Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Wigmore Hall 23/2/26

Anthony Marwood violin; Coleman Itzkoff cello; Aleksandar Madžar piano.  Shostakovich, Violin Sonata Op. 134; Tchaikovsky, Piano Trio in A minor Op. 50

As i travelled to London for an evening Wigmore Hall concert, prior to moving on the next day to Paris, I found myself thinking about the dire state of British politics. In front of me on the train, having a rare old time, were three young men who I took to be Christian nationalists, who seemed to be reading and listening to a heady succession of lectures and podcasts about England becoming a Godly Kingdom and properly Christian again, the end of the domination by other religions, particularly Islam, a new era of Christian colonialism and victory over other nations. There was a very creepy-sounding South African ideologue speaking, chunks of Ezekiel, and also some references to the ‘Young Lions’, an Assemblies of God group, I believe, as well as ‘Tarshish’, which apparently in end-times conversation means a group of nations who will stand against the Anti-Christ . Of course, I should have engaged them in conversation but, in the usual British way, didn’t and just buried my head in my computer. Suddenly, not entirely relevantly to the young British Christian nationalists but entirely appropriate to Shostakovich’s violin sonata, there came into my head Edgar’s lines from King Lear – “The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say” (or in my case, speak what will be socially embarrassing because it’s important to speak up, not just keep silent out of politeness …..)

Shostakovich by the late 60’s though WAS able to speak through music what he felt, and in no way held himself bound by what Soviet orthodoxy said he ought to say. The Violin Sonata is not as bleak as the later Viola Sonata but it is by no means easy listening – using elements of 12-tone practice, deliberately spare and not easily relatable melodic material, and clearly focusing on Shostakovich’s increasingly frail health and serving as a meditation on death and dissolution. I find I just have to submit to it and accept its slow, fragmentary movement – there are moments of grim humour but no revelation, just, at the end, a gradual dying away. It is a moving experience, and was beautifully and sensitively played by Anthony Marwood and Aleksandar Madžar. It’s never going to be one of my top ten musical experiences of the year, but it is very rewarding nonetheless.

I don’t know to what extent this well-known British violinist and, from my perspective, less well known Serbian pianist and American cellist often perform together, but there was a definite rapport and sense of common understanding between the three players in something of a barn-storming performance of the Tchaikovsky Trio. It’s a work I’ve heard live once before, performed in Sheffield by Ensemble 360 and I was rather bowled over by it at the time, particularly its ‘big tune’ that opens and closes the work, and bought a recording of the work as a result. Listening to it again, I was more conscious that it is a long work – coming up to 50 minutes in this performance – and one which sometimes meanders a bit, particularly in the Theme and Variations section, where there was a sense of ‘”…and next…, and then…….”. Apart from the ‘big tune’’s return, I didn’t get much of a sense of structure in the work – it sprawls, rather. But it’s always appealing, doesn’t seem to go in for noisy rhetorical gestures, the grand moments of the work came off well, and this was a performance of utter conviction and passion, I felt. There were lots of audience whoops and cheers at the end, well-deserved. Was Tchaikovsky really saying what he felt, though, rathe than what he ought to say to the bourgeois salons of St Petersburg and Moscow? I’m not sure……………………

Mozart, Cosi Fan Tutte. ENO, 19/2/26

Dinis Sousa conductor; Phelim McDermott, director; Tom Pye, designer; Laura Hopkins, costumes; Paule Constable, lighting. Lucy Crowe, Fiordiligi | Taylor Raven, Dorabella | Joshua Blue, Ferrando | Darwin Prakash, Guglielmo | Andrew Foster-Williams, Don Alfonso | Ailish Tynan, Despina plus circus skills ensemble

I had heard good things about this production – 19th century Naples translated to 1950’s Coney Island, unlikely as this seems –  and having Lucy Crowe in the cast was another big draw – she must be the UK’s finest soprano in this sort or repertory at present.

In fact (not that I have seen that many productions – traditional Covent Garden and ENO ones in the 70’, the recent Covent Garden one, that’s about it) this must be the finest and most enjoyable production and performance I have ever seen of this work.

It helped of course (but with some other productions could have hindered) that I was sitting in Row B of the stalls, thus unusually near to the stage and so could see very clearly the quality of the acting close up. But my reasons for this assessment are based on a range of considerations:

  1. The Coney Island/motel concept was in no way distracting.. Compared to the Marriage of Figaro Cosi is a much more static work, with less recitative, and the sense of one aria after another can induce boredom if not carefully handled. The Coney Island concept gave an  opening to the circus skills ensemble, and the tacky motel after a while seemed entirely appropriate – both helped to engage the audience. Some of the backgrounds of a rollercoaster, a big wheel and a helter-skelter were quite haunting. The design concept allowed Don Alfonso to be a more rounded figure than he is sometimes portrayed, engaging with people and not just being a puppet-master. The circus performers were a brilliant idea, and they do a range of tasks – holding placards which describe the main  themes of the piece, doing their tricks (but not too often – a fire eater, a sword swallower, acrobats, the strong man and so forth); and they also shift scenery and are part of the crowd reacting to the story. All this engages the audience and keeps us alert even during a sequence of arias;
  2. The actual construction of the set was clever. There were moveable fairground dodgems, horses and other rides, pushed around by the circus people and stage hands, and a floating balloon for Fiordiligi. There was a drop down set of the motel rooms where Fiordiligi and Dorabella were staying, that had both exteriors and interiors, which could be shifted quickly from one to the other, again helping with pace and audience attention (plus a set of windows and a pane of glass in the doors, which people looked through or even sung through at various points (helping with the length of arias like ‘Come scoglio’), Incidentally, Wikipedia reports that “”Mozart had an extreme dislike for Ferrarese del Bene, for whom he first created the role of Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte. Aware of her tendency to drop her chin and throw back her head while singing low and high notes respectively, Mozart chose to fill her showpiece aria (“Come scoglio”) with continuous harmonic leaps to force her to bob her head “like a chicken”.. The truth of this is questioned by Wikipedia but it’s a nice story and fully in keeping with what we know about Mozart’s humour.
  3. The translation, again by Jeremy Sams, I thought was excellent – no jarring notes and very singable too. It was also very funny at points and got a lot of audience laughs, aided by the clarity of diction of almost everyone on stage. I appreciated particularly the translation of ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’  – ‘That’s human nature’ – which gets round  some of the objections this piece can attract when done less absorbingly and sensitively.
  4. The quality of acting and inter-acting on stage by the principal singers was outstanding. All of them were utterly believable, even the two soldiers, who can seem a bit wooden in some productions. This allowed Don Alfonso to be a warmer, less cardboard figure. Lucy Crowe, and to not quite the same extent Taylor Raven, both showed us the extent of the distress they felt in gradually succumbing to the two ‘strangers’.
  5. The quality of singing. I have to say it – I have heard nobody live since Margaret Price and Kiri Te Kanawa 50 years ago singing Fiordiligi quite as well as Lucy Crowe, who has everything for the role – good diction, a beautiful sound whatever the volume or height/depth of the note, some meltingly lovely phrasing, and complete control of the coloratura elements. This was an utterly outstanding performance. Ailish Tynan as motel chambermaid Despina again was just about the best Despina I have seen – never hamming it up, but performing with a kind of wide-eyed madness that was very funny.  She sang her two big arias with deftness and again with some lovely phrasing – as an aside the director gave her the best and least winceable/ silly disguises I have ever seen for doctor and marriage lawyer. Andrew Foster-Williams – not a name I’ve come across – was utterly believable and with a warm bass-baritone sound. The other three principals  – again, all new to me – were never other than very good, but perhaps less distinctive. Taylor Raven was a particularly effective actor, drawing out the early attraction she felt for the disguised Guglielmo very believably
  6. Dinis Sousa gave the music time to breathe and the right sort of Mozartian bounce – nothing seemed rushed or over-excited, but had its internal energy brought out with vivid orchestral playing (including no horn mis-behavings in Fiordiligi’s big Act 2 aria, and a wonderfully perky oboe in the overture and Come Scoglio)

I avoided this production in 2022 (and I think before Covid) feeling it was likely to be a bit of a disaster. The very opposite is true – it’s an ENO triumph of a classic kind, up to their highest standards of years gone by. That they can put on a show like this (and in the same week as a very effective ‘Mahagonny’) at a time of such financial crisis and dislocation / unemployment for them is remarkable

Thyrsus Trio: St Pancras Church, lunchtime, 19/2/26

Thyrsus Trio, Schubert Trio No. 1 in B-flat major D.898

The thyrsus, a quick check with Wikipedia suggests, is a kind of staff used in rituals “ typically associated with the Greek god Dionysus (and his subsequent Roman equivalent Bacchus) as a symbol of prosperity, fertility, and hedonism.”. It has to be said that St Pancras, the church near Euston Station, didn’t immediately offer itself as a symbol of hedonism – it’s built in an 18th century-looking classical style that feels a bit forbidding, particularly on a cold cloudy day threatening to rain at any minute. But actually lunchtime concerts and recitals in the middle of the city are one of the hidden glories of London and on most weekdays there’s 5 or 6 to choose from. Sometimes I let myself be adventurous but for today there was no choice because it was one of the Schubert Piano Trios on offer – both are glorious works, and it was only being performed just down the road from the hotel I was staying in.

The lunchtime concert audiences are a mixed crew – down more in the City area there are a fair number of pretty affluent looking City-workers; here in St Pancras we were a more motley crew, mainly elderly , with an admixture of Chinese students and other young people who might have been friends of the players – maybe 40-45 people in all.

The Thyrsus Trio don’t have much of an online presence but I saw something that suggested they had an association with the Guildhall School. I know the Schubert work quite well but don’t have particular recordings implanted in my memory to compare this Trio with against others. As far as I could tell they were:

  • Generous in their playing – many if not all the available repeats were taken
  • Although the church had the usual rumbly ecclesiastical acoustics, to the extent I could tell, offering a seemingly well balanced performance, which must be tricky when you have a piano and strings to balance. Certainly I could always hear the different lines of the instruments
  • Tempi seemed well-judged, particularly in the slow movement. Schubert’s special moments of thematic transformation/modulation always seemed to be handled well

And I came away with a sense of wonder at the fertility of Schubert’s invention and his sense of hedonism in the face of imminent death (the work was finished in the last year of his life). I hope other people in the audience felt wonder too – there was a very desultory amount of applause from the audience which stopped as soon as the musicians were out of sight. In the very unlikely circumstance that any of the Trio read this, I do hope they will accept my apologies for the poor response of my fellow audience members and my reassurance that I at least thought they had given a very enjoyable performance!!

Weill/Brecht: Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. ENO, 18/2/26

André de Ridder, conductor; Jamie Manton, director; Milla Clarke, designer; DM Wood, lighting designer.  Cast: Rosie Aldridge, Leokadja Begbick; Kenneth Kellogg, Trinity Moses; Mark Le Brocq

Fatty the Bookkeeper; Richard Trey Smagur, Jimmy MacIntyre; Alex Otterburn, Bank-Account Billy; Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Jack O’Brien; David Shipley, Alaska Wolf Joe; Danielle de Niese, Jenny Smith; Zwakele Tshabalala, Toby Higgins

I was hoping this was going to be a more cope-able-with production than the mad one I saw in Berlin last July, where the whole theatre space was used for the performance, and it was very difficult to know what was going on – or even to know where to be to find out what was going on……and though there were English surtitles everything moved at such speed in Berlin on the video screens that you only understood the outline of what was happening. This ENO production also marked Andre de Ritter’s first production since taking on the decidedly poisoned chalice role of ENO Music Director. And it had several distinguished singers in it – go-to Tristan and Parsifal Simon O’Neill, Danielle de Niese, Mark Le Brocq and Rosie Aldridge to name but a few.

And indeed, I did understand a lot more of what was going on in this production and enjoyed it – if that is the right word for this bleak work – far more in London.  A couple of the media critics, while generally praising this production and performance, grumbled about the longueurs of Mahagonny. I have to say I was gripped throughout and never felt my attention straying. The sets and production I think helped me keep my attention – as one would expect with Brecht, emphasising the unreality of the theatre, the full large Coliseum stage was opened up and used, with machinery and lights clearly on view. There was a container structure that could be moved around, lifted up, serve as an inner room and so forth. That, and banners (see photo), plus seating/benches of various sorts and a boxing ring for the fight (which also served as Jimmy’s cell) was about all there was on stage. That meant inevitably – and to the good – a focus on the people on stage and what they were singing/saying. So this looked like a properly thought-through production and not just an on-the-cheap 3-night-staging-only approach. It had an inevitable logic which emphasised the work’s cheerlessness. The fairly neutral costumes also helped to emphasise the relevance of the work to our times – the lack of human solidarity, the environmental destruction, consumer culture and everlasting (or not) economic growth, and the idolising of money – Brecht foretold it all nearly 100 years ago and it’s all in this opera/musical.

There were lots of good directorial ideas in the production. Having a tap dancer dressed in red with a weather vane on his head to lead the typhoon sequence sounds bizarre but worked quite well. The handling of the fight and the fluid realistic movement of the principals before and during it was extremely well done. I loved the sequence when one of the characters eats himself to death – very funny in a horrible way. Throughout, the chorus was extremely well-handled – occasionally there were dance-like musicals-type sequences, sometimes they were required to be robotic, as in the trial, but they always looked credible and never aimless. Translations are always something that get people going with wildly varied opinions, so let me just say that from my perspective the translation by Jeremy Sams sounded just right – pointing out the contemporary relevance, biting but not (too) vulgar.

There were two drawbacks to the production which, to my mind, were minor. One was the decision to have everyone singing and talking in American accents – as is usually the case when this is done, individuals’ accents came and went and were not always very good…..The decision to sometimes use amplified sound seemed arbitrary for talking and singing, and sometimes it felt that some of the opera singers didn’t always seem to know how to use them.

I am not quite sure why, but one was more conscious than usual that the Coliseum is a very large (London’s biggest) stage and some of the means used to support singers in opera – bringing them downstage, having walls etc behind them  – weren’t available, That meant that all the voices sounded quite small – even Simon O’Neill with his heldentenor background (and hence the mike-ing up at times). But there was some very good acting – O’Neill in particular was very convincing as Jimmy, getting across, and with good diction, the boorish, discerning and vulnerable aspects of the character. Rosie Aldridge (it’s a gift of a role) was brilliant as Begbick and flounced around very effectively. Danielle de Niese sometimes seemed uncomfortable as Jenny in role and voice, not quite doing the whore-ish bits with sufficient gusto (I do remember the Berlin performance Jenny being more convincing) and her hard-hitting end of Act 2 song suffered from being over-amplified. All the other characters were well done. In many ways vocally the stars of the show were the Chorus – it’s simply astonishing that, with all that has happened to them over the past two years, the ENO Chorus could sing with such finesse, such clarity and such energy in what seemed some quite difficult choral writing. The judgement of the conductor as to how to get the right sound in such a barn of a place as the Coliseum must be a difficult task – how many strings, when to amplify, how not to over-power or underwhelm to complement what is happening on stage – but de Ridder and the orchestra seemed to give an excellent performance which never felt out of place, was unobtrusive but always right, somehow.

The house was completely packed – the first time I have seen it so since Porgy and Bess before Covid – and very appreciative. Let’s see what ENO’s next fore-shortened season looks like and what happens in Manchester in 26/27…………………

Shostakovich/Beethoven: Halle Orchestra, Bridgewater Hall. 12/2/26

Halle Orchestra, Kahchun Wong conductor; Jan Vogler cello. Unsuk Chin, subito con forza; Shostakovich Cello Concerto No.1; Beethoven Symphony No.3, ‘Eroica

This was a very absorbing and first-rate concert. I have never heard a live performance of the Shostakovich concerto before. And, actually and oddly, in fact I’ve not heard that many performances of the Eroica live which I can now recall – the last one I remember was seven and a half years ago in Russia where the Vladimir Symphony Orchestra gave a full throttle performance in  a town about 100kms from Moscow with authentic braying Russian brass and nasal oboe, slow handclapping (ie approving applause) and, it being the first concert of the ‘season’, lots of bouquets of flowers for everyone. I must have heard the Eroica a lot at the Proms in the 70’s with the two knighted Davis’s and Mackerras, but all memory of those performances has vanished.

The first piece in the concert – a short 5-minute piece by Unsuk Chin – was commissioned for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in 2020. I liked it a lot – it was, I guess, in the spirit of Beethoven, a combination of disruptive sudden extracts of some of his well-known works – the Emperor concerto, Leonora no 3 overture, the 5th symphony and many more  – dovetailed in with Unsuk Chin’s 21st century equally disruptive and dissonant ruminations, both aspects disrupting the pathway of the other.

There is a connection, I suppose, between the Shostakovich piece, where the cello soloist sometimes seems like a prisoner caught in a spot-lit trap, alternatively rushing around underneath the trivial yet weighty sound of the orchestra in the first and fourth movement, and singing in solitude, supported in the slow movement by the orchestra, and the Beethoven work, essentially glorifying humanity and its ability to rise above its natural constraints and burdens  – two very different and opposed views of the human condition. I don’t really know the work well enough to be able to comment on how good a performance it was, but it was certainly one I was engaged by, particularly the sad slow 2nd movement. The work is made more poignant by the connection between the first movement’s main melody and the D-S-C-H motif of the 8th String Quartet and the 10th Symphony. Kahchun Wong kept the orchestral volume down so that the cello could always be heard clearly. As far as I could tell Jan Vogler played it well, with a powerful yet also expressive style, and I was very impressed by the variation of tone he was able to give in the 3rd movement, the cadenza. He gave us what I assume was a Bach Cello suite movement as an encore.

The Beethoven Eroica performance I thought was very fine indeed. Although there was no spoken introduction by Mr Wong or anyone else explaining the rationale for it, this Eroica was performed by the orchestra standing up, as the Aurora orchestra famously does (apart from cellos and basses). This is the first time I have seen the Halle do this, and it meant Mr Wong having to have an extra layer to his rostrum to be seen by the orchestra (see photo). I had lazily assumed the standing mode would increase the vigour and energy of the playing. What it actually seemed to do, I found, as the strings and woodwind swayed in time to the music they played, was that it increased the sense of line, of players listening to each other, and of creating often exquisite transitions from one instrumental phrase to another. This was not a beauty for beauty’s sake sound, but there was a thoughtful sense about the playing, of grace and delicacy. Mr Wong used a full modern symphony orchestra (no hard timpani sticks here, for instance), but carefully graded the climaxes so that the overall impression was very different from the over-driven, over-emphatic versions of period instrument bands (and of some conductors of the past). It was difficult to say exactly how standing changed the sound of the orchestra but it did seem to emphasise certain positive aspects of the way they normally play. There was some beautiful woodwind playing, with extraordinary precision from, particularly, the flutes in the first and last movements, as well as the oboe in the funeral march. The strings sounded warm and lush. The horns were splendid throughout, with no cracks in the trio of the 3rd movement, and a noble but never raucous rendition of the slowed down version of the finale’s main dance melody towards the end.  It was particularly the nobility of the 2nd movement and the final movements’ peroration which stayed with me after the concert, and also I liked Mr Wong’s slowish speeds and his giving the music room to breathe (as I have said in other performances he has given) yet Mr Wong also ensured the orchestra had thrust and energy where needed, so an abundance of creative energy was also part of the performance’s impact, and a sense of human potential.  How extraordinary this work must have sounded to its first public audience in 1805. Mr Wong, in the interplay between wind and strings, made one hear more of the Haydn-esque elements in the symphony than one would find in some renditions. I am not seeing this combination of conductor and orchestra until Mahler 6 in May – that should be something special!!   

Consone Quartet, Music in the Round, Sheffield Crucible – 10/2/26

C Schumann (Arr. Tress) Three Romances; Mozart String Quartet in C ‘Dissonance’; Schubert String Quartet No.13 ‘Rosamunde’

The Corsone Quartet I thought I’d heard before and a bit of digging around my memory and the internet reminded me that I had heard them play some Mendelssohn chamber music in Sheffield about 18 months ago, and that they’re a period instrument group, playing with gut strings.

The programme was quite an interesting one, perhaps playing with the idea of what defines a Romantic piece – to what extent is the Clara Schumann piece ‘Romantic’ or just a piece of sentimental salon music? To what extent is the Mozart piece ‘Romantic’ though thirty years before ‘romantic’ music began to come to the fore with Beethoven and Schubert? And to what extent is the Schubert ‘Romantic’, beyond its Winterreise-like first movement, full of pain and longing? Perhaps the answer is that the word usefully describes the general form and shape of music in a given period of time but that each work of a master (or mistress) has its own reality which can , and perhaps should, over-ride generic characteristics……

Somehow, though, these performances didn’t quite take off for me – which could be more to do with my mood and state of well-being as opposed to anything objectively to do with the musicians and their performances. Somehow I didn’t feel that the Mozart was given enough character, enough liveliness, enough – so to say – thought between the notes in the slow movement or the finale, though the ‘dissonant’ prelude worked very well on the bright rasping gut strings. The Schubert work’s first and second movements were very well played and characterised, but tension and variation seemed to sag and then disappear in the last two movements (which in the finale I suspect is Schubert’s fault).

I listened the next day to my recordings of these two pieces – the Emerson Quartet performing the Schubert, the Suske Quartet playing the Mozart, and found much more colour in both performances. Strange that I should have had such a down on these excellent performers (though the Sheffield MITR audience at the Crucible wasn’t as vociferously enthusiastic at the end as it sometimes is)

What did work well were the Clara Schumann pieces, adapted from a violin and piano set. They were straightforward, tuneful and unpretentious and were well played by the quartet

Bruckner, RLPO, Hindoyan – Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, 6/2/26 

Schubert: Overture, Rosamunde; Saint-Saens, Cello Concerto No 1; Bruckner, Symphony no 6. Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor Domingo Hindoyan; Guy Johnston, cello

It must be nearly 10 years since I last heard Bruckner 6 live (in the distinguished hands of Barenboim and the Berlin Staatskapelle, at the RAH Proms), so I was keen to go to this concert – it’s not a work that often pops up in the concert hall. I may also possibly have gone to a BBCSO performance conducted by von Dohnányi in 1969 and I remember a BBC Phil Proms performance in 2012. That’s about it in terms of live performances….. I have known this work since I was 17 or so and bought a disk of one of Jochum’s performances. But somehow in this Liverpool performance of Bruckner 6 I found I was hearing the work as though for the first time.

The programming didn’t make a great deal of sense (except for the very general connection between Schubert and Bruckner) unless, I suppose, seen as two tasty morsels served before something more challenging, designed to encourage the cautious to take a risk. In fact, though I’ve known the Schubert overture since I was about 13, I have no knowledge at all of the Saint Saens piece, which, like most of his music, has simply passed me by (I keep meaning and failing to see Samson and Delilah at ROHCG).

All three of the major Midlands/Northern orchestras seem to have struck lucky with their musical directors appointed in the past two years or so – Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham (and actually the BBC Phil at Manchester too). So I was also interested to hear and see how the relationship b between the RLPO and Hindoyan was developing

It was bitterly cold when I arrived in Liverpool, with a biting wind straight off the Irish Sea. The manic character of central Liverpool – one of the more likeable of British cites – seemed worlds away from 19th century Vienna. The bright white glare of the Philharmonic Hall seemed equally far from both. However, Hindoyan and the orchestra deftly squared the circle and took away both the glare and the cold by offering a sprightly Rosamunde overture, with punchy tight woodwind playing, extremely rhythmically precise string playing (I was sitting in the front row and they were flawless) that nevertheless had a properly Viennese lilt to it and was not hard driven. There was also some gorgeous oboe playing in the solo introduction

The Saint Saens piece I had low expectations of as music and by the law of self-fulfilling prophecies that’s exactly how I found it. It is urbane, and tuneful but nothing that marks it as an interesting journey or one which grips the listener. I fell asleep momentarily in the finale. Guy Johnston gave a nuanced delicate account that sounded just right for the piece (and I appreciate cellists probably have a different view of the work, given their limited repertoire). Johnston’s encore, perhaps inevitably was The Swan, with accompaniment  from the RLPO cello section in an arrangement by Ben Hughes..

The performance of Bruckner 6 I liked very much. The RLPO sounded quite magnificent, with a gorgeous central European sheen on the strings, cellos and basses in particular digging deeply into their notes; the horn section sounded full-bodied and unfaltering, and there was some very fine woodwind playing – the oboe, again, comes to mind, in the slow movement.

Bruckner 6 is an oddity even among his quirky set of symphonies.  It is more hesitant and unpredictable than the others, sometimes feeling as though its music lurches forward pursued by something deeply unsettling, even evil. The end of the finale, normally in Bruckner a glorious hymn of praise bringing different elements of the symphony together, in the 6th symphony sounds rushed and perfunctory, as though the door opening up the heavens is being slammed shut quickly before the demons get in. Hindoyan made the centrepiece of his interpretation the slow movement, which was a real revelation to me. Hindoyan and the orchestra gave a full-blooded loving account of the music, and I enjoyed I think this performance of it more than any other I’ve heard live. Again, it’s not like many other slow movements of Bruckner’s, which have a triumphant almost orgasmic climax, and its structure is more complex,  but it is a place of consolation and safety around which the other movements swirl. The closing bars were quietly luminous and beautifully played by the strings and woodwind. The first movement was fastish, and again emphasised the demonic element – the insistent 5 note rhythm sounded threatening and urgent, a nervous tic, in Hindoyan’s reading, and although the broadening brass blaze towards the end offers hope, it is overtaken by the driving 5 notes again, ending in what sounded more like a threat rather than a promise. The third movement was curiously unsettling, the fluttering main theme difficult to pin down, perhaps a little like that of the 9th’s second movement’s Trio – wisps of melody that are by no means benevolent. The fourth movement, usually described as difficult to bring off, Hindoyan and the orchestra drove forward convincingly, pushing back the darkness, with some splendid brass playing.

This was by no means a conventional approach to performing Bruckner, but for this symphony anyway it worked really well. I’m glad I made the effort to travel to Liverpool to hear it. Hindoyan is an undemonstrative conductor on the rostrum – a clear beat, lots of use of the eyes, not much gesturing – and probably all the better for it – certainly he gets superlative results from the RLPO

From Versailles to Leipzig via Venice: BBC Philharmonic, RNCM, 30/1/26

Lully Suite from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme; Bach Selections from The Art of Fugue; Vivaldi Concerto for Two Trumpets; Bach Concerto for Oboe and Violin; Rameau Selections from Les Indes Galantes, Naïs, Hippolyte et Aricie, and Dardanus. BBC Philharmonic Orchestra: Jonathan Cohen director; Tom Fountain, Gwyn Owen trumpets; Jennifer Galloway oboe; Zoë Beyers violin

I don’t think I’ve ever heard any music by Lully or Rameau live in the concert hall or opera house. I have a recording of some of Rameau’s dances, and an album of French Baroque arias and that’s about it. So I was interested to find this concert in the listing as well as the combination of a well-known ‘period instrument’ conductor, usually working with the group Arcangelo, and an entirely modern-instrument (though of course slimmed down) symphony orchestra.

It was also the first time I’ve been in the RNCM concert hall as opposed to their theatre. It is splendidly equipped and has great acoustics (see photo of the stage), cleverly nested into other parts of the building.

I wasn’t quite sure about the why for this concert. Was the BBC Phil seeking to show what it could do with modern instruments (which these were, though strings were played as far as I could see without vibrato, and obviously numbers were pared down, to about 28 players or so in all) ? Did they feel a need to broaden their repertoire? And why this particular combination – was the main driver to given some of their players a solo role in a way they wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to do?

It was an enjoyable evening, and the BBC Phil players provided all the energy and variation they could. It has to be said though that I missed the buzz and the rawness of gut strings and the more extreme sonorities of period wind instruments.

On the whole, it was the Bach and Vivaldi pieces which came off best , unsurprisingly since the Bach works are on another level of thought and depth to the Lully/Rameau dances, while the Vivaldi, not as complex as the Bach, has its very exciting two swirling trumpets. The highlight of the concert was the Bach oboe and violin concerto, probably also the best known work, with its central slow movement offering a lovely lyrical line and stillness. I hadn’t appreciated that this work is only known in written form as a concerto for two harpsichords, BWV 1060, which has been speculatively re-constructed for oboe and violin, based on similarities in the harpsichords’ music to some features of woodwind and string playing. The oboe playing of Jennifer Galloway was exemplary. The Art of Fugue extracts were the main theme “No. 1, the fugue theme inverted (No. 4), at double and half speeds together (No. 7) and slowed down and set against a new counter-theme in running quavers (No. 9).” (from the programme note by Lindsay Kemp). Here the orchestra was very good at bringing out the emotion, the melancholy, of the piece, as well as the intellectual tour de force that is very obvious in key board versions (though no credit was given to the orchestrator). The Vivaldi trumpet concerto is exciting, and huge fun. I guess with modern instruments you lose something of the high wire act of playing on period trumpets (the programme note interestingly says that, because of the technical limitations of early 18th century trumpets, in the whole work the two soloists play only 11 different written notes) but they were classy enough to give that sense of possible danger, even if it was one which could easily be averted.

I had hoped the Rameau selection might have included the gorgeous ‘Entrée de Polymnie’ from Les Boreades, but it didn’t. The Lully and Rameau dances and orchestral extracts were good fun – with drum and tinkly cymbals – and well played but frankly a bit boring without any stage action, and my mind began to wander in the Rameau. I think they might have ditched the Lully, cut the Rameau and have had a Brandenburg concerto or similar Handel concerto grosso instead……

Bartok, BBC Philharmonic, Bihlmaier, Bridgewater Hall, 24/1/26

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Anja Bihlmaier conductor’ Jennifer Johnston – Judith; Christopher Purves -Bluebeard. Boulanger D’un soir triste; Kodály Dances of Galánta; Bartók Bluebeard’s Castle

This was a very enjoyable concert, and well programmed too. The Boulanger piece seemed to have thematic and harmonic links with the Bartok piece at times, and shared a similarly gloomy outlook. And obviously Kodaly and Bartok have that immediately recognisable Hungarian sound world in common.

The Boulanger piece was obviously of its time and the influence of Debussy and Faure are clearly present. But there’s enough that’s distinctive to make one wonder what sort of composer Lili Boulanger might have become, had she not died so young  (24). It’s a sombre piece, clearly structured and immediate. I liked it.

The Kodaly piece is often used as an orchestral show – off work, and what I liked about this performance is that, though it was very well played – some spectacularly fast woodwind playing as things pick up speed, and some gorgeous string sound, as well as some very characterful clarinet playing – it was all at the service of the music. Anja Bihlmaier wasn’t just driving the music forward relentlessly, but loosening it up at points, so that both she and the orchestra looked as though they were enjoying themselves throughout. That said, the very ending, after the slow down, seemed a bit underpowered, as though the sudden reversion to the quicker tempo was too fast for the players to catch on to. Throughout, Ms Bihlmaier seemed utterly focused on the orchestra, with no element of self-conscious playing to the audience. Though fairly new to major international engagements, she’s in her late 40s and a very experienced conductor, trained in German provincial opera houses. She is currently chief guest conductor of the BBC Phil. – I hope she stays for longer than her initially contracted 3 years. She’s now beginning to be courted by the Premier League orchestras (she had her LSO debut recently)

The Bartok Duke Bluebeard performance was very absorbing (and indeed was heard by one of the most silent and non-coughing audiences I can remember at the Bridgewater Hall) – I have to say I enjoyed it more than the Budapest orchestra’s performance in the summer. One of the main reasons for this I think was that it was sung in English.  While I know that the melodic lines are rooted in Hungarian speech, hearing it in English makes it so much more immediate, and it also felt as though the translation was not distorting the musical phrasing in any way.. The second reason for my enjoyment was the performance of Christopher Purves, a late stand-in,  who gave a master class in how to make every word, every note count, with superb diction and a riveting stage presence. He didn’t act in any physical sense in front of a music stand, but everything we needed to know about the character -paranoia, love, resignation – was in his singing. His verses about his previous wives at the end -which rather passed me by on the summer Proms performance – were gloriously and affectingly delivered.  He occasionally used sprechstimme to great effect. Jennifer Johnston wasn’t in the same league of singing and presence as Purves, she wasn’t as believable, but she sang powerfully, with careful shading of phrases, and a glorious top-whatever at the 5th door. The telling of the story was enhanced by some well-judged lighting effects (done without disturbing the orchestra). Door no 5 was further enhanced not just by the Bridgewater Hall organ at full tilt but also by 8 extra brass players in the choir stall. They made a wonderful noise. Ms Bihlmaier’s conducting was fluent and straightforward, again focusing on letting the music speak, or rather sing, for itself, rather than emphasising particular aspects for effect. All her tempi sounded ‘right’ in context. I saw one review which grumbled a bit about the orchestra being over-loud at points. From where I was sitting – Row M in the Stalls – if anything the orchestra was almost too subservient to the singers, but certainly Anja Bihlmaier had them well under control (perhaps in fact Door 5 might have been louder. I shall listen to this again on Radio 3 whenever it is broadcast.

The Makropoulos Case, Janacek – concert performance, LSO/Rattle, Barbican 15/1/26,

London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle   conductor; Marlis Petersen   Emilia Marty; Aleš Briscein   Albert Gregor; Jan Martiník   Dr Kolenatý; Peter Hoare   Vitek; Svatopluk Sem   Baron Jaroslav Prus

It’s a strange piece of programming to have this concert performance (the 2nd of two) happening only two months after the ROHCG production of the same work. However……this was just such a different experience to seeing the ROHCG production that it didn’t matter at all. Good though the ROHCG one was musically, it was let down a bit by an over-complicated production. Somehow, having the singers and orchestra on stage in a concert performance as in this performance felt more intense, clearer and easier to follow dramatically. Even the surtitles seemed to make more sense and to be easier to understand,

This was without a doubt the most convincing and gripping performance of this amazing work I have heard, and increasingly I find that this work and the Cunning Little Vixen are my favourite Janacek operas. It helped that, like the ROHCG production, it was played without a break – it would seem almost an obscenity after these two different performances for the work to be divided by an interval.

Part of the reason for the extra intensity was that Marlis Petersen’s was such a more sympathetic portrayal of EM than Ausrine Stundyte. Clearly EM is in many ways a sad and nasty piece of work and that must remain a constant in any portrayal, but somehow Ms Petersen drew out more of the humanity and more of the sadness there is in the role. The last 10 minutes were absolutely glorious,. A lot of the role is declamation but where there was a lyrical passage Ms Petersen unfailingly handled it sensitively. Ausrine Stundyte was more formidable and cold – an equally valid approach but which, together with the ROHCG production, left one a bit distanced at the end of the work. At the end of this work, I had tears in my eyes – for the sadness of EM’s fate and the affirmation of ordinary human existence.

The rest of the cast  – with the exception of Vitek and Hauk – were Czech singers, and this helped the fluency and the understandability of the story. There were no weak links – all were outstanding, and kudos to Alan Oke for his definitive performance of the ageing Baron.  The other great contributor to the success of this concert was the LSO and Rattle – balance between singers and orchestra was perfect, there were many outstanding solos from the woodwind and horns, the strings sounded glorious in the last 10 minutes or so, and Rattle gave the more energetic parts of the score a propulsive dynamism – the opening prelude was tremendous. Having the offstage brass come on at the end to add to the grandeur and tragedy of the closing bars was a magical touch.

All members of the cast were very restrained when it came to acting, so that there was no irritating distinction between those using the score and those throwing caution to the winds and singing from memory. Everyone had a score in front of them, all sung towards the person they were addressing but nobody started hogging the limelight. Ms Petersen used the same space given to everyone else in portraying so clearly the character of EM.

It will be fascinating to see what Janacek operas Rattle and the LSO want to perform next– From the House of the Dead, which I have never heard a note of, would be ideal……..

I am so lucky to have started the new year with four such very fine performances