The programme was: Ruth Gipps: Symphony No. 2 in B major, Thomas Adès: The Exterminating Angel Symphony, and Brahms 3.

It’s staggering to think that just on Monday the CBSO would have been performing Rhinegold with BOC, and they performed this same concert in Birmingham on Wednesday evening. They must have had very little time to rehearse these pieces and get down to London. All the more reason then to admire the quality of their playing, and of the interpretations. The CBSO had clearly decided to define their own boundaries in the RAH for their COVID-framed performance and to increase the orchestra (and therefore the utilised hall space) rather than fit within the RAH-determined limits of the ‘stage’. The violins and double basses were therefore extending way into the RAH side stalls. This seemed to me to be a good solution that increased the power and urgency of the music-making. It was great to see Mirga conducting – close-up I was more aware of her quite unorthodox (or so it seemed to me) conducting technique, with very little phrasing encouraged – her arms go up and down together – though with a lot of use of head and eyes for cues. Anyway, whatever the technique, it certainly gets results…..!

The symphony by Ruth Gipps was clearly a journey from some sort of innocence or calm through distress to resolution. There was a memorable main theme that was symphonically developed and worked on throughout. The work is in one continuous movement which, however, falls into several clearly-defined sections, with a tempo di marcia serving as the scherzo, and a nostalgic and heart-felt adagio to follow. The overall thrust is one of optimism, despite some shadows along the way, and the work ends affirmatively. While it had obvious influences from Vaughan Williams and had some of the qualities one might associate with Malcom Arnold, it seemed to have a status of its own and to me seemed a well-crafted and effective piece – another work I don’t know which I will buy a recording of. Indeed I’d never even heard of Ruth Gipps until the Proms brochure came out.  It called for a large orchestra, and Mirga and the CBSO played it extremely well. It might not be a masterpiece but it was definitely worth hearing.

The Adès work calls itself a Symphony, and the programme note made a case for this.  To me the case is not convincing, and the point of this Ades ‘symphony’, it seems to me, is to provide a summary and showcase, a set of profiles, for some of the brilliant and exciting episodes of music Ades has written for the Exterminating Angel opera. There were four movements with mad waltzes – maybe even a hint of tango – a la Ravel – and sinister quiet pieces, maybe also a glimmer of light and hope at one or two points. I found it – as I found the opera – extremely absorbing, and want to listen to it again. I am very disappointed Covid cancellations meant that I never got to hear a planned performance at the RFH of Ades’ ‘The Tempest’, said to be his best opera to date. I am really looking forward to his ballet the Dante Project at ROHCG in October (insh’allah). The performance by the CBSO was exuberant and overwhelming – a magnificent sound!

The Brahms I found less convincing – it is a much more difficult work to carry off, with an uneasy mixture of melancholy and raw agitation, and my more equivocal response might be to do with the way the RAH’s acoustics. conveyed the performance While the inner two movements were beautifully shaped and played, particularly the second movement, the first movement to me sounded marginally too fast to give room for nuances and pointing, while the finale seemed to lack  – maybe the social distancing factor – a really powerful string sound (that may be because of where I was sitting, I will listen again on I-Player) which is needed to give a propulsive forward motion to the music. Also the final fluttering repetitions, like falling leaves, of the symphony’s opening theme in the strings seemed to be lost in the over-loud brass and wind chords at the end. The performance, as it faded into silence, was marred by an idiot shouting ‘bravo’ as soon as the last chord had sounded – he should have been summarily arrested by the ushers and interred in the depths of the RAH.

This was the first Prom concert I’d been to this year which was televised. An already squeezed Arena had even more space roped off to accommodate a giant crane-type object which held a camera ranging across the stage. As all the Proms seem to be far from full this year, it’s not a big issue, but I have seen this machine in use in previous years without taking up anything like as much audience space. I hope this is not setting a precedent for future years……!

The programme was Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Respighi: Concerto gregoriano, and Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 5 in D major, ‘Reformation’. The RPO’s new chief conductor, Vasily Petrenko, was in charge, with Japanese violinist Sayaka Shoji in the Respighi piece. This was Petrenko’s first concert in his new role with the RPO

This was a really engaging and excellent concert, with one work I have never heard before – the Respighi – and one work I know extremely well, the Vaughan Williams, with the Mendelssohn in-between

Petrenko’s conducting was detailed, expressive and vivid, clearly inspiring his players throughout all three works – we are lucky to have him regularly appearing in the UK (very different from yesterday), given his commitments to one of the major orchestras in Russia. He conducted from the score but was very far from having his head in it!

The programming of this concert was very clever -to bring together three pieces of music with a religious theme, and two of them in close fundamental relationship through Gregorian chant being  at the historical roots of Tallis’ music as well as the Respighi piece.

In the Vaughan Williams Tallis piece the RAH’s space and elevations were used to good effect  – there was a clearly separate string section of 7-8 players behind the main orchestral strings, and a quartet of soloists within that main group. The Tallis was taken faster than I’ve heard it some times, but felt suitably spacious and solemn

The Concerto Gregoriano is a violin concerto by Respighi, inspired by the history and music of early Christianity, such as plainsong and Gregorian chant.. Seemingly an early work, written in 1921, it was premiered the following year in Rome. I was unaware of its existence until the Proms brochure came out. Scored for a big orchestra  – 5 horns and a celesta and harp, for instance – it was a lively and colourful piece and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, with a particularly beguiling last movement (splendidly brazen horn opening). The soloist from what I could tell performed her part very well. I am not sure whether impetus for choosing this work came from Petrenko, the BBC or the RPO, but Petrenko clearly has a good nose for neglected works (see for instance his recent disc of Schreker and Zemlinsky. I want to buy a recording of this work to get to know it more – it’s not a masterpiece but it is good fun, and both touching and exciting at times

Readers of this blog may know that Mendelssohn is not my favourite composer but the drive and energy Petrenko and the orchestra gave to their performance kept me listening attentively and to my surprise I found the work not too tweely Victorian or sentimental, and the use of the Lutheran hymn Ein Feste Burg and the Dresden Amen didn’t sound trite. I thought Petrenko and the RPO’s performance of this work was about as good as it gets!

Somehow the whole evening felt as though the Proms spirit was picking up steam – there was a lot of cheering at the end and some of the really special Proms silences – eg in the slow movement of the Mendelssohn. Is understandable concern about returning to live big events beginning to recede? I hope so…..

I am looking forward to the performances Petrenko is giving (I already have tickets for them) of the Britten War Requiem and Mahler 8 in 2022.

The programme was Haydn Symphony No. 103 in E flat major ‘Drumroll’, Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, and Beethoven Symphony No. 4 in B flat major. The conductor was Ben Gernon and the soloist Elisabeth Brauss with the BBC Philharmonic. This was my first Prom in just over 2 years and it felt quite emotional to be back in that enormous arena which I have inhabited most years at some point since 1968. Things were very different though, and of course it is a huge achievement to have got 6 weeks of Proms up and running, given the huge challenges involved over the last few months (indeed tickets for some parts of the Hall only went on sale 10 days ago). Inside the Hall, half the arena was taken up with an extended stage. The Hall Stalls and Loggia / Grand Tier areas felt pleasantly full but most of the upper circle was empty – I guess due to both the vagaries of ticket sales, and that there’s still quite a lot of people worried about attending mass events. I was seated at the side stalls which, in the current reshaped context, meant being right behind the double basses – hence the sound I heard was inevitably unbalanced  – though it was great to be so near the players.

Both the Haydn and the Mozart works in the first half were performed very well, I thought. In the Haydn, the woodwind playing was beautiful, trumpets, horns and drums weren’t over-bearing, rhythms were springy, and the whole performance radiated a sense of enjoyment in shared music-making – nothing was over-driven. The uncomfortable drum roll and the slightly eerie – dies irae-like – string harmonies at the beginning and end of the work weren’t overdone.The darker harmonies and tones in the Mozart were also well conveyed – again, excellent woodwind playing…..The soloist – but it was difficult to hear how she might have sounded from the front (I was listening to her from the side)….sounded as though she had a small precise tone for Mozart, but that is not inappropriate and she produced some sensitive phrasing, as well as precision.

I was not so convinced by the Beethoven – this might have been again a problem from where I was sitting, but there didn’t seem to be enough energy and bite in the string sound. This could have been a problem with the socially distanced strings, and there simply being not enough of the violins and violas, so that woodwind tended to predominate (something they didn’t do in the Haydn and Mozart – Beethoven’s sound is richer and thicker,), or maybe something to do with the orchestra not using period instruments (I missed the thwack of early 19^th c timps) or maybe (looking at his podium posture). There was also some imprecision in the strings at time – e.g. at the beginning of the first movement. Mr Gernon just wasn’t energetic enough in his approach, or not conveying that energy to the audience. Beethoven – unlike Mozart! – does need to be driven, I find

But these are minor qualms – this was a really enjoyable return to the Proms!

 

This was an altogether enthralling and deeply engaging performance.

The set was a circular stage with two ramps for entrances and exits in the middle of the Symphony Hall stalls, with only a few props – gold in pots, chairs and table and a model of Valhalla. The lighting was focused around giant stands, switched on and off very explicitly, which I suppose was making a point about the life lived by the gods in the limelight.

Wagner held utopian socialist views in the 1840’s and early 1850’s, and, though they later became less all-determining in his thinking, they contribute important elements to the development of The Ring, and remained with him till the end of his life. Cosima Wagner’s Diaries in 1877 describe Wagner journeying up the Thames and expressing the view that London was “Alberich’s dream come true – Nibelheim, world domination, activity, work, everywhere the oppressive feeling of steam and fog“. Wagner had already issued a clarion call for “Revolution” in an essay by that name just prior to the May 1849 revolt in Dresden. Like Bakunin, his revolution was a call to instinct and to vitalism. It was a romanticism of revolt that sought the overthrow of states because they suppressed the instinct, the vitality of life. He saw revolution as a “supernatural force” and referred to it as “a lofty goddess.” Wagner wrote: “I [the revolution] am the ever rejuvenating, ever fashioning Life. I will destroy every wrong which has power over men. I will destroy the domination of one over the other, of the dead over the living, of the material over the spiritual, I will shatter the power of the mighty, of the law and of property. Man’s master shall be his own will, his own desire his only law, his own strength his only property. “

How to regenerate the modern world was throughout Wagner’s life an abiding concern – though his operas have very different answers to those questions both in relation to each other and even within the one work. The Ring is itself both informed by the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer (some have even argued for a Christian version of the Ring) and the earlier socialist perspective. Like any great work of art, The Ring has an infinite range of possible interpretations, but one based upon a socialist perspective makes perfect sense for Das Rheingold (less so for Gotterdammerung, say), and of course the famous Bayreuth Centenary Chereau Ring focused on frock-coated top-hatted Victorian capitalist gods.

This Rheingold – or rather RhineGold, since it was sung in an excellent English new translation – makes the Gods celebrities and populist figures – Wotan has a blingy watch, designer shoes, a shell-suit and is constantly speaking to the media (a slogan says ‘Your Lives Matter’), Fricka’s costume has a WAG look to it. The Rhine Girls are seen as in cahoots with the gods to protect the gold from the hoi polloi, and wear glittery mini-dresses, with high heels and selfie sticks . One wears a MAGA hat, and another a bishop’s mitre and cross. Alberich is seen as a Deliveroo cyclist, and the dwarves come across as hoody-wearing outsiders, some also wearing cycling helmets and Deliveroo baskets (the Tarnhelm itself becomes a cycling helmet.) Fasolt and Fafner wear hard hats, and not very smart suits and ties. The theme is therefore definitely one of a divided society, with a privileged elite and many others who are excluded outsiders, becoming a collective ‘other’ who, dressed in rainbow hoodies, both menace and adulate the gods at the end of the opera (see picture below.) Alberich comes across, therefore, more sympathetically than in some productions – he is making the best of one of the few chances of life-betterment open to him when he renounces love and takes the gold.

As an interpretation it was consistent and convincing. I suppose what it leaves out is the whole element of the despoiling of Nature by human beings which is another interpretation of the role of the Rhine maidens and the gold, and the end of Gotterdammerung which implies some sort of return to a ‘natural’ state reborn – and of course that is also what is behind Erda’s intervention at the end of Rheingold – the warning of Nature. The approach taken perhaps also doesn’t take sufficiently into account the fact that Wotan is responsible for contracts and treaties, for the realm of public order – this is part of his whole dilemma in Walkure. We will never know now how Graham Vick (who died two weeks before the opening night) might have continued this Ring, but Richard Willacy as Director clearly carried out the spirit of what Vick would have wanted.

Eric Greene was outstanding as Wotan, with stature and voice for the role (fraying a bit sometimes on the top notes, but sounding magnificent in his final reflections where the sword motif is introduced). And equally Loge played by Brenden Gunnell was brilliantly performed, as a gay hipster or heavy metal biker (red string vest, leather jacket, lots of metal, painted red nails) who was also sinister as Wotan’s violent enforcer. Chrystal E Williams as Fricka had a beautiful voice but her diction was sometimes unclear. Fasolt played by Keel Watson and Fafner by Andrew Slater were very good indeed – excellent voices, good diction and Slater had a wonderful line in sly menace (and, as he should, Watson showed the vulnerability of Fasolt). Alberich was well sung and characterised by Ross Ramgobin but his diction was sometimes unclear and maybe he sounded slightly underpowered at times – he was also ‘guilty’ of over-acting at some key moments. The huge – by Covid standards – CBSO offered wonderful -playing. Alpesh Chauhan’s performance by timing was really quite slow – I made it two hours 35 minutes, almost a Goodall-like speed, but it never felt as though the music was dragging, and climaxes were well pointed. As in all good Wagner conducting there seemed to be a seamless arc of music from the CBSO and Chauhan, with an onward measured flow which was carefully varied and correlated to meet the different moods of the music and what’s happening on stage without ever becoming disjointed.

One of the best things I’ve seen in ages!!

My last visit to the Buxton Festival was a mixed affair – John Casken’s new work The Shackled King, a music drama based on the King Lear story, was the main ‘second half’ work, and with it in the first half a compilation called “Brunnhilde’s Dream”, a sequence of songs by Wagner, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Zemlinsky, Berg, Szymanowski, Henze, and Muller-Hermann, devised by Barry Millington. Impressively, both works featured Sir John Tomlinson, bass; and Rozanna Madylus, mezzo-soprano, with musicians from the group ‘Counterpoise’ – violin, trumpet, saxophone and clarinet, and piano.

The great treat in all this was hearing John Tomlinson, now well over 70, singing some of ‘Wotan’s Farewell’ from Die Walkure, accompanied by a piano. Beautifully sung, even though his voice is frayed and not what it was, this was unexpected and wonderful. I enjoyed the sequence of songs in Brunnhilde’s Dream, but they, or I, could have done with surtitles or at least flagging up where we had got to – I lost track some of the time and one really needed to know some of the details of what the Brunnhilde figure was singing about

‘The Shackled King’ was interesting, though that was only intermittently due to Casken’s music. John Tomlinson played Lear, and Rozanna Madylus a combination of Cordelia, Regan, Goneril and the Fool, using a combination of spoken, sprechstimme and sung voices. Tomlinson projected the spoken words of Lear excellently, and with real power, and Rozanna Madylus’s acting was energetic and full of interest. I didn’t always feel that Casken’s music was adding much to Shakespeare’s wonderful poetry, but (my ultimate test) if I was asked what of this will I remember in 12 months time, it would probably be The Shackled King  – so the work clearly made some impact on me!  

The programme was Rimsky-Korsakov’s ’The Tale of Tsar Saltan’ Suite;  Rachmaninov’s The Rock, and Stravinsky’s The Firebird: Suite (1945 compilation)

This was an enjoyable concert with two relative rarities. All three pieces were in a sense in the business of telling stories, with lots of brilliant sounds, evocative but with nothing that really chilled the soul or warmed the heart, or gave sustenance to the soul at this difficult time. They were great orchestral display pieces – and it’s always good to hear an orchestra being put through its paces – but maybe not ultimately very satisfying – though often thrilling. The Halle sounded very well and particularly in the ‘Firebird’ offered some beautiful woodwind and horn playing. It would be interesting to see some of the Rimsky-Korsakov operas performed in this country – maybe they have been, but I have never encountered a production. I saw a wonderful display in Moscow of some of the design models for the original sets of Rimsky’s operas’ first productions. If not in the UK, maybe I should try to see them performed in Moscow or St Petersburg. One day, perhaps………  

The Rachmaninov piece – written when he was 20 – is obviously prodigiously mature to be written such a young composer, but it is not, to be honest, very interesting

The programme was on the short side – about 75 mins – and so the Halle played the ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ from the same Tsar Saltan opera as an encore

At the end of this sparkling well-put-together programme, brilliantly played by the Halle, I did have a ‘so what?’ question buzzing in my mind – if music has the ability to affect our emotions, intellect, and psychology, to assuage our loneliness or incite our passions, what was this concert doing? I’m not sure…..

Fleur Barron, the Singaporean-British mezzo who is clearly making a name for herself gave a very good lunchtime recital at the Buxton Festival. Entitled “Between Dark and Daylight”, it included works by Clara Schumann, Brahms, Ives, Dutilleux, Korngold, Cage, Chen Yi, Florence Price, Li Yinghai, Chinese Folksongs and Schubert.

I didn’t have access to the words so it wasn’t always clear what Ms Barron was trying to communicate, though she gave good snappy introductions to a number of the songs, and the over-arching theme is obviously highly relevant at this time

I particularly liked the Chines folksongs, the piece by Li Yinghai, and the Ives’ songs. But all were interesting to listen to and Ms Barron seemed to have a lovely voice, particularly in the lower registers. I came away from the hour-long recital glad that I’d gone and feeling at peace with the world (for a bit, anyway)

This was a performance that had two contrasting aspects. It was very well sung and played by the Early Opera Company under Christian Curnyn.  All the singers – (Galatea – Anna Dennis; Acis – Samuel Boden; Damon / Coridon – Jorge Navarro Colorado; Polyphemus – Edward Grint, and Chorus – David de Winter) were strong, clearly well versed in Baroque style and having no problems with the ornamentation. Each aria was a pleasure to listen to, and the authentic instruments gave glinting colours to the music, from the recorders, the oboes and other instruments, that you would never have heard from a conventional band .

However, Acis and Galatea is a Masque, in an early 18^th century pastoral vein. Its conventions are impossibly remote for an audience 300 years later, so clearly a production ‘angle’ that gives the work meaning for a modern audience is necessary. The approach chosen for this production seemed to be: set the work in a 1962 (why that date?) Mid-West University symposium on Handel’s Acis and Galatea and 18^th century conventions, entitled “The games we play: a study of worldly and unworldly love through Acis and Galatea”.  have the actors sitting round a bare black box stage waiting for their turn, and show some connected images and lecture points on a PowerPoint screen (disregarding the fact that they wouldn’t have had PowerPoint slides in 1963 !). Eventually, as Acis and Galatea become divine, all the characters on stage join them in their divinity amidst a field of golden corn, and the conference is abandoned. Regie-theatre is unfairly abused by many people and in general terms I support what many directors of operas are trying to do to rescue works from banality or over-familiarity. But this did seem to be incoherent. Granted this was another performance in a shoe-string, funding restricted by socially-distanced audiences. But there are so many things that could have been done with this work – a black box stage with thoughtful lighting, or with a backdrop of videoed images could have been an examination of what love means in this opera. Or you could have gone full throttle on the symposium concept and have gradually evolving , violent and angry confrontation – finally murderous  – among the participants. What we saw on stage just seemed to be incoherent, I’m afraid

So I felt I would have been better off closing my eyes throughout the performance. It seemed a bit of a wasted opportunity. I also – though again one wants the Festival to profit where it can – thought it jarred to have an interval after about half an hour of music

So not one of my better outings, I’m afraid

After a couple of weeks of seeing various, very worthy, but inevitably cramped, opera productions, with little money to spend on sets or costumes or concept, it was a bit of a relief and an excitement to experience a full scale all-stops-pulled major opera production, which Don Giovanni at Covent Graden definitely was. I think I last saw a production of Don Giovanni at ENO about 5 years ago, and around the same time I also saw a production in Vienna. This was a better performance than either of them.

Don Giovanni is a complex work, with, like the Marriage of Figaro, reflections on the nature of masters and servants which reminds you that the French Revolution was two years away when this was first performed in Prague in 1787, and also much to say what ‘liberty’ means and how ‘liberty’ related to living in community – an issue which is of course highly topical in the current Covid context. But this was more than ‘business as usual at Covent Garden’ for three reasons:

1. Some quite exceptional conducting by Constantin Trinks. As I have said in this blog many times, slower is usually better, and this was markedly less rushed than usual, with time for the music to breathe, and rhythms to be properly sprung and harmonies savoured, and the ROHCG orchestra responded with tight playing, offering delicacy and beauty (particularly in accompanying the big arias) when needed. The overture was a master class in how to conduct Mozart

2. A really interesting production by Kaspar Holten. The revolving tower/rooms set with video projections on them for the most part worked well in illuminating the characters and their movements, and there is something essentially seedy, furtive and enclosed about the way Don Giovanni behaves, an unwillingness to open up and embrace a wider world that seems to work very well with this approach to the set. The two times when I didn’t think this helped the meaning of the words and music were the party scene at the end of Act 1, which seemed incoherent and would be difficult for anyone who didn’t know the opera well to work out, because there was no space for the party-goers to gather in one place; also the point at which from a higher level the Commendatore extends his hand to Don Giovanni to invite him to dinner – because Don Giovanni was at a lower level than the Commendatore, the text was completely subverted. However I suppose that given that Holten’s view is that the Hell destined for Don Giovanni is one of isolation, of a perpetual lack of community and connection, maybe it makes sense. The end scene, with Don Giovanni pinned down by his own loneliness, and the impassive walls (almost like the Masons’ HQ in Covent Garden!) was very effective. The interactions between the characters seemed natural and well-done. I also liked the way Holten gave the female characters much more individuality than they sometimes have, much more ability to make their own choices – the women in this production know what they are getting into when they deal with Don Giovanni. I suppose the overall approach is a bit hyper-active, with all those white-veiled ladies drifting from room to room and the changing videos, but I liked it

Some much better than average singing and acting: Riccardo Fassi was an excellent Don Giovanni, with consistently beautiful tones and always acting well. The other stand-out star was Adele Zaharia as Donna Anna, whose big Act 2 aria was one of the best sung I have heard live – up there with Margaret Price, I thought.   Frédéric Antoun’s Don Ottavio was also very fine – a particular highlight being ‘Il Mio Tresoro’, and indeed he convinced me that Don Ottavio is not a total bore whose arias hitherto I have rather switched off to in my live listening in the past. I was less convinced by Leporello (Paulo Bordogna) whose acting seemed understated, and Nicole Chevalie, whose Donna Elvira sounded a bit shrill at times. But no-one was less than adequate and the overall impression was of a high standard of performance

This was a really up-lifting and fine performance which engaged everyone and was wonderfully heart-warming. I have heard this work twice before in live performance – a very good Glyndebourne production, which maybe was a bit too perfect in retrospect, but very beautiful to look at (and it may be that I had had too much Glyndebourne-related champagne to focus sufficiently on the memory of what it was like), and a performance a couple of years ago – see earlier in this blog – in concert with the LSO, Simon Rattle and the estimable Lucy Crowe as the Vixen and Gerald Finlay as the Forester , which was lovely, but not the same as a theatre show.

This production, done to a very tight design budget, was extremely effective. A recycling bin  – linking of course with urban foxes – stood in for the vixen’s lair, the bar of the pub and several other places. Children flying kites on long poles represented all the insects of the forest, and there were some quite clever masks for some of the creatures – the dog, the owl, the badger – while not giving the vixen and dog fox a mask.  The ending, where the Forester gazes into the forest and sees something of the divine in all the activity around him, was marvellously done, with very effective coloured lighting and a great blaze of brightness on the final note, together with dramatic use of the Holland Park House door, which was flung open to reveal a golden Vixen. There were some great sunflowers accompanying the Vixen’s marriage! Very good use was made of the opera ‘house’ space – children, actors came in at different times from all of the 6 or so ways into the auditorium available to them, and the singers were able to use the space in front of the orchestra as well as behind them.

There needs to be a real company feel to any performance of this work – there are a lot of children playing frogs, vixen cubs, insects etc, a cast of smaller characters, a chorus, and three singers with a big part – the Vixen, the Forester and the Dog Fox. That sense of happy company interaction, of people really enjoying themselves as part of a temporary community, came across very effectively. Of the three big parts, Jennifer France was outstanding as the Vixen – a powerfully sung, energetic even charismatic performance. Julia Sporsén was an excellent Fox. Grant Doyle was not the most poetic Forester (Thomas Allen on the old Rattle recording and Gerald Finlay on the new one make much more poetic impact with the words and the phrasing they give them) but was perfectly adequate while the stand-in Poacher of Ashley Riches got a big cheer from the audience. The work was sung in English but very little of it was audible, I assume because of the inevitably strange Holland Park acoustics – so thank goodness for surtitles

Curiously the orchestra sounded more together, louder and more expressive than the previous evening. Under Jessica Cottis, I thought they played really well, and the conductor seemed to have real expressive power in her gestures and beat that was getting across to the orchestra and positively energising them. The reduced orchestra was really not a problem, except perhaps in that final blaze of glory, which does need a full-bodied string sound (which a total of 9 strings isn’t going to achieve)

This is a strange work in many ways and one that really invites you to more listening – I shall look forward to what I hope will be the postponed ENO production happening in Feb/March 2022