Conductor-Henrik Nánási: cast – Jenufa: Asmik Grigorian; Kostelnicka: Karita Mattila; Laca: Nicky Spence; Števa: Saimir Pirgu. Director: Claus Guth; Set designer, Michael Levine

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 2^nd 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 2^nd 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

Cast: Rigoletto: Carlos Álvarez; Duke of Mantua: Liparit Avetisyan; Gilda: Lisette Oropesa; Sparafucile: Brindley Sherratt; Maddalena: Ramona Zaharia; Monterone: Eric Greene. Conductor Antonio Pappano; new production directed by Oliver Mears

I have been, over the years, rather snooty about Verdi’s early and middle period works. I love Otello and Falstaff and have vivid memories of Jon Vickers singing Otello in the 70’s (I have also persuaded myself I was at one of the legendary Carlos Kleiber/Placido Domingo Otello performances at Covent Garden in the early 80’s but I have no documentary evidence for that and maybe I dreamt it…). More recently I admitted to myself that I had enjoyed the ROHCG Traviata screening with Ermonela Jaho, and the Forza del Destino one with Anna Netrebko – but generally Trovatore, Rigoletto, Macbeth, let alone Don Carolos and Aida have just not been works I have bothered about or listened to since the early 70’s (though I did once hear Aida at the Pyramids c.1987 as a research visit to see how to put on large scale arts events at the Pyramids – I was involved at the time with a rather mad plan to stage the National Theatre production of ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ with Judi Dench and Anthony Hopkins, there – sadly a stage hands’ strike meant it never materialised).

The fact that I’ve now become a Friend of ROHCG, and can attend one dress rehearsal per booking period has given me a new urge to explore beyond my usual prejudices, and so my first visit as a  Friend to a dress rehearsal was to the one for this new production of ‘Rigoletto’

I have to say I enjoyed it hugely. This was for a number of reasons:

1. It had an operatic superstar, in Lisette Oropesa, singing Gilda. Her voice has a lovely smokey quality and what she does with it is very distinguished – beautiful soft singing, razor sharp coloratura and high notes when they matter. Added to the fact that she looks the part and at 37 is relatively young, and that she can act, you can see why she is one of the most in-demand lyric coloratura sopranos around today. I was immensely impressed – and have made a spur of the moment decision to see her in action in Traviata in November
2. Secondly, the performance benefited from the energy and commitment Tony Pappano gave to it – the orchestral presence was always there, pushing the drama along. The orchestra played brilliantly
3. The production was attractive and straight-forward and with only minor irritations. The sets were mainly in a range of browns and oranges, for the Court and Rigoletto’s house. Sparafucile’s house was cleverly designed to be set besides the river where the Duke was to be drowned, and this was a very effective stage picture of greys, dawning light and cold clouds. The costumes were fairly indeterminate – mostly modernish but the Duke of Mantua was in Renaissance gear! There were a range of very large images of semi-naked Renaissance women projected on to the back of the stage, and a running theme throughout the production was male behaviour degrading women – when Gilda is taken from Rigoletto’s house, a blown-up sex toy is put into the bed to replace her. The production has some Shakespearean references as well – Monterone has his eyes gouged out like Gloucester in ‘Lear’, and altogether Mantua seems a pretty unpleasant place. The point of the very opening – a still life of chorus and characters representing (I assume) a Renaissance painting – seemed less clear in what was being conveyed, though it looked fantastic! The lighting seemed effective – i.e. unobtrusive. The directions to the singers seemed clear and helpful in making the action understandable and the characters as as realistic as they can be in what is a pretty silly story – the chorus was very effective in conveying a menacing and thuggish tone, and they sang superbly.

There was no-one really at the same level as Oropesa. Liparit Avetisyan was a goodish Duke of Mantua but with a not always steady, and certainly not that subtle, voice.  Carlos Alvarez I found a bit opaque as Rigoletto – he didn’t really convey the depths of the character’s bitterness and anguish. Brindley Sherrard was a very reliable Sparafucile, and it was great to hear Eric Greene, recently a superb Wotan at BOC’s RhineGold, as Monterone.

I came away from this still thinking that it was a very silly work, really, but it’s dramatically compelling and very exciting when you have a conductor and star singer fired up to delivering it in the way Oropesa and Pappano were.

Louise Alder soprano, Iestyn Davies counter-tenor, Stuart Jackson Evangelist, Hugo Hymas tenor, Roderick Williams baritone, Matthew Rose Christ: Choristers of St Paul’s Cathedral Choir/Arcangelo Chorus & Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen harpsichord/director

It is years and years since I heard the St Matthew Passion live. In fact I am embarrassed to say that I suspect the last live performance I heard of it was at Aldeburgh in 1975, with Peter Pears as the Evangelist….that takes me back….. I remember it was, I think, the Easter Saturday weekend, or maybe even Good Friday and I wandered through the reeds in the interval. Also, I remember some Bach Choir performances in the early 70’s – I had a girlfriend who had family members in it and we went along. All these performances were of course in a mid-20^th century large-scale ‘traditional’ performance style, before the widespread adoption of period instruments and Baroque performing traditions to inform how this music is presented.

This performance was generally fast in the usual early music mode, but for the most part this simply made for crisp rhythms and listeners’ engagement, I felt, and did not affect the marvellous stillness of ‘Erbarme Dich’, for instance. A couple of times arias from the tenor and soprano did sound too fast, to my ears, however.

Stuart Jackson was very good as the Evangelist, though it sounded like an interpretation that will grow with time, with more nuance and pointing of words and phrases. I had two issues with the singers: I felt Matthew Rose as Christ was too declamatory and unvaried; he didn’t bring any shading or quietness – just loud! He sounded as though he was in Wotan mode (he’s the Wotan in the new ENO Valkyrie in November), and, although he has a great voice, seemed miscast in this role. The other issue for me – no criticism of Iestyn Davies – is that I just get uncomfortable about the use of a counter-tenor in a role that is often given to a mezzo-soprano. When I remember the wonderful mezzos and contraltos who have sung this music, pre-eminently Janet Baker and Kathleen Ferrier, I find it difficult to adjust to the ‘hooty’ sounds of a counter-tenor, however beautifully they’ve sung the music (and Davies was great!). I don’t understand the thinking that lies behind this decision – there was after all a female soprano in the cast. Louise Alder and Roderick Williams also made notable contributions.

The orchestra was great (some wonderfully vibrant playing from the two first violins and the flautists) and also the Arcangelo chorus (great to hear a chorus live after 18 months). Again, I wondered about the inclusion of the St Paul’s Cathedral boys in the first half (is the thinking that Bach wanted his pupils to take part but didn’t trust them to sit through 3-4 hours of the work, so let them leave half way through?)

As I am a practising Christian, I do find it a bit difficult to understand what other people are getting out of the St Matthew Passion experience – the audience around me had some people who clearly had sung the work in a chorus and were moving along with the music; there were others impassively sipping their plastic-jar pints of beer. Curious…….

But, anyway, overall, a very good performance

Shostakovich: Festive Overture, Op 96 Mahler: Symphony No 5 in C sharp minor Proms Festival Orchestra Mark Wigglesworth, conductor

This was billed as a special concert and so it was. Movingly, a scratch orchestra formed of freelancers who had not been able to work or paid to be musicians over the pandemic had been brought together by the BBC for this concert. Freelance orchestral players have been particularly badly hit by the pandemic, being of course not eligible for furlough payments. Many have been forced to find other sources of income – one of the double bassists on stage, for example, is currently working as an undertaker (I was sitting three rows behind him – see the Guardian photos and article about the occasion –‘There won’t be a dry eye anywhere’: the Proms Festival Orchestra – in pictures | Music | The Guardian) . Moreover, they were performing Mahler 5, which two months no-one would have dared thought possible – but there they all were – string section maybe a bit understrength (6 double basses for instance) but with quadruple woodwind, 5 trumpets, 4 trombones and 7 horns all in place!  It was completely and utterly wonderful to see and hear a full late Romantic orchestra at full throttle. Not only that but the Albert Hall was pretty near capacity – by far the fullest I have seen it this Proms season, particularly the upper circle seats and choir, and the arena was rammed solid. Maybe people are less worried about the pandemic or maybe they really want to turn up for a special piece, which this is – and to celebrate the return of big symphonic works to the live concert hall

I can now say I’ve known this symphony for over 50 years (I remember buying the Halle/Barbirolli recording on vinyl from a record shop near Liverpool St station in 1970). I’ve been to many good live performances, Boulez, Haitink and Honeck among them, most recently Rattle and the LSO at the Barbican in 2019. I also heard last summer the famous Bernstein/VPO 1987 performance at the Proms on the radio. This performance though was very special and memorable, both because of all the extra emotion it was freighted with, but also because it was extremely well played. When you think that this was a scratch group of musicians who’d only had 3 three hour rehearsals together, the achievement was remarkable. In particular the trumpet playing, the horns and the timpanist were exceptional. The woodwind were impressive in the 3^rd movement; the strings were very clear in the fugal bits of the finale but maybe lacked some final degree of heft for the climax of the Adagietto. I was sitting at the very side of the orchestra beside the double basses, so I can’t really comment on the orchestral balance achieved, though it sounded fine over the radio when I listened to extracts of it the next day. Wigglesworth I thought chose good tempi for all movements – not lingering too much in the Adagietto. The pointing of climaxes – eg the chorale in the 2nd movement – was extremely well done; there was a very wide dynamic range. Wiggleworth’s conducting was rhythmic and pointed – a wonderfully sprung feel to it. He also allowed some inner parts to come through you don’t always hear, without overdoing it

Let’s hope this is really a new beginning and we don’t collapse back into lockdown……

The musicians were Benjamin Nabarro violin, Claudia Ajmone-Marsan violin, Rachel Roberts viola, Gemma Rosefield cello

I had seen and enjoyed Ensemble 360 performing op131 late in October last year, before lockdowns 2 and 3. I’m not sure why they were performing it again so soon afterwards but it is a wonderful work and I’m certainly not complaining.

The Op 18 no 6 is an interesting work – Haydn-esque in many ways but with a strange slow introduction, ‘La Malinconia’, to the finale, which seems to each across almost to the late quartets. A witty Allegretto then follows – almost like a quick waltz – but with, half-way through, a reminder of the ‘Malinconia’ music. Ensemble 360 played it with energy and, where needed, lightness of touch.

Op 131 followed after a slightly inconsequential reading of one of Beethoven’s letters that didn’t really tell us anything about either work, instead informing us he was rather keen on royal honours and notice, even as he was writing the late quartets in the final year of his life….. I was perhaps a little less impressed by the performance of the op 131 compared to what I heard last year – it sounded, to my ears anyway, a little scrappy at times, with players slightly out-of-synch with each other – maybe playing this work twice in a day is a bit too tough for them (I went to the 7pm performance; there was also a 1pm one….). But there was massive energy in the final movement that drove all before it. The first movement sounded at times a bit too bright and forward, not introspective enough or slow enough (Wagner said “nothing more melancholy has ever been expressed in sound”, but the theme and variations in the Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile was well characterised (I loved the loud plonks on the cello!_