Director, John Cox; Designer, David Hockney; Conductor, Kerem Hasan; Anne Trulove, Nardus Williams; Tom Rakewell, Frederick Jones; Nick Shadow, Sam Carl; Mother Goose, Fiona Kimm; Baba The Turk, Rosie Aldridge

My eyes almost popped out of my head a few months ago when I saw that Glyndebourne were touring their venerable production of the Rake’s Progress round the country this Autumn. I caught up with it in Milton Keynes. I first remember reading about this production in Opera magazine in 1975, and I think I remember also going to hear it in concert form at Glyndebourne’s annual outing to the Proms around that time. The production – directed originally by John Cox with sets designed by David Hockney – is of course legendary and it was a huge privilege to be able to see it, albeit 46 years on……..Also, astonishingly, John Cox had come back 46 years after the first performances to rehearse the company for this Glyndebourne tour.

Hockney’s sets are built and designed around the Hogarth engravings, and created so as to seem as though drawn/painted in great detail, with small criss-cross, wavey lines. There are many memorable images – the front cloth (inadequately photo’d below), Bedlam, the churchyard, the opening scene in Anne’s house and the wonderful decorations and paintings in Tom’s London town-house…… The props designed for the auction by Hockney are wonderful too – the drawing-like Great Auk, for instance…..I guess the one drawback of letting a famous painter loose in the theatre is that there’s an awful lot of set-changing and clunky 3-4 minute waits. There’s no use of a core set which adapts for different acts in this production! But there is a real sense of the Hogarth engravings somehow coming alive before your eyes which is very remarkable to see and hear, an effect heightened by clever costume designs and make-up. John Cox’s direction of the singers makes the most of the jokes without becoming crude, and always is at one with the music.

Although I heard another concert performance of the work in 2018 (LPO, Jurowski) this was the first stage performance I have seen of this work. I was bowled over by the wit and wisdom of the text, particularly the religious undertones that were important both to Stravinsky and Auden. And I hugely enjoyed the music too in all its cleverness and sparkle and melancholy (has there been more haunting song written in the last 100 years than Anne’s lullaby for Tom in the churchyard?). 

Of the singers, the standout performance was Nardus Williams as Anne. Though she’s not got a big voice, she projected well and produced some wonderfully soft singing and phrasing. Maybe the role doesn’t need a strong actor, but she was good at being still and having a calm presence, which is what the role requires. Sam Carl as Nick Shadow was strong, pointing the text well and having a lowering stage presence. He has some funny lines and delivered them well. Frederick Jones as Tom Rakewell was maybe slightly bland, with less of a nuanced approach to song and text, but maybe that’s ok with this character. Rosie Aldridge went hell for leather with Baba the Turk, as one has to, I guess (not a role for subtlety).

Keřem Hassan conducted, effectively, as far as I could tell. The MK Theatre has a dry forward acoustic and sometimes the orchestra seemed to be playing too loudly (eg the discordant woodwind in Anne’s lullaby. Whether that’s something Mr Hassan could have done something about I’m not sure

A great evening……and one which the audience much enjoyed too (and the house was pretty full)

In between La Traviata at Covent Garden and The Rakes Progress in Milton Keynes I went to a surprisingly enjoyable lunchtime recital at St Olave’s church near Fenchurch St station. This was given by young Colombian coloratura soprano Meliza Metzger. accompanied by Michelle Chow. There were arias by Mozart, Rossini and Donizetti, and two of Adele’s arias from Die Fledermaus. Michelle played extracts from two Scarlatti sonatas. 

Though its difficult to know how her voice would sound in a big opera house Ms Metzger projected splendidly in this church context. She dealt with the coloratura runs accurately and confidently and hit the high notes with panache rather than timidity. She projected the text well. Maybe there could have been a bit more variation to phrasing at times and – with Adele – a bit more characterisation (I would be happy to be proved wrong , but it sounded to me as though she was less comfortable singing in German as opposed to Italian). But it was thoroughly enjoyable to hear her in these pieces. And I enjoyed the Scarlatti too – there’s so much music to hear that I know next to nothing about. I have one CD of Scarlatti sonatas – there must be 100’s of them!

Anyway, this was a thoroughly worthwhile hour of listening to unfamiliar music.

Director, Richard Eyre, Designer, Bob Crowley; Conductor, Antonello Manacorda; Violetta, Lisette Oropesa; Alfredo, Liparit Avetisyan; Germont, Christian Gerhaher

This was the first ‘live’ Traviata I’ve been to since the one at Covent Garden in the 70’s when Ileana Cotrubas was Violetta in a new production, though I did see a film of the current ROHCG production ‘live’ in 2019 (see blog around early 2019).

The sets and production are at the service of the music and drama, and, in a good sense, don’t get in the way, with period, glamorous costumes and a required bit of spectacle in the gambling/ballet scene. The only set I would question would be the one for the last Act, where Violetta’s bedroom simply looks too big, and a more confined space would have aided the sense of illness and oppression (it was also in this act that there was a rare technical glitch, with the lights coming on to represent sunshine before the blinds were open!)

I always, as I have said elsewhere, always been a bit disdainful of Traviata, as being sentimental and full of too much ‘oompah’ music and trite tunes. This is silly, I know……however I felt particularly stupid as I listened to Antonello Manacordo’s reading of the score, which was taut, exciting, beautiful when it needed to be, and very well phrased. The ROHCG orchestra sounded excellent. There was one point – I can’t remember whether in the gambling scene or the last act – when Manacordo almost made the coming together of Alfredo and Violetta sound like Tristan, such was the intensity of the playing!!

This work depends crucially on the ability of the singer playing Violetta to be a credible actor, to project a whole range of emotions, characterising aspects of the role through her voice in two hours and 10 minutes of almost constant on-stage presence, and to have the vocal ability, stamina and technique to deal with the coloratura elements of the role. I wasn’t originally going to go to Traviata at all but as soon as I heard Lisette Oropesa as Gilda in Rigoletto (see blog) I raced to the ROHCG website and bought just about the last decent ticket in the Amphitheatre, foregoing an evening of Shostakovitch string quartets at Milton Court. Lisa Oropesa was – no other language will do – stunning as Violetta. She has a totally confident technique which allows her to produce stunning top notes (as in Sempre Libre), coloratura runs, and an immense variation of volume, vocal colour and tone. Her intrinsic vocal sound is beautiful – a sort of smoky sound, if that makes sense. She projects the words well and acts very convincingly. This is one of the finest, all-round, operatic performances I have ever seen – the sort of performance that gives some confident backing to my feeling that, at its best, there’s no other art form that can beat opera

Liparit Avetisyan as Alfredo had also been in Rigoletto with Oropesa earlier in the season. I was much more impressed with him here than in the former work. Though he is a bit stolid on stage and doesn’t particularly project much of anything (possibly a fault in Verdi’s characterisation?) he offered us some sensitive soft singing – altogether more varied than when he was the Duke of Mantua. There’s been a lot of critical discussion about Christian Gerhaher’s Germont, with some feeling he produced singing that was unidiomatic, and ‘choppy’, un-legato-like. For, me this was simply his representing the pent-up fury of an elderly gentleman seeing his ambitions for his family collapsing around him, and I thought it worked well – his singing of some phrases was very lovely.

All in all – much to my surprise – a great evening!!

Britten, Ireland and others: settings of poetry by Thomas Hardy; Finzi: Song cycle: Before and After Summer: Roderick Williams, baritone, Christopher Glynn, piano; also for a few songs Gareth Brynmor John, part of the ‘Momentum: Our Future, Now’ initiative

I wondered why there was such assiduous queuing going on for this event – people started queuing for the doors to open a quarter of an hour beforehand….my answer came as the lights went down. For a song recital, even one entirely in English, it’s always good to be able to see the words on the programme – however at the Crucible Studio only the first few rows have sufficient light for you to be able to do that! Sure enough, all the early queuers I’d noticed had indeed grabbed the ‘limelight ‘ spots.

The Crucible Studio is really a wonderful place to experience a song recital – you’re so near to the singers, and they really (at least these singers) seem to like that sense of closeness (though the closeness might have issues associated with it in these pandemic-infested times, but nobody seemed that bothered about the issue).  It was a pity not to be able to read the words in the programme as none of the songs were known to me apart from those from Britten’s ‘Winter Words’ cycle. Roderick Williams (who gave an excellent introduction to the songs) was outstanding – the shadings he could give to his voice, the clarity of his enunciation and (something you only see close-up) the projection of personality (or acting, if you like) were all really first – class. His colleague Gareth Brynmor John if anything had a more beautiful-sounding voice but wasn’t able to match Williams’ shadings and projection. The second half was entirely taken up with the Finzi cycle ‘Before and After Summer’. I like Finzi in short doses but maybe 40 minutes of him is a bit much – though very sensitive to the words, the music is just a little too much the same…..On the whole, I enjoyed the first half more. Still, while an hour and a half of uncompromising Hardy gloom in prospect was uninviting – it’s to the credit of a varied set of composers and to the two singers that it felt neither unvarying nor depressing

Mendelssohn A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Scherzo, Nocturne, Intermezzo, Wedding March; Ryan Wigglesworth Piano Concerto; Schumann Symphony No.2.  Ryan Wigglesworth conductor, Marc-André Hamelin piano, Halle Orchestra

This was my first time in Sheffield City Hall for, I think, almost two years……I was struck again by its very dead acoustic; in the space after a loud orchestral chord instead of appealing reverberations there’s a sound like a football bouncing off a formica table. Apparently people have been talking about its unsatisfactory acoustics since the 1930’s but no-one seems to have come up with a solution…..

For some reason I had chosen to sit in the front row of the stalls – this means that you’re up, close and personal with the violins but everything else seems to be happening at a distance over your head. In that unsatisfactory position and acoustic, the Halle still sounded very good indeed – violins in particular really together and sharp (as in ensemble, not tuning . I counted just one slight early entry from a single violin in the piano concerto, but otherwise they sounded razor-edged)

The Mendelssohn MSND extracts were very enjoyable – it’s a long time since I have heard this music. I was struck by the similarities between some of the music and early Wagner – Mendelssohn, Schumann and Wagner were all born within 4 years of each other, all were around in Leipzig during a similar period, yet there is little I heard this evening that connects Wagner with Schumann, while with Mendelssohn there are many similar turns of phrase and melodic cells. Interesting…..

The Wigglesworth piano concerto was a hard nut to crack, for me anyway, and I can’t say I enjoyed it as much as some other contemporary works I’ve heard recently.  My understanding wasn’t helped by the fact that seemingly City Hall had given up on issuing programmes, so I was unable to know in advance the structure of the piece or get any advance notice of particular aspects of it. The piano concerto is in 4 movements, and I enjoyed the third one (Notturno) best – into a strange arid and disturbed landscape of meandering strings, the piano brings at (I think two) points a simple melody – I thought it might be Chopin but apparently it’s a Polish folk tune – which is very touching, and gives a sense of incredible loneliness and desolation. I also got on with the first movement reasonably well, where the strings seemed to have a set of Mahler or maybe Berg-like themes to play while the piano wandered through this density with a cool calm set of reflections. The scherzo and the final fugue made little impact on me, I’m afraid.

For some reason, while I have known the 1^st, 3^rd and 4^th symphonies of Schumann since I was a teenager (with vinyl recordings by Furtwangler and Solti) I never listened to the 2^nd symphony to the same extent, so it is only more recently I have come to appreciate it. While commentators often talk about the symphony being linked to the recovery of Schumann from serious illness and his relationship with Clara Wieck, to me it always sounds as though it is linked to the mental illness he suffered from – now thought to have been a combination of bipolar disorder and perhaps mercury poisoning which led to “manic” and “depressive” periods. The scherzo 2^nd movement, with its obsessive repetitive rhythms, is, to me, pretty manic, and the slow movement is then a wonderful reaction to it – not dangerously exalted, but a  deeply felt reflection. The final movement then does sound genuinely like an overcoming of illness, and is very moving in its energy and joy. I thought the Halle’s performance was very good – maybe not with the sweep and grandeur that a Berlin Philharmonic could bring, but with precision and energy. Wigglesworth, like Mark Elder, splits the violins across the stage, and this led somehow to a lot more energy in the orchestral sound in the outer movements, while giving a real bloom to the reflections of the slow movement and its wonderful melodies. Maybe there wasn’t quite the fullness of some performances in the first and last movements but still – an excellent rendering of this work………..

Obviously, 92 is a good and very advanced age to get to, and so, in a sense, it wasn’t very surprising to hear that Bernard Haitink had died, on Friday. But it is still sad to see another part of my teenage years of coming to classical music – and always thereafter –passing away, after Solti, Abbado, Kleiber and others. He was perhaps the last of that stellar group of conductors brought into prominence particularly by the recording industry from the 1960’s to the 1990’s .

I saw him conduct mainly in the 1970’s and then more recently from about 2008 onwards (in between I was working overseas or with family responsibilities, so my concert-going was much more selective). I remember his Mahler 2 at the RFH and many Proms – Mahler 1, 2 ,3 , 5 , 6, and 9; Bruckner 2, 5, 8 and 9, as well as Tchaikovsky, Britten, Dvorak and many others from the 70’s. More recently I heard a Mahler 9 with the LSO in about 2009, a Bruckner 9 with the VPO in about 2012, an astonishing Mahler 3 with the LSO in 2016, and then several concerts in the 2017-19 period: a wonderfully relaxed Brahms 2 with the LSO in 2017, a Schumann 2 with Gustav Mahler Chamber Orchestra in 2018 and a Mahler 4 with the LSO finally in 2019. The one time I heard him conduct Wagner was ‘Siegfried’ in 1990 at ROHCG, with Rene Kollo as Siegfried – a fine performance, I remember.

I think my biggest disappointment is never to have heard him in the opera house apart from that one Wagner performance. I missed his entire tenure at Glyndebourne and the rest of his time at Covent Garden.

I think I probably took him a bit for granted when I was younger. Only in the last 15 years did I fully appreciate the way he could create a special aura over a piece, so that its structure was clearly expounded, and the performance seemed absolutely ‘right’; and at the same time he encouraged the players to a pitch of intensity in a performance I have rarely heard in the concert hall, and with only a modicum of expressive gestures. What I noticed, sitting in a RAH Choir seat for that memorable Mahler 3 in 2016 , was the power of the cue-in glances he gave to members of the orchestra as they played – both encouraging and vigilant. That performance, though slow by the clock (105 mins, someone said) was utterly transfixing – the music of the first movement flowed unselfconsciously; the great chasm of the third movement, when the scurrying of the animals seems to suddenly die away and you’re left with a sense of the immensity of the universe, was shocking; Sarah Connolly in the 4th movement was unbearably moving in the Nietzsche song, and the final movement just grew and grew in waves of sound that were overwhelming at the end. That performance was a great tribute to Haitink’s art. On the other hand, I’m ashamed to say that, while my South Bank Centre account assures me that I went to – or at least bought – tickets for – a concert in September 2009 consisting of Haydn’s Clock Symphony and Bruckner 7, with the Chicago Symphony, I have absolutely no memory of this event. I wonder why this is?…..maybe Haitink was sometimes too easily taken for granted and it is only now he’s gone that we shall realise what we are missing.

I hope the BBC will repeat the splendid documentary they made of his life soon

R.I.P.

MARTINŮ  Nonet; VITKAUSKAITÉ Nanga (world premiere); DVOŘÁK  Piano Quintet No.2 in A Op.81: Ensemble 360

This was an enjoyable concert that involved most of the members of what I guess you might call a chamber music collective, Ensemble 360 (declaration of an interest: one of them is a near neighbour of mine).

The Martinu work was very easy on the ear and clearly for the musicians huge fun to play. It is scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. These nine distinct instrumental voices interact with one another in a very conversational sort of way – words like neo-classical, optimistic, and expressive come to mind. I am not sure I found it very memorable but the andante was particularly attractive – the programme note suggests it’s a lament for Martinu’s Czech homeland that he never went back to after emigrating to America before the war

I liked the new piece by Ruta Vitkauskaité, a (I think) Lithuanian composer now resident in the UK. It combined strange very high harmonics on the violin and cello, odd slapping sounds from both (and occasionally the piano as well) together with motor rhythms and at the same time some lyrical passages, sequences seeming to follow a similar pattern like waves. I am not entirely sure I understood the trajectory, but I never lost interest (in fact I was more gripped by it than by the Martinu). There was a particularly effective lament/cadenza for cello near the end , which Gemma Rsoefield played very well. If I hadn’t had a train to catch and dinner to eat, I would have stayed for the Q and A with the composer afterwards (she was in the audience).

The Dvorak piece was obviously more approachable than the other two. It was extremely well played. Although very attractive, I found the second movement, the Dumka (a Ukrainian dance) rather over-stayed its welcome. However the energy of and players’ commitment to the finale made for a very rousing end to the concert

All of these works were new to me – in many ways, the best sort of concert!

Halle Orchestra – Lera Auerbach, Icarus; Walton, Cello Concerto; Copland, Symphony No.3 Gemma New conductor • Laura van der Heijden cello

I hadn’t come across the name of Lera Auerbach before. She’s a prolific Russian/American artist, not only a composer but also a conductor, pianist, a published poet and an exhibited visual artist. Her short piece, ‘Icarus’, which started the concert, I found very attractive – there were understandable melodic fragments depicting Icarus, the earth he leaves, his ascent and descent, and the emotional journey  – as in the story – was vividly portrayed with lots of shimmering colour (including, in the splendid sounds of the very large orchestra, the remarkable theremin, the first time I think I have heard this live, which captured some of the unearthly elements of Icarus’ story). The huge orchestra was handled by Auerbach with delicacy and imagination. I’ll look out for her name in future.

Jumping to the last work, the Copland Symphony No 3 is a work I think I’ve heard once but never live. To my mind it is frankly not very good. Its melodic content is uninteresting, it relies on excessive noise to make its not very understandable points and meanders between arbitrary climaxes. There’s little sense of either an emotional journey as with the Icarus piece or the sort of logical concision of a Beethoven or Schoenberg. The only memorable theme, the Fanfare for the Common Man, is bolted on to the symphony from an earlier work. When you compare this work with contemporary symphonies of the mid 1940’s – Shostakovich 8, Prokofiev 5, Vaughan Williams 6,, it is a pretty paltry specimen of a symphony, in my view. Looking at it say alongside Malcom Arnold’s 5th Symphony of a few years later, the latter seems a positively blazing masterpiece! The Halle made the best possible case for the Copland – some spectacular trumpet and flute playing. Gemma New made the best of a bad job…..I think I shall ignore this work in future. I should add that the RNCM and Cheetham students in the audience were very impressed by the sheer earth-trembling conclusion…..

And what a contrast there is between the bludgeoning, meandering Copland and the Walton Cello concerto, which I was hearing for the second time in 3 months. The Walton piece by contrast is complex emotionally, melodically much more memorable (eg those stealthy steps at the beginning, concise – a bitter-sweet journey that constantly holds your attention. I thought this was a lovely performance – less showy than the one by Stephen Isserlis which I’d heard in August, but Laura van der Heijden brought out the subtleties of the cello part.

Altogether good to hear relatively unfamiliar music and the Halle played extremely well throughout

Thomas Ades / composer and conductor; Wayne McGregor/choreography; designs/Tacita Dean;  lighting designer/ Lucy Carter; dramaturg/ Uzma Hameed

I am not a balletomane, and I have never been to the ballet at Covent Garden before. My reason for going to this performance was mainly to hear the music for The Dante Project, composed, and, on this occasion, conducted by Thomas Ades (he’s conducting for the first 5 performances of its run) – and receiving only its 3^rd ever performance. It is one of his most substantial pieces, running for nearly 2 hours of music, and the orchestra is huge – what looked quadruple woodwind, lots of percussion and brass.

I really enjoyed Ades’ music, and the visuals for the ballet for the most part were stunning. I’m afraid – and I am sure the fault is mine, so that should be borne in mind in all that follows – I still find, as I always have done, that the actual dancing and choreography is quite confusing, in terms of what’s going on. There is clearly a code of signifying movements I have yet to crack, but I could make little of what was happening in terms of working out what the dancers were thinking and feeling, and what their movements were designed to be expressing. Part of this in Act 1 may have been the difficulty of conveying some of the Hellish cameos in dance-form, possibly….

The Dante Project is – as one might expect – split into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. Inferno is much the longest – about 50 minutes – and Purgatorio and Paradiso are each about 30 minutes. Each ‘act’ has a very different visual feel – Act 1 is dark and lowering, Act 2 is green, bright and penitential, while Act 3 is a blaze of colour and whirring rings and globes

I found the music gripping and absorbing. Inferno has lots of pastiche – Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and others; it has marvellously strong rhythms, whooping horns, sliding trombones, stomping drums and is immensely – one can feel – danceable; there are lots of downwards glissandi at various points, appropriate to Hell, I guess. At times it is frightening in its dramatic energy. Act 2, Purgatorio, starts with extraordinary recorded synagogue chanting, and the orchestra then builds on the tunes the cantors sing – this fits well with the penitential feel. I thought the Act 3 music was wonderful – I had assumed Paradiso would involve high soft strings, but in fact the music reflects the film of rolling spheres that is central to the visual imaging of the act – a lovely spiralling upwards sort of music that is neither quiet nor minimalistic but in its way quite hypnotic and utterly suited to the subject matter. The act ends in a blazing light, signifying, I suppose, the pure light of the divine gaze (there’s also contribution of female voices from the London Symphony chorus near the end too!) .

My only real criticism was that the first Act was I thought just too dark, and it was sometimes difficult to see what was happening

I am sure Ades will make an orchestra suite from the ballet – I shall look forward to hearing it. I see the Artsdesk critic is stating that the work has “ a serious claim to being the greatest music composed this century”. We shall see, but I wouldn’t immediately disagree after today’s performance

Bach – Mass in B Minor, played by the Feinstein Ensemble with the London Bach Singers: Martin Feinstein , conductor

Bach’s B Minor Mass is a piece I have never heard in the concert hall before now….. except, that is, on an occasion when I sung in it (almost 50 years ago). I was recruited by a friend to join a large College choral society at Cambridge (St Johns) who sung a major work in the choral repertory in their Chapel once every term. I remember my introduction to singing with them (I don’t read music and I have a very nondescript voice) was growling away in the Brahms Requiem, a piece I knew fairly well, in the Autumn term, and then came the Bach in the Spring term., which was a piece I didn’t know at all (at the time I knew little about Bach’s works). The chorus was – given the Cambridge of the time – heavily weighted towards men; there must have been something like 150 basses, 30 tenors, 20 sopranos and the same number of contraltos. I followed 149 basses in roaring out the part when I knew what I was doing and mouthing it in the runs and more complex singing. Goodness knows who the conductor was – quite possibly now he’s a senior luminary of the conducting world, but he must have had his work cut out to control us basses. My abiding memory though is of the day the orchestra came to rehearse with us for the first time, and I was suddenly transfixed by the glory of the swirling trumpets and the drums in the Gloria, Sanctus and Dona Nobis Pacem.

So the B Minor Mass has always been a favourite since then, but the recordings I have owned over the years have tended to be old-fashioned – Richter and Klemperer. The Feinstein performance was a very different beast. There were 21 period instrumentalists and just 10 singers, who doubled as the chorus and soloists. 10 singers were quite possibly what Bach might had had at his disposal at St Thomas’ Leipzig, but that’s not really so relevant, given that there is no certainty it was ever performed in Leipzig (though – something I didn’t know – the programme notes said that the Kyrie and Gloria could be sung in the Lutheran Church for certain thanksgiving services) and, given that he may have conceived it as a monument to his art, Bach might have envisaged much larger forces. The size didn’t really matter that much, though, given the excellence and power of the singers and the relatively small size of the venue. The star singer for me was Matthew Brook in Et in Spiritum Sanctum (I realised I’d heard him in Errolyn Wallen’s Dido’s Ghost as Aeneas in July) but all were good. The main issue I had with the performance – a usual one with me – is the tendency of period instrument conductors to go as fast as possible wherever they get the chance. Here the Sanctus in particular raced along, and lost some dignity thereby – the Quoniam too was rushed, making life even more difficult for the woman playing (very well) the fiendish natural horn part. The Et Resurrexit went at an undignified gallop. But I wouldn’t want to make too much of this….there was a lot of beautiful woodwind playing, particularly from the flutes, and some of the tempi – the Gratias Agimus and final Dona Nobis Pacem – were just right, to my ears. So, not a perfect performance perhaps, but great to be able to hear this great work live after all these years…….