Wagner, Siegfried. Pappano, ROHCG, 21/3/26

Director, Barrie Kosky; Set Designer, Rufus Didwiszus; Costume Designer, Victoria Behr; Lighting Designer. Alessandro Carletti. Conductor, Antonio Pappano. Siegfried, Andreas Schager; Mime, Peter Hoare; Der Wanderer, (Tommi Hakala, replacing Christopher Maltman); Brünnhilde, Elisabet Strid; Alberich, Christopher Purves; Fafner, Soloman Howard; Erda, Wiebke Lehmkuhl; Woodbird, Sarah Dufresne.

A couple of days before this performance, I got an email from the Covent Garden website telling me that the performance of Die Walkuere filmed last year in May with this team was now available for streaming. I dipped into it – I didn’t have a massive amount of time – and was quite astonished by the quality of singing and acting all offered, and the excellence of the orchestral playing. Though the live performance I went to was one of my highlights of 2025, this seemed to be at a level of ‘rightness’ I have seldom encountered with Wagner – beautiful, powerful singing (especially from Maltman), and thoughtful original staging, nearly always faithful to the sense of the text. I was also reminded of the rightness of the ‘Erda’ concept – the naked 80-year-old – as part of that, which was even more moving close-up. Here is a screen shot I took of the final few moments of the opera from the streaming, with the Magic Fire, Wotan and Erda.

So, it was with a renewed admiration for the team of Kosky and Pappano, for Maltman and Strid, that I looked forward to this live performance, the second of the run.  Unfortunately, I got an email the day before telling me that Maltman would be off sick for my performance, and that someone called Tommi Hakala from Finland was replacing him. I quickly realised I had heard him before – in Ed Gardner’s Mahler 8 last year – and that he, for those with long memories, was a long-distant Cardiff Young Singer of the World (in 2003). He seems to have had a creditable but not stellar career and is now in his mid-50’s, with plenty of Wagner roles under his belt. I think my general feeling was – better Maltman get sick than Schager…………

Looking back after what overall was a tremendous performance, there were a few thoughts I had, which I’ll share:

  • Just as with the Walkuere production, the acting was excitingly physical and visceral, with much movement and non-singing vocalising when appropriate by Mime, Alberich, Wotan and of course Siegfried. I have seen Schager sing Siegfried before, at Bayreuth, and I remember his unflaggingly generous singing there, but I don’t recall the degree of humour, energy, and sheer abandon he showed at this Covent Garden performance, jumping up and down at every opportunity, playing Nothung like a guitar, doing extreme sulks with Mime, waltzing with a coat. The two – Siegfried and Mime – became a music-hall, Steptoe and Sons, routine very effectively.
  • The detail of the acting and thought given to tiny moments of interaction was impressive – the way Siegfried threw soup over Mime and then wiped his face in Act 1, indicating a more subtle relationship than many productions allow; the choreographing of what is a very long scene at the end of the work between Brunnhilde and Siegfried was engaging and meaningful throughout. I loved the way Kosky ended Act 2, with the increasingly irritated Erda pointing out to Siegfried where he’d left behind Nothung, and the Wanderer’s handing a packet of crisps to Alberich in their scene together. The scrap of bloody bear was a good way of dealing with that particular problem in Act 1.
  • Despite being a last-minute shoe-in for the ill Maltman, Tommi Hakala seemed just as effective as his predecessor on the first night in demonstrating the Wanderer’s conflicting impulses – towards renunciation on the one hand and on the other the need to retain power, both reflected in the wonderful scene with Erda, but also the way in which he enjoys getting one over Alberich and Mime – contained within his downsized grubby appearance. Peter Hoare as Mime managed to be both profoundly evil in his handling of Siegfried but at the same time to evoke some sneaking sympathy, given the background of his treatment by his brother; he was very far from being one-dimensional, which sometimes Mime is in performance
  • Vocally, all the singers performed at a very high level. Schager is not Alberto Remedios but he does at times offer softer more lyrical singing than the heldentenor norm, as well as wowing everyone with his energy and the sheer volume of his voice (pinning you back in your seat, even at Row D to the side of the Amphitheatre). Elisabeth Strid’s is not a steely high-volume Wagner soprano in the Nilsson/Davidsen mould, but she gave us much beautiful phrasing and banged out the top notes with energy and precision – her last top C among the best I have heard. Hakala was much more than an efficient stand-in ; he had his own gravelly splendour of voice, He probably didn’t do as much with the words as the ever-thoughtful Maltman would have done (and I might go to the cinema screening on March 31st if Maltman is singing) but he acted without hesitation and convincingly (in itself remarkable when you think how much rehearsal time he must have had). It was touching, and appropriate, that he got the third biggest cheer of the evening (after Schager and Pappano) by a very grateful and appreciative audience. Christopher Purves sounded a bit alarmingly stretched at the top of his voice but was otherwise dependable and Peter Hoare and Soloman Howard did all one could hope for vocally with Mime and Fafner. I also loved the beautiful rich voice of Wiebke Liehmkuhl as Erda.
  • Schager in a Guardian interview described this production , in an appreciative way (as he would, having sung in the Schwarz Bayreuth Ring a number of times, and some other spectacularly ill-conceived regie-theater shows) as ‘old-fashioned’ and in a way it is – very focused on story-telling. If an object is mentioned in the text it’s there on stage – be it anvil or ring.  The production is also kind to the singers – invariably they are placed down stage when the orchestra is at high volume. Coming on to the sets and design aspect, Act 1, and Act 3 scene 2 (i.e. at the mountain-top) worked brilliantly. Act 1 had a grey Hansel and Gretel type house stuck at a crazy level angle on top of a ladder, while two Heath Robinson machines huffed and puffed in the forging scene (with sparks flying from the sword). I liked the way too the whole length and breadth of the Covent Garden stage was visible, allowing for Siegfried to run around and for the Wanderer’s entrances. There were some spectacular fireworks at the end of Act 1! Act 3 Scene 2 had the, by now familiar, stark dead tree, last seen in Act 3 of Walkuere but this time surrounded by a carpet of mountain pasture flowers, in the midst of which Brunnhilde is lying. This looked quite wonderfully appropriate, with glorious colours – at the same time, the fact that it was obviously a carpet, and you could see the bare black stage behind and in the wings, suggested how transient this all was.  Act 2 was about as far removed from the normal forest greens and sunlight-through-the-trees approach as you could find. We had the same night time scene as played out in Act 2 of Walkuere, again with a street lamp, but this time with (lots of) snow, and Fafner’s lair became a sinister looking bungalow, like something out of a horror film. There were park benches for Alberich and the Wanderer. Fafner was (curiously a bit like the Bethnal Green Regents Opera Fafner last year – could Kosky’s team have stolen the idea?) a human dressed in a suit made of hundreds of small gold leaves with golden crutches as weapons. Personally, I liked the setting and didn’t feel much incongruity with the text even during the Forest Murmurs – and Fafner in his suburban lit-up bungalow shows how far he, as current Ring-holder, is from the Nature which Siegfried references throughout the act, also symbolised of course by the Woodbird and ‘old Erda,’ who I’ll come onto below. What I found difficult to accept is the staging of the encounters Wanderer has with Erda and Siegfried in Act 3, plus Siegfried’s walk through the fire. Each of these scenes is in essence played in front of the curtains, with a grey wall blocking the set up for the final scene, and with no props beyond spear and sword – plus ‘young Erda’ crawling out of the capacious dress of ‘old Erda’. Surely something could have been done to light the scene more effectively and to suggest the magic fire (the person I was with, seeing the work for the first time, wasn’t even clear when Siegfried was going through this)?
  • ‘Old Erda’ is possibly even more prominent than she has been in the other two music dramas – on stage throughout all the Acts, I think, with very brief exceptions, and there’s a particularly nice cameo of her watering the flowers in the last scene. We will have to wait till Gotterdammerung to get the full view of what Kosky intends by her, but she is in this work less of an agent than she was in ‘Walkuere’, and this makes it easier to get your head round the ‘Erda’s dream’ concept for the whole cycle
  • The orchestra under Pappano sounded glorious – full bodied, wonderfully delicate woodwind at times, beautifully-rounded horns, sumptuous strings in the final scene. Everything sounded paced at speeds comfortable for the singers and allowing clear diction (another notable aspect of this production) while keeping the drama taut. There was no lingering, but also much sensitivity.

I have seen, in over 50 years of opera-going, perhaps 10 productions of Siegfried (plus two concert performances): – ENO 1970’s, ROHCG, 1970’s, Bayreuth 1972, ROHCG 1990, ROH 2012, Opera North 2016, Longborough 2022, Bayreuth 2022, Regents Opera 2025, and now this one. I think this is the best staged production of the lot (though Goodall’s conducting and his cast at ENO were very special)

PS Also ROHCG Screening at Sheffield Curzon cinema, 31/3/26

I used the excuse that I hadn’t seen Maltman sing the Wanderer when I went to the live performance on 21/3 to justify to myself going to the screening of Siegfried at the end of March. Although it was disappointing to have the last 10 minutes of the first act removed by a ‘technical hitch’, the screening proved to be a very exciting and engrossing occasion, demonstrating to a huge audience the fine acting as well as singing informing the performance. In particular I was struck by Elisabeth Strid’s acting – how every gesture, every movement of her hand, counted. And she was able to use her face so expressively, even while managing to keep an eye on the conductor, and managing her vocal chords. Schager was just as energetic and credible close-up as he was in the theatre. In fact, it is remarkable that both Strid and Schager, both in their early to mid-50’s and in one sense looking their age, can be such credible figures on stage playing characters years younger.  Maltman didn’t quite bring, to my ear anyway, the sort of lieder-singing approach and sensitivity to words that I remembered from Walkuere but he was always credible, and with a strong voice easily riding over the orchestra.  Almost my favourite scene in the Ring is the one between Erda and Wotan in Act 3, and this was wonderfully realised. One thing I hadn’t appreciated while seeing that scene live is that throughout old Erda is mouthing ‘young’ Erda’s words – taking part in, or remembering, the conversation, I am not sure. I don’t think also I had appreciated before Pappano’s varied approach to these huge acts. Act 1 is taken at really quite a pace, cutting 5 minutes off the scheduled timing, and the Erda/Wotan scene is taken at quite a speed as well, whereas most of the final scene between Siegfried and Brunnhilde is taken at a set of almost-Goodall-like tempi, until the last 5 minutes, when he suddenly speeds up. This varied approach helped the drama I think to move at a pace that engaged the audience’s attention. Whether it totally makes sense structurally is another issue, but, in the excitement, I wasn’t bothered.

I can’t wait for Gotterdammerung………!

Walton, Halle Orchestra, Bridgewater Hall. 12/3/26

Halle Orchestra, Alpesh Chauhan conductor, Tine Thing Helseth trumpet. Britten Courtly Dances from Gloriana; Nico Muhly Doom Painting (Hallé co-commission / UK premiere); Walton Symphony No.1.

This was an interesting programme in prospect. I have a lot of time for Alpesh Chauhan as a conductor since I heard his RhineGold for Birmingham Opera in July 2921, which must have been a major feat of logistics given the nearness to lockdowns and the restrictions still in place for orchestras; also, I have read about but never heard any music by Nico Mulhly, so that was another attraction.

The Britten Gloriana pieces beginning the programme were all good fun, and well-played, though raising the whole question – why? – which applies to the work as a whole. Why was Britten writing cod galliards; why did he engage in this project, which really didn’t ignite the blaze of inspiration his other opera libretti produced, and the reception of which put him off ‘big’ operas for good?

Nico Muhly is an American classical music composer and arranger who has worked and recorded with both classical and pop musicians. He apparently sees himself as ‘from’ the classical music tradition, fundamentally, but is happy to work in a range of genres. ‘Doom Painting’ is essentially a trumpet concerto. The work takes us through this instrument’s various iterations – ceremonial object for rituals and celebrations alike; harbinger of Doomsday; and jubilant instrument of the psalms.  I liked the piece, in its quiet meditative way (that’s how i experienced it anyway….). Though the programme notes described a work which covered different aspects of the trumpet’s use over history, it seemed to be the trumpet ‘last posts’  that seemed to predominate over the battle calls and the last judgement scenes. There was some stunning playing by Tine Thing Hesketh. Perhaps there was a tendency to blandness and to a lack of development – I am not sure – but it is certainly a work I’d like to hear again, and is clearly from an individual voice. Much cheering from the audience for Tine…..

I had a dream the other night, in which my head had fallen off. I was trying to meet someone in a nearby house – I think a woman, so there might have been a romantic tinge to this – and I was fretting because not only had my head fallen off but I had dropped it on the floor and broken it. Attempts to put it back together hadn’t worked, it wouldn’t fit back together properly, and I was very distressed by the time I suddenly woke up, sweating. I had completely forgotten this dream, but it all came back to me as I listened to this Walton 1, which is a head-banging (or dropping) musical nightmare if ever there was one. The problem with this work is not the first three movements, which wonderfully re-create the head-banging/dropping story in 3 different guises, with reference to a clearly torrid affair Walton had with a woman in the 1930’s, but instead the ‘triumphant’ finale, which seems to want to put all this nonsense behind the composer and listener, by virtue of a lot of noise and  crashing gongs, and which has often in my experience felt inflated –  false or unconvincing. I found neither the Wilson/ Sinfonia of London or the Ed Gardner/Bergen Philharmonic performances I’ve heard over the last 7-8 years very persuasive in relation to the finale, and I have to go back to Previn and the LSO performing the work in the 1970’s for a truly convincing rendition of that movement (and I still remember also the late, ultra-cool, Kurt Goedicke, the then LSO  timpanist, producing an almighty hammering at the end of the first movement…).

The Halle wasn’t perhaps on its top virtuoso form in the first two movements – things seemed sometimes less than razor-sharp but there was much to admire in the orchestral voices Mr Chauhan brought out and the careful balancing, the layers of different sound carefully blended, and the control of volume (this work can easily sound unrelenting) his conducting produced. Unusually – but you can see why as you hear the music – he placed the violas opposite the first violins, and brought out some of the colours that provided – including a solo  viola in the first movement I’d never realised was there before. Where this performance scored was in the last two movements. I don’t think I have ever been so engaged with the tortured orchestral colours and slow, grinding changes of atmosphere in the slow movement, and there was some beautiful woodwind playing.  And, praise be, the finale made more sense than it has in the past for me – something to do with the fast bits being pushed along and not too much slowing down for the gongs and the doubled up timps. I think. I was really quite moved by the bit that sounds like a crib from La Mer, and which subsides into a fulfilled silence before another bout of crashing gongs

…So a really good performance of the Walton, and altogether an enjoyable, interesting evening.

By Steven Psano

Andras Schiff, Wigmore Hall, 4/3/26

The programme to be announced from the stage

It is one of the fascinating things nowadays of attending Andras Schiff’s recitals that he wants what he plays to be a surprise and nothing is known beforehand of what he will perform. Of course, it is also true that what he tends to perform recently – in my limited experience (though of course he has a huge repertoire) tends to fall within a fairly narrow range of composers (but what depth and richness!) – Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, maybe Scarlatti, Beethoven, Schubert, maybe Schumann and Brahms – so my guess was that the programme would cover some of these composers. I did wonder whether he would perform any music by his great composing compatriot, Kurtag, on the latter’s 100th birthday just celebrated………….

Though with no Kurtag, the recital was nevertheless a real treat. The audience is taken on a journey, and you’re never sure what you’re going to find along the way. So one reason for the attraction of this recital is simply the unexpected, and the opportunity for fascinating and revealing juxtapositions. Another is Mr Schiff’s often amusing remarks introducing each piece. Both were in evidence at the beginning – he played without an introduction (and beautifully – though quite fast) the ‘aria’ from the Goldberg Variations. I am sure most of the audience asked themselves – are we in for 1 hour and twenty minutes of the Goldbergs this evening? Mr Schiff said, after the aria – ‘don’t be worried, I am not going to play the rest of the variations this evening!’. Another attraction is making unexpected links between some of the pieces you wouldn’t normally (or at least I wouldn’t) bracket together.

 The first half – to the best of my memory – after the Goldberg aria consisted of the Bach Italian Concerto, an early Haydn sonata (two movements, 1769), a late Mozart Rondo (K511), a Bach Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue (I think BWV 908) and Beethoven’s early ‘Tempest’ sonata. Before the Haydn sonata there was the touching piece the young Bach – 18 or 19 at the time – wrote on the departure of his brother on his travels, a four movement ‘Capriccio’ – surprisingly similar to the Haydn in mood and tone . This was a long first half – almost 80 minutes. The second half, a lot shorter, was a delight – seven pieces of shortish Schubert. Mr Schiff made the point that he would normally play Schubert only on his Bosendorfer (I remember this being used when he gave a recital in Salzburg in 2024) and he thanked the Wigmore Hall technician for adapting its Steinway to his satisfaction. The central element in the second half was the three piano pieces (i.e. klavierstucke) from his final year of life, and positioned around them was an impromptu (the beautiful G minor D899 one), a moment musicaux (D780, no 3) with a supposedly Hungarian tune (Mr Schiff was a bit sniffy about the veracity of this), and a couple of other pieces I have forgotten. The first half was mainly in the minor key and the overall mood was melancholy and dark – the Mozart, as Schiff said, out of context sounded surprisingly like Chopin; the Bach Chromatic Fantasia seemed to be in the same sound world as the opening of the Beethoven. The Schubert second half was a delight – sharp rhythms, wonderfully handled modulations, and a dancing lilt and lightness of touch when needed. Together the pieces sounded like a newly discovered mature piano sonata from Schubert’s final months , but not played over-portentously, always sounding like something Schubert might have put together for his friends and a party. 

The encore was one of my all-time favourite short piano pieces, the Brahms Op 118 No 2 in A Major, beautifully played and, again, making the connections across 70 years between it and the Schubert pieces. It is a long time since I have so much enjoyed a piano recital……

András Schiff in Gewandhaus of Leipzig on 3. September 2016

John Adams, Nixon in China. Opera Bastille, Paris. 24/2/26

Kent Nagano, conductor; Valentina Carrasco, director; Carles Berga, set design; Peter Van Praet, lighting; Cast:  Thomas Hampson, Richard Nixon; Renée Fleming, Pat Nixon; John Matthew Myers; Mao Zedong; Caroline Wettergreen, Chiang Ch’ing; Joshua Bloom, Henry Kissinger; Xiaomeng Zhang, Zhou Enlai.

I was very pleased when I saw this was on Paris Opera’s 25/26 schedule – it is one of the top ten operas I’ve said I must get to before I get too decrepit to charge around Europe visiting opera houses. And two big name singers in the cast and Kent Nagano, a long time close collaborator with Adams, conducting were draws too…………………

Having very much enjoyed this performance, I am still thinking about whether this is a great 20th century opera. It is long – approx. 2 hrs 40 mins – and complex. Whether it’s up there with Peter Grimes and Wozzeck, I am not sure – the Act 2 sequences are maybe less dramatically tight than they could be and I wonder if I were hearing it again live whether the 3rd act would seem a bit anti-climactic. Not having known much about the score apart from the ‘Chairman Dances’ sequence often played as an orchestral excerpt, and the aria ‘This is prophetic’ sung by Pat Nixon, which Adams included and conducted in the Halle concert I went to of his music last October, there was a lot to absorb in this performance. It is by no means easy listening – despite the minimalist veneer, there is a lot going on in the music, not always easy to pick up on, and many different styles – Stravinsky-like neo-classicism and rhythms, parts that sound like Tristan and Parsifal, rock and jazz, popular American music of the 30’s – not to mention the near quotations from R.Strauss’ Alpine Symphony in Act 2……. And on top of the remarkable music, there is an equally remarkable libretto by Alice Goodman, which clearly needs time and attention beforehand to absorb, which I didn’t have the means to do, and therefore many subtleties were lost to me in the swirl of the music and what was happening on stage. Some have said that Goodman’s text is off-putting and makes the characters unreal – I have to say I loved its slightly off-beat language. The libretto is about many things – a clash of opposing views and being able to move beyond them, politicians having their minds changed by on-the-ground experiences, moving beyond national cultural cliches, and a view of the US and Americans as more nuanced than most of its foreign policy would allow people to assume, but also doesn’t downplay some of the horrors of the Mao regime. Does it underplay Nixon’s role in the Vietnam War? – I think this production does cover that aspect. Anyway, I must get a recording of this work, and I must find another performance!…………

It seems remarkable that the opera is more than 40 years old now, compared to barely a decade between the historic China visit by Nixon and the opera’s composition. The director – see link below – says in an interview (from when the production was new in 2023) that the time lapse justifies a certain surrealism in approach; the opera, she believes, has been on stage for long enough for a production to move beyond the realism which would be understandable and inevitable for a director handling its first few performances. How much a more surreal approach added I am not sure – however the first duty of a director, to ensure the story is clearly told, was, I think, achieved. The key production element she introduced was the table tennis match – ‘ping-pong’ diplomacy, the invitation of US table tennis teams to China in the late 60’s, had been a key diplomatic preparation towards the Nixon visit, and so table tennis teams, dressed in opposing red and blue, and tables for the game, were a key element of the set and action at various points, particularly in the openings of Acts 1 and 3, and are used for some choral sequences. There were also a large number of Red Army cadres in khaki uniform, perhaps chorus, perhaps extras. Other elements of the set were:  movable large terraces for the chorus; Mao’s library, elevated, with what looked like police punishment cells underneath; screens suggesting  snow and the countryside, and film of what might have been US bombing attacks during the Vietnam war (though I am not sure about that) as part of the ‘show’ the Nixons watch in Act 2;there was also a very fine Great Hall with an array of suspended lights. The third act suggested dislocation – suspended ping pong tables in the air, chunks of terrace scattered across the stage. There’s a spectacular presidential bird-like aircraft which swoops down from the sky. The elements which I was less clear about direction-wise were: a rather sympathetic and cartoonish-looking red Chinese dragon that followed Pat Nixon around at points and which she seemed to see as a pet; and a longish (10 minutes or so) film shown on screen between Acts 2 and 3 and made by US film-makers in the late 1970’s (obviously partly there as a scene-changing device, with curtains down) about the impact of the Cultural Revolution on an elderly man teaching Western music in the mid-1960’s and the utter destruction of his world.

The characterisation  – obviously mainly fictional – of the main protagonists is fascinating: Nixon becomes more reflective and three dimensional – thinking of his past, of his views on Communism (“Everyone, listen; just let me say one thing. I opposed China, I was wrong”); Mao is gnomic and leaves the politics to Chou-en-lai, but dons a Hawaiian shirt and dances energetically with his wife; Chou-en-lai asks at the end “How much of what we did was good?”; Kissinger is a nervous, fidgety but know-all figure. Only Mao’s wife Chiang Ch’ing is treated fairly stereotypically, as an ideological fanatic.

There were a range of musical highlights – I’ve mentioned Pat Nixon’s aria in Act 2, but there’s also (she’s a coloratura soprano) Chiang Ch’ing’s spectacular song “I am the wife of Mao Tse-tung”), praising the Cultural Revolution and glorifying her role in it; much of the music for the Act 2 performed drama; the arrival of the Presidential aircraft in Act 1; Chou’s last act aria “I am old and I cannot sleep” , the Women’s Red Army choral number ‘Flesh Rebels’ and many more memorable moments.

All the cast members were strong – perhaps the strongest being Caroline Wettergreen as a powerful Chian Ch’ing, bouncing across the stage, ready to shoot from the hip and with some strong top notes. Mao’s is almost a heldentenor role and was sung with great clarity of diction and strength. Renee Fleming is one of those stage presences that commands attention effortlessly, and she sang beautifully. About Thomas Hampson, I was less sure – he was clearly trying to put over the complexity of Nixon’s personality (‘Tricky Dicky’ indeed) but came across as perhaps a little too introverted and self-effacing (but maybe that is what Adams and Goodman were aiming at) and at times he seemed a bit under-powered. I liked Xiaomeng Zhang ‘s Chou a lot – clear diction and strong bass-baritone voice. The orchestra under Kent Nagano sounded capable and responsive – I thought I caught a couple of moments when repetitive rhythms went slightly astray, but for the most part, they were unobtrusive and never drowned the singers.  The chorus were very impressive – having listened since the Paris performance to some extracts from the Met 2011 screening on YouTube, the chorus in this performance was much more impressive in numbers like ‘Flesh Rebels’ than the New Yorkers,

A person I think was the director – or maybe the revival director, given that this was the first night of a revival – came on stage in the curtain calls, to a considerable amount  of enthusiasm, which makes a change……….

Time for me to look up Operabase for that follow-up performance………….

Here is a trailer with various scenes

Nixon in China – Opera from the Paris Opera

And here is a conversation with the Director – [INTERVIEW] Valentina Carrasco and Alexander Neef about NIXON IN CHINA – YouTube

Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Wigmore Hall 23/2/26

Anthony Marwood violin; Coleman Itzkoff cello; Aleksandar Madžar piano.  Shostakovich, Violin Sonata Op. 134; Tchaikovsky, Piano Trio in A minor Op. 50

As i travelled to London for an evening Wigmore Hall concert, prior to moving on the next day to Paris, I found myself thinking about the dire state of British politics. In front of me on the train, having a rare old time, were three young men who I took to be Christian nationalists, who seemed to be reading and listening to a heady succession of lectures and podcasts about England becoming a Godly Kingdom and properly Christian again, the end of the domination by other religions, particularly Islam, a new era of Christian colonialism and victory over other nations. There was a very creepy-sounding South African ideologue speaking, chunks of Ezekiel, and also some references to the ‘Young Lions’, an Assemblies of God group, I believe, as well as ‘Tarshish’, which apparently in end-times conversation means a group of nations who will stand against the Anti-Christ . Of course, I should have engaged them in conversation but, in the usual British way, didn’t and just buried my head in my computer. Suddenly, not entirely relevantly to the young British Christian nationalists but entirely appropriate to Shostakovich’s violin sonata, there came into my head Edgar’s lines from King Lear – “The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say” (or in my case, speak what will be socially embarrassing because it’s important to speak up, not just keep silent out of politeness …..)

Shostakovich by the late 60’s though WAS able to speak through music what he felt, and in no way held himself bound by what Soviet orthodoxy said he ought to say. The Violin Sonata is not as bleak as the later Viola Sonata but it is by no means easy listening – using elements of 12-tone practice, deliberately spare and not easily relatable melodic material, and clearly focusing on Shostakovich’s increasingly frail health and serving as a meditation on death and dissolution. I find I just have to submit to it and accept its slow, fragmentary movement – there are moments of grim humour but no revelation, just, at the end, a gradual dying away. It is a moving experience, and was beautifully and sensitively played by Anthony Marwood and Aleksandar Madžar. It’s never going to be one of my top ten musical experiences of the year, but it is very rewarding nonetheless.

I don’t know to what extent this well-known British violinist and, from my perspective, less well known Serbian pianist and American cellist often perform together, but there was a definite rapport and sense of common understanding between the three players in something of a barn-storming performance of the Tchaikovsky Trio. It’s a work I’ve heard live once before, performed in Sheffield by Ensemble 360 and I was rather bowled over by it at the time, particularly its ‘big tune’ that opens and closes the work, and bought a recording of the work as a result. Listening to it again, I was more conscious that it is a long work – coming up to 50 minutes in this performance – and one which sometimes meanders a bit, particularly in the Theme and Variations section, where there was a sense of ‘”…and next…, and then…….”. Apart from the ‘big tune’’s return, I didn’t get much of a sense of structure in the work – it sprawls, rather. But it’s always appealing, doesn’t seem to go in for noisy rhetorical gestures, the grand moments of the work came off well, and this was a performance of utter conviction and passion, I felt. There were lots of audience whoops and cheers at the end, well-deserved. Was Tchaikovsky really saying what he felt, though, rathe than what he ought to say to the bourgeois salons of St Petersburg and Moscow? I’m not sure……………………

Mozart, Cosi Fan Tutte. ENO, 19/2/26

Dinis Sousa conductor; Phelim McDermott, director; Tom Pye, designer; Laura Hopkins, costumes; Paule Constable, lighting. Lucy Crowe, Fiordiligi | Taylor Raven, Dorabella | Joshua Blue, Ferrando | Darwin Prakash, Guglielmo | Andrew Foster-Williams, Don Alfonso | Ailish Tynan, Despina plus circus skills ensemble

I had heard good things about this production – 19th century Naples translated to 1950’s Coney Island, unlikely as this seems –  and having Lucy Crowe in the cast was another big draw – she must be the UK’s finest soprano in this sort or repertory at present.

In fact (not that I have seen that many productions – traditional Covent Garden and ENO ones in the 70’, the recent Covent Garden one, that’s about it) this must be the finest and most enjoyable production and performance I have ever seen of this work.

It helped of course (but with some other productions could have hindered) that I was sitting in Row B of the stalls, thus unusually near to the stage and so could see very clearly the quality of the acting close up. But my reasons for this assessment are based on a range of considerations:

  1. The Coney Island/motel concept was in no way distracting.. Compared to the Marriage of Figaro Cosi is a much more static work, with less recitative, and the sense of one aria after another can induce boredom if not carefully handled. The Coney Island concept gave an  opening to the circus skills ensemble, and the tacky motel after a while seemed entirely appropriate – both helped to engage the audience. Some of the backgrounds of a rollercoaster, a big wheel and a helter-skelter were quite haunting. The design concept allowed Don Alfonso to be a more rounded figure than he is sometimes portrayed, engaging with people and not just being a puppet-master. The circus performers were a brilliant idea, and they do a range of tasks – holding placards which describe the main  themes of the piece, doing their tricks (but not too often – a fire eater, a sword swallower, acrobats, the strong man and so forth); and they also shift scenery and are part of the crowd reacting to the story. All this engages the audience and keeps us alert even during a sequence of arias;
  2. The actual construction of the set was clever. There were moveable fairground dodgems, horses and other rides, pushed around by the circus people and stage hands, and a floating balloon for Fiordiligi. There was a drop down set of the motel rooms where Fiordiligi and Dorabella were staying, that had both exteriors and interiors, which could be shifted quickly from one to the other, again helping with pace and audience attention (plus a set of windows and a pane of glass in the doors, which people looked through or even sung through at various points (helping with the length of arias like ‘Come scoglio’), Incidentally, Wikipedia reports that “”Mozart had an extreme dislike for Ferrarese del Bene, for whom he first created the role of Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte. Aware of her tendency to drop her chin and throw back her head while singing low and high notes respectively, Mozart chose to fill her showpiece aria (“Come scoglio”) with continuous harmonic leaps to force her to bob her head “like a chicken”.. The truth of this is questioned by Wikipedia but it’s a nice story and fully in keeping with what we know about Mozart’s humour.
  3. The translation, again by Jeremy Sams, I thought was excellent – no jarring notes and very singable too. It was also very funny at points and got a lot of audience laughs, aided by the clarity of diction of almost everyone on stage. I appreciated particularly the translation of ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’  – ‘That’s human nature’ – which gets round  some of the objections this piece can attract when done less absorbingly and sensitively.
  4. The quality of acting and inter-acting on stage by the principal singers was outstanding. All of them were utterly believable, even the two soldiers, who can seem a bit wooden in some productions. This allowed Don Alfonso to be a warmer, less cardboard figure. Lucy Crowe, and to not quite the same extent Taylor Raven, both showed us the extent of the distress they felt in gradually succumbing to the two ‘strangers’.
  5. The quality of singing. I have to say it – I have heard nobody live since Margaret Price and Kiri Te Kanawa 50 years ago singing Fiordiligi quite as well as Lucy Crowe, who has everything for the role – good diction, a beautiful sound whatever the volume or height/depth of the note, some meltingly lovely phrasing, and complete control of the coloratura elements. This was an utterly outstanding performance. Ailish Tynan as motel chambermaid Despina again was just about the best Despina I have seen – never hamming it up, but performing with a kind of wide-eyed madness that was very funny.  She sang her two big arias with deftness and again with some lovely phrasing – as an aside the director gave her the best and least winceable/ silly disguises I have ever seen for doctor and marriage lawyer. Andrew Foster-Williams – not a name I’ve come across – was utterly believable and with a warm bass-baritone sound. The other three principals  – again, all new to me – were never other than very good, but perhaps less distinctive. Taylor Raven was a particularly effective actor, drawing out the early attraction she felt for the disguised Guglielmo very believably
  6. Dinis Sousa gave the music time to breathe and the right sort of Mozartian bounce – nothing seemed rushed or over-excited, but had its internal energy brought out with vivid orchestral playing (including no horn mis-behavings in Fiordiligi’s big Act 2 aria, and a wonderfully perky oboe in the overture and Come Scoglio)

I avoided this production in 2022 (and I think before Covid) feeling it was likely to be a bit of a disaster. The very opposite is true – it’s an ENO triumph of a classic kind, up to their highest standards of years gone by. That they can put on a show like this (and in the same week as a very effective ‘Mahagonny’) at a time of such financial crisis and dislocation / unemployment for them is remarkable

Thyrsus Trio: St Pancras Church, lunchtime, 19/2/26

Thyrsus Trio, Schubert Trio No. 1 in B-flat major D.898

The thyrsus, a quick check with Wikipedia suggests, is a kind of staff used in rituals “ typically associated with the Greek god Dionysus (and his subsequent Roman equivalent Bacchus) as a symbol of prosperity, fertility, and hedonism.”. It has to be said that St Pancras, the church near Euston Station, didn’t immediately offer itself as a symbol of hedonism – it’s built in an 18th century-looking classical style that feels a bit forbidding, particularly on a cold cloudy day threatening to rain at any minute. But actually lunchtime concerts and recitals in the middle of the city are one of the hidden glories of London and on most weekdays there’s 5 or 6 to choose from. Sometimes I let myself be adventurous but for today there was no choice because it was one of the Schubert Piano Trios on offer – both are glorious works, and it was only being performed just down the road from the hotel I was staying in.

The lunchtime concert audiences are a mixed crew – down more in the City area there are a fair number of pretty affluent looking City-workers; here in St Pancras we were a more motley crew, mainly elderly , with an admixture of Chinese students and other young people who might have been friends of the players – maybe 40-45 people in all.

The Thyrsus Trio don’t have much of an online presence but I saw something that suggested they had an association with the Guildhall School. I know the Schubert work quite well but don’t have particular recordings implanted in my memory to compare this Trio with against others. As far as I could tell they were:

  • Generous in their playing – many if not all the available repeats were taken
  • Although the church had the usual rumbly ecclesiastical acoustics, to the extent I could tell, offering a seemingly well balanced performance, which must be tricky when you have a piano and strings to balance. Certainly I could always hear the different lines of the instruments
  • Tempi seemed well-judged, particularly in the slow movement. Schubert’s special moments of thematic transformation/modulation always seemed to be handled well

And I came away with a sense of wonder at the fertility of Schubert’s invention and his sense of hedonism in the face of imminent death (the work was finished in the last year of his life). I hope other people in the audience felt wonder too – there was a very desultory amount of applause from the audience which stopped as soon as the musicians were out of sight. In the very unlikely circumstance that any of the Trio read this, I do hope they will accept my apologies for the poor response of my fellow audience members and my reassurance that I at least thought they had given a very enjoyable performance!!

Weill/Brecht: Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. ENO, 18/2/26

André de Ridder, conductor; Jamie Manton, director; Milla Clarke, designer; DM Wood, lighting designer.  Cast: Rosie Aldridge, Leokadja Begbick; Kenneth Kellogg, Trinity Moses; Mark Le Brocq

Fatty the Bookkeeper; Richard Trey Smagur, Jimmy MacIntyre; Alex Otterburn, Bank-Account Billy; Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Jack O’Brien; David Shipley, Alaska Wolf Joe; Danielle de Niese, Jenny Smith; Zwakele Tshabalala, Toby Higgins

I was hoping this was going to be a more cope-able-with production than the mad one I saw in Berlin last July, where the whole theatre space was used for the performance, and it was very difficult to know what was going on – or even to know where to be to find out what was going on……and though there were English surtitles everything moved at such speed in Berlin on the video screens that you only understood the outline of what was happening. This ENO production also marked Andre de Ritter’s first production since taking on the decidedly poisoned chalice role of ENO Music Director. And it had several distinguished singers in it – go-to Tristan and Parsifal Simon O’Neill, Danielle de Niese, Mark Le Brocq and Rosie Aldridge to name but a few.

And indeed, I did understand a lot more of what was going on in this production and enjoyed it – if that is the right word for this bleak work – far more in London.  A couple of the media critics, while generally praising this production and performance, grumbled about the longueurs of Mahagonny. I have to say I was gripped throughout and never felt my attention straying. The sets and production I think helped me keep my attention – as one would expect with Brecht, emphasising the unreality of the theatre, the full large Coliseum stage was opened up and used, with machinery and lights clearly on view. There was a container structure that could be moved around, lifted up, serve as an inner room and so forth. That, and banners (see photo), plus seating/benches of various sorts and a boxing ring for the fight (which also served as Jimmy’s cell) was about all there was on stage. That meant inevitably – and to the good – a focus on the people on stage and what they were singing/saying. So this looked like a properly thought-through production and not just an on-the-cheap 3-night-staging-only approach. It had an inevitable logic which emphasised the work’s cheerlessness. The fairly neutral costumes also helped to emphasise the relevance of the work to our times – the lack of human solidarity, the environmental destruction, consumer culture and everlasting (or not) economic growth, and the idolising of money – Brecht foretold it all nearly 100 years ago and it’s all in this opera/musical.

There were lots of good directorial ideas in the production. Having a tap dancer dressed in red with a weather vane on his head to lead the typhoon sequence sounds bizarre but worked quite well. The handling of the fight and the fluid realistic movement of the principals before and during it was extremely well done. I loved the sequence when one of the characters eats himself to death – very funny in a horrible way. Throughout, the chorus was extremely well-handled – occasionally there were dance-like musicals-type sequences, sometimes they were required to be robotic, as in the trial, but they always looked credible and never aimless. Translations are always something that get people going with wildly varied opinions, so let me just say that from my perspective the translation by Jeremy Sams sounded just right – pointing out the contemporary relevance, biting but not (too) vulgar.

There were two drawbacks to the production which, to my mind, were minor. One was the decision to have everyone singing and talking in American accents – as is usually the case when this is done, individuals’ accents came and went and were not always very good…..The decision to sometimes use amplified sound seemed arbitrary for talking and singing, and sometimes it felt that some of the opera singers didn’t always seem to know how to use them.

I am not quite sure why, but one was more conscious than usual that the Coliseum is a very large (London’s biggest) stage and some of the means used to support singers in opera – bringing them downstage, having walls etc behind them  – weren’t available, That meant that all the voices sounded quite small – even Simon O’Neill with his heldentenor background (and hence the mike-ing up at times). But there was some very good acting – O’Neill in particular was very convincing as Jimmy, getting across, and with good diction, the boorish, discerning and vulnerable aspects of the character. Rosie Aldridge (it’s a gift of a role) was brilliant as Begbick and flounced around very effectively. Danielle de Niese sometimes seemed uncomfortable as Jenny in role and voice, not quite doing the whore-ish bits with sufficient gusto (I do remember the Berlin performance Jenny being more convincing) and her hard-hitting end of Act 2 song suffered from being over-amplified. All the other characters were well done. In many ways vocally the stars of the show were the Chorus – it’s simply astonishing that, with all that has happened to them over the past two years, the ENO Chorus could sing with such finesse, such clarity and such energy in what seemed some quite difficult choral writing. The judgement of the conductor as to how to get the right sound in such a barn of a place as the Coliseum must be a difficult task – how many strings, when to amplify, how not to over-power or underwhelm to complement what is happening on stage – but de Ridder and the orchestra seemed to give an excellent performance which never felt out of place, was unobtrusive but always right, somehow.

The house was completely packed – the first time I have seen it so since Porgy and Bess before Covid – and very appreciative. Let’s see what ENO’s next fore-shortened season looks like and what happens in Manchester in 26/27…………………

Shostakovich/Beethoven: Halle Orchestra, Bridgewater Hall. 12/2/26

Halle Orchestra, Kahchun Wong conductor; Jan Vogler cello. Unsuk Chin, subito con forza; Shostakovich Cello Concerto No.1; Beethoven Symphony No.3, ‘Eroica

This was a very absorbing and first-rate concert. I have never heard a live performance of the Shostakovich concerto before. And, actually and oddly, in fact I’ve not heard that many performances of the Eroica live which I can now recall – the last one I remember was seven and a half years ago in Russia where the Vladimir Symphony Orchestra gave a full throttle performance in  a town about 100kms from Moscow with authentic braying Russian brass and nasal oboe, slow handclapping (ie approving applause) and, it being the first concert of the ‘season’, lots of bouquets of flowers for everyone. I must have heard the Eroica a lot at the Proms in the 70’s with the two knighted Davis’s and Mackerras, but all memory of those performances has vanished.

The first piece in the concert – a short 5-minute piece by Unsuk Chin – was commissioned for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in 2020. I liked it a lot – it was, I guess, in the spirit of Beethoven, a combination of disruptive sudden extracts of some of his well-known works – the Emperor concerto, Leonora no 3 overture, the 5th symphony and many more  – dovetailed in with Unsuk Chin’s 21st century equally disruptive and dissonant ruminations, both aspects disrupting the pathway of the other.

There is a connection, I suppose, between the Shostakovich piece, where the cello soloist sometimes seems like a prisoner caught in a spot-lit trap, alternatively rushing around underneath the trivial yet weighty sound of the orchestra in the first and fourth movement, and singing in solitude, supported in the slow movement by the orchestra, and the Beethoven work, essentially glorifying humanity and its ability to rise above its natural constraints and burdens  – two very different and opposed views of the human condition. I don’t really know the work well enough to be able to comment on how good a performance it was, but it was certainly one I was engaged by, particularly the sad slow 2nd movement. The work is made more poignant by the connection between the first movement’s main melody and the D-S-C-H motif of the 8th String Quartet and the 10th Symphony. Kahchun Wong kept the orchestral volume down so that the cello could always be heard clearly. As far as I could tell Jan Vogler played it well, with a powerful yet also expressive style, and I was very impressed by the variation of tone he was able to give in the 3rd movement, the cadenza. He gave us what I assume was a Bach Cello suite movement as an encore.

The Beethoven Eroica performance I thought was very fine indeed. Although there was no spoken introduction by Mr Wong or anyone else explaining the rationale for it, this Eroica was performed by the orchestra standing up, as the Aurora orchestra famously does (apart from cellos and basses). This is the first time I have seen the Halle do this, and it meant Mr Wong having to have an extra layer to his rostrum to be seen by the orchestra (see photo). I had lazily assumed the standing mode would increase the vigour and energy of the playing. What it actually seemed to do, I found, as the strings and woodwind swayed in time to the music they played, was that it increased the sense of line, of players listening to each other, and of creating often exquisite transitions from one instrumental phrase to another. This was not a beauty for beauty’s sake sound, but there was a thoughtful sense about the playing, of grace and delicacy. Mr Wong used a full modern symphony orchestra (no hard timpani sticks here, for instance), but carefully graded the climaxes so that the overall impression was very different from the over-driven, over-emphatic versions of period instrument bands (and of some conductors of the past). It was difficult to say exactly how standing changed the sound of the orchestra but it did seem to emphasise certain positive aspects of the way they normally play. There was some beautiful woodwind playing, with extraordinary precision from, particularly, the flutes in the first and last movements, as well as the oboe in the funeral march. The strings sounded warm and lush. The horns were splendid throughout, with no cracks in the trio of the 3rd movement, and a noble but never raucous rendition of the slowed down version of the finale’s main dance melody towards the end.  It was particularly the nobility of the 2nd movement and the final movements’ peroration which stayed with me after the concert, and also I liked Mr Wong’s slowish speeds and his giving the music room to breathe (as I have said in other performances he has given) yet Mr Wong also ensured the orchestra had thrust and energy where needed, so an abundance of creative energy was also part of the performance’s impact, and a sense of human potential.  How extraordinary this work must have sounded to its first public audience in 1805. Mr Wong, in the interplay between wind and strings, made one hear more of the Haydn-esque elements in the symphony than one would find in some renditions. I am not seeing this combination of conductor and orchestra until Mahler 6 in May – that should be something special!!   

Consone Quartet, Music in the Round, Sheffield Crucible – 10/2/26

C Schumann (Arr. Tress) Three Romances; Mozart String Quartet in C ‘Dissonance’; Schubert String Quartet No.13 ‘Rosamunde’

The Corsone Quartet I thought I’d heard before and a bit of digging around my memory and the internet reminded me that I had heard them play some Mendelssohn chamber music in Sheffield about 18 months ago, and that they’re a period instrument group, playing with gut strings.

The programme was quite an interesting one, perhaps playing with the idea of what defines a Romantic piece – to what extent is the Clara Schumann piece ‘Romantic’ or just a piece of sentimental salon music? To what extent is the Mozart piece ‘Romantic’ though thirty years before ‘romantic’ music began to come to the fore with Beethoven and Schubert? And to what extent is the Schubert ‘Romantic’, beyond its Winterreise-like first movement, full of pain and longing? Perhaps the answer is that the word usefully describes the general form and shape of music in a given period of time but that each work of a master (or mistress) has its own reality which can , and perhaps should, over-ride generic characteristics……

Somehow, though, these performances didn’t quite take off for me – which could be more to do with my mood and state of well-being as opposed to anything objectively to do with the musicians and their performances. Somehow I didn’t feel that the Mozart was given enough character, enough liveliness, enough – so to say – thought between the notes in the slow movement or the finale, though the ‘dissonant’ prelude worked very well on the bright rasping gut strings. The Schubert work’s first and second movements were very well played and characterised, but tension and variation seemed to sag and then disappear in the last two movements (which in the finale I suspect is Schubert’s fault).

I listened the next day to my recordings of these two pieces – the Emerson Quartet performing the Schubert, the Suske Quartet playing the Mozart, and found much more colour in both performances. Strange that I should have had such a down on these excellent performers (though the Sheffield MITR audience at the Crucible wasn’t as vociferously enthusiastic at the end as it sometimes is)

What did work well were the Clara Schumann pieces, adapted from a violin and piano set. They were straightforward, tuneful and unpretentious and were well played by the quartet