Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer. RAH, BBC Proms, 6/8/25

Beethoven Symphony No. 7 in A major; Bartók – Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. Dorottya Láng, Judith; Krisztián Cser, Duke Bluebeard. Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer conductor

This was a late choice of Prom – it was one I flagged up when booking, decided against, dithered, and finally bought a ticket for…..The BFO and Fischer are always worth hearing, though……..

This Beethoven 7 was a performance that emphasised how crude some of the period instrument performances can be, with their thwacked over-prominent timpani, blaring horns and wiry strings. It was joyous, finely balanced, beautifully played and the energy came as it were from inside the music and the orchestra, rather than feeling externally imposed. The orchestra wasn’t huge – for instance 6 cellos and 4 double basses – and placement of players helped the clarity and energy – double basses centre back row, split violins, and the timpani (period-type, and played with hard sticks) were placed behind the violas and cellos, blending in more with the overall orchestral sound, and not being allowed to predominate. Ivan Fischer allowed each player to breathe in the tempi he set– this couldn’t be called a driven performance, yet in allowing the players time to breathe, Fischer inspired infectious excitement in the sprung rhythms. The performance radiated geniality – maybe a Viennese flavour (though that’s an insult to a Hungarian orchestra) – but with split second precision – I loved the clarity of the timpani off-the-beat interventions in the scherzo, for instance. All the woodwind playing was outstanding, but particularly the flutes and oboes. The tempo for the finale was surprisingly fast, but the virtuosity of the strings was such that they managed all the notes without smudging them, while conveying both enjoyment and excitement. And the tempo set for the slow movement was exactly right – slowish, in comparative terms, but not ponderous. I found this performance about the best I’ve heard in recent years.

The hall was sold out and I suspect a lot of people had come mainly for the Beethoven. The audience stayed on for the second half but I sensed many in the audience didn’t know the work, and had problems with its idiom – there was quite a lot of coughing and restlessness at times. Also, curiously, when I van Fischer, in his role as the Bard, opened the opera with the spoken-word introduction, sections of the audience tittered at some of the lines…..why……..?!!

I am not as clued up on Bartok as I should be at my age. I have recordings of all the significant works, but very rarely play them. The only works I could really say I know well are the Concerto for Orchestra, the 3rd piano concerto, and this one. I keep meaning to have a sustained session with the quartets and never quite get round to it…..I got to know this work when I was a teenager through the old LSO Kertesz recording, which I bought second-hand. I last heard it live about 14 years ago conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen with John Tomlinson and the Philharmonia. I also know that I went to its Proms premiere in 1971 (an extraordinary concert in retrospect conducted by Boulez, with Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart, and with Brendel playing the Schoenberg piano concerto in the first half….) and I also heard Boulez conduct it again in 1976 (taking in La Mer and L’apres-midi d’une faune in the first half!!).

The Bartok piece is not an ideal piece for the RAH – it has its massive climaxes, like the 5th door, but also a lot of the work is quiet, and complex harmonically, and must be difficult to hear in the upper ranges of the hall. It is also, like Pelleas and Melisande, an oblique, enigmatic work deliberately designed to create multiple meanings and uncertainty – which again is difficult for those encountering the work for the first time (people round me were flipping through their programmes, I guess trying to understand what was going on). There were other oddities going on round me – one guy behind me made a sudden dash for the exit before the opening of the final door, while somebody else struggled for 5 minutes taking his jacket off just before door 4 was opened, creating a whole maelstrom of chair squeaks and grunts).

Nevertheless, I found myself totally gripped by this performance – with surtitles and my side stalls seating near the stage, I felt fully involved in the action. I have always understood the work to be about the irreconcilable differences between men and women – or, perhaps, THIS man and THIS woman. It’s also about memory, people’s privacy and, yes, possessiveness as well (in both people). It works well in the concert hall and did so this evening, with the two singers on either side of the conductor, never looking at each other, without scores and utterly isolated. Judith made good use of her long hair at various points – gripping it, burying her face in it towards the end. Both the singers were Hungarian.  Krisztián Cser as Bluebeard was utterly right in the part – tall, with clear diction, subtle infections of tone, and a slightly rasping deep voice with a wide range – he sung memorably about the tears when the 6th door was opened. Dorottya Láng as Judith looked equally convincing – tall, long blonde hair – and some of her singing in the quieter moments was beautifully phrased. She was a bit overwhelmed at time by the orchestra and struggled once with some of the very low-placed passages in her part. As Ivan Fischer was keen to point out in the programme notes, the Budapest orchestra has this work in their blood, and he further claims one has to know Hungarian to play the work well, so intertwined in the work are how the Hungarian words are spoken and how the melodic material for the voices is developed (like Janacek). Certainly there was some glorious playing  – sweeping strings in the run up to the opening of the final door, the splendour of door 5 (though why wasn’t the RAH organ used? – an organist was advertised in the programme), and the glittering sounds of the Treasury were some of the memories I have of their playing.

A good Proms foot-thumping ovation followed at the end of this very fine concert. A pity there was no encore – but what could you possibly play after this devastating work?

Boulez / Mahler – BBCSO, Lintu. RAH, BBC Proms 4/8/25

Boulez, Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna; Mahler Das klagende Lied (original version, 1880). Natalya Romaniw soprano; Jennifer Johnston mezzo-soprano; Russell Thomas tenor; James Newby baritone. Constanza Chorus, BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hannu Lintu conductor

It is now 57 years since I went to my first Prom. I missed out on them for many years but even so, I have been to at least one Prom for about 37 of those 57 years. They have offered some of the most overwhelming musical experiences of my life

So, my first Prom of 2025……. As usual with the Proms, the first few weeks are the least interesting part of the 8-week festival and the unmissable concerts tend to proliferate later in the season. There seem to have been, from reviews and what I’ve heard on BBC Sounds, two highlights so far: one was Yunchan Lim playing the Rachmaninov 4th piano concerto, with wonderful lucidity and poetry; the other was a repeat of the extraordinarily good performance by the Halle and Kahchun Wong I heard in January in Manchester of Mahler 2, which sounded glorious over my headphones, and received a standing ovation according to the BBC announcer.

In this concert I liked the idea of having another attempt to appreciate Boulez, plus there looked to be a strong cast for Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied. I have only heard this work once before live, at the Mahler Festival I went to in Leipzig just over two years ago. The performance I heard then was of the revised 1898 version – this Proms one was of the earlier version, and with a much stronger group of singers, particularly Natalya Romaniw, fresh from her triumph as Sieglinde at Covent Garden, and Russell Thomas, who has sung multiple roles there, including Otello.

The first thing to be said about this concert- extraordinary to me from years of experiencing this Festival – was that the hall was essentially full (see photo). For Boulez and scarcely popular Mahler this was very unexpected. Moreover, the audience was still and gripped throughout – far fewer than the normal amounts of coughing and spluttering. Maybe there is really an increased demand for classical music in these troubled times, or maybe it was the pull of a star singer

Rather to my surprise, this was the first Boulez piece I’ve ever really got my head around, and quite enjoyed. There were several reasons for this. The programme notes’ suggestion not to look for emotion in this piece but regard it as perhaps like viewing a monument was helpful – you viewed the edifice from all sides, and came back to where you started from. The notes also pointed out the key motif in the work, first played by the oboe, and that helped me in following its iterations, and how the various rhythmic pulses gradually take over. Thirdly, I love the sound of tuned songs. The piece reminded me of Messiaen’s Et Expecto Resurectionem mortuorum, though that has a very different background and context. I found myself just listening to the work. a bit zoned out and letting the sounds washed over me, in the way I’ve always read should be the approach to listening to Boulez but which I’ve never quite managed before. The audience responded warmly at the end, with three curtain calls – two guys near me stood in appreciation

The version we heard of Das Klagende Lied was completed by Mahler when he was 20, and is remarkable in several ways. It was rejected by both Brahms and Liszt for various prizes, thus managing to alienate the champions of two competing tendencies in 19th century German music. It is astonishing in the way various phrases and orchestral colours from the work make their way into the 1st and 2nd symphonies via in some cases Lieder eines Fahrenden gesellen . Thus, for instance the trio part of the third movement of the 1st symphony, and the brass chorale theme of the finale of the 2nd Symphony boys have their origins in this work, as well as the double bass arpeggios which follow climactic moments in the 2nd. The sound world is immediately that of the mature Mahler – the trumpet calls, the bird song, the use of folk-like material. It is also impressively scored, though gross and prodigious in the utilisation of the large forces involved – neither the 300 plus chorus or even the need for having 6 soloists are really justified by the sparing use made of them. There’s also what sounds like a very large off-stage band thrown into the mix as well…. Inevitably the influence of Wagner is there in the background- e.g. the Prelude to Act 3 of Lohengrin at the beginning of Part 3. But, all in all. Das Klagende Lied commands attention for its 65 minutes – it has some strong melodic material, the grotesque story carries you along, and there are no real longueurs.

I was slightly behind the soloists in the side stalls so am not really able to comment on the quality of their performance – none of them have that much to do. The power and clarity of the two boy soprano/altos was astonishing….The BBC Symphony gave what sounded to me like a committed performance, albeit with one or two slips on entries, and with horns and woodwind particularly good. The large chorus was excellent. I’ve not come across Hannu Lintu live before – he had very good stick technique and was clearly enjoying marshalling his considerable resources.

This isn’t a work I’d want to come back to very often but it is much more than an academic curiosity and for a 20 year old, it is an extraordinary achievement. Apart from Wagner and Bruckner, it is difficult to think of many other composers working at this time with such confidence and deftness in writing for such large forces

Faure, Penelope,  Bayern Staatsoper, Prinzregententheater, Munich, 23/7/25

Conductor, Susanna Mälkki; Director, Andrea Breth; Designer, Raimund Orfeo Voigt; Costumes, Ursula Renzenbrink; Lighting, Alexander Koppelmann. Ulysse, Brandon Jovanovich; Eumée, Thomas Mole; Antinoüs, Loïc Félix; Eurymaque, Leigh Melrose; Léodès, Joel Williams; Ctésippe , Zachary Rioux; Pisandre, Dafydd Jones; A Shepherd, Soloist(s) of the Tölz Boys’ Choir; Pénélope, Victoria Karkacheva; Euryclée, Rinat Shaham; Cléone, Valerie Eickhoff

Once more, a work I have never heard before and will never hear again (I have been very good this trip in organising the avoidance of Rhinegold, Lohengrin and sundry other favourites I might have gone to in Munich, though thinking about it I should have gone to this opera on the 21/7 instead of the so-called  Baroque concert, and tried to get to the Jonas Kaufmann recital on 23rd). This was my last night in Munich before returning to the UK.

Somehow, I always think of Faure as a 19th century composer but in fact his dates are 1845 -1924 – thus he lived, for instance, 6 years beyond Debussy’s death. Penelope was written between 1907-1912 and premiered in 1913 (the same year, in fact a few weeks before, The Rite of Spring). I had no idea he’d written an opera – in fact he wrote two. The only works I know of his are the Requiem, of course, some songs and some chamber music works. So I was fascinated to hear what this sounded like. I assumed something like Saint-Saens (the work was dedicated to him) but with Wagnerian overlays.

The plot is a fairly straight-forward one from the Odyssey – Penelope has been waiting for many years for the return of her husband, Odysseus, King of Ithaca. She has many suitors wanting to marry her on the assumption Odysseus is dead. She’s been promising these suitors she will choose between them once she has finishing weaving a shroud but every night she unpicks the day’s work and at the same time keeps watch for Odysseus’ ship. Odysseus arrives at the palace disguised as a beggar and is recognised by his old nurse Euryclea. The presumed beggar meets Penelope and offers to help her defeat the suitors. He claims to be a fugitive Cretan king who has seen Odysseus alive at his court. In the final act the suitors have again arrived in the place and Penelope tells them that they must decide which one will win her hand by holding a competition to see who can draw Odysseus’ bow. Not one of them succeeds. The beggar steps forward and draws the bow with ease, before turning to shoot the suitors. Odysseus and Penelope are happily reunited.

In the event, I’m sorry to say,  i didn’t enjoy this at all – it is not often I retire from the field baffled and rather annoyed, but it was the case with this rather dire evening. There were several reasons for this. 

I. As I had noticed when I was at this theatre 3 years ago listening to Capriccio – but the situation seems to have got worse since then – the positioning of the surtitles makes them very difficult to read – too much light prevents the white on black being clear enough. This is not my eyesight – I heard (I think) others saying the same thing…there were mutterings about ‘oben’. This wouldn’t haven’t been such a big issue (after all surtitles didn’t exist until the early 90’s, so I would have grown up without any indication at all in detail of what people were singing on stage and would just have had to rely on my memory of the story). but I think part of the problem with my experience with this opera and this production might have been that it observes the classical unities (like Racine) so quite a lot of the action is reported on rather than seen. That’s a problem if you can’t see the surtitles and your French isn’t that good….

2. The music turned out to be sort of sultry-sub-Tristan-ish with Debussy-ish overtones. It’s far too unvarying, with little colour and light, and more or less the same moderato pacing throughout. I wasn’t engaged by it. Pelleas is in a different universe of achievement.

3. Given the problem with the surtitles, I was reliant on piecing together what was going on on stage from what I knew of the story as above. This proved however exceptionally difficult, as this production has to be one of the more extreme versions of regie-theater I’ve seen. If I told you –truthfully – that at the end of the first half of the opera I was still unclear who Penelope was on stage, this gives you a sense of the difficulties…..One of the issues was that throughout most of the work, the director had clearly told everyone to move as little as possible, and if they did, they were to move extremely slowly and ritualistically,, so the normal means by which one would connect a voice heard with someone on stage wasn’t available. The main set for both halves was 4 or so boxes which created different rooms with different groups of people within them, and which could be moved to left or right (Die Schweigsame Frau had much the same concept last Saturday). However the different boxes meant there wasn’t much interaction between the different groups – again failing, therefore, to give visual clues as to what was going on. In addition it looked to me as though there were doubles of some characters, making life even more difficult. Each half began with a baffling sculpture hall, where a number of Greek-type statues were displayed and through which somone in a wheel chair was pushed. In the second half this seemed to be Odysseus, pushed by Penelope (this might have been the other way round for the first half), though why he was in a wheel-chair wasn’t clear – he seemed to get out of it and was totally mobile by the time he was engaged in the bow stretching match. This latter was incomprehensibly staged, – though it must have something to do with the female athlete performing a bow stretching activity – as was the killing of the suitors, who seemed to be hung up on hooks and then were seen running off stage. Among the boxes slowly moving across the stage in the second half was what looked like a butcher’s cold store, with 4-5 carcasses. What this was meant to signify? I was truly at a loss with this production…… 

Odysseus in a white suit seemed to be present on Ithaca from about half way through the first half. He didn’t seem to adopt the beggar’s disguise at all, as far as I could make out, nor was there, in terms of action on stage, any great flurry of discovery at the climax of the work. Various characters wandered around who I couldn’t effectively identify – including a boy who i guess might have been Telemachus.

The director clearly had a very thought-through understanding of what she wanted to achieve in this dream-like production, but was unable to convey this to me, and maybe others. I am sure I would have been fully enlightened had I read the programme book -but why should I have to? I guess I could have prepared more diligently but I am not sure how much it would have helped. It seems to me to be a mistake, perhaps, to adopt such a style of direction for a work that will be unfamiliar to most people in the audience

I should add that Victoria Karkacheva and Brandon Jovanovich both sung very well, as far as I could tell…….

R.Strauss, Die Liebe der Danae, Bayern Staatsoper, Munich 22/7/25

Conductor, Sebastian Weigle; Director, Claus Guth; Designer, Michael Levine; Costumes, Ursula Kudrna; Lighting, Alessandro Carletti; Jupiter, Christopher Maltman; Mercury, Ya-Chung Huang; Pollux, Vincent Wolfsteiner; Danae, Malin Byström; Xanthe, Erika Baikoff; Midas, Andreas Schager; Four Kings, Martin Snell, Bálint Szabó, Paul Kaufmann, Kevin Conners; Semele, Sarah Dufresne; Europe, Evgeniya Sotnikova; Alkmene, Emily Sierra; Leda, Avery Amereau

 I had a pleasant lunch with some old friends who were also going to the Strauss work in the evening, and in fact I also had a drink with them during the interval of the opera. I had a slight drama on coming to the theatre (the first time I have been in it for 3 years) – I was initially refused entry to the theatre! This was something to do with malfunctioning bar codes but a very efficient box office soon had me fixed up with a new ticket

This is the final opera Strauss wrote before Capriccio, and was composed between 1938 and 1940. Apart from a public dress rehearsal in 1944 it was never performed in Strauss’ life time (the initial run was cancelled after the assassination attempt on Hitler) and the inaugural production was in Salzburg in 1952. The librettist is Josef Gregor, although his work incorporates a design sketch left by Hofmannsthal. I can’t resist Wikipedia’s quotes on that initial dress rehearsal – “Rudolf Hartmann, the opera’s original producer, wrote ……. ‘Towards the end of the second scene (act 3) Strauss stood up and went down to the front row of stalls. His unmistakeable head stood out in lonely silhouette against the light rising from the pit. The Viennese were playing the wonderful interlude before the last scene (‘Jupiter’s renunciation’, Strauss once called it) with an unsurpassably beautiful sound. Quite immobile, totally oblivious to all else, he stood listening. Hartmann went on to describe how, as the performance continued, those who witnessed the scene, (were) ‘profoundly moved and stirred to our depths, sensed the almost physical presence of our divinity, art… Several moments of profound silence followed after the last notes died away…’ Krauss, the conductor spoke a few sentences outlining the significance of these last days in Salzburg. Strauss looked over the rail of the pit, raised his hands in a gesture of gratitude and spoke to the orchestra in a voice choked with tears: ‘Perhaps we shall meet again in a better world’. He was unable to say any more… Silent and deeply moved, everyone present remained still as he left the auditorium.” This does have some relevance to this production – see below

This is yet another Strauss opera I have never seen live before and will probably never see again……. and it looked in prospect to be an enticing event: the production has a starry cast  – Maltman, Schager (shouldn’t he be rehearsing at Bayreuth?) and Bystrom – and a known quantity as a director in Claus Guth, whose 2 recent productions of Salome I have seen this year. It also received some very positive press reviews when the production was new in February.  I did ask Gemini, Google’s AI tool, if there had ever been a performance of this work in the UK. The response was “Based on the information available, the most notable UK “performance” was a live radio broadcast by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Opera Chorus on April 2, 1980. This was later released as an unofficial CD recording.  It’s important to note that this was a radio broadcast, not a staged opera production in a theatre. Opera companies rarely stage “Die Liebe der Danae” due to its considerable vocal demands and complex stage directions. It is generally considered a “rarity” in the operatic repertoire”. So there………………This I think had Norman Bailey in the Jupiter role, conducted by Mackerras

The plot involves the following: King Pollux of Eos is bankrupt. He wants to marry his daughter Danae to someone rich and the obvious target is the wealthy King Midas, whose very touch turns things to gold. Midas was originally a donkey herder, but who has become King of Lydia through his gold creation skills. This gift to Midas, of being able to transform all he touches to gold, comes about thanks to Jupiter, and what is behind this ‘gift’ is that Jupiter, an inveterate womaniser, knows that Danae will marry Midas and wants to take Midas’s place on the wedding night. At the same time he has to be careful about his wife Juno. Midas is not meant according to the terms of his agreement to woo Danae but he does and they fall in love. Jupiter argues with Midas, who now does not want to give him his beloved Danae. Jupiter, angry at this breach of their agreement, then turns Midas’ gift into a curse with an immediate fulfilment – when Midas embraces Danae, she turns to gold. Midas then asks Jupiter to turn her back to her human self and let her choose whom she wants as her lover. Danae comes back to human form and chooses Midas, despite the poverty that she will have once Jupiter withdraws his golden gift. Jupiter accepts his defeat and renounces his quest for Danae.

It’s a long work – I would guess 2 hrs 40 minutes. It is always a great pleasure when you’re listening to a work you’ve never heard before, and when you discover it has some wonderful music in it, which is being performed to the highest standards possible, and which has a clear production that accompanies and clarifies what is going on on stage and in the music, rather than obfuscates. And that is what was happening here – yes, OK, there are some longueurs, which if it were heard and seen more frequently you might want to cut. But when the work is performed rarely even in Germany, you accept that it has to be heard intact. I would say that for the last 40 minutes of Acts 1 and 2, and for most of Act 3 the music is on fire, and, when sung as gloriously as it was by Schager, Bystrom and Maltman, it seems in the moment as good as anything else Strauss ever wrote. And the last 15minutes or so of the work are wonderful, a Wotan’s Farewell for Jupiter and an affirmation of human love.

Claus Guth’s production was very good. The work is set in what must be a New York skyscraper (see photo) and King Pollux resembles unmistakeably Donald Trump. The skyscraper set remains the same throughout, and various props denote the bedroom where Danae, Jupiter and Midas have to sort out their relationship, and the hut where Midas and Danae live in Act 3.  There’s a high gantry above the stage where Juno spies on what her husband is up to and throws some very effective thunderbolts into the action, and where Mercury cynically comments. The chorus and extras  – of whom there are a lot – are very  well-directed. Though the stage is quite often very busy in the first half and crowded, the action remains very clear. Particularly moving is the handling of the last 20 minutes or so of the second half – the citizens of Eos, we begin to understand, are morphing from the materialistic crowds of Act 1 into the citizens of Munich in 1945, wandering around looking shell-shocked , waving white flags, with images of a destroyed Munich in black and white on a back of stage screen filmed in slow motion. Alongside these images we also see a film of Strauss with a serious contemplative face walking in his mountain retreat. The point here, I think, is to link in a positive way Strauss’s withdrawal from public life from the mid-30’s onwards, and his dissociation from the Nazi regime, with Danae’s decision to choose true love over power, money and material possessions.

Between them, Strauss, Gregor and in the background Hofmannsthal have introduced quite a lot of surely conscious Wagnerian echoes into this work, particularly of Act 3 of Siegfried. Mercury is Loge, Jupiter is Wotan, complete in this production with cloak and spear, and Midas is Siegfried (only emphasised by the fact that Schager and Maltman are playing precisely these roles in London next March). Jupiter’s talk is of renunciation, as Wotan’s is, and this too ties in with the sense of withdrawal, of melancholy in the work’s later pages.

The characterisation of the three main characters is very well done – Danae is shown at first as image conscious, acting like a fashion model, and gradually transforming herself from the brittle character of Act 1 to the self-aware figure of Act 3. Jupiter changes from the brittle cynical and manipulative figure he is in Act 1 to the weary Gotterdammerung of Act 3. Midas changes from the embittered puppet of Act 1 to the content, whole, person of Act 3. And the three singers performing these roles were simply glorious. Schager is astonishing – his voice never tires, sounds effortless throughout, and, as a great heldentenor should, rides easily over the loudest orchestral climaxes (his voice is also, like many other great singers, instantly recognisable), alongside offering sensitive phrasing and excellent diction. Maltman, as with his singing of Wotan in London recently, brings the care of a lieder singer to the role, and through his voice alone can chart that transformation of character I’ve described. His singing about the renunciation of human love was beyond praise. Malin Bystrom does not have quite the sort of creamy Strauss soprano sound some have (cf my review of Intermezzo in March) but what she does have is a subtle voice, always under control, with a wide expressive range, utter security on the high notes and good diction. The huge orchestra (6 horns, I counted) sounded wonderful in this great theatre – warm strings, beautiful horn and woodwind playing, tight discipline in the fast moving early pages of the score. The chorus sounded great too!! All the other parts are well-taken – I particularly enjoyed Jupiter’s quartet of ‘ex’s’

Altogether this was a great evening – undoubtedly one of my top 10 for the year. Here’s the trailer – Trailer zu DIE LIEBE DER DANAE – which gives you some sense of the production in action.  And there’s also a very good interview with Guth talking about the work – CLOSE-UP: Die Liebe der Danae

2nd Festival Baroque concert, Cuvilliés Theatre, Munich, 21/7/25

Violin, Verena-Maria Fitz,Clara Scholtes; Viola, Johanna Maurer; Cello, Allan Bergius; Zinc (which I think means cornet – presumably a high Bach trumpet), Gebhard David;  Conductor and organ; Stefan Steinemann; Augsburg Cathedral Boys’ Choir

 I was to be off from Berlin at 1028 am, allegedly, on a train to Munich, though in fact it didn’t arrive until 1130, getting there about 4pm. After a rest and some food, I went along to the Cuvilliés Theatre for this concert, which, even on the morning of the concert, had no indication of what the performers would be playing on the Munich Festival website. I got into the Cuvillies Theatre – pictures below, a beautiful 18th century theatre, where Idomeneo was first performed – and bought a programme I discovered, slightly oddly, that this ‘Baroque’ concert was nothing of the sort  – it was a joint birthday party for Palestrina – 500 this year – and Arvo Part, bless him, 90 and still with us (i think so anyway).  The photo below shows the complete programme.. Fine by me, but not exactly honest with the punters

The programme included two favourite Part works of mine  – Spiegel im Spiegel, and Fratres. Curiously in another part of the Cuvillies complex there was an Abba tribute band due to perform: the audience for that looked as elderly as the Palestrina/Part one….

It was all very well performed and enjoyable – the string players used both period and modern instruments. All the Part pieces were outstandingly performed and very absorbing – he and Tavener are the great masters of ‘holy minimalism’. It has to be said , though, that the ambience of the theatre isn’t really right for this sort of music – why couldn’t one of Munich’s many beautiful churches be used? The other thing I noted is that the boys and young men of the Augsburg Cathedral Choir are good, but not as cuttingly powerful as the major English Cathedral choirs – maybe I’m just being boastfully patriotic but I do think our major cathedral choirs are incomparable in church music like Palestrina’s. 

 Weill/Brecht, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny; Deutsche Oper Berlin, 20/7/25

Conductor, Stefan Klingele; Director, Benedikt von Peter; Design, Katrin Wittig; Costumes, Geraldine Arnold; Lighting, Ulrich Niepel; Leokadja Begbick, Evelyn Herlitzius; Fatty, Thomas Cilluffo. Dreieinigkeitsmoses, Robert Gleadow; Jenny Hill, Annette Dasch; Jim Mahoney, Nikolai Schukoff; Jack O’Brian, Kieran Carrel; Bill, Artur Garbas; Joe, Padraic Rowan

I spent the morning, as I have done whenever I have been in Berlin on a Sunday during the past few years, at the Anglican Church of Berlin at Neu West End, which is a very welcoming and multi-cultural place, people bound together by the Anglican language of Common Worship .

After a drink and a rest, on to Brecht/Weill. ‘Mahagonny’ is a work I have never seen live before, though I have a vague memory of singing the ‘Alabama’ song at University in a performance of ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’. It is curious to think that Mahagonny pre-dates Die Schweigsame Frau by three or four years, while of course its sound world and perspective is utterly different. Whether it’s about capitalist societies generally, or specifically about the Weimar Republic, in a sense doesn’t matter – it is a continuingly relevant story of consumer culture, of the gospel of perpetual economic growth and a place where power and money has come to mean more than love, human community and care. The outcome can only be misery and social outcome.

The story involves three fugitives from justice in Alaska who set up a pleasure city called Mahagonny. At first all things go well and people flock to enjoy its pleasures – Eating, Lovemaking, Fighting, and Drinking. Several prostitutes join the population, headed up by Jenny, After a while a group of Alaskan timber-men turn up, led by Jimmy. Mahagonny seems to run in to financial problems and is threatened by a hurricane. Jimmy loses all his money and is eventually sentenced to death for the ultimate crime of – having no dollars. After Jim’s death, increasing hostility among the city’s various factions causes the destruction of Mahagonny. To a potpourri of themes from earlier in the opera, groups of protesters are seen on the march, in conflict with one another, while the city burns in the background.

The basic production concept was that the Deutsche Oper building itself was to be the city of Mahagonny.  I quote at length from guidance to the audience emailed beforehand, which gives a sense of how this production works for audiences: As soon as they enter, the foyers become part of the staging and unfold an unusual atmosphere: the rooms are darkened, at a certain point the first scenic interventions begin…… Performances are not only performed on stage, but also in the auditorium, in the foyers and on the sidewalk in front of the opera. That’s why you’ll be on the move a lot. In the second part of the evening, there will be seating on mattresses with free choice of seats. The second part will take place with an audience on stage. The audience is pushed into the hall and onto the stage. In the staging there are depictions of sexual and physical violence. So the whole impact of the setting is meant to be chaotic, I guess, and you are meant to feel pulled around by events, not knowing exactly what is happening.

There were no intervals in the performance, which meant that positioning yourself for maximum interest but also comfort was important.  I suspect quite a few members of the audience had seen this production before and knew what to do and where best to go. To me, it was all pretty baffling at first.  The foyer was in semi-darkness with lots of areas roped off, no natural light allowed in and various flashing disco like hangings and red lights. I hung around wondering where to go. There seemed to be a general upstairs drift of people, which I followed and found myself in the main bar area, where there were two large screens and a lot of the chorus or extras dressed up in silly clown-like costumes, blowing bubbles or selling champagne, representing some of the denizens of Mahagonny. At first the action is going on in various front of house areas, outside the theatre and the back of the auditorium for the scenes until the hurricane. As far as I can tell all the singing was live, and being covered by video cameras (with surtitles on the screen). Occasionally some of the singers hoved into view – and I think I was served with champagne by Evelyn Herlizius at one point. As the hurricane is announced, people are ushered out of the bar area and I followed part of the herd, and ended up midway in the stalls – which suited me fine, as I had been standing until that point. As already described above, part of the audience went on to the main stage, where mattresses had been placed, and the rest of the action took place either between the mattresses, or at the back of the stage in front of the orchestra. I thought at first the orchestra must have been pre-recorded for the opening scenes, but I now assume the orchestra had been playing live all the time (a formidable bit of coordination with the live singers in front of the theatre- all the singers were miked up throughout). There were two big screens in the auditorium for people like me to see what was going on in the scenes beyond the hurricane (perhaps they had been there throughout). I have been to these sorts of immersive theatre events for opera before – Birmingham Opera Company operates in this way. The benefits are clear – you get caught up in the action, you see great singers close-up and it is really engaging. And that was the case here. Whether this approach makes any discernible difference to the impact of the work and the points Brecht wanted to get across I am not sure. Particularly to me, as someone who has never seen the work live before and doesn’t know it at all, it was often quite confusing, and I would have appreciated a more conventional approach. Luckily, I have got that coming up, in February next year, with ENO.

The work is great fun, with all sorts of different kinds of music – ragtime, jazz, a Lutheran chorale, marching songs. I did think the scenes of Jim in prison and being tried went on too long, but otherwise the work seemed well structured. The three star roles are Jenny, Jim and Begwick and all of them were very well sung. The only singer I’ve heard of is Evelybn Herlizius and she was impressive – a powerful voice and good actor, a total fierce Madam. Annette Dausch as Jenny has one of those ‘white’ voices – strong, without any sort of vibrato, quite a hard steely sound  -which sounded exactly right for Jenny. Nicolai Shukoff had an effective tenor voice which never sounded under strain and could do the declamatory parts as well as the lyrical elements of the role, But the whole evening had a great company feel and there were no weak links in any of the cast. If I have one complaint it would be that I would have liked to see more of the surtitles but unfortunately the surtitles were at the bottom of the screens – thus often difficult to see when combined with colour and light from the action, rather than white text on black. It was therefore difficult to times to follow the detail of what was being said.

R. Strauss, Die Schweigsame Frau, Thielemann, Staatsoper, Berlin, 19/7/25

Conductor, Christian Thielemann; Production: Jan Philipp Gloger; Design, Ben Baur; Costumes: Justina Klimczyk; Lighting: Tobias Krauß;  Video: Leonard Wölfl; Choreography: Florian Hurler; Sir Morosus: Peter Rose; His housekeeper, Iris Vermillion; Barber Cutting Beard: Samuel Hasselhorn; Henry Morosus: Siyabonga Maqungo; Aminta, his wife: Brenda Rae; Isotta: Evelin Novak; Carlotta: Rebecka Wallroth; Morbio: Dionysios Avgerinos; Vanuzzi: Manuel Winckhler; Farfallo: Friedrich Hamel

After the usual problems with Deutsche Bahn, I arrived in Berlin from London an hour and a half later than scheduled in the evening but still with enough time to go to my hotel via the S Bahn and have dinner locally in Kurfürstendamm.The next day I had an interesting morning at the German History Museum and then a good lunch near Unter den Linden. After a drink and a rest, on to the Staatsoper for the first of four operas I am seeing during this trip

Die Schweigsame Frau is a fairly late Strauss opera (premiere 1935) and Hofmannsthal was dead by the end of the 1920’s. Strauss’ replacement librettist for this adaptation of Ben Jonson’s Epicoene was Stefan Zweig, the eminent Jewish Austrian writer. The work had a troubled early history – a  year before the opera opened in 1935, Zweig fled his home in Austria for London, as a result of threats. After the premiere, Die Schweigsame Frau was quickly banned by the Nazi Party because of Zweig’s involvement in the work, and Strauss was forced out of his post as president of the Reich Music Chamber. Even in Germany the work is still not performed that often, and in the UK it has not been heard since 2003 at Garsington (the ROHCG presented the work in English at the UK premiere in 1961 and the opera formed part of the Glyndebourne festival in 1977 and 1979).

The plot involves an old man longing for company but who is enraged by bustle and noise. When a much loved nephew, Henry, reveals that he and his wife Aminta have taken up with a troupe of performers, the man, Sir Morosus, disinherits him and vows to marry immediately. The nephew, Henry, responds with an elaborate prank, organising his troupe into a group of ‘silent women’ who will be good submissive brides for Morosus to choose from, and tricking Morosus into a fake wedding with one of them, his wife Aminta. The charade is played out, though Aminta feels quite fond of Sir Morosus and wishes she hadn’t agreed to deceive him. Nevertheless she becomes Morosus’ fake wife and turns into a nag, constantly scolding him loudly. Eventually Henry and Aminta own up to the trick after causing almost a nervous breakdown in Morosus, and the work ends in reconciliation between Sir Morosus and Henry, once again his heir, and a reconciliation in broader terms between the old man and the world – he has become more tolerant of others and more accepting of his situation in life. If the plot seems vaguely familiar that’s because the librettists for Donizetti’s Don Pasquale also used the Ben Jonson play for that work.

There are three firsts involved in this new production – it’s Thielemann’s first time conducting a new production since his taking over at the Staaatsoper; it’s also the first time he has conducted this piece, and, amazingly, despite the fact that Strauss worked regularly there for 20 years and led over a thousand performances for the theatre, it’s the first time the work has been performed at the Staatsoper.

The piece is not easy to stage, although the layers of complexity in a way help. One is left wincing in the first act as Morosus enthuses about the idea of ‘quiet women’  who do what they are told by men, and the text then portrays them as nagging all the time, and being too calculatingly enthused by the idea of a rich husband – all of which is how Morosus thinks, at any rate, but it is also true that Aminta and the theatrical troupe show a different much more assertive version of how women behave. Some of the more wince-able sessions are in fact when Aminta and the troupe are acting in front of Morosus, fulfilling his myogynistic expectations. Less easy to understand is how either Strauss or Zweig found this work’s essential focus relevant to the urgency of the time it was written, though I suppose the emphasis on a created community is there in the work, which is some sort of retort to the NSDAP notion of the volk. Still, at least we didn’t have SS officers or brownshirts making an appearance in this production (cf Arabella in my review earlier this year and Capriccio in Munich in 2022). The director Jan Philipp Gloger has chosen a contemporary Berlin setting for the work and says it is about older people’s loneliness, mysogyny and the housing problems of big cities. The latter I don’t really buy, although the overture to the work has housing ads coming up on the front curtain – I really don’t see this as relevant. Morosus’ house is plenty big enough! The other two themes though do run through the work. I felt the director and designer had got things absolutely right – there was no heavy emphasis to make a particular point, but just a very effective telling of the story and encouraging everyone on stage to think through their parts clearly. There are though some crowd scenes and also dance routines for Henry’s acting troupe which need a clear directorial hand, and these worked really well.

The set was made up of 3 rooms and an additional hallway which could be moved left or right, to give plenty of room for plotting/additional acting, The work is long, and I suspect Thielemann performed it without cuts (I’d say 3 hours at least). Having two intervals made it longer…..). There are moments when things drag – particularly in Act 3 as the net of the deception closes in (Rosenkavalier has the same longueurs at this point) but, although this is not top-shelf Strauss, I was impressed at the number of musical highlights. For instance:

  • The paean of praise to quietness and peace which Morosus sings in Act 1, the declaration of love between Henry and Aminta and the final chorus also of Act 1 are all super pieces of music
  • In Act 2 it’s the closing duet between Henry and Aminta which has the most impact, made more poignant by Morosus’ request that Henry guard his door while sleeping to prevent the un-quiet woman getting in….But Aminta’s first presentation of herself is also very touching – even if totally faked – while her expressions of self- disgust at what she is doing is movingly expressed.
  • In Act 3, Morosus’ final words – I read somewhere that this is often sung in recitals – about finding a new sort of quietness and being an accepted part of the community he has come to know – the players – which has given him a happiness he’s never had before and quite removed his old grumpiness are really terribly moving – I found myself identifying with Morosus’ former self at that point!! This is 5 star Strauss.

I loved the company feel of the production, and how well it had clearly been rehearsed, But nevertheless there are some roles who stood out.

  • Peter Rose is someone who is seen more often in Europe than the UK, though I heard him in May at the Barbican as Mr Broucek. His Morosus was quite outstanding – well-acted throughout, both the grumpy and the gentle side of Morosus’ character being well portrayed, and he has a beautiful bass baritone voice which conveyed particularly well the reconciliations at the end
  • Brenda Rae, the American singer was also exceptionally good as Aminta , the role at its premiere taken by Maria Cebotari. This is a fiendishly difficult role – you have to be a very good actor, to have a lower register which can convey sympathy and warmth and also do some difficult coloratura runs. She did all this amazingly well
  • The Barber and the Housekeeper are also significant roles, and these were well taken by Iris Vermillion and Samuel Hasselhorn

The orchestra as you would expect sounded wonderful – beautiful burnished horns, some lovely woodwind playing and deft strings. Thielemann, as I always find with him, graded the climaxes carefully, and achieved a clarity of sound that I would have thought would be difficult to achieve in this dense score

Director and the design team came on at the end, as is the wont with first nights. A few idiots booed them (I can’t imagine why) but they were roundly cheered by everyone else. Thielemann got the biggest ovation. This was a great evening experiencing a work for the first time which on the face of it I am unlikely ever to hear live again.

Ning Feng, Wigmore Hall 16/7/25

Ning Feng, violin; Yeol Eum Son, piano. Stravinsky, Divertimento from The Fairy’s Kiss; Alfred Schnittke, Violin Sonata No. 1; Szymanowski, 3 Paganini Caprices Op. 40; Prokofiev, Violin Sonata No. 2 in D Op. 94bis

This was another of those concerts I would never have made the effort to go to specially but went because I was in London for the evening, with a 0615 Eurostar service to Brussels to catch the following morning, and this concert seemed the best thing to do the night before.  I thoroughly enjoyed the music, none of which I knew. And, although I am pretty ignorant about violin playing, I could hear that Ning Feng’s performances were exceptional – he’s in his 40s and now based in Berlin, though obviously he grew up in China. I also thought the pianist was very accomplished, with some striking moments of her own.

I suspect I have a recording of The Fairy’s Kiss but have never listened to it. The most I could remember is that it is the one with the Tchaikovsky pastiches. Indeed in the extracts Ning Feng played, there were some Tchaikovsky moments, and these were performed with lyrical sweetness. What I hadn’t appreciated is that at times the music turns rambunctious, to a Rite of Spring mode, and Mr Feng  clearly enjoyed the stomping rhythms,  digging deeply into the strings.

The Schnittke piece was a bit of a revelation. I have heard a few pieces by him over the years without ever wishing really to follow them up by listening to more. The violin sonata is an earlyish piece from his late 20s. The four movements are starkly contrasting – the first, andante, being a dark meandering feel, using perhaps serial techniques but still evoking an emotionally dark context – nuclear annihilation, the Cuban missile crisis and the Cild War seems to hang heavily in the air. The third movement, largo, is  the most striking, a chill beauty from the violin with massive responding chords from the piano. The last movement starts off in jazzy mode, briefly turns (and it’s the first time his music in this work does so) invoking a jaunty Shostakovich-like tune, and then returns to the slow movement’s stillness and sadness, and ending with high whispers from the violin. I was impressed by the quality of feeling in this piece.

The Szymanowski pieces were good fun – essentially a piano part in late Romantic mode was added by the composer (and played by him) to Paganini’s solo violin Caprices, one of which played here was the famous tune adopted by among others Rachmaninov . Ning Feng played them with what seemed to me to be astonishing virtuosity

Finally  the Prokofiev Sonata was originally written as a flute sonata and then later transposed for the violin with the help of David Oistrakh. It’s a sunny piece, according to Prokofiev himself recalling the 18th century and his years in France between the wars. It’s also even by Prokofiev’s standards a tuneful approachable piece, quite belying its war time genesis.

Poulenc/Bernstein. Buxton Festival, Buxton Opera House, 15/7/24

Iwan Davies Conductor, Daisy Evans Director, Loren Elstein Designer, Jake Wiltshire Lighting Designer. CAST – Trouble in Tahiti: Charles Rice – Sam, a businessman; Hanna Hipp, Dinah, his wife; La voix humaine – Allison Cook, Elle

This was an absorbing evening which I very much enjoyed. The conductor Iwan Davies, and the director Daisy Evans, gave a brief talk about the two works before the performance. The two works have rarely been coupled before, they said – La Voix Humaine was more normally coupled with a similar solo singer piece like Erwartung and theBernstein with another one acter like his opera A Quiet Place. Yet they do sit well together – though stylistically they are worlds apart, they each deal with the breakdown of relationships and human loneliness, the absence of human connectedness and community. Which one to put first, they said, took a bit of time to sort out, but I think they very much made the right decision in having the Poulenc piece last, as it is much more intense and Alison Cook gave a tour de force of a performance; to put it first would have trivialised the Bernstein. The pieces are also from the same era – the fifties.

The director felt it important to emphasise the links between the two pieces in several ways: firstly, through using the same set (obviously saving money at the same time); secondly and more controversially by using the same characters in the Bernstein to play silent bit-parts in the Poulenc. More on this below……

The set as you can see from the photo below, is a simple one – centre and stage left a big living room (bedroom in the Poulenc), with a small kitchen (bathroom in the Poulenc). Off to stage right is a curtained separate room, as another acting space. Props are minimal – a table and chairs for the Bernstein living room, a big bed, and a cabinet (with phone of course) in the Poulenc. The lighting was very good, although at one point something seemed to go wrong in how Elle was lit.

The Bernstein piece is an interesting one – text and music written by Bernstein, rather disturbingly, on his honeymoon, I’ve read somewhere!! Sam and Dinah have been married for 10 years – they are both disenchanted with each other. Sam is an alpha-male, who sees his work-life and personal fitness as all-important, and is also having an affair on the side. Dinah is a house-wife/mum, who is bored, tired of her husband, and the title of the opera comes from a film she sees during the day which bores her to distraction and which she ridicules for its simplistic attitude to life. Being criticised throughout in various ways is consumer culture and the American Way of Life in the 50’s, with its easy assumptions of the superiority of suburban life and the importance of material comforts. The style is a mix, as Iwan Davies remarked – there is a jazzy close-harmony trio of singers, lauding suburban values, and intentionally sounding like radio advertisement music; there’s a harsher, contemporary opera sound for some of the interactions between Sam and Dinah, and then there are some sweet-toothed musicals-like ‘numbers.’ The day starts in argument and finishes in false harmony. Hanna Hipp (last seen in opera as Cherubino at ENO in February) was an excellent Dinah – looking exactly right for the part and singing with sensitivity and excellent diction. Charles Rice also was absolutely right for the part. My only criticism would be that (as I think neither are American or Canadian) the American accents came and went a bit. I thought Bernstein had got the timing of this work very well thought-out– it doesn’t try to do too much in too short a time, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, it doesn’t try to resolve the characters’ problems in 50 minutes.

La Voix Humaine is a work I have read about a lot but never seen before. The 40 minutes of the Poulenc piece are much more intense and spikier than the Bernstein work. The action is wholly focused on Elle speaking to her ex-lover over the phone and the work ends by Elle killing herself. Alison Cooke was riveting as Elle – totally believable in the part, her descent into suicide utterly credible. Her singing was secure and with a wide range (maybe the diction got a bit unclear at times, but it didn’t matter). As with Poulenc’s Carmelites’ opera, the music grows on you – at first it seems fragmented, but then you begin to hear haunting repeated phrases. The music somehow doesn’t get in the way of the sole actor on stage – it supports her rather than offering a separate medium of commentary. I found the whole experience very moving. I don’t think the director’s idea of linking the two works detracted from the intensity of the drama, but equally I am not sure how much it added – in a less commanding performance it might have seemed irritatingly clever. In this production Bernstein’s Sam becomes Elle’s lover, seen on stage once or twice, while Elle herself, we realise, was the girl with whom we see Sam in the Bernstein piece in the little room stage right. Dinah becomes the woman who keeps cutting in on Elle’s call (I wonder incidentally if younger members of the audience understood about the business of calls cutting in on each other – I am too young to have ever heard that happening in the UK, but I do remember it in Egypt and Sri Lanka in the 80’s). The jazz trio assume various roles – telephone engineer, ministering angels of various kinds, and finally the givers of pills to Elle for her overdose.

I hope the critics are kind to this production. I thought it was a great evening for the Buxton Festival.

Beethoven etc. Wigmore Soloists. Buxton Festival, St John’s Church, 15/7/24

F Berwald Grand Septet in B flat major. C Nielsen Serenata in Vano. L van Beethoven Septet in E Flat, Op. 2

Wigmore Soloists is intended to be a new super-group of chamber music players, led by the clarinettist, Michael Collins. It clearly has a flexible group of players – two of the musicians in this concert are not mentioned on their website and are members of the Sheffield-based Ensemble 360 – the first violinist and the oboist among the group of players. I miscalculated the time needed to get to the venue so arrived about 10 minutes late. It meant that I missed the Nielsen piece, which was a pity.  Franz Berwald was a Swedish composer (1796 – 1868), one of whose symphonies I have come across – I think I had an old LP of it. The Septet was new to me (as was the Beethoven piece). Berwald’s Septet in B flat for clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello and double bass is an early-ish piece (1828) and is I think in three movements. It’s in a sub – Mendelssohn/Weber idiom – one might say Mendelssohn without some of the sparkle….It was not very memorable, if I’m honest, but pleasant enough – the slow movement was the most distinguished and despite its poco adagio marking had several faster sections.    

With the Beethoven piece, I felt immediately a greater sense of presence, of energy, of innovation, although its 6-movement structure got me a little lost at times. It was very popular in the first few decades of the 19th century – Beethoven turned against the piece for that reason!! He was in his late twenties when he wrote it so it comes from a period when his individual voice was becoming apparent. It resembles, I guess, a Mozart-style serenade, and has plenty of phrases that might be Haydn’s or Mozart’s, but overall there is an energy, and intensity, that is very much Beethoven’s. I particularly enjoyed the first movement. The group repeated one of the later movements as an encore