Bach Partita No 2; Chopin Nocturne No 1, Op 27, Nocturne No 2, Op 21, Scherzo No 4. Shostakovich Piano Sonata No 2, Prelude and Fugue in D-Flat Major, Prelude and Fugue in D-Minor
I wanted to go to this recital partly because Kissin is a very significant pianist, and I was keen to hear his Bach and Shostakovich, and partly because I have never got on with Chopin, and I wanted to see and hear if he could convince me. Somehow I have always been allergic to Chopin’s music – I never got into it as a teenager, and my children’s struggling/succeeding with it for Grade 5 or Grade 8 left me relatively unmoved . It has to me a sense of sentimentality and smugness which I am sure is unfair, but which is how I hear it.
Evgeny Kissin was a child prodigy, a product of the extraordinarily successful musical education system of the USSR. His late teenage years coincided with his first international engagements and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He stayed overseas, ending up as an Israeli citizen with a global reputation as one of the finest pianists around. I’ve heard him as a concerto soloist before but never in a solo recital. He’s an outspoken critic of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, incidentally, and has been dubbed a foreign agent by the Putin regime.
This programme which he has been performing widely in Europe and the US is in part a tribute to Shostakovich on the 50th anniversary of his death (the announcement of which I well remember). None of this music was familiar to me, though I have played on CD the Bach Partita. and The Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues a few times.
Kissin’s technique – insofar as I am able to judge it as a non- pianist and indeed non- performing musician – is extraordinary. Of the many star pianists I’ve heard in the past 10 years or so, only Yuja Wang has impressed me more with the utter confidence, utter clarity and the precision under speed of their playing. Some of the Bach and Shostakovich playing had a blazing brilliance you very rarely hear in the concert hall. The Barbican was packed, with a lot of Kissin groupies about, leaping to their feet at the end.
For me this was definitely a programme of two halves. The Bach Partita sounded technically brilliant and clear, but I heard in all that dazzling sound very little variation of light and shade, no stillness, none of the quiet melancholy that pianists like Vikingur Olafsson and Andras Schiff bring to Bach, or that sense of lifting dance which radiates through so much of his music. Of course, technical brilliance is something Bach would have enjoyed, but surely he’d want emotion as well?
I am afraid, also, that the Chopin didn’t grab me either as pieces, though I could tell they were gorgeously played. There’s just too much of the perfumed salon about his music….they seemed to be miniature gems of throbbing emotion to no particular purpose, with no sense of the objective correlation of that emotion. Why don’t Schubert’s Impromptus have the same impression on me? I’m not sure – somehow there’s a sense of the pain of his imminent dissolution that’s conveyed by them which anyone listening to them understands. I never feel that with Chopin, even though he was just as doomed. The emotion is somehow generalised. But these are personal ramblings – Kissin is a longtime Chopin specialist, and it showed in the subtlety of his playing as well as his virtuosity.
The Shostakovich second half was something quite different – it was moving, impressive and with playing that combined technical expertise and emotion perfectly. I’ve not come across the 2nd Piano Sonata before, which was a wartime piece (1943) so roughly contemporaneous with the Leningrad Symphony. It’s big – maybe 30 minutes. It has none of the sarcasm and fury that invades many of Shostakovich’s works at points – rather, it sounded throughout introspective, quiet and mournful (it was written after the death of his teacher). The first movement is quite light hearted – much like the opening of the 7th Symphony, but never breaking into anything more aggressive. The second is quite extraordinary – quiet, notes almost unconnected, intensely sad, and wandering sometimes almost aimlessly. Kissin played it wonderfully. The fourth movement, I think the longest, is a theme and variations, the former quite memorable and the latter covering a range of emotions with an ending which brings strands from all three movements together before the movement finishes solemnly. I must get a recording of this work
The two Kissin played of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, bringing us back to the start of the programme, were both enjoyable – the second, the D Minor, was particularly grand and wonderful to hear live – Kissin played it gloriously.
Kissin’s two encores reflected elements of the programme – first a slow Bach piece – maybe one of the transcriptions by Busoni or similar – which had the melancholy missing earlier, and (though I couldn’t tell you its name) a well known and relatively upbeat Chopin piece to get the crowds cheering….
Songs by Schumann, Britten, Copland, Dove and others, performed by Nicky Spence tenor; Clare Presland mezzo-soprano; Andrew Matthews-Owen piano; Robert Rinder presenter
This was an interesting programme, centred around songs from Schumann’s song cycle Frauenbliebe und Leben. Nicky Spence I know as an ENO Siegmund and a fine tenor in several of the Janacek operas heard in London recently. Clare Presland I thought I hadn’t heard/of before but in fact I had – she was the fine singer performing Pia in the premiere of Turnage’s Festen at ROHCG a few months ago.
This concert was a concept that looked great on paper but which didn’t quite work as well as it could have done, in practice. The idea was to balance Schumann’s Frauenliebe und leben, with its cyclical view of how human relationships work, against songs on the same themes by LGBTQ+ composers – think Britten, Copland, Poulenc, Stephen Hough and others. That’s good, and it did introduce me to a very fine young Welsh composer called Nathan James Dearden, whose songs are quite outstanding. I was also very moved by Jonathan Dove’s AIDS song, Soon. Nicky Spence is a well known presence on UK stages, and his voice is very much an operatic one – about three times the volume of Appl’s. But he can fine it down to a bare whisper, and his voice is capable of great beauty. In what I felt was the finest song of the whole programme, Britten’s Since she whom I loved from the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, his singing was quite outstanding, with a comparable intensity and loveliness to Appl’s.
Problems for me were as follows…..
Though I am very familiar with the songs – Janet Baker as a teenage purchase again – the texts of Frauenliebe und leben never fail to grate. They’re so cloying, so much of their time and a mid 19th century middle class view of how women are supposed to be that they are an embarrassment nearly 200 years later. Nicky Spence and Clare Presland attempted to deal with this by a partial staging around a coffee table. This was quite funny sometimes – Nicky S is a natural comedian and his reactions at times counteracted successfully the cloying sentimentality of the Schumann songs. But the range of songs emotionally was so wide that the staging idea didn’t always work or wasn’t always used.
This was a late night recital, starting at 10pm and billed to last ‘approx’ an hour. It actually lasted 75 mins, which is a bit much when people have last trains to catch. There should have been several fewer songs. One factor which extended the evening was the use of a presenter to read poems and letters. Though he did this very well, and it did allow the LGBTQ+ aspects to be more pointed – eg the famous late letter from Pears to Britten expressing his love – on the whole we could have done without these readings.
Finally, and it pains me to say this, while Nicky Spence has a powerful voice (singing Siegmund is not for the faint-hearted ), which is also capable of refinement and subtlety, Clare Presland’s voice on this occasion had a quite distractingly wide vibrato, which also seemed to lead to less pointing and variety of phrasing than was ideal. Maybe others heard her differently – I hope so. Let me stress that hers was a perfectly competent rendering of the Schumann songs, but just not on the level of Appl or Spence
I pushed and shoved my way on to a ‘severely delayed’ Victoria line train, at Oxford Circus, afterwards feeling I had had a very worthwhile evening
Benjamin Appl baritone; Simon Lepper piano. Songs by Schubert, Kurtag, Brahms, Liszt and Eisler
This was a recital I was looking forward to as a challenge – to explore works new to me. Appl, a much-praised young German singer, was the last student Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau took on, and so Appl has set up a European tour (maybe beyond) in his memory on his 100th birthday. This London programme is considerably more challenging than the programme Appl has offered at a couple of other UK venues – both the songs of Kurtag, the great Hungarian modernist (last of those still living from the 50’s and 60’s coming up to 100), and Eisler, 1930’s and later collaborator with Brecht and composer of the East German national anthem, seemed in prospect to be tough going, and I have never heard any songs by Liszt before.
London has never done very well for concert venues. The Barbican and the Albert Hall are acoustic disaster zones, the RFH is better but dry. The Cadogan Hall is good but I don’t find much I want to go to there. The Wigmore Hall is the place that combines superb acoustics for the sort of music it hosts combined with always interesting programming. So it was a great pleasure to be there and good they were offering two song recitals on the same evening – this one and the late night one reviewed above.
Appl has a beautiful golden baritone voice, with a wide range. It’s not hard edged but warm and with seemingly infinite flexibility, from the almost whispering to the stentorian. Like his great forebears – Fischer- Dieskau, Hotter, Schreier – his diction is superb. Every phrase is nuanced; every note counts. It’s a voice which is ideally suited to the Wigmore Hall. I see from his bio that he has done some opera but not much recently, and, as you would expect, more at the Mozart end of the spectrum – it’s not a big voice. There was one moment when he pushed his voice too far, and it cracked, but this was his only miscalculation in a long evening. His programme was called ‘Lines of Life’ and, I guess was about the big experiences of life – it comes from one of the Kurtag Hoelderlin settings “The lines of life are varied, as paths are and the mountains’ boundaries’. The hall was far from packed – Kurtag in particular and Eisler probably frighten the horses – but very appreciative.
The first half mixed Schubert bravely with Kurtag. The Kurtag songs are very interesting – two of them were unaccompanied, and that made particularly clear that Kurtag writes music for the voice which is expressive, not conventionally tuneful but well suited to accompanying the words. I was also interested to come across Hoelderlin, whose poetry I hadn’t read before. His poetry is extraordinarily advanced for the period -at least in the translation given here – and sounds 50 years later than his dates [1770 to 1830]. R. Strauss and Brahms are the main musicians who have set his poetry to music I enjoyed Kurtag’s setting of 6 Hoelderlin songs and a terrifying setting of Celan’s (a Romanian / French Holocaust survivor) ‘Tubingen, January’, which ends in shouts and vocal noise. The Schubert settings were wonderfully sung and I particularly enjoyed ‘Liebesbotschaft‘ from ‘Schwanengesang’, a song I know well. I also particularly liked a song new to me, ‘Am Tage alle Seelen’. The Brahms and Liszt settings were perhaps less interesting, though Brahms’ ‘Da unter in Tale’ was a real find. I am not that familiar with his songs other than a few favourites, like Mainacht, bought on a Janet Baker album when I was 18. Liszt is a fascinating figure – I am reading a book about him which somehow popped up on my Kindle recommendations for 0.99p by Sacheverell Sitwell. written in the 1930’s. My experience with Liszt is he normally promises more than he delivers, and so it was here, although his setting of Heine’s Lorelei gripped me. The other big and enjoyable surprise were Eisler’s songs. I have never heard a note of his music before – the nearest comparison would be Kurt Weill, and they had not dissimilar careers. A lot of the Eisler settings were of Brecht. They were easy on the ear and enjoyable though the subjects were often serious – Hitler Youth and pre-war abortions.
Simon Lepper seemed to be, to my inexperienced ears, a fine accompanist though I wondered why his pedalling of long final notes cut off so abruptly into silence.
I had forgotten to review a short concert I went to by a group called Baroque in the North recently
I have heard them twice before. There are three players – a harpsichordist, a Baroque cello player and someone who successively plays a baroque violin, a recorder and ‘musette’, a kind of bagpipe. They offer an hour – more like an hour and a quarter – of music and then a chance to have a chat and look at the instruments.
The composers were a Baroque mix of Buxtehude, Telemann, Vivaldi, Rameau, and the unknown Daquin, Dupuits, and Finger. As always, in the long term, public appreciation is insightful. There are reasons why some of these names are unknown and why some of the known names are less familiar to some than others……the stars of the show were Vivaldi and Rameau. In an age when composers were like crafts folk, expected to turn out pieces of music in the same way a cobbler might be expected to turn out hand-made shoes, these two have just a bit more sparkle, a bit more of the memorable about their works as played here. I appreciated the solemnity and melancholy of Buxtehude (music after all composed during the Thirty Years War and its aftermath) more than the busyness of Telemann,
All in all an enjoyable hour or so, and very well played too!
Paul Carey Jones, The Dutchman; Eleanor Dennis, Senta; Robert Winslade Anderson, Daland; Neal Cooper, Erik; Angharad Lyddon, Mary; Colin Judson, Steersman. Peter Selwyn, Conductor; Julia Burbach, Director; Naomi Dawson, Set Designer; Sussie Juhlin-Wallén, Costume Designer; Robert Price, Lighting Designer.
I haven’t been to the Holland Park Opera set-up since 2021 (when I saw excellent productions of L’Amico Fritz, The Cunning Little Vixen and Hansel and Gretel), and that was the first time then I’d been there. I remember enjoying the atmosphere and the way operas have to be performed there (in a tent, relaxed, little opportunity for fancy scene changes except in the interval, the uncertainty of noises off [peacocks and parakeets this time] and whether it will rain). It has what feels like a different crowd going to it from either Glyndebourne or the regular ROH/ENO-goers, and when the CEO of Opera Holland Park, in a welcome speech, asked ‘hands up those attending an opera for the first time?’, a surprising number of people put their hands up. Several people around me who had put their hands up were whooping enthusiastically after the performance, so it seems to have gone well for them. I tried to imagine hearing this work through their eyes and I could see it spoke to the mostly young couples who had put their hands up about the relationships between men and women, what love means, and so forth. Though some of the words (‘the duties of a woman to obey her father’) make me squirm, they didn’t seem so bothered
This was a straightforward production and performance of the Hollander which I enjoyed a lot. It focuses on Senta’s obsession and sheer oddness, and made the most of the specific theatrical context of Holland Park. The photos give you a particularly clear sense of the set and my memory is that all OH performances need to have the orchestra pit situated in the middle of the acting space, with a performance space behind and in front. As you can see, the area behind the pit is steeply raked, with the top representing Senta’s place of security and safety, with a bed and a lamp, and the bottom Daland’s table, but it is also used flexibly for the big choral scenes. The area in front of the orchestra is a gravelled space representing the sea shore (and other places) and is where the picture of the Dutchman is held – under a bollard or something similar. The two big staircases into the auditorium are often used by the chorus for exits and entrances – they run in and out, adding to the energy of the production. The tent area conveniently does for a general sense of sails, and then there are ladders and ropes around as well to add to the ship-like impression. Costumes are broadly modern and all colours are muted – grey, browns, dark green and black – with the exception of Senta, who is in white or wine red. As you can see, the set is very busy, and the one drawback of it – but maybe this was intentional – is that it was sometimes quite difficult to know when the Dutchman was entering, in his all-black coat. Given the complexity of the stage area here, and extra things to take into account like the steep raking of the back stage, direction of movement was generally good, but there were one or two moments when things seem to droop back into stock operatic acting – semaphore arms and face the audience, particularly with poor old Erik, a thankless part if ever there was one. There were appropriate sound effects and occasionally the whistling of wind which came from the outside. The ghost ship was suggested by flashing lights and a fairly abstract projection.
Wagner made a range of revisions to the work throughout his life and this one had a few seconds of music I don’t recall hearing before (maybe the recent ROHCG production used them). This OH production employed the early 3 act version, with an interval after the first act, and the version which does not have the ‘redemption’ theme at the end of the overture and the conclusion of Act 3 (as with ROH). This makes for a less than wholly satisfactory ending – Senta has the spotlight on her, sings her final words about eternal fidelity and then slowly walks off up one of the staircases. It is unclear what her fate is – a problem in the production but also arising from how Wagner ends this version.
Peter Selwyn conducted the work broadly but without ever losing momentum, and with plenty of energy for the Dutchman music and the sailors’ songs. I was very impressed by the orchestra – the City of London Sinfonia – which is obviously a reduced one, given the size of the pit and the need to keep costs down, but which had all the volume, detail and bite you need in this score. The horns and trombones sounded particularly splendid, but the string sound was warm and never sounded thin or scratchy. And a shout to the timpani player, who was thwacking away enthusiastically. And, to my ears anyway, there were very few mishaps and wrong entries.
The cast was very strong. As in so many other productions in the UK over the past few years, I am constantly coming across British singers I’ve never heard of before – Eleanor Dennis I thought was very good indeed. She’s tall and able to be still and yet have a significant stage presence and used those qualities to help portray the depth of Senta’s obsession. Her voice was powerful, top notes secure and with plenty of shading – she had all you want for an ideal Senta. I was reading an article about Lise Davidsen’s recent recording of this work where the reviewer refers to the fact that Senta as a role is deadly for singers’ vocal chords, and Davidsen herself has said she would never sing the role again after the recording and the concert performances in Norway. I hope Ms Dennis’ voice survives these performances…….I was also deeply impressed by Paul Carey-Jones, who I had previously come across as a fine Wanderer at Longborough during their recent Ring. He has all the gravitas you need for a good Dutchman – again, confident stage presence, a strong but warm voice easily spreading throughout the whole auditorium, and excellent diction. His approach at the beginning of Die Frist ist Um and the Act 2 duet was inward, beautifully legato – drawing you in superbly. Robert Winslade Anderson’s Daland was a lighter, rather dry, – voiced character than you get sometimes, but conveyed well his venality and was confident on stage. Colin Judson and Angharad Lyddon did their best with Erik and Mary. The chorus sounded tremendous, and they were extremely well directed !
As I walked back towards Holland Park tube station I found myself in reactionary mode, feeling perhaps newly and freshly outraged by the Tcherniakov Bayreuth Dutchman I saw in 2022. If a publisher decided to publish a book under the title of Pride and Prejudice which took the view that Jane Austen needed expurgating and updating to reflect contemporary views, and twisted round all elements of the plot in the process into a new story, there would be outrage from all quarters if that were then published as ‘by Jane Austen’. Why is the critical framework for that Bayreuth production any different? OK, there are elements in the text which are outdated – particularly concepts of daughterly obedience- but any competent director can find a way of handling these (eg suggesting Daland is abusive). And, yes. I know about modern theories of theatre, and observers recreating the text, but still – it has to be understood as a shared experience, with understand being emphasised. As for concepts of eternal love – well, these have been around in at least the 3 main monotheistic religions for thousands of years…….And for the sake of the future of the art form any director should always be thinking- what would anyone who hadn’t seen/heard this work before make of my production? Barrie Kosky’s recent Walkure shows how a director can handle a canonic work brilliantly, offering new insights without in any way distorting what is going on, and all the while remaining faithful to Wagner.
Bethan Terry, soprano; Ellen Pearson, mezzo-soprano; Harun Tekin, tenor; Anton Kirchhoff, baritone. Anna Giorgi, Francesca Lauri,Jia Ning Ng, piano
This is apparently the fifth year of the Wigmore French Song Exchange, devised by Dame Felicity Lott and François Le Roux, two great champions of the mélodie, alongside Sebastian Wybrew. The programme offers gifted singers and pianists a year of coaching from their mentors, culminating in showcase performances.
There was a soprano, mezzo, tenor and baritone presenting songs and duets at this recital, alongside their accompanists. Let me say first that all the singers were excellent and the accompanists likewise. There are two further things I think I’d like to say.
The songs were well chosen, in being varied in form, content and composer. Inevitably I liked some more than others. Top was a great favourite I’ve known for more than 50 years – ‘L’Invitation au voyage’ by Duparc. I also particularly enjoyed Reynaldo Hahn’s setting of Verlaine, ‘L’Heure Exquise’, and some of the Ravel and Bizet songs
It was interesting watching and listening to the singers. When you see a group of quite, but not massively, experienced youngish singers, you realise how important communication is – with face, eyes, hands – in the art of singing. To my mind, the best singer of the four was Bethan Terry, not because of her technical vocal expertise (as I said, they all sang very well), but because she was constantly alerting her audience to nuances of text in the song by gestures, movements, and facial expressions even (particularly in the Bizet duet) – good acting in other words, and making herself vulnerable to aid that connection with the audience. As a result she was totally absorbing to listen to
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, conductor; CBSO, Stephen Waarts, violin. Brahms, Violin Concerto; Weinberg, Symphony No.5 in F Minor
The programming of this concert seemed odd – what possible connection could Weinberg and Brahms have? Probably the simple explanation is that the CBSO needed to programme a crowd-pleaser alongside the unknown Weinberg…..
I’ve not heard of Stephen Waarts before this concert. He seems to have a good stream of European and US invitations at present so his career is obviously taking off. The last live performance I heard of the Brahms was an enervated over-subtle performance by the LSO, Isabelle Faust and Simon Rattle, so exquisite it seemed almost lifeless. By contrast this was a much more robust affair with Mirga encouraging the orchestra to offer an energetic and forceful account of the outer movements, dotted rhythms and syncopations clear and precise, with subtle rubato at times. The soloist played the work straightforwardly, caressing phrases where needed. He’d maybe not that big a sound , but he had plenty of bite as well as sweetness. The oboe solo in the second movement was beautifully done. I very much enjoyed this performance. The soloist gave an encore I found impossible to place – modern, full of subtle harmonics. It might have been by someone like Adès or John Adams, perhaps.
The Weinberg symphony, like so many of his works, I was hearing for the first time, and there is a lot to get one’s head around. It’s for a big orchestra – 7 horns, 5 trumpets, a battery of percussion, triple woodwind – and is in 4 movements – the first an allegro moderato, second an adagio sostenuto, the third an allegro, and the fourth an andantino. The programme note suggests connections between Weinberg’s 5th and Shostakovich’s 4th, but I couldn’t hear myself much evidence of this, apart from the very obvious borrowing of the very ending of Shostakovich 4, with an insistent rhythm, celesta and percussion.
I found it an impressive work though it’s not easy to follow its emotional journey. The two most immediate (to a newcomer) movements are the middle ones. The first movement starts with wavering uncertain violins and a 4-note cutting theme on the cellos broadens out into two main themes. The themes turn both threatening and mocking, and then the uncertain opening returns and the music seems to become lifeless, hopeless. There’s a faster passage, with more energy, and marching rhythms – this is quite Shostakovich-like – and then the music gradually subsides into the uncertainty with which it opened. There’s a final sudden outburst from the orchestra
The second movement starts with a meandering melody on violins (maybe violas too) and is gradually harmonised. It becomes beautiful on repetition – a sad calling out into the dark – and more emotionally intense. Its intensity gradually subsides. There’s a quicker section with an oboe solo, and flutes and other woodwinds then joining the oboe, plus high strings. The opening melody returns, with greater emotional intensity and builds to a sweeping string-led climax – there’s huge longing and sadness. Gradually everything subsides, and the opening melody gradually breaks down into isolated phrases. My immediate thought was that this was as fine as say the slow movement of the 10th Symphony of Shostakovich
The third movement starts with a flute-led folksy, perhaps East European Jewish but not kletzmer, fast theme, and then a bustling cartoon like tune which seems to get faster and faster……… and louder, with the brass joining. The noise subsides with the clarinet and later the trumpet taking over the lead playing of the main theme. The music is both fun and threatening at the same time, a kind of perpetuum mobile. There’s a sense of the uncertain violins of the opening movement and the music gradually subsides into the final movement. Another sad violin theme with flutes weaving in and out follows (this is where I got a bit lost). The mood is sad and resigned. There’s a more agitated dance-like section which gradually subsides. Anger – or is it something oppressive and external? – seems to take over, and the heavy brass and percussion come in with a galumphing rhythmic tune (the trombones particularly impressive). The galumphing melody becomes the mainstay of the final section, lurking behind all the notes, and the works ends in a dull repeated thumping with flute and celesta gliding over the top that is, as above, akin to Shostakovich 4.’s ending. Surrender or withdrawal ?
What does it all amount to? ‘I’m not sure’ would be an honest answer – I’d have to listen to it again (and it sounded from the programme as though DG is recording this with Mirga and the CBSO – I must buy this!) The symphony is a record of the feelings of a quiet, in many ways badly treated and under-valued, soul living in a regime which only intermittently acknowledged him (and imprisoned him in the Lubyanka at one point). The difference from Shostakovich is that the Polish Weinberg was always profoundly grateful to the Soviet Union for the entry he was given into Ukraine in 1939, while the rest of his immediate family were killed during and after the Nazi invasion. There is despair, anger and melancholy, occasionally playfulness, but also ultimately maybe more of an optimistic outlook than Shostakovich’s.’
The CBSO sounded glorious playing it – really full-bodied playing: glowing strings, some splendid flute and oboe solos, and some great timpani playing. Mirga had clearly inspired them. In addition this was the least cough-ridden most intense audience I think I have ever heard outside the Proms. It sounded from conversations in the interval that a number of people had travelled quite a distance to hear this work.
Alice Neary (cello), Sophia Rahman (piano): Richard Strauss Cello Sonata, Op. 6 (1881); Franz Schmidt Fantasy Pieces after Hungarian National Melodies (1892); Richard Strauss Don Quixote finale, Op. 35 (1898)
This was a delightful short recital to accompany a relaunching of the UK Richard Strauss Society, a meeting which included a number of prominent experts e.g. Prof Laura Tunbridge from Oxford University. I had not come across the names of these two musicians before but they both have had, and are having, notable careers. Ms Neary also works with orchestras, and in a question-and-answer session after the performance was talking about leading the cello section as a guest principal for the ROHCG orchestra under Pappano for the performances of Elektra in early 2024 ,and the enormous complexity of Strauss’ orchestral writing.
The Cello Sonata is a very early work, unfamiliar to most – it has elements of Brahms and Schumann but occasionally you can hear glimpses of the later Strauss, particularly in the work’s lighter moments. It is – well – let’s say intermittently engaging. Schmidt’s two Hungarian-folk works were very charming. The playing in the arrangement for cello and piano of the final movement of Don Quixote was glorious and really gave light and colour to a very gloomy rain-washed afternoon in North London.
Conductor, Robin Ticciati; Director, Jetske Mijnssen; Set Designer, Ben Baur; Costume Designer, Gideon Davey; Choreographer, Dustin Klein; Lighting Designer, Fabrice Kebour. London Philharmonic Orchestra, The Glyndebourne Chorus. Cast: Parsifal, Daniel Johansson; Gurnemanz, John Relyea; Kundry, Kristina Stanek; Amfortas, Audun Iversen; Klingsor, Ryan Speedo Green; Titurel, John Tomlinson
In the essay ‘Religion and Art’ (1880) Wagner says that “…. where Religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for Art to save the spirit of religion”. In my view, almost all Wagner’s music dramas from the Flying Dutchman onwards deal in some way or other with the ‘spirit of religion’, though by no means through the lens of orthodox Christianity. Issues about what ‘salvation’, ‘renunciation’ or ‘redemption’ might mean in a modern context are often referred to, as well as concepts like sacrifice – dying that one may live. Wagner was also very much aware of the power of myth, and mythic symbols, many years before Jung and others began to explore these issues – in the inimitable translation of Ashton Ellis, “The incomparable thing about the mythos [Wagner wrote] is that it is true for all time, and its content, how close soever its compression, is inexhaustible through the ages. The only task of the poet was to expound it”. For me the classic presentation of that religious/mythic ‘‘Parsifal’’ was the 1950’s Wieland Wagner production at Bayreuth, which I was lucky enough to see in one of its last showings in 1972. Different ways of exploring the meanings of ‘‘Parsifal’’ are possible within a broadly similar framework. One can focus on a corrupted religious community and the story of how that comes to be healed; there is the approach (quite well taken in the much-abused Bayreuth production of 2016) which moves from the externals of religious faith to what Wagner called ‘True Christianity’, based on compassion and without any sort of clerical caste or external symbols. I saw a notable production which had Parsifal rejecting the demands of an oppressive community and going off on his own at the end as a kind of sadhu. I have also seen productions that emphasise the male oppressiveness and crudity (exemplified by the ‘robust’ Grail knights’ choruses) of Act 1 and the reunion of male and female at the end of Act 3 (and of course the spear and the grail can be seen as symbolic in that context). In many productions a core issue is the distinction. learned through painful living, between eros and agape – desire and compassion, if you like.
There’s also the definition of the term Gesamtkunstwerk – in my understanding this is the ideal of unifying all expressions of art via the theatre. That must include words – that the text is important and that the words the characters are using when they sing in a Gesamtkunstwerk must be consonant with musical expression, dramatic movement and sets/costumes/lighting. A Wagner production of his works after Lohengrin that ignores that consonance is likely to be problematic.
And yet……………….despite all the above, there are the occasional productions that break all the rules and yet are clearly well-grounded interpretations, winning much praise. I am going to what may be one such in Vienna after Easter in 2026, the Serebrennikov production of Parsifal set in a prison, much praised by Mark Berry (whose views I take seriously, so I’ll give it a try…….though loathed by others). People of many different persuasions have praised the power of the Herheim production at Bayreuth in 2008 (which I haven’t seen, though it is on YouTube and I should do so), set in Wahnfried and the wider Germany of the 19th and 20TH centuries. It is also worth pointing out that a director of an opera/music drama does have in theory the ability – often taken up in regietheater – to ignore the gesamtkunstwerk concept and offer different meanings related to different elements of the music drama in question – to indicate one meaning through music and another through words or set, an interplay which is unique to this art form. This can make for complex but powerful theatre, particularly relevant if there are, for modern eyes and ears, problematic elements to the work in question. I have just been reading about a feminist production by Katie Mitchell of Die Frau ohne Schatten – a problematic work in terms of some of its assumptions – in Amsterdam, where a reworking of some elements of the plot sounds to have been very successful.
Ultimately, though, while there may be a very few outstanding directors who can look at a work like ‘Parsifal’ and provide a radical reinterpretation that is satisfying to many, there are considerable perils in moving beyond that essentially religious/mythic focus which Wagner clearly has in mind in relation to all his works, and only a few highly talented directors are able to provide a radical reinterpretation of ‘Parsifal’, in particular, which is consistent, truly satisfactory and without serious problems emerging. To me, maybe because I am a ‘person pf faith’ ,‘Parsifal’ is not problematic in the way Die Frau ohne Schatten can be, and I see little evidence for Gutman-like (and others’) interpretations of the work as racist.
So – after all this long preamble – what of the Glyndebourne ‘Parsifal’? My first comment is – why on earth would you seek to graft an additional story onto a plot which is already quite complex and sometimes obscure….? I find it difficult to summarise my reactions to this performance: maybe my best effort would be that it was flawed, insightful, and very impressive musically. It was not a Herheim-like totally original take on the work, magnificently realised. Nor by any means was it a disaster. It was much more powerful and moving dramatically (though musically marginally less impressive) than the Parsifal I saw in Bayreuth last summer, and also much better than many of the reviews I’d read had led me to expect.
The ‘flawed’ aspect is not easy to describe and assess. The director had decided to recast the work as a ‘Chekhovian family drama’ (her own words, in the programme’). Essentially then the back story changes to something very different from Klingsor’s estrangement from Montsalvat, his entrapment of Monsalvat Knights through their sexual desire for his “flower girls’, and his seizing the Holy Spear from Amfortas after his seduction by Kundry, wounding him in the side as a symbolic representation of sexual desire constantly tormenting and never overcome. Instead we have a (far too quick) back story during the Prelude of a quotation of part of the Cain and Abel story from the Bible on the front curtain, and two young men, one Klingsor, one Amfortas, clearly intended to be brothers, seen with a young woman, Kundry. both clearly in love with her; there is then an altercation between the two men, Klingsor stabs Amfortas with a small knife and runs off. Klingsor and Amfortas are thus permanently estranged. This back-story is clearly intended to cut through and remove the mythic and to some extent religious (but see later) aspects of the work. There is no Holy Spear, no real emphasis on the difference between eros and agape. It is unclear in this version why Amfortas should feel unable to take the Grail service. The wound here becomes simply an ongoing fratricidal hatred, powerful obviously, but not connecting clearly to many of the Buddhist, Schopenhauerian and Christian elements of the story that Wagner clearly wanted to include. The whole idea of Kundry being in thrall to Klingsor and her moving between the Grail castle and Klingsor’s gardens and castle, her timelessness, becomes obscure in this context, as are the reasons for why she should be seducing Parsifal or of Klingsor being a sorcerer. The whole issue of Kundry being cursed because she laughed at Christ becomes unmoored
The ‘family feud’ idea is intensified by the use, rather confusing, of ‘young’ and ‘old’ figures of the main characters – a young and old versions of Kundry, Klingsor, and Amfortas, as members of the family. The use of these additional characters and the import of them I often just didn’t ‘get’, particularly in the first scene of Act 3. Much more effectively, Titurel is present on stage throughout Act 1, fussing around Amfortas ineffectually. At times in Act 1 Klingsor males his way into the house, hoping to be accepted and there are mimes of his being pushed away by other family members. The family dimension disappears entirely in Act 2 (though see below) and appears again (in ways to be described later) in Act 3. To make things more confusing, there is a very clear and straightforward Grail scene in Act 1, with the family, Gurnemanz and all the Knights in white and black surplices and essentially a Protestant Communion service enacted with a giant cross and crucified Christ in the background. The Grail is an ordinary silver chalice. None of this very clearly relates to the emerging themes hitherto. At first sight, therefore, so far so grim – more than a bit of a muddle.
The key to what is insightful here is excellent personen-regie, every move, every character reaction, carefully plotted, with an intensity of acting only a Festival opera setting can create. What was particularly insightful is the way the theme of compassion is treated in the production – and its obverse. In terms of the latter, the knights are a brutish bunch, in the 1st Grail scene manhandling Kundry and setting upon, booting and punching Parsifal with abandon during the communion service. Parsifal ‘s dawning awareness and reaction to Gurnemanz’s comments on the swan is very carefully and well handled. In a remarkable handling of the ending of Act 1, Parsifal cradles Kundry in his arms, empathising with her rejection (she has tried to enter the grail scene and been pushed away by Titurel). The staging of Act 2 is exemplary and throughout Parsifal demonstrates a sensitive compassionate approach, not just feeling the wound of Amfortas and his suffering, but also clearly understanding the suffering of Kundry in front of him, in a way I’ve never seen in any other Parsifal production. The way in which Act 2 ends is extraordinary – not with the collapse of Kingsor’s castle and his presumed death, but rather with Parsifal holding Klingsor in his arms. In Act 3, Klingsor, who enters with Parsifal and who in a sense has ‘become’ the Spear (a point of major obscurity I’m just passing over) is constantly the focus of Parsifal’s compassionate attention, as is Kundry. Kundry’s role is by now impossibly complex, and not again one I can elucidate, as she washes Parsifal’s feet and receives his baptism but she is undoubtedly fully also the object of Parsifal’s compassion – and he washes her feet too, which is a very moving moment. This compassion is remarkably evident in the Good Friday music, where (maybe with a bit of help from changes to the surtitles) Kundry becomes the subject of all Gurnemanz’s and Parsifal’s comments about redeemed Nature, through references to flowers; there is no pointing to an external world as there normally is (in the 2016 Parsifal at Bayreuth there is a Garden of Eden scene at this moment, with naked young people) There is no Grail scene at the end, only the healed family gazing at each other with love, presided over and brought together by Parsifal, with Amfortas and Klingsor finally reconciled. It does leave an open question though as to what status Parsifal has at the end of it all – he is shorn of his normal ‘king-like’ manner and attributes.
In short, what we end up with in this production is something like Wagner’s True Christianity, but with an overlay of Christian and mythical inputs from a traditional version of Parsifal which don’t fully now fit into this renewed reading.
In design terms, things looked much the same throughout the three acts. As the curtain opens after the Prelude to Act 1 we are in a gloomy claustrophobic Victorian large countrty house, perhaps a seminary. The set for all three Acts remains essentially the same – dark and forbidding. In the first act there is a sidelong seemingly large window letting light in but this disappears thereafter, and the whole building appears to be crumbling in Act 3 . The Grail scene in Act 1 is impressively staged, with long tables, candles and a very large image of Christ on the Cross at the back of the stage. There is no opening up of the set to light during the Good Friday music. Costumes are grey, black and dour. There are no richly coloured flower girls, just young women in long Victorian grey dresses and tightly drawn hair. Kundry is depicted with red hair and clearly intended to look something like Lizzie Siddall (the model for Rossetti and Millais),. Again, she wears a long grey dress but changes into a white night slip for the seduction scene with Parsifal. There are two rather clumsy black curtains drawn across the set by the actors to effect scene changes. Three design memories stand out – the white Victorian bed in front of a bare black tree in Act 2 for the seduction scene, and the remarkable visual impact of the procession for Titurel’s funeral in Act 3, snow falling, the pall bearers and mourners wearing heavy black coats and top hats. Also the flower girls all dressed identically to Kundry – is this meant to suggest they are all figments of her imagination?
Musically there are no question marks – this was a remarkably good performance, all elements of it being at a very high level. The orchestra has a golden glow in the Glyndebourne house’s acoustics, and there was first class playing from all sections of the orchestra, though I’d single out the woodwind as being particularly excellent. The string playing was also enveloping and warm. Ticciati’s reading struck me as very flexible – shaping the music carefully, extraordinarily slow at times (e.g. the Prelude to Act 3) while the flower girls chorus went at quite a lick. He was particularly good at shaping climaxes, and holding back the full force of the orchestra until it was really needed. I also heard a lot of the inner voices in the orchestra through Ticciati’s careful balancing. Of the five principals, the standout has to be John Relyea as Gurnemanz -a beautiful voice and the music sonorously delivered, always with clear diction, and breathing understanding and meaning into every phrase. I was also deeply impressed by. Kristina Stanek as Kundry, who offered real warmth of tone in her voice, looks right for the part, and, through her singing, engendered a real sympathy for her character. Though a mezzo, her top note in Act 2 for ‘lachte’ was remarkably powerful. Amfortas and Klingsor were perhaps less notable but still very good. Parsifal came across as a bit of a cypher sometimes dramatically – you got in a sense that he was working his way into the role, but he did have the power for key parts of his role in Acts 2 and 3, and provided some sensitive shading of phrases. The chorus sounded magnificent throughout (though at times I think their singing was recorded)
In summary, then, the production’ is incoherent and muddled at times but also with new and refreshing readings of some of the scenes. All in all this was an impressive evening, albeit problematic. I am glad I went.
Conductor, Giacomo Sagripanti; Rosina, Aigul Akhmetshina; Count Almaviva, Jack Swanson;Figaro, Andrey Zhilikhovsky; Dr. Bartolo, Peter Kálmán; Don Basilio, Alexander Vinogradov. Director, Bartlett Sher; Set Designer, Michael Yeargan; Costumes, Catherine Zuber
It is a long time since I’ve heard the Barber of Seville – it’s probably 45-50 years since I’ve heard it live in the theatre, and even in terms of screenings/streamings, the last time I sat through a screening was the Glyndebourne production in 2019. I am sure I have only seen live the elderly ENO one from the 70’s, with a rather rickety brown-looking set inherited from the old Sadlers Wells performances in Islington.
I am surprised how much I remember of the music, given how long it is since I have heard any of it. I remembered all the arias except a very florid aria with dense coloratura at the end before the final number, for Almaviva, which must have been thought beyond the capacity of the ENO tenors of the time
This was a lively production which gave the three youngish principal singers room to innovate, extemporise, and energise each other. It’s impossible not to have some comic drills embedded in the director’s concept (the production dates from 2008) for that’s the nature of the work but you could also sense particularly Rosina and Almaviva ad-libbing in small ways all the time in movement and looks. The costumes were utterly traditional 18th century Spanish and very expensive looking – they looked very traditionally ‘Met’. The sets were much less traditional and very effective – essentially a series of doors and walls (also bushes and trees in one scene) on wheels manipulated by chorus members which were not at all distracting but gave further pace to the production, and gave a real sense of the maze like prison in which Rosina was being kept. In addition, as you can see from the photo there was a walk all the way round the pit to allow variation of scene and engagement with the audience by individual characters
This was a screening which had no down sides at all. All the performers looked the age they were supposed to be and all were good actors, somehow just being themselves, unselfconscious and not using exaggerated gestures. I guess the star was Aigul Akhmetshina. She not only has a most beautiful mezzo voice, with a wide range, including a very high top note at the end of one of her arias or ensemble pieces; she is also very comfortable with the coloratura demands of her role, tossing off runs with a light grace, and she is a consummate actor, naturally dominating the stage. I was impressed by Andrey Zhilikhovsky as Figaro. His voice had richness and depth, he had a good energetic stage presence and conveyed very well Figaro’s occasional venality. Perhaps his delivery was a bit unvaried, in terms of musical phrasing; it tended towards the continuously loud (but his Italian was excellent). Jack Swanson (not a name I’ve come across before but he’s obviously developing his career both in Europe as well as the US) has a high lyric tenor which sounds bright and clear – the coloratura occasionally sounded a bit more effortful (he himself said in the interval, perhaps unwisely, that he felt he’d done well when he’d articulated about 80% of the notes Rossini had written; Rosina was delivering 100% alongside him) and occasionally the voice sounded under strain towards the top of his range. Peter Kalman had a good comic presence and excellent diction, while I was very taken by Vinogradov’s world-weary, tricksy but not over the top Don Basilio, whose Slander number was excellently done. The orchestra had a real zing under Giacomo Sagripanti.
John's musical journey 