Bruch Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano Nos 2, 4, 5 & 6; Jörg Widmann Fantasie; György Kurtág Hommage à Robert Schumann; Mozart Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano in E-flat major, ‘Kegelstatt’: Antoine Tamestit viola; Jörg Widmann clarinet; Frank Braley piano
This was a really lovely chamber music concert, at lunchtime in LSO St Lukes. It was memorable for several reasons:
1. Though ambience isn’t everything. LSO St Lukes is an impressive building, brilliantly conceived and lit (and of course the church is interesting in itself – partly designed by Hawksmoor who created the strange obelisk spire [a most unusual feature for an Anglican church}, which is topped by a strange weather vane depicting the head of a dragon with a fiery comet-like tail). It had been derelict for 40 years before the LSO decided to redesign it as a music centre
2. The players were all obviously old friends and knew each other’s playing personalities very well – there was a lot of eye contact and smiling which conveyed itself to the listeners. They were clearly enjoying themselves hugely
3. An interesting range of pieces – the Brahmsian and rather lovely and lyrical Bruch pieces; the completely bonkers and very virtuosic Widmann piece for solo calrinet (Widmann is apparently the third most performed contemporary composer); the fascinating Kurtag piece with wisps of Hungarian melody, reflections on Schumann’s bi-polar disorder, and some haunting harmonies – and a bass drum stroke at the end; and finally, the sunny Mozart piece, with a beautiful middle-period-Mozart final movement (contemporary with the Marriage of Figaro)
The violist Antoine Tamestit was a sensitive and thoughtful player – and given that I’ve primarily heard of Widmann as a composer, I was amazed at the quality of his clarinet playing. The pianist was maybe at a less exalted level. Listening to my old recording of the Kegelstatt trio afterwards, with Jack Brymer, Stephen Bishop and Patrick Ireland, I wondered whether the balance of the players at LSO St Lukes could have been better – sometimes the viola seemed a little submerged. But this is a minor point…this was a wonderful concert, and to be broadcast by the BBC on 14/12/21
Sean Panikkar (M.K. Gandhi), Musa Ngqungwana (Lord Krishna), William Thomas (Parsi Rustomji), Felicity Buckland (Kasturbai), James Cleverton (Mr Kallenbach), Sarah Pring (Mrs Alexander), Ross Ramgobin (Prince Arjuna), Gabriella Cassidy (Miss Schlesen). Conductor: Carolyn Kuan, Director: Phelim McDermott, Revival Director: Peter Relton, Set Designer/Associate Director: Julian Crouch
Unwittingly – sort of – I had booked myself in not only to the first performance this year of Philip Glasss’ Satyagraha at the ENO, but the first time they had performed back in the London Coliseum since March 2020. It’s the first time I’ve been in the Coliseum since November 2019 (oddly, to see another Glass opera – Orphee). After 5 visits to Covent Garden over the past three months, the Coliseum felt an enormous, cavernous building, not particularly welcoming, but I was reminded that it was a venue where the voices and orchestra sound much warmer and more vibrant than they do in the drier Covent Garden acoustic. Though the performance was – as above – a rather special one, and with speeches beforehand by the ENO management team, the auditorium wasn’t by any means full. That doesn’t bode well for (an-already-beleaguered-before-the-pandemic) ENO. I wonder if the old idea of Georg Solti’s – put ENO and ROHCG Opera into Covent Garden, and the Royal and Sadlers’ Well Ballet Companies into the Coliseum – hasn’t finally come to seem rather sensible. Or even – given that the ENO is only giving 67 performances this season, put both opera companies into Covent Garden and keep the ballet. There does seem to be overlap in the current season between the two houses – eg both offering Cosi Fan Tutte, two Rings being planned, two La Boheme’s happening this season etc; this is hard to justify.
This production has been on the ENO’s books since 2007, and is well known and appreciated, although I’ve not seen it before. Phelim McDermott was the original director, and I was first introduced to his work watching the Tao of Glass in June 2019 at the Manchester International Festival – it has many of the same approaches to staging, writ large, including puppets, the use of paper shapes, and imaginative lighting. It does everything it could for the work. Rather stupidly I hadn’t worked out who the dominating figures were at the back or side of the stage in each of the three acts – Tolstoy, Tagore and Martin Luther King – until I talked to the friend I was with, who’d seen it before.
Listening to Satyagraha made me realise what it must be for non-Wagner enthusiasts sitting through the more slowly-paced parts of the Ring. Some of it was very beautiful, some of it was dramatic, but there were times when it was just mind-numbingly, tediously, repetitive. Yes, I know that Satyagraha is not a work that’s meant to be conventionally dramatic, I know it’s contemplative and meditative in form and meaning, but still…..I thought I’d scream after the 20th repetition in the final scene of the 8 note melody Gandhi sings (rather lovely though that tune is). The problem I think is that Glass rather contradicts himself in his approach – the 2nd Act is in fact quite dramatic, with lots of action on the stage and reasonably contrasted successive scenes. The final act by contrast is unvaryingly slow-moving, and relatively little happens (apart from arrests of course). So maybe I am just not in tune with the nature of Glass’ art…….
As far as I could tell, the solo singing was uniformly good (with Sean Pannikar as a particularly strong voiced and clear Gandhi) , the ENO Chorus fantastic, and the orchestra deserves a collective medal for getting through the score – with so many repetitive figures, it must be a nightmare to count the bars for the next entry or to know when to stop, but they seemed to manage without any glitches. The production is great – but……probably seeing it once is enough for me
Conductor, Richard Hetherington. Cast – Tamino, Bernard Richter; Pamina, Christina Gansch; Papageno, Peter Kellner; Queen of the Night, Aleksandra Olczyk; Sarastro, Krzysztof Baczyk; Monostatos, Peter Hoare; Papagena, Alexandra Lowe. Director, David McVicar (Revival Director, Daniel Dooner); Designer. John Macfarlane
Both Jenufa the previous evening and this performance of the Magic Flute were extremely well attended. It was great to see the ROHCG at near or absolute capacity, and there was a real buzz in the house (though interestingly, and perhaps ominously, and despite repeated loudspeaker injunctions, maybe only 40% of the audience was wearing face masks. This may not end well………)
The last Magic Flute I saw was at ENO in April 2019 with the excellent Lucy Crowe as Pamina. I’m not sure this performance at Covent Garden was as good, but it was thoroughly enjoyable and more than competent
For anyone seeing this work for the first time, or with little experience of this form of music theatre, what would they have made of this performance?
They would probably have admired the sets and the special effects: the dark heavy pillars of the temple, the wonderful moon, sun and night effects, the use of puppets, the Three Boys’ flying machine (though they might have wondered whether this work could be produced by ROHCG with equal impact at considerably less cost – whereas Jenufa needed the sort of design and sets that were offered, sometimes the Magic Flute sets seemed to say – hey, we’ve lots of money, we’re grand….!)
I’m sure they would have loved Papageno and all the usual but never-failing gags- Monostatos and his men charmed by music; Papageno / Papagena etc
They would have loved the music
I’m sure that quite a lot of the story they would have found baffling, from a number of perspectives:
The muddled libretto with all sorts of loose ends – like why Pamina isn’t, and then is, allowed to undertake the trials
Sorastro’s misogyny
The general implication that women have to be ‘led’ / guided into enlightenment by men
What to do about the Magic Flute? This production did what it could, but all the usual embarrassments were there. My recipe for a production of this opera is as follows:
Make absolutely clear that the Queen of the Night and her crew, and Sorastro and his merry men, are not to be seen as ‘ordinary’ human beings but rather as archetypes – the Queen of the Night standing for religion / superstition (and maybe the darker aspects of human nature – Mozart must have heard about what was happening in France by 1791 when he wrote this, however he might have approved of the initial stages of the Revolution); Sorastro for 18th century enlightenment. If necessary have the Queen of the Night looking like the Pope!
The ensuing production would then show that both aspects of being – religion and rationality – have a part to play in a whole and balanced human life. It would emphasise the severe trials of initiation that Pamina has to face, and make absolutely explicit that Sorastro has things to learn too and that Pamina’s initiation is not his wish
To emphasise all the above, it would be OK to mess about with the text mercilessly. It’s already accepted in more modern productions (though this was not the case back in the 1970’s productions I saw of this) that they bowlderise the whole business of Monostatos being black – so why not go further?
The singers were good, but only one was outstanding. Bernard Richter, the Tamino, had a heavier voice than a normal “Mozart” tenor. He was rather stolid in movement and at times his voice stood out when it should blend with Pamina or Papageno. In his big Act 1 aria he seemed to force his voice and it sounded a bit frayed at the top. Christina Gansch, the Pamina, was recently one of the finalists of the Cardiff Singer of the World contest, where I thought she had a lovely voice. Here, her Pamina was not an especially good performance, I’m afriad, though it was never less than adequate. Her voice seemed unfocused and slightly wobbly at points. The Papageno, Peter Kellner, was the best of the four main performer roles – his was an introspective and sometimes almost wistful reading of the part, with a warm rich voice. It was a very likeable portrayal. The Sorastro had a perfectly enjoyable voice but nothing special or distinctive. The Queen of the Night, Aleksandra Olczyk, however, though not on the stage for very long, was in a different league, and gave a spectacularly good performance of her two high coloratura arias. The conductor was an ROHCG staff member, Richard Hetherington, doing one performance (presumably having helped to prepared the run for Helmut Haenchen, the conductor for the other performances). His conducting was too fast on the whole, though the excellence of the orchestra meant that articulation was still crisp and clear despite the speed. But a lot was missed through cramped room for expression.
Everyone in the audience seemed to be very happy with the performance, and warmly cheered everyone!
Mr Antipov graduated from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, BMus (Hons) Performance, in 2017. He has performed widely in the UK since then with local music societies and events. This was a lunch hour concert I caught sight of on the internet, as I was in London for Jenufa and the Magic Flute.
St Olave’s church is one that’s worth a visit for its own merits as well – near Aldgate tube station, there’s a memorial to Samuel Pepys there
Mr Antipov played Liszt (two pieces from the Annees de pelerinage, (Troisieme annee), a display piece by Chopin (variations on Mozart’s ‘La ci darem la mano’) and Ravel’s ‘Gaspard de la nuit’. And he did so from memory, which was little short of astonishing in the Chopin piece, which is quite substantial – 20 minutes or so – and with sprays of notes in every direction. Indeed for me the Chopin piece was the most enjoyable. Somehow I never warm to any of Liszt’s music, and the piano pieces here seemed very much going-through-the-Romantic-notions. The Ravel was more interesting but I got lost at points…..
Still, not a bad way to spend a lunchtime, and I thought Mr Antipov was a very interesting player
This was exactly the sort of performance and production which should give opera a good name among those who expect from it standards of acting, production and design similar to those you’d anticipate from a play at the National Theatre or RSC.
The basic set was a huge box enclosing the stage, made of white narrow horizontally placed wooden-like beams. Colours were black and white, with the only colour provided by peasant women’s costumes for the wedding in Act 3. The Kostelnicka’s house in Act 2 is made of angular metal rods. Beginning each act, a grid at the front of the box is raised. The overall effect is of imprisonment and oppression, and is obviously intended to mirror the restrictions and conventions of life in the Czech village at the centre of the drama. The wall at the back of the stage in Act showed in silhouette women in desperate poses of attempted. In the first act, there are a number of beds placed against the outer walls, with male chorus members on them, moving in robotic fashion at points. It wasn’t clear what the point of this was – one review said it was a workhouse, another that it represented how lazy the villagers were! The mattresses from the beds seem to be strewn around outside the Kostelnicka’s house in Act 2 (one review said this was intended to look like snow……). In Act 3, very effectively, flowers for the wedding were strewn on the floor. So…not all of it made immediate sense (on the other hand, the vision of the dead husband of the Kostelnicka with a bloodied head was effective). At least from my vantage point (a good Lower Slips seat) the wandering large crow which reviews spoke of seemed to have been ‘disappeared’. escape. But – it was a fundamentally serious and thought-provoking production. It also had a coup de theatre at the end when the front grid is lowered but Laca and Jenufa position themselves in front of it – they have escaped imprisonment!
The production was thus an effective and credible frame for two remarkable performances. Karita Mattila was mesmerising as the Kostelnicka. She is one of those very few performers – I can think of Boris Christoff and Janet Baker as two other examples – who simply by being on stage command attention. It is impossible to say how they do this – but you know it when you see it! What was remarkable about Mattila’s performance was not just her stage presence, but the power and nuancing of her singing – in a role that is usually given to distinguished singers who are just a little superannuated she sounded absolutely at her prime. Deservedly she received the biggest ovation at the end, and as the curtain came down Jenufa did a little curtsey to her.
Asmik Gregorian had all that it takes to be a very effective Jenufa indeed – she looks very credible, she acts well, and she has a powerful voice. I didn’t get much sense of nuance for the most part in how she used her voice, though her song to the new-born baby in Act 2 was beautiful. Nicky Spence sounded a bit underpowered as Laca – slightly worrying for his Siegmund at the ENO less than 8 weeks away – maybe it was just where I was sitting. All the other roles were never less than well-sung and acted.
The other thing to be said is that – although I have been to several other Janacek operas, and have known Katya Kabanova for 50 years, I have never listened at home to Jenufa or seen it live, so it was a first for me. What a stunning work it! So many moments of beauty and grandeur……I will want to go back to listen to my download of the Mackerras recording from WNO (which I bought 5 years ago but have never got round to listening to). It’s wonderful to come to such a work for the first tine! It seems to me more dramatically credible than Katya Kabanova which simply moves at too fast a pace to make the story seem real.
Sir Mark Elder conductor | Baiba Skride violin: Wagner, Lohengrin: Prelude to Act I; Sofia Gubaidulina, Offertorium; Elgar, Symphony No.1
This time at the Bridgewater Hall the Halle orchestra seemed to have a ‘normal’ full orchestra on stage – 10 cellos. 8 double basses. The Halle made a glorious sound in the Elgar, and the Gubaidulina piece was very well played – though admittedly I was sitting in what was probably the best seat in the house (M20 Stalls, for future self-reference!)
The Wagner was slow and the climax well crafted – maybe the strings were a bit too loud at the beginning? The Gubaidulina piece, played in honour of her 90th birthday, was tough but rewarding – a violin concerto that portrayed a sort of darkness-into-light journey, based around the theme Bach worked on In the Musical Offering and variations on that theme. It was difficult to disentangle (and maybe that is the point) the logical progress of the variations from a sense of mounting violence and a portrait of relentlessly dark forces. After the last of various huge climaxes there is a beautiful 5 minutes or so that sounds like an Orthodox hymn near the end, or something out of Arvo Part. Maybe – given that this was written when the Soviet system still had 10 years to go, and religious expression was still regarded with suspicion – the violin is something like an individual struggling against orchestra-as-system?. Anyway the work, though spikey, was always absorbing. The soloist, Baiba Skrida, was excellent. Maybe the work still is slightly in need of further cutting (I believe its current length is itself a reduction on the first version) in the earlier variations?
Elgar 1 followed after the interval. I have heard the Halle and Elder do this at least two times before, and it was as good as I’ve ever heard live. Elder, who tends to favour quite broad speeds in Elgar, produced a 2nd movement which was quite driven and fast – maybe a bit too fast for that theme representing ‘something you hear by the river’, as Elgar said almost to himself at one rehearsal. The finale was exciting too – sometimes I’ve felt listening to performances of this work that at points Elgar is going through the motions in the final movement, developing themes a bit mechanically but here everything was taut and gripping. The late Michael Kennedy in his programme notes mentioned something I remember reading but had forgotten – the main theme of the slow movement was that of the second at a greatly reduced speed; likewise, the main theme of the second movement is the motto March theme reversed. Elder’s conducting emphasised the underlying musical logic of this symphony, and the dynamics were finely tuned. And what a complex work its is , wonderfully orchestrated – how could anyone ever have thought of Elgar as a representative of a complacent and self-satisfied age? I’ve just read W.H (Billy) Reed’s book about Elgar, which reminds me what a very complicated person he was.
As I’ve said, the Halle sounded wonderful – the split of the first and second violins on either side of the conductor really adds something in a work like this and gives an amplitude to the sound which really enhances the textures. The ending of the slow movement featured the best clarinet playing here I’ve ever heard, better than Jack Brymer in 1969, and there were appropriately soaring strings in the slow movement
I hope the concert covered its costs – when I looked at the booking page they hadn’t sold a massive number of tickets, though at the actual events there seemed to be masses of students, presumably there at little or no expense. It was great to hear the enthusiasm for the Elgar after the concert from all the young people around me. The concert was also filmed for streaming
London Philharmonic Orchestra; Edward Gardner conductor. Cast – Robert Murray, Mark; Rachel Nicholls, Jenifer; Ashley Riches, King Fisher; Jennifer France, Bella; Toby Spence, Jack; Claire Barnett-Jones, Sosostris; Susan Bickley, She-Ancient; Joshua Bloom, He-Ancient. London Philharmonic Choir, English National Opera Chorus
I got to know this work quite well as a student and bought the vinyl set of the late 60s recording by Colin Davis from the Covent Garden production of that time. But I have for one reason or another always been out of the country or unavailable when any stagings have happened since. So a live performance of this work was a first for me, and given the likely span of my life and the unlikelihood of another UK production, is probably the last as well. I’d be happy for this prediction to be proved wrong – in fact there have been performances every 10 years or so – ROHCG 1996 and 2005, Proms 2013. but I am not sure I’ll make it to the next one!
The RFH was packed, with a great atmosphere and amazingly there were two choruses – the ENO one and the LPO choir. Given the pandemic restrictions until recently on choruses rehearsing, the performance of the latter was remarkable. The LPO under Gardner sounded crisp and alert in this very-difficult-to-play work – the woodwind in particular bubbled and frothed just as they should.
So how did it all seem, so many years since I last listened to anything from the work except the Ritual Dances and Mark/Sosostris’ arias, and how did it all hang together? In many ways if you had a big video screen behind the chorus with changing relevant images on it, a concert/oratorio performance might be the best way to present this work, which does seem to have a number of dramatic flaws. Oddly, for a work that is about personal transformation, the two characters who are transformed, Mark and Jenifer, are for the most part remote cyphers whom an audience cannot relate to (apart from Mark’s wonderful Act 1 aria). Several of the arias seem to go on too long for the structure of the piece e.g Sosostris’ in Act 3, and Bella’s in Act 2 about making up her face. With the best will in the world, and even with the knowledge that it is so already with you, some of the text is not just very obscure but doesn’t particularly help us to understand the changes taking place to Mark and Jenifer. Bella has become with time a toe-curlingly outdated 50s female stereotype – even with all the Papageno/Papagena parallels acknowledged. Large parts of Act 2 are a ballet. Dramatically it is very static indeed. The performance was described as a semi – staging, but all that meant in effect is characters moving off and on stage instead of being on stage all the time – there was no attempt at acting by anyone except Bella. Having it all as an oratorio would also mean that you could afford a larger chorus of the size we heard here, which gives immense power to some of the most impressive moments of the score – eg Fire in Summer, the last of the ritual dances.
The advantage of a concert performance thus is that it minimises some of the dramatic flaws and allows a greater focus on the absolutely glorious music, which, far more than the words, or what’s happening on stage, really does give us a sense of what true changes in how we live might feel and sound like. Tippett’s music sounds like no-one else’s, and its glitter, the warmth, the contrapuntal energy, the lyricism and its beauty are overwhelming. Though you can hear the influence of Tudor choral music at times, the music is unique – always absorbing and never routine, and conveys an intoxicating joy at being alive, something I saw personified in Tippett himself when I saw him conduct/appear at concerts. Somehow the teeming contrapuntal energy of the music is a mirror for the miraculous vitality of the world Tippett tries to depict in his libretto (and the music then takes on a life of its own. The work almost becomes a celebration of music itself). The choral repetition of the climax of Sosostris’ aria ‘I am who was, is and shall be’ was overwhelming and had me in tears.
The cast was never less than very good. Robert Murray as Mark was perhaps the least impressive – he was not always able to sing over the orchestra. The voices used for this role have often been heavier tenor types – Alberto Remedios and John Treleaven, for instance – and Murray’s singing was less lyrical than, say, Remedios. Rachel Nicholls has of course the voice to cut across the orchestra, but I suspect the part needs a warmer voice and presence, along with the power and coloratura she offered. The best performance – but then the role is much better characterised by Tippett – was by Jennifer France as Bella, who was the only person on stage really trying to act, and who handled her arias in the 2nd act superbly. Ashley Riches and Toby Spence also projected well with their voices and created understandable characters (again, helped by Tippett). Claire Barnett-Jones as Sosostris did her aria marvellously well.
All in all a wonderful evening!! Let’s hope I do make it to the next one 8-10 years hence….I saw Martyn Brabbins in the audience. Might ENO consider a new staging?
Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; Ravel Piano Concerto in G; Thea Musgrave Song of the Enchanter; Sibelius Symphony No.2 – Sir Mark Elder conductor, Benjamin Grosvenor piano, Halle Orchestra.
This was another great concert. It was a joy to hear an orchestra in the Bridgewater Hall so soon after being in the Barbican – I was reminded how much better the acoustics were in the former, for classical music at least. Although this was the first of three performances with the same programme, the hall was impressively full and non-socially distanced too, though probably a majority were wearing facemasks. What with coaches queuing outside the BH bringing folk from out of town, it all felt like a return to near-normal. And the orchestra was back to its normal unsocially-distanced space, and was more or less up to its pre-pandemic strength (maybe 3-4 strings less than normal?) – interestingly not wearing face masks, unlike the LSO.
This was a programme, in a sense, of oddities – works which must have struck their first audiences as strange and unconventional. Compared to the portliness of Parry and Stanford, or the early Elgar (and when Elgar did become less conventional, he turned to R. Strauss – eg the start of the 2nd Symphony), the Vaughan Williams piece in its spareness and solemnity sounds a world away. The Ravel’s jazziness might not have been what Parisian audiences were expecting, even in the late 20’s. Thea Musgrave’s work again sounds unconventionally tonal and unspikey compared to the modernists of the time. The Sibelius piece is again far removed from Tchaikovsky, who is probably his nearest model.
The dynamic range of the orchestra in the Tallis was impressive – it was a more introspective reading than the one I heard a month and a half ago at the Proms from Petrenko and the RPO – the chamber group sounded more mysterious and organ-like.
In the Ravel, there was precise articulation and a sense of fun from both the orchestra and Benjamin Grosvenor, but I felt (and I was sitting in a very good seat, so it wasn’t a matter of acoustics) the pianist sounded a bit small in tone – delicate and graceful playing, but not a sense of a massive personality
Thea Musgrave piece was more or less tonal – wisps of sound honouring Sibelius. And it did sound very Sibelian – it was subtle and, attractive though the rather obvious quote from Sibelius 5 irritated me, slightly
The Sibelius 2 I thought was very fine. I have never heard this performed live, as far as I can recall, and it is many years since I last sat down and listened to it – until the Proms first night this year, when it was featured on TV! That was a jagged nervous performance which I liked tremendously. This performance was less – in a good sense – nerve-wracking but still very powerful. What an odd work it is – particularly the second movement, full of turmoil, stops and starts, sudden silences, and desperate loneliness. The third movement bounds off with restless energy but then again there is stillness and melancholy at its heart. As I listened I realised the ‘big tune’ of the last movement, the one part that does sound very Tchaikovskyian, on its first appearance almost feels like a song sung into eternal darkness. It is only after the trudging second theme, a determined restatement of the big tune, and the final peroration, that some sort of resolution is achieved. The highlight of that performance for me, as it should be, was that final peroration, transfiguring the opening, questing theme of the first movement into something glorious – and very powerfully performed, with a more than triple-f sound and superb trumpet and trombone playing. Overall, the strings sounded sumptuous when they needed to be, and the woodwind were expressive and clear. The Halle, in short, sounded wonderful, and it does make a difference to their sound for them not to be socially distanced anymore
Bruckner Discarded Scherzo (1876) and Discarded Finale, ‘Volksfest’ (1878) from Symphony No 4, ed. Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs; Bruckner Symphony No 4, ‘Romantic’ (1878–81), ed. Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs*: Sir Simon Rattle conductor, London Symphony Orchestra
An absorbing evening. The Barbican sounds very boxy and confined after the spaces of the Albert Hall for which this music is ideally suited. I last heard Bruckner 4 live about five years ago at the RAH in an impressive spacious performance by Barenboim and the Berlin Staatskapelle. The bright forward sound of the LSO is very different. The orchestra had brought string players together to share music stands (with masks on) but were still a little under strength – only 6 double basses and 12 first violins. However in the Barbican this really didn’t matter. The Bruckner 4 performance was very fine indeed. Rattle’s tempi were well judged – fastish at times, as in the 3rd movement and the second subject of the first movement, but never disruptively so. The climaxes had the right sort of awe-inspiring visionary blaze, particularly the return of the first movement’s horn theme near the beginning of the last movement and at its close, and were often accompanied by Barenboim-like slowings-down. Rattle once again with the LSO (I made the same comment over a performance of Schubert 9 during lockdown) never fell into the “beautiful sounds for their own sake’ mode or the focus on small details that marred some of the BPO performances I heard him give – here, everything was in the service of the structure and intent of the work. The LSO horns were absolutely outstanding as were the other brass. The woodwind were very impressive indeed too, particularly in the times they follow and glide like a flock of swifts around the horns in the third movement – the first flute was outstandingly effective. The performance was billed as the first of a new scholarly edition of the Symphony by Benjamin -Gunnar Cohrs – but to be frank I couldn’t make out any difference from the standard Nowak and Haas editions, apart from one minute of music towards the end which might have been cut. Maybe some of those inner woodwind parts had been changed but very little else that I could make out.
The first half of the programme was a fascinating glimpse into what Rattle called “Bruckner’s workshop” – earlier discarded versions of parts of the 4th symphony. The first piece was a totally different Scherzo. This started as a solo 4 note horn theme with a rather edgy full orchestral response. The trio was again an Austrian folk tune. This was interesting to hear but frankly much less effective than the ‘hunting’ scherzo Bruckner eventually replaced it with. The second piece was an earlier version of the finale, called a ‘Volksfest’. The main themes of the usual final versions were there in this earlier version, but with a totally different introduction and other ways of developing the main theme. The introduction, slightly insouciant but sinister at the same time, I found rather haunting, and in fact it is still there, I think, in at least one of the Haas/Nowak editions in the juddering string rhythms of the build up to the coda. As I’ve said before in this blog, a bit facetiously, I’d say Bruckner is a mixture of Wagner, Schubert and God. If you over or under emphasise one of these elements in conducting this work, its performance will be less than complete. Someone was saying to his friend as I left the Barbican that ‘it doesn’t get any better than that’. Well, I think there are many ways of performing this great work, which I have known and loved for almost 55 years, and I could envisage and have heard the ‘God’ bit done more effectively – a more inward, perhaps ‘prayerful’, slower performance. But this was a valid, exciting and powerful way of presenting the symphony which was hugely enjoyable, and which got at least the ‘Wagner’ and ‘Schubert’ dimensions of the work just right.
Benjamin Nabarro violin, Gemma Rosefield cello, Tim Horton piano: Haydn Piano Trio in C Hob XV:21 and Dvořák Piano Trio in F minor Op.65.
Neither of these pieces were known to me. The Haydn is a product of his second visit to London, and sounded poised and confident, like the London symphonies. The playing seemed vivid and energetic. I particularly enjoyed the finale. The music is not really memorable, but always enjoyable – ‘entertaining’ in a positive and not dismissive sense.
The Dvorak is a much bigger work, and I didn’t find it that easy to grasp at a first hearing. I liked the finale best. The music was surprisingly shorn of the folky elements one would normally expect from Dvorak – even the second movement, a sort of scherzo, had jagged edges and the sense of dance rhythms constantly forced out of line by interjections and cross-current emphases. The playing seemed passionate, driven and appropriate to this work. I’d like to hear the work again
John's musical journey 