Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra/Nelsons. RAH, BBC Proms 26/8/25

Arvo Pärt Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten; Dvořák Violin Concerto in A minor; Sibelius Symphony No. 2 in D major. Isabelle Faust violin, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Andris Nelsons conductor

Again, not a totally obvious bit of programming, but I guess the common theme is new nations asserting themselves against dominant powers (Finland/Russia – Czechia/Austro-Hungarian Empire –  Estonia/Soviet Union) with obvious contemporary reference. It was great to be hearing the Leipzigers again – I last heard them in 2023 powering their way through Mahler 8 – and also it was very good to see Andris Nelsons The last time I saw him – two years ago, Boston Symphony at the Proms –  he looked grossly over-weight, he struggled onto the stage and his conducting seemed impeded by his weight. Tonight, he was half the size, thin and trim, and very active on the podium. He is either a very ill man (in which case I wish him a return to good health) or, much more likely, he has been on a very serious weight loss programme…..Unusually for me at the Proms, I was sitting  in the centre of the Stalls, experiencing another aspect of the RAH’s quirky acoustics.  At least the sound wasn’t unbalanced, though a bit echoey.

The Part piece is the kind of work well-suited to the hall – whispering violins slowly becoming audible from silence (beautifully played by the orchestra), brightly clanging bell, a swelling sound of string scales . The violins were split throughout the concert which here added to the richness of sound. It’s hard to imagine the work being better performed.

Isabelle Faust was a late replacement for Hilary Hahn. I’ve heard her a number of times in recent years and have always thought her a soloist who was a little cerebral and cool, with a beautiful, inward sort of sound. I wondered how she would sound in this concerto and in this hall…..the answer was that she sounded completely different from the last performance of hers I heard, the Brahms concerto. She gave a wonderful folksy lilt to the music, slightly accentuating some notes so that in the third movement her playing had an impetus that made you feel like dancing- and in fact an important aspect of her contribution was that she herself danced, swaying to the music in a folksy dress (and the Leipzig strings swinged in time with her!) . She was also able to project well the warmth, the beauty and melancholy of Dvorak’s first two movements (which maybe outstay their welcome a bit), with playing of great tenderness. Her playing was very clear and audible from where I was sitting, helped by Nelsons’ sensitive accompaniment, keeping the orchestral sound down to let Faust be heard fully (the final few bars showed what they could do when off the leash). The orchestra offered also some beautiful woodwind playing, the flutes outstanding. This must be one of the finest of the (not very many live) performances i have heard. Ms Faust played an encore, a Baroque piece by Nicola Matteis Jr, (Fantasia in A Minor )whose opening sounded curiously like one of the Dvorak melodies….). He was according to Wikipedia the earliest notable Italian Baroque violinist in London.

I realised as I prepared for the second half that I had never thought very much about Sibelius 2!  I must have bought a recording of it when I was 14 or 15 (maybe Reiner and the Chicago Symphony), played it a lot, got to know it very well without really thinking much about why it was as it was, and how the different elements fitted in with one another – beyond vaguely summoning up images of tundra, pine forests and Finnish nationalism. Listening to it tonight, it was startling to hear how disjointed the first three movements were. The first movement throws around snatches of melody abruptly, with chasms of growing volume and silence. The second contrasts its solemn pilgrim-like trudging main theme with violent episodes and outbursts. The third movement contrasts manic activity with the time-stopping oboe melody. Even the triumphant ‘big tune’ of the finale has an alternating theme that suggests whirling wind-driven snow blowing everything off course. The whole work seems disturbed, fragmented, introspective. If there is a triumphant climax, that victory seems likely to be short-lived.

So I would want to hear a performance of this work which reflected its fragmentation and unsettling nature and didn’t make the ‘victory’ of the final bars more than provisional. I thought the first movement in this performance was very effective in that context – the intensity of the strings, the careful attention to dynamics, the wonderful brass playing near the opening were all supporting the unsettled nature of the music – as did some of the speed changes in the slow movement, alternating between faster than usual and very slow, with pregnant pauses, and some violent unsettled outbursts. These two movements had some superb woodwind and string playing, plus impressive solo trumpet playing of the ‘pilgrim’ theme. The third movement ‘tarantella’ was taken at a truly manic pace, with some beautiful woodwind and string playing in the ‘Trio’, and there was a flexible opening to the finale, with speedings up and slowing downs in the prelude to the ‘big tune’. Again, the ‘alternating theme’ was treated flexibly, gradually increasing in menace. Altogether I found this to be an unconventional reading but which very much conveyed the unsettling and provisional nature of the work. And as the finale moved to an end, the dynamics of the strings and brass were handled beautifully and they just made an utterly glorious sound, particularly the trumpets and timps…….I particularly appreciated the very careful handling of dynamics in the closing bars so that the end really did seem overwhelming – despite the reality of before and after………………..

R.Strauss/Puccini – LSO, Pappano. RAH, BBC Proms 19/8/25

R. Strauss Die Frau ohne Schatten – Symphonic Fantasy; Puccini, Suor Angelica. Carolina López Moreno, Sister Angelica. Kseniia Nikolaieva,  Princess; Elena Zilio, Monitress. Angela Schisano, Mistress of the novices. Sarah Dufresne,  Sister Genovieffa. Tiffin Choir, London Symphony Chorus, London Symphony  Orchestra, Sir Antonio Pappano conductor

This promised to be an exciting concert. Pappano conducting Strauss with the LSO is always going to be a stand-out, and ditto his Puccini – his previous venture with the LSO into Puccini opera concert performances was La Rondine last December at the Barbican, which also featured a great performance from Carolina López Moreno in the lead part, as a last-minute stand-in for Nadine Sierra.

The combination of works is quite a clever piece of programming – being a mother, or wanting to be or devastated by motherhood, is central to both works and both end in hope for human beings and their future.

The Strauss symphonic fantasy I suppose in its title gives Strauss the liberty to forget about any attempt to tell the story and just run through a few disconnected parts of the opera – the Keikobad theme comes in at the beginning but then we immediately jump to the music for Barak and his wife and so on…..there’s nothing from the music for the Emperor and Empress except for the final blast at the end, no falcon, no well of life….well, most things really. Nor does it sound particularly effective in the concert hall – the orchestration’s density is fair enough in the pit with the voices riding over the top, but when the LSO is tackling it in full view it all sounds a bit messy, even with Pappano’s expert hand guiding the orchestra. I am not sure what anyone who didn’t know the opera would make of this…..

Suor Angelica I guess is something you love or loathe. Me – I love it, at least when it is sung and played as well as it was here. This is opera at its most visceral, its most compelling, and it was a quite stunning performance……. For me, although the opera is in some ways grossly sentimental (maybe cross out the ‘in some ways’) and arguably manipulative of the audience’s emotions, it reflects upon a common social issue in many societies (including Ireland till quite recently) about what attitude to take towards illegitimate children and unmarried mothers, and although the Mariolatory, convent life and fear of damnation seem far removed from 21st century British lives, these things again are still real and living for many places in the world (and, errrm, for me, actually). So it’s not an unworldly out of date fantasy that’s being described here, and although the drama is perhaps crude it is very powerful and effective in the concert hall – as long as you have great voices and a great orchestra (and surtitles which make sense). For once I got lucky with my Side Stalls position and from my row 3 seat was on the side of the stage which had the visiting Princess and Sister Angelica, so was really caught up in the action. Neither of these two were reading from scores (some of the bit part singers were) which helped a great deal in maintaining concentration – I have rarely heard the Prom audience listening so intently.

Carolina López Moreno has it all – she’ looks the part, she has an ability to present herself as fully ‘inside’ the role, and, though a slight figure she has a really powerful voice. It was utterly thrilling to hear her letting rip with her top notes, and feeling the sound waves pulsating round the RAH. Hers is also a warm, not a steely, voice, and she has the ability to fine it down to exquisite high pianissimo notes, beautifully controlled (with a blip at one point), in for instance Senza mamma. Her final scene was unbearably moving, and it was wonderful too to see the collaboration between Ms Moreno and Pappano, the latter encouraging her to linger over some phrases and carefully giving her the lead in her big moments, judging exactly when to bring the orchestra in. And all of this very near to where I was sitting….! Although with a very different acting style – much more standard operatic semaphore and externalised – Kseniia Nikolaieva was also deeply impressive as Angelica’s aunt – she has a remarkably rich and deep mezzo voice. All the other roles were well characterised and sung. And then, on top of this, we had the LSO Chorus women, the Tiffin Boys Choir, the RAH organ going full pelt at points and the LSO itself – some of their string playing was gorgeous (the long chamber music-like passages near the end when Angelica is taking the poison), and, as always with Puccini, there’s so much that’s interesting in the orchestral accompaniment of this relatively late opera, all the details of which the players brought out clearly.

The final 10 minutes brought tears to my eyes . One of the great Proms’ evenings…..one for the ages……

Delius, Mass of Life. RAH, BBC Proms, 18/8/25

Jennifer Davis soprano, Claudia Huckle mezzo-soprano, David Butt Philip tenor, Roderick Williams baritone. BBC Symphony Chorus, London Philharmonic Choir, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Mark Elder conductor

 This was a work completely new to me – and so was a ‘must’ when I saw it on the Proms schedule. I have never heard it live, never heard a recording and in general have never felt the need to explore it as I have a major Delius aversion – I find myself feeling something akin to nausea after a few minutes of those Delian chromatic harmonies in Brigg Fair etc. So this was a bit of a challenge to myself, buoyed up by the very strong forces brought together for the work.

The work was completed in 1905. Part 2 was first performed in Munich in 1908, with a complete performance in London a year later. It was last performed at the Proms in 1988, but with only one or two complete performances before that.

I was reading recently in the excellent web-site ‘The Conversation” (The Conversation UK ) about recent research into people’s response to music. The research suggested about 25% of people in their sample group were intensely stimulated by music, about half were mildly affected and 25% were indifferent to it. The research then looked into why this was and concluded for the indifferent 25% that “while the brain networks underlying music perception and reward are both intact in people with music anhedonia, the communication between them is severely disrupted. There is little to no traffic between the auditory processing parts of the brain and the reward centre/” I was wondering at the time – what would it feel like to be indifferent to music (as, obviously, I am among the 25% stimulated by it)?  I might not be interested much in pop and rock, but I am certainly affected by it – I just don’t feel I have the time or the energy to listen to it properly. Much the same for folk and world music  – I like them, in some cases very much – though Indian classical “. music is beyond me (but would be accessible if I put time into learning its codes and structures – ditto jazz) but choose not to prioritise listening to them.

However…this was an evening of music about which I felt utterly indifferent, despite my best intentions…..!!!

I knew it had the potential not to be very inspiring but it went below my gloomiest expectations. The first thing to be said is that this had nothing to do with the quality of the performance itself, and everything to do with the work. The combined choruses of the BBCSO and LPO in particular were most impressive – in the sort of writing Delius offers for choirs there is a lot of quite difficult close harmony writing which must take a lot of practice and care to get right. There were no ragged edges and no-one conspicuously out of tune, in the choral singing, and the choirs sounded most impressive in the solidity and weight of their singing, particularly, the final chorus (the text for which is the same words Mahler uses in his 3rd Symphony). The soloists – with Roddy Williams having the lion’s share of the singing – did, as far as I could tell, all that was required of them. My Side-Stalls position once more meant I couldn’t really tell how they were coming over in the hall but Roddy W certainly seemed to be singing with a warm and glowing tone when the words demanded this, and with clear diction.

The problems in the evening were:

  • The text. Seemingly random chucks of Nietzsche were thrown together by the compiler/librettist Delius used, with little attempt at overall coherence and no proper suggestions of context. My feeling – perhaps wrongly – is that Nietzsche was so much part of the zeit-geist in the first decades of the 20th century that the public likely to be listening to this work understood the backgrounds to these disparate texts, and what Nietzsche was trying to achieve, so that they could fill in the gaps in the text and intuitively relate the concepts of the New Man, the death of Christianity and ‘life in all its fulness’ re-imagined, and the need for a new morality to Delius’ music. But to an audience 110 years later a great deal more explanation was needed as to what all the references to dance, midnight, green fields and eternity were getting at. Simply saying ‘it’s all about the beauty of nature’ is not nearly enough. The use of surtitles rather than a printed text in the programme oddly made things more confusing  – pronouns swirled around without it always being clear what they referred to. In summary, then, it was very difficult to get a sense of the structure of the work and where it was heading
  • Apart from the final chorus and one or two of RW’s solos up in the mountains (some rather fine horn music) the music just passed over me in a chromatic swirl, meandering over a never-ending prospect of hills of slow ascents and descents, and with too many clogged up pathways en route (it’s instructive to compare the opening chorus of the Mass with the beginning of Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony, both expressing similar sentiments but the latter incomparably more powerful and memorable, and also much clearer in texture – the opening of the Mass’ choral writing obscures some fine orchestral passages). Too much of the Mass moved at the same speed, too much of it sounded the same, too much of it seemed not to be going anywhere. There was, I suppose, little that was actively distasteful, just a lot of music that went on far too long and to which I felt totally indifferent

I will try again on BBC Sounds with this performance but I will have, I am sure, the same reaction,

POST SCRIPT. I did hear it the next day on BBC Sounds and got on a bit better with the work. But I still will not be rushing to the box office for another chance to hear it

BBC NOW, Bancroft. RAH, BBC Proms 15/8/25

Sofia Gubaidulina Revue Music for Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Band; Ravel Piano Concerto in G major ; Shostakovich Symphony No. 13 in B flat minor, ‘Babi Yar’. Benjamin Grosvenor piano, Kostas Smoriginas, bass; Synergy Vocals, BBC National Chorus of Wales (lower voices), BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Ryan Bancroft conductor

Yet another Prom completely packed out…..this just wouldn’t have seemed possible for a programme like this 20 or 30 years ago. Nevertheless, Proms programming can sometimes be a bit mystifying and one wondered about the rationale for putting these three works together. While Gubaidulina and Shostakovich go together well enough, and maybe the former also with Ravel, given jazzy inflections, it’s difficult to see much connection between Ravel and Shostakovich, other than the stark contrast between French levity and Slavonic gloom. Anyway, an interesting mix of works to look forward to……..I heard the Shostakovich work for the first time live last November, and this Prom was one of the first concerts I decided on for this season.

Sofia Gubaidulina died in late March this year, her death perhaps coming too late to have too much influence on Proms programming. The Revue music was commissioned for a planned-for popular music venue which never happened, when she was at a low ebb financially.  There has been intermittent attention to her work in previous Proms (including an all-Gubaidulina programme conducted by Gergiev with Maryinsky forces in 2002!). This work is a peculiar combination of jazz band, with four close harmony vocalists, and Gubaidulina’s more usual preoccupation with slow dark orchestral timbres, gongs and bells, and a sense of sacred mystery. There are several sequences of these two alternating kinds of music, some whispered text about stars, eternity and stillness, followed by a rousing mix of the two, finishing, as it started, with bells and gongs. Strange…..but I rather enjoyed it……

The Ravel piano concerto I last heard a few years ago in Sheffield,with Steven Osborne, Mark Elder and the Halle. This performance didn’t make quite as much impact on me. The cor anglais (I think, maybe an oboe) solo in the slow movement was most beautifully played, and Grosvenor’s playing was light and agile, but somehow the performance overall lacked the grace, the finesse, the easy wit it should have. This might have been due to a number of factors – I think the first movement was taken too fast and sounded pressurised and at times the orchestra sounded a bit ragged (a friend at the interval who knows the work better than me said the first horn missed, or miscalculated, an entry in the first movement).

Shostakovich 13 has only been played at the Proms three times before this evening – its Proms premiere was as late as 1992 (ie 15 or so years after his death) and 2006 saw Gergiev, with Maryinsky forces, conducting the work. I find this symphony increasingly impressive, the more I listen to it.  The combination of Shostakovich’s spare, stark music, and Yevtushenko’s poetry is very powerful. The work seemed particularly apposite on the day of Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska to discuss the ending of the Ukraine war, in reminding us of a very different Russia beyond the walls of the Kremlin, of the suffering of its people over the ages and the greatness of its artists. The work also, in its first movement, reminds us, beyond the egregious war crimes of Israel’s current government (and Hamas’) of the horrors of 19th and 20th century anti- Semitism. 

My peculiar seating position for this concert didn’t help my appreciation of the performance (at the very end of the side stalls nearest the stage, so slightly behind and to one side of the singer – I don’t understand the logic by which the RAH allocates seating …. I must have been one of the first to book for this concert yet had one of the worst seats in the category I booked for). From where I was the men’s chorus sounded a bit disjointed at times. The singer, a Lithuanian, clearly had excellent Russian diction – he didn’t quite have that black Russian bass sound that maybe the music needs, and I didn’t get much sense of variety in his singing. The orchestra sounded, to me, more on the ball than for the Ravel, with Bancroft whipping up some enormous climaxes. 

Altogether a very rewarding concert

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.