Intermezzo

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.

Brewer droops

LPO / Vladimir Jurowski / Christine Brewer - Royal Festival Hall, 4 May 2011

Vladimir Jurowski has of late turned away from the fascinating but crowd-repelling obscurities which peppered previous seasons' programmes. His reward last night was a near-capacity crowd for an evening of familiar comforts, crowned with Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. Jurowski's customary asceticism cut straight through the syrup and sentiment - this was Tchaikovsky at his most fleet and muscular, crafted with an airy transparency and acute attention to detail.

1 down, 75 to go - the First Night of the Proms

Prom 1: Christine Brewer / Pierre-Laurent Aimard / Nicholas Daniel / Wayne Marshall / Royal College of Music Brass / BBC Symphony Orchestra / Jiří Bělohlávek - Royal Albert Hall, 18 July 2008

R. Strauss Festliches Präludium
Mozart Oboe Concerto in C major, K314
R. Strauss Four Last Songs
Messiaen Dieu parmi nous, from 'La Nativité du Seigneur'
Beethoven Rondo in B-flat, for piano and orchestra
E. Carter Caténaires (solo piano)
Scriabin The Poem of Ecstasy

If there's one thing the Proms are good for, it's a whinge or two. So here, in no particular order:

- the weather. In place of the usual bugbear, scorching heat inside and out, this year's Proms started damp and blustery, with the odd shower sprinkling those of us queuing outside. The white at the top of the picture >>>>>
isn't overexposure btw - it's a solid bank of cloud....

- the first night programme. A bitty 'sampler' that needed a different orchestra/stage configuration for each piece. Seemingly designed to maximise tea break time for the TV audience at home (the whole Prom was broadcast live, and is still available on the BBC iPlayer here if you're interested), but all the fannying around completely disrupted the momentum for the live audience.

- The 8ft BBC camera platform plonked in the middle of the Arena >>>>> 
and blocking the stage view for anyone behind it. With a capacity audience, particularly unfair.

- the free Proms pocket guides running out before the concert had even started.

But what about the music? Well, the opening  Festliches Präludium shows Strauss at his least subtle, all banging organ chords and brass fanfares. Bělohlávek conjured up decibels on a Ted Nugent scale. My ears rang. What a start. 

After an eternity of faffing the stage around, the now-drastically pruned orchestra were ready to take on Mozart's Oboe Concerto, with Nick Daniel in the driving seat. A choux puff after Strauss's black forest gateau, it was handled with delicacy and a touch of wit by all concerned. I couldn't help thinking though that for all its charm, it does just go on a bit.

Then came the late sub, the redoubtable Christine Brewer, billowing in on a cloud of white satin and powder blue chiffon. Not many voices can fill the Royal Albert Hall, so the knob masters at the BBC often twiddle up the vocal volume for the benefit of home viewers. But la Brewer chose instead to give her live audience a real performance. She belted out Strauss's Four Last Songs at her impressive full capacity. Subtlety was necessarily in short measure, but her lusciously creamy soprano, capped with a remarkably even vibrato, rang out to the back of the hall.

I know it's Messiaen's anniversary year and all that, but even a diehard fan couldn't complain about the amount of Messiaen on offer at this year's Proms. The first of the many tributes came with a stunning Dieu parmi nous from Wayne Marshall. I could barely see him, bent over between the 9,999 pipes of Britain's second largest organ in his stage-rear eyrie, but the sound was ear-splitting.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard was the evening's final soloist. A rather slight piece of early Beethoven, the B flat Rondo, with orchestra, was followed by Elliot Carter's Caténaires. Written for Aimard, and receiving its UK premiere, it's a tiny twinkling gem, a mad ant dash around the keyboard that displays Aimard's extraordinary skill with line and phrasing (not to mention virtuosity) to the full.

The closer, Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy, was hardly an orgy of sensuous abandon under the dour baton of Bělohlávek, but was at least lively enough to end the evening in the spirit of celebration in which it had begun. And like everything else on this evening, loud.

Incidentally, I was surprised to read a review of the Scriabin in The Guardian, as my friend Lu claims she was sitting right behind its author in the side stalls and he left just before it began. But perhaps it's a case of mistaken identity.

No mistakes about The Times Proms podcast - several of us in the Arena watched discreetly as a couple of Timesers stood in the corner recording this before the concert. So if they say it comes directly from the Proms, it's nothing but the truth. 

 

 

 

First night of Proms - Christine Brewer parachutes in

Sadly, Karita Mattila has withdrawn from the first night of the Proms (tomorrow, Friday 18th) due to ill health.

But the good news is that Christine Brewer will be replacing her for Strauss’s Four Last Songs.

To be broadcast on Radio 3 and BBC2 at 8pm.

 

 

Blowing a tiny horn for the new LSO 2008-9 season

The LSO's 2008-9 season details will soon be up on their website, with tickets on sale to the public from 11 February. It seems crazy to be thinking about concerts 9+ months ahead, but the fact is that the most popular ones start to sell out well in advance. Be there or be staking out the website for returns later.

One of the highlights promises to be a collaboration with the Mark Morris Dance Group on Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet over four nights from 5 – 8 Nov 2008. Stefan Asbury conducts.

And, not to put all that rehearsal time to waste, Romeo and Juliet returns on 21 and 23 Nov without any pesky dancers, this time with Valery Gergiev conducting. This is part of a marketing ploy series tenuously spun around expatriate composers that the LSO have entitled Émigrés.

Another of the Émigrés is Bartók, and Gergiev conducts Duke Bluebeard's Castle with Willard White in the title role on 27 and 29 Jan 2009.

Other operatic highlights are Act III of Parsifal on 12 Mar 2009, featuring René Pape, and the season finale on 22 Sep 2009, Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust. The starry cast includes Bernarda Fink, Michael Schade, Thomas Quasthoff and Florian Boesch. Gergiev conducts both.

Love Brahms? another series of concerts asks. Well, if I was walking past and Bach, Beethoven, Berg, and Brahms were all drowning, Brahms would have to hope he could hold his breath underwater for a while. But I'm looking forward to his Symphony No 3 on 17 Jun 2009, prefaced more enticingly by Paul Lewis bangin out Beethoven's Emperor Concerto. Sir Colin Davis conducts.

Christine Brewer visits for Verdi's Requiem on 11 and 14 Jan 2009, Sir Colin Davis conducting. She sticks around for Strauss's Four Last Songs on 25 Jan 2009, conducted by Donald Runnicles, part of the Last Words series. Yup, death as a branding concept, with guest conductors Xian Zhang, Marin Alsop, Antonio Pappano and Andre Previn along for the ride.

More on the LSO website later, including visits from Bernard Haitink, Midori and Lang Lang.

Christine Brewer's Wigmore opener kicks Proms into touch

Christine Brewer/Roger Vignoles - Wigmore Hall, 8 September 2007

The opening night of the Wigmore Hall season is cunningly scheduled to provide a welcome alternative to the last night of the Proms. The honour this season went to soprano Christine Brewer, a Wigmore Hall favourite.

In a concert recorded for later release in the Wigmore Live series, she married a familiar first half - Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder and Wolf's 4 Mignon Lieder - with some less well-known works in the second - Britten's Cabaret songs and John Carter's Cantata.

Coming on in a glamorous cerulean satin dress topped with a floral print kimono and incongruously battered black Queen Mother shoes, she delivered a predictably immaculate performance.

Her powerful voice is even across its whole range, her diction is clear but never mannered, her dynamics perfectly controlled, her tone flexible and intelligently deployed. And she makes it all seem so easy, so natural, even her breathing seems to be by some imperceptible osmosis.

In the Wagner I sensed her attention was more focused on line than on individual words, and her natural warmth substituted for a more specific engagement. Dramatic intensity was clearly not to form a part of tonight's performance. But the sublime Goethe poetry of the Wolf songs brought more pointed colouring to the text. Roger Vignoles, particularly in the tricky Wolf, proved an able and sensitive partner on the piano, the perfect foil.

Incidentally, this night was also the concert debut of the new Wigmore Hall piano, a Steinway selected with the aid (puzzlingly) of András Schiff, undoubtedly expert, but a pianist so attached to Bosendorfer he may never use the new acquisition. It seems to have a brighter, brasher tone than its predecessor, but that could simply be my imagination.

For her second half, emphasising the switch to a very different repertoire, Brewer dropped the gown and went for an art teacher look - black top and pants, complemented with a colourful braid-trimmed kimono.

The Britten/Auden Cabaret songs, as the title hints, are far from characteristic Britten, with their hints of Porter and Weill. The first one in the set of four, Calypso, was my only moment of doubt in the evening. Brewer, wavering between two irreconcilable styles, swung from singing the high notes to belting the lower lying passages. But it was largely redeemed by her wicked humour and a couple of piercing taxi-whistles she slipped in.

In the other songs of this set, her American accent and sense of humour created a warmth and ease that often eludes classically-trained singers in this sort of repertoire.

The Cantata she ended with is a classical setting of four spirituals - Peter go ring dem bells, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Let us break bread together, and Ride on King Jesus - by the little-known African-American composer John Carter. Brewer again sang these with a radiant born-to-it ease and great sensitivity, though I am not sure Carter's rather fussy, laboured arrangements do the exquisite simplicity of these great songs any favours.

A reception made even more enthusiastic by the free wine offered to all in the interval drew three encores, Hall Johnson's arrangement of I've heard of a city called heaven, Strauss's Ich liebe dich, and last, Mira, from Bob Merrill's musical Carnival! With its uncomplicated down-home warmth, it was not hard to see why it's Brewer's favourite song.