Intermezzo

Barbican 2013-14 classical music season

It seems the Barbican have learned a lesson from their disastrous (over)pricing policy this season.  Only student freebies and last minute discounts have salvaged £85 concert after £85 concert from a windswept prairie of empty seatage.

For 2013-14, the top ticket price is £65, and this only applies to guest orchestra visits. These include Chailly and the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig with a complete cycle of Brahms’s symphonies and concertos in October 2013, Mariss Jansons with the Concertgebouw and Bruckner in April 2014 and Bernard Haitink with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in June 2014.

Renee Fleming's Wiener magic

Renée Fleming /Maciej Pikulski - Barbican, 9 December 2012

Who knew Renee Fleming had a sense of humour? She poked fun at her own OTT golden gown - "I wanted you to get the Klimt connection." She paused between songs to join the bronchial audience in a spot of coughing - "I have a cold too, so I sympathise!". She flubbed her words in one of the encores, then threw up her hands and giggled before starting over.

ENO free ticket scandal

Next April, Michel van der Aa's new opera Sunken Garden receives its world premiere via ENO at the Barbican. 

No doubt, as usual, pairs of free tickets will be distributed to press, ENO employees, friends, patrons, theatre workers, mates of the chorus, Damon Albarn, etc.

But how many free tickets does the composer - who let us not forget has slaved away for months actually writing the thing - receive? Just two, apparently.  He's even been forced to fork out £50 just so his mother can attend one of the most important events (perhaps THE most important) in his professional career. 

Let me make it 100% clear that Michel van der Aa himself has NOT complained or even commented about his miserable allocation. 

But isn't there something odd about an organisation that hands out tickets willy-nilly to any Tom, Dick or blogger (exception - Yours Truly) but can't/won't extend the hand of generosity to someone who deserves it more than anyone?

A warm hand for La Ceci

Sadly I couldn't be there to witness Cecilia Bartoli's triumph at the Barbican last night, but Kyoko's curtain call video shows how London rocked to the sound of Steffani.

Renee Fleming and no Messiaen

The programme for Renee Fleming's 9 December Barbican recital has been announced.

In place of the threatened Messiaen and Dutilleux come the more box office-friendly Mahler, Wolf, Korngold and Zemlinsky. That may help shift a few more tickets for the surprisingly slow-selling event. (As might dropping ticket prices, which seem to have doubled since her last visit).

Donizetti twofer

Canary fanciers, your prayers have been answered. Little more than a year after its last London airing, Donizetti's Belisario gets another concert performance. This time it's at the Barbican, with Mark Elder conducting and Joyce El-Khoury as Antonina.

Thanks to Manou for spotting this Evening Standard offer - two tickets for the price of one by calling the Box Office on 020 7638 8891 quoting ‘Evening Standard Offer’ or entering promotional code 17935 if booking on the Barbican website.

Above is a brief introduction to the opera; below is the full 1969 live recording from La Fenice, featuring Leyla Gencer and Giuseppe Taddei in the principal roles.

Le temps de Renee

On Sunday night Renee Fleming joined Valery Gergiev and the LSO for a City Livery Concert in front of the Lord Mayor and more than 750 cordwainers, chandlers, girdlers, curriers and fishmongers, cunningly disguised as middle-aged men in suits. It was left to Renee herself to provide the glamour (gown by Angel Sanchez, jewellery by Ann Ziff, the programme helpfully informed us).

Gerald Barry's Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest - Barbican Hall, 26 April 2012

If I could pick just one ENO opera to revive, it would have to be Gerald Barry' s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant from 2005, an aural health hazard that taxed singers, orchestra and audience in equal measure and different ways. Detractors loathed the relentless volume and sonic density; fans identified a cogent sense of humour and a refreshing unwillingness to please wrapped up in a unique compositional voice.

Der Freischutz at the Barbican

Der Freischütz (in concert) - LSO / Davis - Barbican Hall, 19 & 21 April 2012

As a music drama, Der Freischütz is problematical, inherently fractured by the interpolated speech sections. In the theatre, the visual element provides some compensatory continuity - it's this basic structural issue as much as the content of the story that encourages contemporary directors to lard the work in Konzept. But in concert, it's almost inevitable that the talky bits come across as mere chat between numbers. The English language narration commissioned here to replace the original German dialogue only magnified that effect, breaking the spell with unfortunate regularity. And so, despite high musical values, these two performances failed to gather any real dramatic momentum.

Superman sleeve

Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, New Trombone Collective, Navarra Quartet - Barbican, 9 April 2012

Although it was billed as a collaboration with Nico Muhly and Bryce Dessner, the new song cycle Sufjan Stevens presented on Monday night at the Barbican sounded pretty much like all his own work. Or at least more like his last album than theirs.

Gergiev Moneyov

Thanks to reader Benedict for spotting a special offer on next week's Verdi Requiem at the Barbican with Gergiev and his Mariinsky ensemble. Soloists are Victoria Yastrebova, Olga Borodina, Sergei Semishkur and Ildar Abdrazakov.  

Lastminute.com are offering best-available tickets for just £15 (originally up to £65).

Alternatively, you could scoot over to the Barbican website, where loads of seats have been 'dynamically priced' down to £15-£25, around half what some of them were originally going for. (Now, should we tell the Barbican why their advance sales are down this season - or just let them guess?)

Half price Dvorak opera at the Barbican

And it's not Rusalka. Jiří Bělohlávek conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and a mostly native cast in a rare semi-staged performance of Dvořák's The Jacobin at the Barbican on Saturday 4 February.

Call the Barbican Box Office on 020 7638 8891 and quote 'Evening Standard Offer' or book on the Barbican website using the promotional code 260310.  Stalls tickets as little as £10!

Barbican 2012 - 2013 season revealed

After the usual tedious technical glitches,  details of the Barbican Centre's 2012 - 2013 classical music season are finally up on their website.

It begins on a high as Sir Colin Davis celebrates his 85th birthday with the piano partnership of Radu Lupu and Mitsuko Uchida on 27 September 2012. But there are no visits from European symphony orchestras (presumably three concerts from the highly-paid LA Phil  don't come cheap) and far fewer must-sees than in previous years.

The main strengths in the recitals programme, which includes a one week residency from Juan Diego Florez  and solo recitals from Elina Garanca, Cecilia Bartoli, Renée Fleming and Joyce DiDonato (who also joins JDF in his residency). Pianists include the familiar faces of Evgeny Kissin, Stephen Hough and Murray Perahia, and there's a welcome return to the stage from Maxim Vengerov. 

Operas (in concert) include Donizetti's Belisario (conducted by Sir Mark Elder), Handel's Radamisto and rare Imeneo (with David Daniels and Lucy Crowe), The Turn of the Screw and Lully's Phaéton. 

Booking opens online to Barbican Red Members 23 Jan,  Orange Members 26 Jan and everyone else 30 Jan.

Fiver Seasons

The Seasons - Gabrieli Consort & Players / Paul McCreesh - Barbican, 14 January 2012

I hadn't originally intended to go to this. Two and a half hours of Haydn is always a risky proposition, and the Barbican's eyewatering ticket prices this season (up to £45 for this one) have made me cut back significantly on what I see there. But a last minute offer via Twitter - all seats just £5 - made it unmissable (and pretty much packed out the house). If they'd priced it more sensibly to begin with, they wouldn't have needed to discount tickets - when will they and ENO grasp this simple premise?

Sixteen sing Saul

Saul - The Sixteen - Barbican Hall, 22 November 2011

The Barbican planners cocked up last night. As Handel competed with Opera North's Queen of Spades in the main theatre for the same punters, predictably neither sold out. I suspect the Handel fans were the best-behaved. No mobile phones, no crackly sweeties, no aria-applause, barely a cough - I haven't seen manners like this since Bayreuth. But then Harry Christophers didn't leave a millisecond of fidgeting space in either half - his greatest achievement perhaps being to integrate the musical interludes into the drama in a natural, flowing way. The pace was relentless but the focus was total, with just a brisk twenty minute interval cleaving the three and a half hours.

Say Nyet to Spanx

Olga Borodina / Dmitri Yefimov - Barbican, 7 October 2011

 

Which Russian diva is sticking to her red bikini briefs - even if they do only make them in extra-small these days?

Ariodante at the Barbican - it's Joyce DiDonato's night

Ariodante - Barbican, 25 May 2011

Nice singers, shame about the band. Anyone who came to hear Joyce DiDonato won't have been disappointed. Costumed as Ronnie O'Sullivan for her cross-dressing title role in this concert performance, she outclassed everyone else on stage with her clean line and crisp coloratura.

Pelleas et Melisande with Dessay and Keenlyside

Pelléas et Mélisande - Barbican, 19 April 2011

Pelléas et Mélisande is undoubtedly a tough opera to pull off, but a French orchestra and mostly French cast at least brought a bit of Gallic authenticity to the Barbican's concert version (as concocted for the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris). With singers all parked behind music stands, Natalie Dessay's beaded gown provided the only visual reference to Debussy's opera. Crystals sparkled like stars on black chiffon above a hem embroidered with foaming waves - the dark night and the restless sea in a size 36.

Orlando furioso at the Barbican

Orlando furioso (concert performance) - Barbican, 27 March 2011

Nurtured by recently-departed general manager Dominique Meyer (now installed at the rather grander Vienna State Opera), baroque opera has flourished in recent years at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. Earlier this month, a Pierre Audi production of Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso premiered there to acclaim. Its bedrock was Jean-Christophe Spinosi's Ensemble Matheus and most of the cast he first brought together for his benchmark 2005 recording and later toured to the Edinburgh Festival and beyond.

Pub opera for posh people

A Magic Flute - Barbican Theatre, 23 March 2011

 

Proof that even geniuses have off days. Peter Brook's A Magic Flute (note the indefinite article) is the great director's interpretation of Mozart's Zauberflöte.

Pared down to the absolute minimum, he believes it throws an intimate and spiritual light on the masterpiece. What it actually does is stick a bunch of wispy-voiced young singers in a forest of portable garden canes with naught but a piano in support.

Secondary characters like Boys and Ladies are excised. Spiel is trimmed and en français. A couple of dreadlocked actors (the only real sign of life) are employed to patch up the holes left by all this snipping and shaving.

The result is a bore and a half, with a mildly nauseating aura of hushed reverence about it. Mozart's music is the beating heart of his opera, not an optional extra. Brook of all people should realise this. Or perhaps he does - the show runs at 90 minutes without an interval - so no escape for the terminally enervated.

The Barbican had the cheek to charge up to £50 for tickets. You could find something considerably livelier at any pub opera night - and with better singing.

This is an opera I love beyond reason, and it can stand up to a lot of abuse - think of the brilliant South African version at the Young Vic a couple of years ago. Peter Brook goes a cut too far.