Intermezzo

Saint Nicolas at the Barbican

Britten's Saint Nicolas - Barbican, 6 December 2008

6 December is St Nicholas Day, when the custom in Germany is to leave out a shoe for the kindly saint to fill with sweeties. The Barbican aren't as generous, but they did put on two performances of Britten's bio-cantata Saint Nicolas, an afternoon one for kids, and the evening one I attended for everyone else.

Britten wrote Saint Nicolas specifically for amateur performers, including children. Not that it's just simple enough for amateurs to tackle; it needs their ‘fresh and unrestrained quality’ as Britten put it, and would actually sound wrong if it was slicked up by professionals. 

So most of the performers came from the local amateur orchestra EC4 Music, and the singers from the local St Luke's Community and Youth Choirs. A smattering of pro support (as per Britten's directions) came from the Belcea Quartet and Guildhall students. And there was Ian Bostridge to sing the role of the saint himself.

But that wasn't all. Saint Nicolas includes two hymns to be sung by the audience. So we had a quick five minute rehearsal from the nation's favourite choirmaster, Gareth Malone. Talk about luxury casting.

It was a mark of the thought and preparation which had clearly gone into this. They even managed a staging of sorts - always difficult in the Barbican Hall, even more so when the stage is full of musicians, and probably a superhuman feat when so many small children are involved. But the action was sparing and intelligent - children waving their arms to make a sea for the sailing song for example - and it came off without a hitch.

I could have done without the the tacked-on spoken interludes - a toe-curling debate in faux-playground-speak between a costumed angel and demon. They pedantically filled in any biographical gaps thoughtlessly left by Britten, as if the whole point of the evening was to prepare for a GCSE in St Nicholas Studies. As the almighty Jimmy McGovern says, better to be confused for ten minutes than bored for five seconds.

But despite this, and despite a bad cold that shredded Ian Bostridge's voice, it was hugely entertaining and very competently performed.

Just to give us value for money, I suppose, there were a couple of Bach cantatas in the first half. For some reason, a completely different group of musicians were used, the London Handel Orchestra and Singers. These cantatas were written for advent, so technically they were appropriate, but the style and mood was so far removed from St Nicolas that they seemed part of a different show.

Carolyn Sampson and Roderick Williams did well with their solo parts. Ian Bostridge had been scheduled to join them, but excusing himself with his cold, Jon Bungard and Edmund Hastings were plucked from the choir to cover. I'm not sure which was which. One has a good basic chorister voice and sang accurately, the other a quite beautiful and well-projected lyric tenor marred by suspect intonation. Both did well under the circumstances (I've heard worse from professional soloists) but hearing Ian Bostridge later, even flawed by illness, did underline the difference between a chorister and soloist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Santa, please stuff my stocking with this:

from All Saints

David Daniels is Bach on top

The English Concert / David Daniels - Queen Elizabeth Hall, 15 October 2008

Bach - Orchestral Suite No.1 in C
Cantata No.170 `Vergnugte Ruh, Beleibte Seelenlust'
Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris from Mass in B minor
Sinfonia from Cantata No.42 `Am Abend desselbigen Sabbats'
Schlummert ein from Cantata No.82 (Ich habe genug) 
Erbarme dich mein Gott (St. Matthew Passion) 
Handel - Concerto grosso in A, Op.6 No.11
Ombra cara (Radamisto)
Furibondo (Partenope)
Passacaglia from Act 2 of Radamisto
Mad scene from Orlando 
Encore: Handel - Qual nave (Radamisto)

I've always found David Daniels reliably superb in opera - even in the rare dodgy production - a consummate actor no less than a singer, whose charisma alone is enough to fill the stage.

His London recitals haven't always had the same impact. While the quality of the voice and the technical accomplishment have never been in doubt, performances have sometimes seemed less than entirely committed.

But taking to the stage with crack baroque ensemble The English Concert for this recital, all that seemed far behind him. He bounded on looking confident alert, happy, totally in charge. The all-Bach first half gained intensity slowly, climaxing with Erbarme dich mein Gott. David Daniels's voice was just as sweet and beautiful as ever, the breath control immaculate, and it's also gained a richness of colours well-suited to his yearning, almost romantic interpretations - no starchy Bach here.

The English Concert had the easy intimacy of a string quartet and a technical mastery to match Daniels. Often in these sort of concerts, the instrumental 'bits' are no more than unwelcome, short-changing fillers, but here they more than held their own.

And they seem to have solved the problem of concert attire more stylishly than many ensembles, extending the usual dreary monochrome palette to allow in any shade that won't show a red wine stain. Daniels himself, immaculately fracked, clearly knows the value of great tailoring.

He was even better in the all-Handel second half, a selection that displayed his full arsenal of talents from elegantly sustained long notes to dazzling coloratura. Again, what he's gained since his last recitals here is the ability to clothe all that technique in the sort of shading and colouring he brings to his operatic performances, to bring his characters to full, scary life, to contain their whole history and their future in those few minutes of song. Especially in the last, recit-heavy selection from Orlando, it felt like wandering into an opera half way through, untamed for the recital platform.

It would be impossible to argue with his formidable pre-show billing: "the world's leading dramatic counter-tenor".

  

Did Mrs Bach really do more than the cooking, cleaning, washing up, dusting, ironing, floor scrubbing, child rearing, nappy changing, bed making and grocery shopping ?

YES says forensic-trained Australian academic Martin Jarvis, who claims he can show that Anna Magdalena Wilcke, Bach's second wife, wrote several of the manuscripts previously credited to her famous husband.

Wrote? Or copied? The discovery hinges on handwriting analysis, and of course in Bach's day, the HP Laserjet was nothing more than a Leonardo sketch. So it's conceivable JS got the missus to knock up a few neat manuscripts in between painting her nails and necking gin. But composing? More digging required.

Raise your handkerchiefs for András Schiff

András Schiff - Wigmore Hall, 9 September 2008

 

There's always one, isn't there?

This time, it was the total t1t who, like the rest of the audience, sat silent throughout the hundred non-stop spellbinding minutes of András Schiff's Goldberg Variations. Then erupted with an almighty cough about 2 milliseconds after Schiff had struck his last note. Before his fingers had even left the keyboard! 

Was it a set-up? Who knows (- Schiff is notoriously touchy about interruptions - and why shouldn't he be?)

Score-free and pedal-less, the performance had all the Schiff trademarks of intelligence and clarity. He made his points strongly and unequivocally, sometimes controversially. His tuneseeking tendency to cleave to a line could destabilise and unbalance. And though the strange dissonances of variation 25 were quite properly emphasised before resolution, I'm not sure they needed quite the bold caps double underlining they received. But he didn't, as some before him have done, chicken out when it came to the rapidfire super-virtuoso sections, appreciating the need for balance in tempos as in every other aspect of the work. It was a performance that reached the intellect more than the heart perhaps, but still a stunning achievement.

Afterwards, he seemed genuinely touched to receive the Wigmore Medal for his contribution (over 30 years!) to the musical life of Wigmore Hall. And despite his pianothon, he even managed a coherent and graceful speech of thanks, the coughing interloper apparently forgotten.

Imogen Cooper and Fazil Say - two pianists for the price of one and a half

Imogen Cooper - Wigmore Hall, 1.00pm 23 June 2008
Fazil Say - Wigmore Hall, 7.30pm 23 June 2008

Schubert 4 Impromptus D.899
Bartók Selection from 14 Bagatelles Op. 6
Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No.13 in A minor

One day, two pianists. First up was Imogen Cooper, in one of the Wigmore Hall's bargain (£10!) Monday lunchtime recitals, broadcast live on Radio 3 (though these days the audience in the hall might be bigger than the one on the little box).

In boho-chic gunmetal silk smock floating over loose black trousers she looked the part. But as soon as she started playing, it was clear something wasn't quite right. It was as ever a meticulous and controlled performance. Ms Cooper's fingers would never dare disobey her.  But her laboured pace, monotonous dynamics and spectacularly overheld sustaining pedal suggested her mind was on matters other than Schubert. The four pieces, so different in shape and mood, blurred into one big Schubert soup. The eleven brief Bartók Bagatelles, spare-textured folk-influenced early works, suffered less. The approach was just as unvaried, but at least the foot came off the pedal here to expose delicately articulated melodic trails. The harmonic and rhythmic similarities between these pieces and the closing Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody were deftly drawn out, but the Liszt too suffered from an excess of subtlety.

Bach French Suite No. 6 in E BWV817
Bach/Say Passacaglia BWV582
Mozart Piano Sonata in A K. 331
Beethoven Piano Sonata in D minor Op. 31 No. 2 ‘The Tempest’; Piano Sonata in F minor Op. 57 ‘Appassionata’

Excessive subtlety is not an accusation you could level at the pianist on the evening shift, Fazil Say. Wringing every last drop of expressive potential out of the piano, he made Bach sound like Beethoven and Beethoven sound like Bach.   All while looking oddly like Oscar Wilde (right) with his floppy fringe and loose black velvet Chinese jacket.

Say's extreme licence with tempo and rubato won't have pleased the purists, but Bach is resilient to a surprising variety of musical 'crimes' and the hyper-romantic intepretation was energising and refreshing. Incidentally, and oddly, his own transcription of Bach's (organ) Passacaglia was the only piece Say required a score for. 

Clearly not everyone was convinced by Say, and there were more than the usual number of half time grumbles and departures - musical specifics and Say's flamboyant grunting and hair-tossing were both criticised. But whatever anyone's opinion on these, it is clear Say is a serious musician whose presentation is integral to his performance, and not simply a showman indulging in lowest common denominator theatrics.

By contrast to the Bach, his Beethoven had a quickfire clockwork precision. While there was little sense of the subliminal orchestral textures that tug at Beethoven's sonatas, Say's sheer exuberance was winning. A large part of the audience seemed to be made up of Say partisans rather than Wigmore regulars, but the enthusiasm of the final applause seemed to be pretty much general.

He finished the evening with an inspired version of Gershwin's Summertime that swept the keyboard from end to end. But his first encore was his own composition, Black Earth, which juxtaposes some cheesy sub-Michel Legrand jazz noodling with some far more interesting Turkish-inspired passages, where he reached one hand inside the piano to hold the dampers in place while he thrashed out the tune on the keys with the other. The resulting hollow plucked sound revealed the very essence of the piano - a row of metal wires whacked with wooden sticks.

Here's a video of Fazil Say playing Black Earth:

And just to show how different his approach is, here's Fazil Say playing the last movement of Beethoven's Tempest sonata (quite a bit faster than he played it at the Wigmore Hall, and on a more 'pingy' instrument):

compared with Wilhelm Kempff's version of the same:

Krystian Zimerman - one keyboard is not enough

Krystian Zimerman - Royal Festival Hall, 27 May 2008

Bach Partita No.2 in C minor
Beethoven Piano Sonata in C minor, Op.111
Brahms 4 Pieces for piano, Op.119
Szymanowski Variations on a Polish folk theme in B minor, Op.10

A piano is a machine. Sounds are produced when the hammers hit the strings, not when the fingers hit the keyboard, a fundamental fact often ignored when we talk about a particular pianist's 'tone'. If I strike a key, it sounds the same as if any other pianist had struck it. It's quite different from instruments like the violin, where you'd spot instantly whether it was me or Joshua Bell drawing the bow across a string. With the piano, it's only in a sequence of notes, their relative duration, volume, pressure, that the characteristics of the individual emerge.

Most pianists, if they address the inevitability of tone quality at all, do so in generalised ways like selecting a particular piano. Krystian Zimerman's approach is far more interventionist. A recent FT interview reports that he "impregnates the hammers that strike the strings with specific chemicals, works on his piano's voicing and sound, has devised his own method of transportation, and permits no other technician to touch his instrument."

Unfortunately I missed his discussion with Jessica Duchen prior to this evening's concert, so I'm not sure exactly what his special preparations were. But from the bright, pinging tone, almost clavichord-like, of the opening Bach Partita it was obvious that his adjustments had been radical.

I've never heard a piano sound quite like this. The notes popped out hard and round like pearls, each perfectly self-contained. Combined with Zimerman's immaculate technique, each note evenly articulated, his lilting romantic gloss, and idiosyncratic tempos it was quite unlike any Bach I've ever heard. (Unlike any Bach that Bach himself would have heard, too, so not for the purists.)  Zimerman invited us to inspect the brushstrokes rather than look at the whole painting, and I was happy to absorb the sound on a purely sensory level. It was all over far too soon - with Zimerman's Eddie Van Halen arm-swinging flourish hinting there might be a surprising hint of showbiz tart lurking beneath the fearsomely brainy exterior.

Next came the clever bit. Zimerman sloped off for a couple of minutes (no more), and a technician sped on stage, whipped the keyboard out of the piano, and replaced it with another one (see photo right). A quick screw into place, and that was it.

I'm not sure exactly what the swap achieved from a technical perspective, but the sound changed dramatically to a far more conventional tone, the notes velvety and diffused at the edges.

Zimerman's fantastic, near effortless technical control seemed in some ways a hindrance in the final Beethoven sonata, which only truly comes alive when it's stood up to and wrestled down. A pianist like Barenboim who finds it at the limits of his technical capacities can bring a more vivid sense of struggle. From Zimerman, it all sounded just a bit too easy, a mountain that was soared over rather than scaled.

If the piano was tinkered with again during the interval, I didn't notice. Zimerman seemed more in tune with the Brahms, extrovert but intimate, and the luridly spectacular Szymanowski than he had with the Beethoven. He exuded a simple and engaging joy in performing and a ravishingly supple technique, every note precisely at his command. It wasn't quite heart-stopping stuff, but then that's not really the nature of these particular pieces anyway. And it didn't stop him receiving a thunderous reception, possibly as much for who he is and the simple fact that he chose to perform here as for the performance itself. No encore though.

A lengthy and interesting interview here.

 

 

Ian Bostridge in St John Passion at the Barbican

St John Passion - Academy of Ancient Music/Layton - Barbican, 14 March 2008

What a Bach fix, two St John Passions in London in one month. The previous one, with the OAE at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, was a small-scale, conductor-less (or as the OAE no doubt see it, conductor-free) affair. Here, the Academy of Ancient Music chose to deploy larger forces - 26 in the orchestra and 28 in the choir - and had Stephen Layton to conduct them. This immediately lost them the intimacy and personal touch the OAE had brought -- but in the big Barbican Hall that's always a tough trick to pull off anyway.

The most obvious difference was in the choral sound. The OAE used a small, more 'authentic' group, which included the soloists. It never quite integrated the different voices. Tonight's choir were the well-schooled Polyphony. Their glorious homogeneous sound had a more celestial ring than their dramatic role might seem to demand, but it formed the bedrock of Layton's distinctly theatrical reading. Brisk tempos alternated with pointed silences; the orchestra suddenly cut out for a cappella choral repeats. Though the orchestra lacked a final touch of polish, their sound was at least perfectly balanced, one of the advantages of having a conductor on board.

The soloists were sensibly placed on raised platforms amongst the orchestra, where they could see the conductor, and the audience could see them. Ian Bostridge, up front throughout as Evangelist, chose to pick through the recitative line-by-line, as if he was thinking aloud, rather than telling a story. But at least it sounded attractive enough.

His decision to shoulder all the tenor arias as well wasn't the smartest of choices. Here, strained high notes lent an ever-increasingly desperate edge to his singing.

The other soloists were impressive, in particular countertenor Michael Chance. Who cares if his voice is showing his age? - his heartfelt Es ist vollbracht was quite properly the emotional crux of the work.

Carolyn Sampson inevitably added a touch of glamour despite her rather dowdy black frock. Her crystal-pure tone and refined phrasing seemed tailor-made for the soprano arias. Her expression though (and I may be doing her a gross injustice here) sometimes gave the impression she was trying to stifle a giggle. Basses Roderick Williams and James Rutherford provided solid and unstarry support.

I didn't mind being asked at the start not to applaud, but Stephen Layton stretched matters a bit far when he held his arms aloft for a dramatically extended silence at the very end. Violinists' elbows started to dip as we passed what must have been the minute mark. There's respect and there's power-tripping, and this trod the line rather too closely.

Leif Ove Andsnes leaves the fjords behind

Leif Ove Andsnes - Royal Festival Hall, 10 March 2008

Between the towel and the mighty fjord - Norway's biggest pianist

Bach Toccata in E minor, BWV.914
Beethoven Piano Sonata in E flat, Op.27 No.1 (Quasi una fantasia)
Sibelius Commodo (Kyllikki, Op.41 No.3), Elegiaco in C sharp minor, Op.76 No.10, The Birch, Op.75 No.4, Barcarola, Op.24 No.10
Grieg Ballade in G minor, Op.24
Debussy Preludes - Brouillards (Bk.2 No.1), Le vent dans la plaine (Bk.1 No.3), Les collines d'Anacapri (Bk.1 No.5), Des pas sur la neige (Bk.1 No.6), La puerta del vino (Bk.2 No.3), Ce qu'a vu le vent d'ouest (Bk.1 No.7), Bruyeres (Bk.2 No.5), La serenade interrompue (Bk.1 No.9), Canope (Bk.2 No.10), Ondine (Bk.2 No.8), La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune (Bk.2 No.7)

I've been keen to catch Leif Ove Andsnes for a while, but somehow the scheduling has never worked out till now. Tonight's smorgasbord of a programme offered tasters from an unusually broad repertoire. Unfortunately the starter, a ponderous and over-pedalled Bach Toccata, didn't show Andsnes in his best light. The Beethoven satisfied more, but still seemed timorous and fractured in comparison to the effusive assurance of Daniel Barenboim's recent account, still fresh in the memory.

With comforting predictability, Andsnes shifted into top gear with the Scandinavian section of the programme. The four Sibelius pieces, previously unfamiliar to me, may lack the depth and power of his symphonic work, but they do have a certain charm and vivacity that was underscored by Andsnes' intimate and relaxed delivery.

The Grieg Ballade, which Andsnes recently recorded for the first time (story and audio here), formed the centrepiece of the evening in every way. A twenty minute set of variations on a Norwegian folk song, it is all jagged cliffs and deep pools, with little of Grieg's characteristic drawing-room manners. Andsnes drew together its unevenly matched elements in a penetrating and virtuosic performance, truly revelatory.

His second half offering, an intelligent selection of Debussy Preludes based loosely on the theme of weather, was equally engrossing - not to mention unexpectedly appropriate, with storms raging outside all day. From the ever-mounting swells of the opening Brouillards to the ironic Au clair de la lune quote which begins the closing La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune, Andsnes mastered these richly evocative understatements with a memorable delicacy and refinement.

Florilegium with Lucy Crowe at the Wigmore Hall

Florilegium / Lucy Crowe - Wigmore Hall, 9 March 2008

Telemann Ouverture in E minor
Handel Cantata: Crudel tiranno amor
Telemann Conclusion in E minor from Tafelmusik
Bach, J B Overture in D
Bach, W F Sinfonia in D minor - Adagio and Fugue
Bach, J S Cantata BWV209 Non sa che sia dolore

It seems a lot of the less well known baroque music dished up for us doesn't have much to recommend it besides novelty. But Ashley Solomon's ensemble Florilegium - tonight eight members in all, including two flutes and harpsichord - seem more skilled than most at unearthing stuff that's worth a second listen.

They did it tonight with W F (son of) Bach's D minor Sinfonia extracts. In the fascinating adagio, as the programme notes put it 'two flutes play a mournful melody above quietly hesitating syncopated strings'. The fugue is less arresting, but interestingly scored. Florilegium's touch was featherlight, the ensemble beautifully balanced, as it was all evening.

I confess though my main reason for attending was the soloist (Katherine Jenkins' ex-flatmate) Lucy Crowe. Not one to just stand there and sing prettily, she threw herself into Handel's Crudel tiranno amor as if it was a matter of life and death. Not every colour in her palette was a beautiful one. She shaded towards the screechy quite a few times, and intonation wasn't always perfect, but the impact was undeniable. Few singers have the guts to abandon deference to the Wigmore Hall, to open up and treat it like an opera house, particularly in the baroque repertoire. It requires total commitment, or the effort falls flat. But the risk paid off here as Lucy Crowe's impassioned delivery tugged us in.

Her Bach cantata came across as less focused and prepared, and wasn't quite as successful, but with the encore, Handel's Lascia ch'io pianga, we had the best performance of the night.

Butt first for OAE's St John Passion

St John Passion - Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment - Queen Elizabeth Hall, 24 February 2008

The second best thing about Easter, after Cadbury Mini-Eggs, has to be the inevitable procession of Bach Passions through the concert halls of London. I'm restricting myself to two this season - the next is another St John, at the Barbican on 14 March.

Like London buses, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment didn't have a conductor on board. (Also the tickets were overpriced and the journey seemed to take forever, but I'll leave that for now).

Consciously or not, they drew attention to the absence by leaving a large gap centre stage where the podium would normally be.

The idea was not simply to imitate original performance practice, but also, as Mark Padmore explains here, to interest the audience, and maybe even improve the performance by allowing the tempos to develop more naturally.

With a small ensemble of eighteen musicians and twelve singers, all steeped in this repertoire, there was little chance it would be a total disaster. But at the same time, thirty people cannot be expected to have the symbiotic rapport of a jazz trio or a string quartet. Intelligent decisions can be taken in rehearsals, but there's little scope for flexibility in the performance itself if there's no single guiding hand on the night.

So while the performers' responsiveness to each other created a feeling of intimacy and absorption, there were also no real risks taken (probably wisely - there were several minor fluffs anyway). The cautious uniformity tempos and dynamics failed to shape the work. This task fell to Mark Padmore as the Evangelist. Despite a cast on one foot and a hacking cough, his meticulously-shaded tenor could glow or gleam or glare, sometimes in the course of a single note. The crystal-bright soprano Lydia Teuscher was the other memorable soloist.

The chorus, which included the soloists, generally managed crisp entrances and general ensemble, but there was a distinct lack of balance in many passages, with some individual voices carrying far out over the others. Equally, I felt the bass and cello were over-favoured in the orchestral balance, but that may have been partly because I was sitting closer to them, and the Queen Elizabeth Hall acoustic doesn't compensate for such accidents of placement.

There was no interval in the two hour performance. Instead actor Stephen Dillane (also the double bassist's page turner for the night) gave a couple of readings, in place of the sermon which would have punctuated the original performance. I'm all for playing longer works straight through, but if you're going to split them like that, why not have a proper break? A few of the audience would have appreciated it, judging from the number who slipped out mid-second half, and some of the performers might have wilted less toward the end, too.

The free pre-performance talk by Bach scholar John Butt deserves a mention too. Obviously used to holding the mayfly attentions of undergraduates, Butt got top marks for not only for the title of his talk ('Butt on Bach') but for an entertaining, layman-friendly sweep through the main features of the work and current theories about its original performance style.

In which Natalie Dessay fails to appear

Le Concert d'Astrée / Haim - Barbican, 17 December 2007

OK, I admit I booked for this concert mainly on the strength of Natalie Dessay's promised appearance, and her last-minute replacement by Amy Freston (sweet, serviceable, but decidedly unstarry) was a big disappointment. A couple of days ago, it was sold out online, but a fair number of empty seats on the night suggested my feelings were shared.

To tie in with the CD it was promoting, just two half-hour pieces were scheduled, Handel's Dixit Dominus and Bach's Magnificat.

Generally speaking, I'd take Haim's perennial enthusiasm and exuberance over a dour, over-reverential approach. But here, her one-size-fits-all puppydog bounce seemed more suited to a cheeky baroque opera than the psalm and prayer of tonight's performance.

There were few moments of reflective calm, and most of these came courtesy of the soloists. In particular, countertenor Tim Mead elevated the Bach with a sublime Misericordia in duet with tenor Paul Agnew, followed by a serene solo Esurientes. But how much less comfortable he looked in his tails than he had done in miniskirted drag as Ottone in the ENO's recent Coronation of Poppea. That's countertenors for you.

Perhaps he had his eyes on Salome Haller's curious ensemble, a flapping tube of black rubberized seaweed with zips. Amy Freston's coffee satin gown and sparkly black bolero looked positively prim in comparison. The men could hardly complete, though bass Robert Gleadow set off his piratical beard with a rather racy earring.

Back to the music, and it was Le Concert d'Astrée's superbly-schooled chorus which really took the musical honours. No wonder Haim is able to pluck soloists from their ranks with such regular success. Precise, fluent, and exquisitely balanced with each other and with the orchestra, they were as close to perfection as it gets, truly a joy to listen to.

And a word for the Concert d'Astrée cellist, who performed a delightful pizzicato obbligato with his instrument across his knee, guitar style. No substitute for Natalie Dessay, but fun all the same.

 

Bartok raises the standard, Ades raises a laugh

Prom 49: Philharmonia Orchestra/Dohnányi, Royal Albert Hall, 20 August 2007

J S Bach, orch. Webern Ricercar from 'Musical Offering'
Thomas Adès Overture, Waltz and Finale from 'Powder Her Face'
Bartók Duke Bluebeard's Castle

Charlotte Hellekant

Duke Bluebeard's Castle is such an elegantly concise opera, its sumptuous orchestration so perfectly aligned to the geometry of its spare text. Everything is there in the music, so it loses almost nothing in a concert staging of the type it received tonight.

It was a shame the Albert Hall was half-empty, because the Philharmonia gave a thrilling performance from start to finish. The slow, haunting buildup to the ecstatic central climax, the decline to the inevitable and terrifying ending, all was boldly coloured. Dohnányi wisely held a little in reserve, so that when the big moments came up, they truly exploded.

Charlotte Hellekant as Judith, the woman who can't stop asking questions, threw herself totally into her role. There's an intriguing smoky cast to her clean, secure tones. She's one of the few singers I've heard so far this year who's truly suited to the difficult Albert Hall, projecting clearly across the vast cavern seemingly without effort.

Tonight's Bluebeard, Falk Struckmann, has a warm, burnished tone that's a pleasure to listen to. But from time to time it felt as if he was just going through the motions. Although he has the ability to make a huge sound, at times he simply failed to up the gear and lift his voice over the orchestra. And, buried deep in his score, he often played the inscrutability of Bluebeard to the point of impenetrability.

But it was a fine performance overall, definitely worth listening to again, though the recording process has bestowed a little screechiness on Hellekant and upped the volume on Struckmann.

In earlier part of the programme, a leaden and entirely misconceived Bach Ricercar was followed by the London premiere of a suite Thomas Ades has based on his opera Powder Her Face. This suite redraws parts of the original compact and idiosyncratic arrangement using larger and more conventional forces, losing nothing of its novelty in the process. Like the original, a deceptively light and sugary surface masks a minutely detailed and meticulously constructed heart.

A couple of hours before the concert, I went to watch Ades being interviewed for Radio 3 in the Albert Hall. He made himself distinctly hard work for the interviewer, responding scrupulously in kind to some lame, under-researched questions. But it was great fun for those of us watching (Q - what do you like about Couperin? A - his wig). The silent physical responses (a shoulder shrug doesn't go a long way on radio) were equally treasurable. The process was interlaced with live performances of some shorter works by a student chamber ensemble, rather mixed in quality. I'm not sure that I came away particularly illuminated, but it was hugely entertaining.