet only in part, to the commedia dell’arte, beautifully evoked by the young Achim Freyer – then in his mid-thirties, this year celebrating his ninetieth birthday – the production simply builds its sets before our eyes and ears. Curtains, a few props, and an eye for design are all that is needed for a ‘Seville’ that is neither a naturalistic presentation nor a provocative anti-Seville to arise as the necessary backdrop for singers to act, to make comedy.



Very well they did so too. Samuel Hasselhorn, as Figaro, emerged as first among equals, unfailingly musical, clean and meaningful in coloratura, and with the timing of a seasoned actor. Marina Viotti’s Rosina similarly excelled, with Sitabonga Maqungo a likeable if,  occasionally, a less theatrically tight Almaviva. Grigory Shkarupa constructed a splendidly real-yet-not-real Don Basilio. A sparkling performance from Adriane Queiroz left one wishing Berta had more to sing. What Renato Girolami sometimes lacked in vocal presence, he made up for in theatrical commitment as Doctor Bartolo. The Staatskapelle Berlin, keenly directed throughout by Ido Arad, did not put a foot wrong, evoking, somewhat to my surprise, a sound not so distant from that of Neville Marriner’s vintage Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Bright, precise, and likewise with pinpoint timing, here was another crucial dimension never to be reduced to anything else, yet likewise never approaching abstraction. The aesthetics, then, were as ‘right’ as the execution. 



‘The picture,’ Berghaus explained, ‘really only has to enable the singer to act. I am very dependent on good singers, and sometimes I am of the opinion that singers are greater comedians than actors.’ They sing and take their bows, then, neither to depict ‘reality’ nor simply to present a ‘plot’. The relationship is complex, yet it does not feel as though it is. There does not feel as though there is anything to be ‘interpreted’ at all, though that is surely to conceal much work. That, in any case, can be considered afterwards, or before. A world of enjoyment is created, yet one which permits something deeper to speak, to sing, to be felt. By never forgetting that it is theatre, its success continues.


Friday 16 February 2024

Batiashvili/BPO/Petrenko - Brahms, Szymanowski, and Strauss, 15 February 2024


Philharmonie

Brahms: Tragic Overture in D minor, op.81
Symanowski: Violin Concerto no.1, op.35
Strauss: Symphonia Domestica, op.53

Lisa Batiashvili (violin)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)


Image: Lena Laine

For me, the highlight of this concert from the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko was the performance of Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto, for which they were joined by the equally outstanding violinist Lisa Batiashvili. Almost any few bars – the sound and the direction it took – would have been enough to justify attendance; it was not, though, necessary to choose. Its opening, a fairyland in which orchestral children of Mendelssohn and Debussy took flight to the emergent strains of a silken violin line spun with longing and languor presaged what was to come, such interactions, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral the stuff on which dreams were made on—at quite a temperature. Whatever its twists and turns, there was no doubting the musical line and one’s compulsion to follow it. Metamorphoses magical, martial, and more proved gorgeously beyond good and evil in their phantasmagoria, form created before our ears. It seemed both old and new, all the while played as to the manner born, balances both perfectly projected yet constantly shifting. Fantasy became reality, or perhaps vice versa. 

Brahms’s Tragic Overture preceded it. Here I was somewhat more uncertain. It was tremendously played, of course, though perhaps driven a little hard at the beginning. (Such matters are mostly a matter of taste, yet even fate need not be quite so remorseless.) There was certainly contrast to come, not least in a charming, surprising echo of Schubert in onward tread before Brahms’s Beethovenian inheritance reasserted itself. What I never quite grasped was how the tragic pageant hung together. 

In the second half came Strauss’s Symphonia domestica. Of all Strauss’s tone poems, even Aus Italien, it is the one I know least well. Indeed, I am not sure I can claim to know it in an emphatic sense at all; I do not think I had been to a live performance before this. I was therefore hoping for some sort of ‘eureka’ moment, or at least a shift in my response to a work that has somewhat baffled me on previous hearings. Alas, it was not to be on this occasion—and that is not necessarily any reflection on the performance.  There were times, especially earlier on, when I thought it was. It is not often that Strauss is bested for great washes of orchestral sound, yet after Szymanowski he was; precision and clarity in the opening were therefore all the more valuable by way of contrast. The composer’s antiromanticism was here strongly to the fore, as it was when the music, more strongly than I can recall, presaged the operatic Strauss of a decade or more hence: Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne, even Intermezzo—which, in terms of subject matter, makes sense. Darker passages proved as ambiguous as the music at its more playful; the Mendelssohn quotation might almost have been filtered by Reger, save that it would surely have been the other way around. The sheer strangeness of Strauss’s tonal journey registered, though ultimately I am not sure I followed it, nor the work’s form (as opposed to mere structure) more generally. The ‘finale’ at times sounded intriguingly close to the enigmatic exuberance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, written at more or less the same time, yet an element of failing, as it were, to conclude here seemed less part of the narrative than, well, an inability to conclude. I am doubtless missing something and have little doubt Mahler would have relished the Berliners’ virtuoso handling of Strauss’s counterpoint. (He conducted the  Viennese premiere in 1904.) Sometimes, though, one must wait until a piece comes knocking on the door—which, judging by the reaction accorded this performance, it already had for most of my fellow concert-goers.


Thursday 15 February 2024

Madama Butterfly, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 14 February 2024


Cio-Cio-San – Sonya Yoncheva
Suzuki – Natalia Skrycka
Kate Pinkerton – Rebecka Wallroth
Pinkerton – Stefan Pop
Sharpless – Carles Pachon
Goro – Gonzalo Quinchahual
Prince Yamadori – Taehan Kim
Uncle Bonze – Grigory Shkarupa
Commissioner – Dionysios Avgerinos
Cio-Cio-San’s Mother – Verena Allertz
Aunt – Michèle Cusson
Uncle – Insoo Hwoang
Child – Carl Beyme

Director – Eike Gramss
Revival director – Marcin Łakomicki
Designs – Peter Sykora
Lighting – Irene Selka

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Domingo Hindoyan (conductor)


Images (from the 1991 premiere): Gianmarco Bresadola

Happy St Valentine’s Day! Ash Wednesday and an opera about sex tourism. Whatever we might think about the latter two, many will agree that the coincidence is well deserved by the pseudo-feast of heart-shaped balloons and ‘special menus’ at three times the price, a third of the culinary quality. In retrospect, or rather more or less as soon as I had arrived, I could not help but think it was perhaps not the wisest of evenings to have chosen to see a Puccini opera; some fellow audience members seemed more concerned to chat, consult their telephones, and more rather than to devote attention to what might reasonably be considered the main attraction in an opera house. More broadly, though, an opera house’s life and health extend beyond the glamour and excitement of premieres. For that reason and for their own sake, I try to sample older stagings I have not seen too and have made that a particular effort to explore these, both in opera and spoken theatre, for this spell in Berlin. 

Here, then is Staatsoper’s Madama Butterfly, in Eike Gramss’s production, first seen at the end of April 1991, when it was conducted by Fabio Luisi, with Miriam Gauci in the title role. Fashions change, of course, often rapidly so—and that certainly applies to opera staging. To see something hailing from less than two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall is to step back some time indeed (not helped by the realisation we reached the point some years hence that the post-Wall era had lasted longer than ever the Wall stood). German reunification and full sovereignty were little more than a month old. One of that process’s sternest and most hapless foes, Margaret Thatcher, had recently been replaced as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The first Iraq War had still more recently concluded. And closer to home in newly reunified Berlin, Daniel Barenboim, fresh and doubtless a little sore from his atrocious treatment at Paris’s new opera house in the Place de la Bastille had yet to be appointed music director at the Statsoper Unter den Linden; that would come at the end of the year. 

I wondered initially, then, whether the safety curtain picturing a US sailor and other images, an eagle included, of Yankee imperialism had been initially intended to have more precise reference thirty-three years ago. Perhaps they had, although the theme is, as they say, ongoing, the opera itself bearing witness to that. I think that image may also, or primarily, have borne witness to a more existential conception, which I suspect will have come across more strongly earlier on, before the staging settled into a comfortable, perhaps necessary, repertoire life. There is a sense that Cio-Cio-San is perhaps delusional – obviously, on a very important level, she is – and certainly looking for escape. She does none of the things that would have helped her, in a difficult, disgraced position, owing to her father’s hara-kiri, to lead a better life; indeed, obstinately she rules them out. And this, I think, we can still see here; her movements suggest a refusal to confront her existing society, and an obstinate turn towards a fantasy of someone who will come to rescue her. (Wagnerian precedents in particular came to my mind.) 


In a notably unsympathetic portrayal of Pinkerton, there was perhaps just a chink of light suggesting that he too might have bought into ‘white saviour’ mode, as opposed to acting with pure cynicism. In many ways, that simply rephrases questions, but is probably worth bearing in mind. Otherwise, the action proceeds more or less as one would expect—and still perhaps might see from a smaller company, albeit probably with greater racial awareness. On the latter score, I think – and I know it is easy for me, as a white man to say this – one can be somewhat forgiving. There is nothing especially outrageous here, and doubtless all concerned would take a different approach from the outset today. Moreover, one can always read things more than one way: the dangerously orientalising portrayal of Japanese women fanning in concert can now be taken, if not intended, as a critique of such portrayals or at least a warning. We are free to have our own thoughts and should surely pursue them. 

Sonya Yoncheva gave a commanding performance as Cio-Cio-San. It offered a wealth of dynamic and other contrast, expertly shaded. There is, as ever, the problem as to how convincing, in a highly realist setting, someone can be as a fifteen-year-old Japanese girl. It is not clear to me what we do about that, other than abandon realism (which is clearly a question for another day), and that is not her fault. Natalia Skrycka’s Suzuki offered deep compassion and a high degree of on-stage chemistry. Stefan Pop can certainly has the vocal reserves for Pinkerton, yet I could not help but find his portrayal a little generalised: of thirty-odd years ago in a way that was not entirely beneficial. Maybe that was brought about by the venerable production, but I missed something more variegated. Carles Pachon’s Sharpless, though, had me wishing he had more to sing—and act. This was a creditably – and credibly – detailed performance, asking questions as much as answering them. 

The rest of the cast, chorus included, impressed, as did the Staatskapelle Berlin: the first time, I think, I have heard this orchestra in Puccini. If I am not sure Domingo Hindoyan always had the pacing quite right – the evening did sometimes seem to drag – then this is also in part a matter of taste and is related in complex ways to what one sees, and does not, on stage too. His approach was more Italianate than post-Wagnerian; something at least a little more symphonic might have helped bind the action together more strongly. By the same token, though, there was little doubt the score was unfolding as he envisaged it, and he certainly knew how to whip up a head of steam at climactic moments. It may well be time, so far as some of us are concerned, to replace this production, but audience reaction was enthusiastic in the extreme.