Intermezzo

La damnation de Gergiev

La Damnation de Faust - LSO / Gergiev - Barbican 22 September 2009

A curious evening that caught fire intermittently, but never really took off. Gergiev’s preferred preapration method – rehearse the corners, wing the straights - can produce stunning results in slow-burn symphonies. But it’s fundamentally unsuited to the desperately shoehorned ragbag of ideas (“Let's all improvise a fugue!”) that is La damnation de Faust. Faust’s final ride to the abyss truly burnt with the flames of hell, but a few manicured details aside, the first half was largely directionless and often surprisingly (for Gergiev) tentative. All the beauty and delicacy of the woodwind playing couldn’t compensate for a lack of purpose.

The problems could have been compounded when the scheduled Méphistophélès, Thomas Quasthoff, pulled out due to illness on the morning of the show. But Willard White, flown in from Copenhagen, was a magnificent replacement, despite the twinkle in his eye warning his bluster and beguilements shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Joyce DiDonato, in a gorgeous cornflower gown and tumbling curls, sang beautifully but seemed not entirely at home in the Berlioz idiom. Her Marguerite had the radiant purity of youth but not the ardour that Susan Graham can bring to the part.

Florian Boesch almost stole the show as Brander, but Michael Schade’s Faust was a disappointment. He placed notes accurately and words carefully in his none too intelligible French, but his hard nasal tone is too unvarying and too unyielding in this part. What a pity there was so much of it. The London Symphony Chorus too had a long and tricky sing. They managed heroically, if with more gusto than finesse - for which Gergiev’s flutterfingered non-beat was not entirely to blame.

******* more photos on next page *******

Zeffirelli with knobs on - Robert Lepage's dilution of Faust

La damnation de Faust - Metropolitan Opera, 10 November 2008

Back at last from The Land of the Reversed Baseball Cap, where an eventful week saw Gérard Mortier quitting his NYCO post before even taking it up and Peter Gelb announcing he'll be "switching repertory around” - swapping some planned productions for cheaper ones - to save money at the Met next season.

But from what I saw there last week, ideas seem to be in as short supply as ready cash. The two new productions which on paper seem the most forward-looking and adventurous of the season, La Damnation de Faust and Dr Atomic, were full of splashy technology but (for quite different reasons) surprisingly short on genuine effect.

Peter Gelb revealed the puniness of his expectations for Robert Lepage's Faust in a telling programme note:

"In the 1970s and 80s, Franco Zeffirelli made his vivid, larger-than-life brand of stagecraft a fixture at the Met. His productions.....elevated the possibilites for visual splendor that could be achieved here. This month, another visionary director makes his Met debut, and I believe that he too will help usher in a new era of theatrical excitement and visual thrills."

So Gelb's not interested in telling stories or exploring ideas, just giving folks something purty to look at. Even Zeffirelli at his most Zeffirelliesque could manage more than that. And Lepage's production fails to rise above the dismally low bar Gelb has set for it. It simply replaces the miles of curtain fabric with stacks of monitors, the corsets with leather pants and the crinolined chorines with six-packed acrobats.

To be fair, La Damnation de Faust is a challenge for any director, a sequence of tableaux not a linear narrative. But Lepage infers an overarching structure not reflected in the music by shoehorning the whole thing into a single set of shallow scaffolding across which characters process, videos play, and acrobats fling themselves. It's all slickly executed and some of the imagery is enchanting, even beautiful - a ghostly underwater dance rendered in video, Marguerite's ascension by ladder at the end. But much is over-literal - like the Rat eulogy complete with actual rat - and a potential coup de théâtre crucifixion is reduced to banality by excessive length and repetition.

There were long stretches where I felt, as with Achim Freyer's sweetly dotty Eugene Onegin in Berlin, that I really could have been watching anything, that Lepage could do, say, Don Giovanni or Les contes d'Hoffmann with exactly the same visuals and it would seem just as (in)appropriate.

But worst of all, a lot of it was just plain boring. Juddering from spectacle to spectacle without building any dramatic tension means that theatrical effect is entirely dependent on what's in front of the eyes at any moment - and as with any production, much was necessarily mundane. Lepage has some terrific ideas and a bold use of technology, but it's all just thrown in there. It needs moulding.

The musical side was more impressive, though some of the singing wouldn't win any prizes. Marcello Giordani (Faust) sounded unaccountably knackered, a pale shadow of the impassioned commitment he brought to the role at the Proms last summer. 

Opera's favourite devil, John Relyea - this time got up as a foxy cockroach in a red leather suit and the traditional plumed hat - hardly sizzled. His Méphistophélès was earthbound, prosaic, though solid enough I suppose.

Susan Graham was the pick of the soloists by some distance, her angelic and charismatic Marguerite offering the only real hint that we were sitting in what likes to think of itself as the world's greatest opera house.

Ultimately it was left to James Levine to salvage standards, and although he didn't bring the precision, clarity and sheer perfectionism that he had to his Proms performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, there was warmth and focus and a total security to the sound. And not forgetting the Met chorus, who seem much improved from last year (has there been a weeding?) with clear diction and fine coordination.

The 22 November performance will be livecast, and I suspect that, more than most Met productions, it will be transformed by the process. Especially if Lepage himself is closely involved. The shallow stage, the use of vertical space, all help with vocal projection in live performance, but they also immediately lend themselves to screening, a sort of built-in framing device. As with so many Lepage productions the debt to cinema is an obvious one - and here's one opportunity for it to pay back.  

Susan Graham prays for a bunch of naked guys:   
 

hay, it worked!:

 

 

 

 

This our tempo! Gustavo Dudamel pwns Edinburgh, pwns Proms

Edinburgh Festival: Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Dudamel - Usher Hall, 12 August 2008

Prom 37: Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Dudamel / Martin Fröst - Royal Albert Hall, 13 August 2008

Edinburgh:
Copland Appalachian Spring
Ravel La Valse
Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique

London:
Ravel La Valse 
Anders Hillborg Clarinet Concerto (Peacock Tales)
Berlioz Symphonie fantastique

What proves that the Dudamel effect is not just the creation of a vampiric media, rejuvenating their tired old classical music coverage with fresh young blood, is that he achieves astonishing results with every orchestra he shakes his stick at.

Here was a case in point. The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra - professional, refined, elegant - and about as exciting as a secondhand Volvo. But for two nights in a row - and with a long, tiring train ride (and I know, I did it myself) in between - they set an audience alight with their passion and fervour.

In Edinburgh on Tuesday, Appalachian Spring was sprung with the chill vigour of a sleigh ride. La Valse skirled and lurched drunkenly. The Symphonie Fantastique was delivered with the uninhibited inyerface brashness that for once could make you appreciate why it so scandalised and horrified its original audiences. Berlioz would have wept with joy.

I was left with an agonising decision - whether to hang around for an encore, or dash off through the rainy night to my next appointment (a Gabriela Montero late night recital, of which more later). I escaped, and found later I'd missed the two encores the ecstatic audience had demanded.

But luckily there was no such dilemma on Proms night. After the final wild fugue of the Fantastique, and the thunderous applause, the temperature was lowered with the sombre, hymn-like Sangen by by Swedish composer Stenhammar.

And then two minutes later the roof blew off the Albert Hall with a Latin stomp, Tico Tico, that rivalled the Simon Bolivar Orchestra's rendition at last year's Proms. Complete with the never-before-seen spectacle of the middle-aged sensible Swedish brass section tossing their jackets aside and leaping to their feet with their horns in the air.

But there had already been one encore. This came at the end of the first half. Martin Fröst's staggeringly virtuosic reading of Hillborg's (he turned up at the end to take a bow) Clarinet Concerto (complete with masked dance-mime and spooky lighting) was followed by a klezmer-style arrangement that showed off his skills in yet another light. Is he the best clarinettist in the world right now? Probably.

It should be pointed out, for those who care about such things, that I was sitting inches from the front at the Edinburgh concert, the sort of distance where you can hear every violin individually, and there was not a note out of place in the string section.

Sitting just behind the orchestra in the choir stalls at the Prom, I was impressed too by the calibre of the percussion playing. The whole programme was a mighty test of percussion skills, from the fiendish toms in the Hillborg to the massive bells at the end of the Fantastique. Woodwind intonation varied, but you couldn't accuse Dudamel (as some have done)of not knowing his technical stuff.

The Prom is available on the BBC iPlayer, here, for the next seven days. And the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra have a blog  - in Swedish - with some great photos, here.

Edinburgh:

Gustavo Dudamel and Martin Frost:

 

Martin Frost:

Swedish brass do a twirl:

 

  

Sir Colin gives us the Good, the Bad and the Berlioz

LSO/Davis/Anne Schwanewilms/Tabea Zimmermann - Barbican 12 December 2007

Back together with the team that created the marvellous (some might say definitive) 2003 recording of Berlioz's Harold in Italy, Sir Colin Davis conducted another scorching account to close this all-Berlioz concert tonight.

The colourful and characterful viola playing of Tabea Zimmerman capped a ferociously lively performance from the LSO. Even the quietest part, the chorale theme in the second movement, fizzed with energy as Zimmerman rippled out her unearthly sul ponticello arpeggios. Elsewhere, her warm, rounded tone (and what a fabulous instrument she plays) pushed out readily over the orchestra.

The oboe and cor anglais moulded together exquisitely in the mournful respite of the third movement. The massive percussion crash that signalled the start of the last movement was followed by a frantic brigands' dance where Sir Colin managed to retain control and balance despite colossal volume levels. Even a few careless lapses here and there couldn't diminish the power of the overall effect. It was one of those rare occasions I longed to hear the performance again the minute it was over.

If only the first half had been as good. The opening King Lear Overture sounded tired and tepid, and surprisingly sloppy in places.

For Les Nuits d'été, soloist Anne Schwanewilms sported the same black halter neck dress she'd worn for the second half of her debut Strauss/Mahler recital at the Wigmore Hall last week. Unfortunately the intensity and insight she'd brought to Strauss's Ophelia songs didn't transfer to tonight's Berlioz.

She deployed her laser-sharp silvery soprano cautiously. A pure and even choirboyish tone (with a curious buzz over some of the high notes) seemed all she had to offer. After several fluffed lines and some unrecognisable French, I began to wonder how far she'd studied the text. Phrasing seemed more tailored to the physical requirements of the notes than the meaning of the words. A pretty sound is not everything in this repertoire. As she fluted through, I began to long for the pointed diction and bizarre Anglo-French of the version Ian Bostridge recorded with Sir Colin last year.

It was a limp performance from a singer who is capable of much better, and it was matched by a competent but rather colourless contribution from the LSO. I don't know what they did in the interval, but it obviously worked.

 

They came from Boston - Levine & co at the Proms

Prom 70: Boston Symphony Orchestra/Levine - Royal Albert Hall, 6 September 2007

Central Boston

The BSO and chorus; Finchley Children's Music Group in blue above

This Prom was somewhat overshadowed by the sad news of Luciano Pavarotti's death earlier in the day. Conductor James Levine's long association with the big man at the Met made it more personal for him than for most. It was no surprise when a pre-concert announcement was made that the evening was to be dedicated to Pavarotti.

But in true show-must-go-on style, Levine bounced onto the stage looking chipper, and settled into a plush velvet high chair that had been set up on the podium.

The sole work of the evening was Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust, performed in the original concert version. The BSO have been touring this around Europe for the past couple of weeks, London being their last stop. Their experience shone through in the immaculately polished performance they gave.

Faust is not dramatically or musically integrated to the extent of Berlioz's later work. It is more a collection of splendidly inventive and often witty musical ideas that Berlioz shoehorned into Goethe's Faust story, flexing Goethe's narrative where necessary to fit his own creations better. Dramaturgically weak, it shoots through key plot points and wallows in the incidentals that inspired (or fitted) the marvellous musical creations of Berlioz.

Levine's BSO luxuriated in these details with a precise, technically secure and perfectly balanced contribution. Brass and percussion in particular had a lot of work to do, some very exposed, and never put a foot wrong. It was as if they'd been rehearsing nothing else for the past year.

The Tanglewood Festival Chorus gave the best performance of any choir I've heard at this year's Proms. Performing without scores, they had perfect diction, uniform pitch, and struck exactly the right dynamic balance both internally and with the orchestra. They even managed a certain degree of characterisation, always a challenge with vocal forces of that number.

The soloists too performed mostly without scores, though they did clutch them as a safety blanket. Marcello Giordani's very Italian tenor was perhaps not quite what Berlioz had in mind for the part of Faust, but he gave a clear and sympathetic account. José Van Dam made a somewhat detached and coldly menacing Méphistophélès, dignified but threatening. The voice is thinner now, but it still projected with an almost diffident ease across the yawning Albert Hall. The Marguerite of Yvonne Naef was perhaps the most touching performance, and her rich creamy voice most suited to the material.

Berlioz, a one-time chorus singer himself, sensitively thins out the orchestration beneath the soloists, and Levine paid close attention to the singers and made sure there were no unwanted crests of sound overwhelming them at any point. With all of them having big, well-projected voices anyway, it was the first time in this Proms series I've actually been able to hear every word that was sung.

The young Finchley Children's Music Group sat patiently through the second half waiting for their moment towards the end in Margarita's Apotheosis. They were well up to the standard of the professional musicians with perfect timing, clear French, and a lovely tone. Their two soloists were rightly brought down to the front of the stage at the end to share the applause given to the adults.

Any performance as well-drilled as this one will inevitably lack a degree of spontaneity. The hard work that must have preceded it was impressive, but it was all too visible. It was impossible not to admire the musical management, and the concentration required to pull it off. But, a few soloist moments aside, it largely left me cold.

Thomas Ades does le French thang in Edinburgh

Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Thomas Ades/Toby Spence - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 14 August 2007
Edinburgh International Festival

Tonight's frenchy programme covered 300 years of music from fabuleux to fromage, though in the event it became hard to tell which was which.

The venerable Rameau was the starter. I've always found it hard to muster up the same enthusiasm for Rameau as I have for Couperin, and I couldn't help wondering if Thomas Ades and the COE felt the same. They exhumed the corpse of the overture from Les Indes Galantes but failed to breathe any life into it. It was as English as steamed pudding and just as soggy.

Ades's own Three Studies from Couperin surprisingly failed to pick up the pace, lacking the sparkle and drive of the UK premiere (Ades with the COE again) just four months ago. The scoring is intriguing, but was obscured by an odd dynamic balance, perhaps intentional. Whatever, it failed to dazzle in the way his other work has.

The shift into top gear finally came with Berlioz's Les Nuits d'Été and Toby Spence. Spence began tentatively and selected a different tempo from the orchestra for the opening Villanelle. This was something Ades failed to control, and a problem that re-occured in the final L'Île Inconnue.

However in the second song, Le Spectre de la Rose, both singer and orchestra finally blossomed. Toby Spence has all the basics and more - a fine ringing tone, secure notes, immaculate breath control and terrific projection. When he put it all together, the results were impressive. Although nerves crept in a couple more times, most noticeably at the start of Sur les Lagunes, there were more moments of pure gorgeousness. L'Absence in particular, pickily steered by Ades, was perfect in every way.

The animation that the orchestra gathered for the Berlioz returned after the interval for Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin. Ravel's arrangement is characteristically full of colour and detail, every inch of his canvas filled. Although this is at heart a memorial piece, it's also full of grace, wit and optimism, and the COE brought it exuberantly to life.

The closer, Bizet's Symphony in C, continued in this vein. Written when he was just 17, it has all the naive optimism of youth. This adorable froth is derivative, but Bizet pinched so many different ideas (mostly from Gounod) it's never boring. The COE made it crisp and light as a mille-feuille, but never over-sugared, a surprisingly satisfying ending to the evening. It came as a surprise that Ades could pull more out of Bizet (Bizet!) than his own work but sometimes these things just happen, who knows why.

(No photos tonight - I was personally and firmly informed that this means me:)

Violeta Urmana conquers Munich

Violeta Urmana - Prinzregententheater, Munich, 26 July 2007
(Münchner Opernfestspiele 2007) 

In the splendidly (over)decorated Prinzregententheater auditorium any perfomer needs to make a splash to be noticed. Regally proportioned, sporting a black gown sprinkled with giant sequinned spiders, hair puffed into retro waves, Violeta Urmana swept on stage every inch the old-school diva. And with his wispy blond afro and little wire specs her accompanist Jan Philip Schulze looked the perfect mad-muso foil.

It's a brave singer who commits three quarters of her programme in the land of lieder to non-German song, but Urmana began with Berlioz and ended with Rachmaninow, squeezing just a handful of Mahler lieder in between.

She started Les Nuits d'Été rather tentatively and never really settled down. Berlioz demands abandon but Urmana was locked in clenched buttock reserve. Little contrast emerged between the songs. Her uniform stadium volume was impressive, but not suited either to the intimate space or to the dramatic ebb and flow of the material. The accompaniment didn't help. Les Nuits d'Été sounds so much better in its orchestral version. The piano arrangement is a sparse and weedy one, and though Schulze did his best, it didn't really support Urmana or give her anything to bounce off. A tiny silvery moth which (unnoticed by Urmana) landed atop her bouffant during Sur les lagunes was more of a highlight than it should have been. Her impeccable breath control, flawless intonation and immaculate diction were technically impressive, but no substitute for real engagement.

She seemed genuinely surprised by the strength and warmth of the applause at the end. Given her long association with Munich it may have been as much simply for her presence as her performance, but it seemed to revive her confidence, because she became a different singer in the second half of her programme.

As she floated out her first Mahler, Ich atmet' einen linden Duft, she at last found an emotional link with the music she was singing, and dynamic contrast and meticulous word shaping emerged to colour her performance. From here on she was flying, positively channeling every note, and her final Mahler, Um Mitternacht, drew genuine and uproarious applause.

The Rachmaninow set was equally effective, and here Schulze came into his own, the richly textured piano part providing a real discourse with the vocal. Vocalise, a song with no words, demonstrated most clearly Urmana's empathy with this most Russian of music and her vast palette of tonal colours.

I'd heard she had trouble with some top notes in Tosca at Covent Garden recently, but other than a little thinness at the very top, there were no problems tonight. One of her four encores (and the enthusiastic crowd wanted even more) was Vissi d'arte, delivered with an intensity that convinced even my Puccini-phobic self. She may have started shakily, but Violeta Urmana ended up with a performance which blew some of her overhyped contemporaries right out of the water. Her rather matronly appearance may do her no favours in our image-obsessed times, but it was clear tonight that she's in no way past her best when it comes to what really counts, the singing.

 

Colin Davis talks, Janet Baker sings

To the Royal Opera House tonight - not for the obvious, but for one of the ROH's occasional 'In Conversation' events. In this one, Independent critic Edward Seckerson grilled one of my very favourite conductors, Sir Colin Davis. Or rather, basted him tenderly with unction and vaguely turned the heat up for a couple of brief moments. Seckerson's interview approach - mostly, expressing his opinions and then inviting Sir C to agree - was never going to make for many shocks.

But it was sporadically revealing all the same. Beneath the snowy bouffant, Sir C's expressive eyebrows mischievously disclosed what discretion otherwise forbade. Unfortunately, though he teasingly touched on the difficulties of working with star singers, he was smart enough not to expand, nor (heaven forfend), name names.

He did find time though to vent on the subjects of Shostakovich ("circus music") and historically authentic performance ("waste of time", "interesting for about ten minutes", the last resort of "the emotionally bankrupt), neither of which it's hard to disagree with. And he raised a laugh when he revealed how he once snuck an errant D into the famous final C minor chord of the Matthäuspassion - and nobody noticed. (His eyebrows meanwhile hinted that he does far more of this sort of thing than he was about to let on in public - I sense a tale awaiting the telling there.)

The interspersed musical extracts brought home how many truly great recordings he has made - and a surprising number of them relatively recently too.

I haven't been to one of these open interviews before. I'd always thought they must be a waste of time and money, something you could just as easily get on Radio 3, or by googling. But Sir C is a physical communicator not a verbal one, as all conductors must be, and this format produces something beyond mere chat.

I was looking for some Sir C on YouTube, and I came across this utterly magical Nuits d'Été from 1972 - Janet Baker on Danish TV. Sir C is only peripherally involved here - credited as adviser - but it's Berlioz done very much his way, if a tad slower than he might take it.

Here is Le spectre de la rose:

and the other songs in the cycle are here:

Villanelle (this one is a bit scratchy)

Sur les Lagunes

L'Absence

Au Cimetière

L'Ile Inconnue

Can any of the forthcoming handful of Nuits d'Été performances possibly match up to that? I'm going for Violetta Urmana at the Munich Opera Festival on 26 July and Toby Spence at the Edinburgh Festival on 14 August , sadly doing without Anne Sophie von Otter at the Proms on 29 July - but I suspect Janet Baker's crown will remain secure.

Benvenuto Cellini at the Barbican

Benvenuto Cellini - LSO/Sir Colin Davis - Barbican, 29 June 2007

Benvenuto Cellini is Berlioz at his most witty and exuberant, and the LSO gave it a blistering run through at the Barbican last night. Even the forced cast changes couldn't derail it. One of the late draft, Kenneth Branagh lookylikey Gregory Kunde was lively and assured in the title role. His voice is not especially graceful, but boy is it loud, with a resonance that cut through the supersized orchestra assembled as per Berlioz's specifications. The other replacement, Darren Jeffery as stern paterfamilias Balducci, didn't fit in quite as well. His youthful and rather small sound would no doubt be better suited to the role of the apprentice Bernardino that he was originally slated to play.

Peter Coleman-Wright proved himself a natural bad guy as the villain of the piece, Fieramosca, with a dark edge to his rich baritone at his most dastardly moments, and a full boo-hiss milking of every possible comic moment, of which Berlioz provided many.

Balducci's young daughter Theresa, fought over by Cellini and Fieramosca, is hardly an exciting role dramatically, but Berlioz provides her with plenty of beautiful music, especially in the first act. Laura Claycomb gave us not only sweetness, light, laser-accurate coloratura and the most fabulous red hair, but also managed to unearth a sly, knowing wit that filled out her character and made her far more interesting to watch.

The other soprano, Isabelle Cals as the boy Ascanio, was the only native French singer on stage. Despite this, her liquid diction meant she was the only singer who had me glancing up at the surtitles. John Relyea, a darkly authoritative Pope despite his surfer-dude looks, and Alasdair Elliot as a comic barkeeper were irreproachably splendid in their smaller parts. Credit must also go to Andrew Kennedy and Andrew Foster-Williams as Cellini's assistants. Although they had barely a line between them, they led the chorus on magnificently and proved an unexpectedly apposite visual pairing.   

In a confined stage front area barricaded with music stands it was always going to be tough to get any visual enaction going, but all the singers did their utmost best, and it really helped in following this story, not all of which is explicit in the libretto. This is an aspect of concert performances in general that's not always adequately addressed, but the difference between doing it like this and just standing there reading makes an enormous difference to how well the audience's attention is held, however musically literate they are.

But of course the real stars of the evening were the LSO and LSC. This is challenging and often simply very fast music and needs a huge reservoir of energy to pull it along. From the first few bars of the overture alone it was clear that the orchestra were playing as if their lives depended on it. Berlioz provides plenty of beautifully crafted comic orchestral moments - a tuba solo, a pseudo-folksong, an explosion - and these were a welcome relief from the general intensity. No surprise that Sir Colin looked quite worn out at the end - he'd wrung so much drama and passion out of the score.

This performance and the one two nights ago were recorded for CD release, and I think must be destined to become a benchmark recording in the spirit of last year's LSO Fidelio.