Intermezzo

Eugene Onegin in Amsterdam

Eugene Onegin - De Nederlandse Opera, Het Muziektheater Amsterdam, 18 June 2011

By telling the story largely in interactive flashback, Stefan Herheim's new production ingeniously restores elements of Pushkin's verse novel absent from Tchaikovsky's adaptation. Flitting between Pushkin's time and today, Onegin and Tatiana take turns to contemplate their past.  At the same time, modern Russia's identity crisis is explored via a procession of national stereotypes from peasant to patriarchs, communists to cosmonauts. This feels over-ambitious, though to be fair it is truthful to the novel, which is drawn on a larger scale than the opera. The production as a whole though is still an extraordinary theatrical experience, enhanced by the brilliant playing of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Dutch downloads

The Concertgebouw Orchestra are kindly (amazingly!) offering free mp3 downloads of ten live symphony recordings to anyone who joins their mailing list.

You can see the full list below.

Go here for more details.

Franz Schubert	Symphony No.8 'Unfinished'	Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Ludwig van Beethoven	Symphony No.2	Mariss Jansons
Felix Mendelssohn	Symphony No.4 'Italian'	Kirill Kondrashin
Cesar Franck	Symphony in D	Mariss Jansons
Gustav Mahler	Symphony No.1	Leonard Bernstein
Antonin Dvorák	Symphony No.8	Carlo Marino Giulini
Camille Saint-Saëns	Symphony No.3 'Organ'	Myung-Whun Chung
Jean Sibelius	Symphony No.2	Mariss Jansons
Anton Bruckner	Symphony No.8	Bernard Haitink
Johannes Brahms	Symphony No.2	Mariss Jansons

the magic baton of Mr Jansons

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam /Jansons - Barbican, 12 and 13 December 2009

Last weekend's flying Concertgebouw visit packed in two concerts in less than 24 hours. The better of the pair was Sunday afternoon's Mahler 2.

Mariss Jansons had me gripped right from the hovering, shimmering strings of the first bar. There's something magical, almost mystical about the way he balances architecture against details, form against texture, head against heart. I never felt any aspect of the music was being sacrificed in pursuit of insights elsewhere. His path was secure, unerring, and in a work that tempts theatrics from even the best, ultimately truthful. His music is the sort that doesn't need to shout to be heard. Quite overwhelming.

Saturday night's concert was more fragmented and ultimately less satisfying. The glowing strings, warm brass and sonorous woodwinds of the Concertgebouw are pretty much a given, so no complaints on that score. But where Jansons's restraint in the Mahler was revelatory, in Saturday's Brahms 4 it seemed more like a brake. There was an abundance of elegant craft, but I found myself longing for the do-or-die passion of Rattle, Barenboim (on a good day) or even Daniel Harding.

Smetana's Bartered Bride overture was energetic but inherently throwaway, and Martinu's Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani I simply don't care for, never have, sorry. In some ways, the encores, a Dvorak Slavonic Dance and Brahms Hungarian Dance were the most effective elements of the evening.

Perhaps my diminished enthusiasm has something to do with the seating though. I was, unusually, sitting in the balcony, where the view is perfect and the sound exquisitely blended. But the famously dry acoustic of the Barbican is a thousand times more apparent here than downstairs. The seats are fairly priced (a positive bargain in fact) to take account of tthe problem, but it's an economy I shan't make again in a hurry.

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

Prom 61: Wild Bears and sports bras

Prom 61: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Jansons / Magdalena Kožená

Magdalena Kožená needs underwear advice and she needs it now. I don’t know if her gorgeous gold lace gown was a genuine Chanel or an inspired ‘tribute’. Whichever, I’m sure it would have looked better without a black sports bra showing through. Karl would die. And she so nearly got it Catherine Deneuve-right for once with her elegant pearl accessories and sleekly whipped-up hair.

She couldn’t quite get it together musically either. After an uneven and sometimes inaudible start to her five Duparc songs, her voice settled into that cool, otherworldly glow that lends a touch of magic to everything she does. But it was impossible to tell what language she was singing in, let alone any of the words, and her detached manner suggested commentary more than experience. Her encore, Debussy’s Ballade des Femmes de Paris, was more effective for being more relaxed. But it remained abundantly clear that French – at least the French of the exquisitely turned mélodie – is not her language or her idiom.

Ravel’s second Daphnis et Chloé Suite, a work so perfectly conceived it doesn’t leave a conductor much interpretive leeway, was the Concertgebouw’s follow-up. Mariss Jansons couldn’t find anything new, but a dazzling display of taut, responsive playing made it worthwhile.

The first symphony of Sibelius was the uneven opener to the upside-down programme. Beautifully played throughout, but after a fiery first movement, returns diminished. A tendency to drag was marked by a restless audience (surprisingly, far from capacity).

Two splendid encores – Debussy’s Clair de Lune and Elgar’s Wild Bears – were (as so often at the Proms) the highlight of the evening.  

What's on in London in September

Summer is nearly over, and at last the concert calendar is filling up.

Proms and alternatives
The Proms seem to have gone on forever, but it'll all be over for another year on 12 September.

Remaining highlights include Mariss Jansons with the Concertgebouw, Riccardo Chailly with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Vienna Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta and Franz Welser-Möst (replacing the scheduled Harnoncourt).

On 4 September there's an unmissable double header - first Matthias Goerne and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in Mahler, Ligeti, Schoenberg and Strauss, then a late-night George Crumb special.

Incidentally, operatic highlights for the 2010 Proms - you heard it here first - are expected to include Die Meistersinger with Bryn Terfel, Glyndebourne's Don Giovanni, and a substantial chunk of Tristan und Isolde from the Orchestra of the 18th Century with Ben Heppner.

If you want to skip the ghastliness of the last night - something I cannot recommend too highly - alternatives include the Wigmore Hall season opener which is Die schöne Müllerin from Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis.

Or there's a FREE screening of the 1929 silent movie Piccadilly on an outside wall (don't blame me if it rains) of the Royal Festival Hall accompanied by a new score from composers Suki Mok and Ruth Chan. Following the screening, the score "will become the lynchpin of a cross-artform work incorporating dance, drama and video against a backdrop of the original silent movie".

Opera
The Royal Opera House season opens on 7 September with two concert performances of Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix conducted by Mark Elder and featuring Alessandro Corbelli alongside the hotly-tipped Eglise Gutiérrez and Stephen Costello.

Don Carlo has started rehearsals and promises to turn out even better than first time round. Semyon Bychkov conducts, Jonas Kaufmann is in the title role, and the rest of the cast is much the same as it was first time round, with Marina Poplavskaya, Simon Keenlyside and Ferruccio Furlanetto reprising his definitive Philip.

Don't expect much on stage except the singers in born-again minimalist Christof Loy's new production of Tristan und Isolde. Tristan is Ben Heppner and Isolde Nina Stemme, with Matti Salminen, Michael Volle and Sophie Koch completing the cast. Pappano conducts.

English National Opera's season opens with the much-travelled, highly-praised production of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre by La Fura dels Baus.

The Arcola Theatre's variable but occasionally brilliant (and cheap) Grimeborn opera festival continues until 5 September. Handel, Poulenc and Mozart are included amongst the mostly contemporary works.

There's an opportunity to hear Rossini's rarely-performed Il Signor Bruschino and La Scala di Seta as well as The Rake's Progress from British Youth Opera between 4 and 12 September.

And Valery Gergiev conducts the LSO in a concert performance of La Damnation de Faust on 22 September, with a cast including Joyce DiDonato, Michael Schade, Thomas Quasthoff and Florian Boesch.

Concerts
The LSO's season opener is on 20 September, with Gergiev conducting Debussy, Dutilleux and Ravel.

At the Royal Festival Hall, Bernard Haitink conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 23 and 24 September. And on 25 and 26 September Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO tackle Mahler's 2nd Symphony. Anne Sofie von Otter visits on 30 September with songs from her Theresienstadt CD.

At Wigmore Hall, Matthias Goerne continues his Schubert marathon on 18 and 20 September (a different programme on each night).

And on 28 September it's Imogen Cooper's bus-pass birthday concert. She'll be joined by Wolfgang Holzmair, Mark Padmore, Sonia Wieder-Atherton and Paul Lewis.

More flying Dutchmen - Haitink drops anchor at Barbican

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Haitink - Barbican, 14 March 2009

Mozart Symphony No 35 in D major 'Haffner'
Debussy La mer
Beethoven Symphony No 7 in A major

This concert was the first one of a two day flying visit from the Concertgebouw and their venerable Conductor Laureate Bernard Haitink, recently turned 80 and still going strong. Or strong-ish anyway. The steps up to the stage were clearly a bit of a trial, as they were for Thomas Quasthoff a few days ago. And they're not the first - isn't it about time the Barbican gave a little thought to stage access for its many less sprightly guests?

The opening Haffner Symphony was as efficient as you'd expect from the Concertgebouw, but rather charmless, and with that introspective quality that small ensembles marooned in the middle of the Barbican stage often have. I felt more like an eavesdropper than a spectator.

A sturdy and surprisingly hard-driven La Mer showed them at closer to their best, not a detail submerged beneath the rolling rhythms. And there are no weak links in this orchestra - the playing was as near flawless as you could hope for.

Haitink's take on Beethoven's Seventh was fleet and decisive. His snappy phrasing was warmed by the natural glow of the Concertgebouw strings and underpinned by that itchy beat. There was no pause for breath - even the usually monumental Allegretto was light-footed. As the band tumbled into the last movement at breakneck pace there was a palpable sense that some were struggling just to keep up. Somehow it held together. But that was the only point where Haitink's ideas felt imposed rather than organic, and his faithful observance of all the repetitions lent a perfect balance.

Despite an immediate standing ovation there was to be no ercore, but perhaps just as well - that Beethoven would have been an impossible act to follow.

    

Standing ovation for Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw: