THIERRY ESCAICH
Royal Festival Hall, London 2^nd November 2015

After the brilliantly eclectic opening concert with James McVinnie and members of Bedroom Community in September the series continued with a solo concert from French virtuoso Thierry Escaich. As well as being a well established performer he is rightly known as a skilled practioner in the art of organ improvisation.

The evening opened with a flamboyant rendition of Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D minor (Dorian). This left the audience in no doubt about the power of the RFH instrument or of Mr Escaich’s ability to control it. To my ear the pedal line in the fugue could have benefitted from a more positive registration.

Two contrasting movements from Vierne’s Symphonie No 4 in G minor allowed some different voices to be heard. In Alain’s Variations sur un theme de Clement Jannequin we were taken back in time to a Renaissance sound world, albeit with 20^th Century interventions. There was some beautiful registration here. The second piece by Alain, Litanies, (“an incessant repetitive musical prayer”), was given a passionate rendition, mostly at breakneck speed.

The second half really allowed Thierry to showcase his skills as an exciting performer, arranger and improviser together with much more variety of registration, style and mood.

His own arrangement of Liszt’s Les Preludes opened in dramatic style but also had moments of intense beauty. There were bombastic pedal reed passages contrasting with ethereal tremulant flutes. A very exciting and engaging performance, as was the extended improvisation, Tryptique (on given themes). Throughout Thierry masterfully wove contrasting rhythmic and harmonic ideas using a variety of registration and contrasts of style and dynamic. The second melodic fragment, Scarborough Fair, kept reappearing in a variety of surprising guises. A wonderful experience.

A brisk encore followed the enthusiastic applause of the appreciative audience, bringing a very entertaining evening to a close.

The next concert in the series features David Titterington on February 8^th 2016.

With events running over two weeks and not a single day starting later than lunchtime it is impossible for even a hardened lieder-lover to really do justice to the Oxford Lieder Festival. I spent two whole days this year and managed to take in eight concerts which were clearly focused on the main theme of the festival – Singing Words, poets and their songs.

Lunch with Faure and Schubert

The two lunchtime recitals on Wednesday and Thursday 28-29 October, focussed on songs by Faure and Schubert. The first was given by baritone Nicholas Mogg, who won this year’s Oxford Lieder Young Artist Platform and it was easy to see why, as not only is the voice remarkably well focused but his presence is alive and he communicates warmly,  introducing the songs with relaxed confidence. He brought a profound yearning to Faure’s Vaisseaux, nous vous aurons aimes en pure perte and a sensitive integrity to Schubert’s An die Musik. I look forward to hearing him again soon. He was very ably accompanied by Jams Coleman who showed a keen ear for the dynamics of the recital, coming into his own with the more dominant writing for Faure’s Serenade.

The following day brought us two singers from the National Opera Studio, Katherine Crompton and Hann-Liisa Kirchin. Soprano Katherine Crompton had asked our indulgence as she had been suffering from a throat infection but this did not seem to inhibit the charming rendition of Faure’s Mai or the sentimental Noel.  Mezzo-soprano Hann-Liisa Kirchin impressed with the more powerfully emotional pieces, filling out Faure’s Au bod de l’eau with operatic enthusiasm and bringing real power to Au cimetiere. By contrast there was an unnerving simplicity to Faure’s Les trois soeurs aveugles.

Settings of Thomas Hardy

A new venture this year has been the inclusion of a number of free recitals, given in Exeter College Chapel. These focused on a single composition within a limited time-frame to given those who might be hesitant of hearing a complete song recital a taste of what is in store. In the event they proved to be the best events I attended across the two days, starting with a magnificent performance of Britten’s Winter Words from tenor Nick Pritchard accompanied by festival director Sholto Kynoch. If there is was ever a need to demonstrate the close relationship between words and music these surely do it. Nick Pritchard brought great clarity to the text, within quite a difficult acoustic, and his body language enhanced the impact of his voice. In The little old table he found an emotional intensity which is not immediately obvious in the text and was deeply moving in the gentle sensitivity of The Choirmaster’s Burial. If there is pessimism here, as so often in Hardy, it is lifted by the universality the score brings to the text, none more so than the final Before Life and After. This was a splendid occasion and if anybody was hearing lieder for the first time this could not surely have been a better start.

That afternoon baritone Benedict Nelson brought us Gerald Finzi’s settings Earth and Air and Rain. Deeply romantic in style, the verse concentrates on a range of Hardy’s rural voices, from the folksy Rollicum-rorum to the reflective In a churchyard. Though there was no obvious problem with his voice, the text did not carry well and it was, retrospectively, obvious just how clear Nick Pritchard had been earlier in the day. This did not matter too much as we had the text before us but may matter more if Benedict Nelson wants to be comprehensible without us having our heads buried in the programme.

These two concerts really did reflect the sensitivity of the composer to the text, something which we would come back to later in the day.

Strauss & Chopin

Festivals can often find a place for an oddity and Richard Strauss’ Kramerspiegel is certainly that. Roger Vignoles gave us an extended introduction to the work as it has a fine back-story. In the days when copyright was a far more difficult process, composers often found themselves obliged to hand over works to publishers with whom they no longer wished to work. Strauss found a way round this by writing a song cycle which attacked publishers, hoping that his own would refuse to publish and thus get him out of his obligation. Readers will need to look up the history for themselves, but it will be worth doing so for the fun of it alone. Suffice it to say that there is great play on the names of publishers, most of whom fortunately have names which are also animals or objects eg Bock – Goat. Strauss has great fun with these, as did we listening to them from Elizabeth Watts, whose sense of humour shone through as well as the voluptuous voice she brings on all occasions. Roger Vignoles delighted in highlighting the musical allusions (much here toying with Rosenkavalier etc) and providing sterling and vigorous support throughout.

Late on Wednesday evening Imogen Cooper gave us a little respite from the voice with an all Chopin recital in the Ante-Chapel of New College. Of a finely crafted programme the Fantasie Op49 was exceptionally beautiful, and the final G minor Ballade left us wanting more even though it was close to midnight.

Wildflowers and A Shropshire Lad

The two main evening recitals, though they brought the largest audiences, were both problematic. Anna Stephany’s concert on Wednesday evening seemed unbalanced and bity. While her singing was not at fault the long narrative of Haydn’s Ariann a Naxos was surprisingly unmoving though the nobility of Schubert’s Lied eines schiffers an die Dioskuren somewhat made up for this.

The second half opened with the world premiere of Rhian Samuel’s Wildflower Songbook , settings of poems by Anne Stevenson. Throughout the three songs the vocal setting is more lyrical than the accompaniment so there is a continuous underlying tension between text and music. This often works well, particularly when there is a sudden coming together emotionally as at the shell-frail colour of harebells, but at other times can make for more uncomfortable listening. On a first hearing, the whimsical charm of Digitalis impresses and it would be good to hear the cycle again to get a better feel of its merits.

Of the rest of the programme, the Sibelius songs had the power of simplicity, and Michael Head’s Foxgloves and Sweet Chance were particularly beautiful. Sholto Kynoch was the accompanist demonstrating yet again great versatility and sensitivity whatever he is called upon to play.

The final event I attended also proved to be the most contentious. On paper, performing Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, interpolating settings of the poems as the evening proceeds, should be a simple matter. In the event it was something of a dog’s dinner. While individual items impressed the whole simply did not hang together. It was also deeply hampered by the introduction of regular auto-biographical details which gave an un-necessary slant to the text which we were experiencing. If we add to this the wide range of settings, the whole was, in essence, a mess. C W Orr’s Wagnerian approach, many of his settings soundly distinctly sub-Tristan, sat uncomfortably beside John Ireland and Vaughan-Williams. Not that the voices helped. The three male singers, all in evening dress, seemed intent on presenting the songs like Edwardian ballads rather than the potential simplicity, even naivety which the texts imply. Graham Johnson had pointed out at the start that Housman’s verse is almost entirely monosyllabic and there is a reason for this which goes to the heart of the work. The further one gets away from the simplicity the less effective the texts become. I am very glad to have encountered this performance as I had often thought I would like to mount the cycle using the songs. There is no problem with the poems, there is no problem with the settings by their individual composers, but putting them all together is, in retrospect, a mistake, from which I hope we all can learn.

After so much that had been outstanding over the 48hours I was in Oxford, it seems a pity to end on a sour note. I’m just glad that the Festival draws our attention to so many fine young singers and to works which we might otherwise never hear.

Next year’s Oxford Lieder Festival runs from 14 – 29 October and will bring us the complete songs of Robert Schumann. As a warm up, there will be a Spring Weekend of Song, 4-6 March 2016 which will include the auditions for the Young Artist Platform. 

As David Pountney notes in his introduction to this new season, Madness is possibly more endemic to opera than any other emotion. The three works which make up the autumn season focus on very different forms of madness but are none the less more closely connected than recent seasons, some of which have seemed somewhat fanciful in their linkage.

Handel’s Orlando, which I caught at the Bristol Hippodrome on 21 October, centres on the madness of the hero when confronted with the polarity of love and duty. Harry Fehr’s production moves the action to somewhere during World War II and a military hospital. Though this may seem too far from the mythical medieval realm of the original story it works remarkably well. Orlando, a fighter pilot, is seen dealing with the demons that war brings and the ensuing mental breakdown. The anonymity of a hospital, the almost surreal calm and staff going about their duties, ignoring the passion raging before them, makes sense both of the narrative and the intensely personal music which Handel provides. Arias are inner monologues rather than narrative devices and we have many glorious moments of intense beauty and – frequently – pain.

The production also highlights the importance of Dorinda, radiantly sung by Fflur Wyn. A staff nurse, she has little importance in the hierarchy but her sensitivity sees to the heart of the situation even when she herself loses by it. Her Nightingale aria at the start of act two was exquisite. But there were no weaknesses in the cast with Lawrence Zazzo a noble hero, Rebecca Evans ever so slightly snobbish as Angelica, but one whose pain we feel, and Robin Blaze a finely understated Medoro. The premise of the hospital is held together by the figure of Zoroastro, in this case the senior consultant, who guides his staff to allow nature to take its course. The only low voice in the cast he added a genuine gravity to the excesses of emotion around him.

There is no pit in the Birmingham Hippodrome which helps baroque works, though the orchestra under Rinaldo Alessandrini seemed larger than is needed to be. Not that this provided any lack of balance with its carefully moulded musical lines and the plethora of ornamentation coming from the stage.

The following night was the first of three performances of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. It is obvious that this is excellent box-office for WNO as the house was packed and enthusiastic. I have always liked Sondheim though we seem to have had rather a lot of Sweeney’s recently. While this was efficiently staged and well sung throughout I found myself wondering if the work was not somewhat more limited in scope than I had been led to believe. I have yet to see a production which gives me any real alternative insight into the characters. James Brining’s direction highlights the idea of madness by setting the opening in Bedlam and coming back to this on a number of key moments during the work, but they are hinted at rather than used. Maybe the whole evening could have been set within Bedlam – like the Marat/Sade – which would give another nuance to the text but, no, we were on very familiar ground. The containers which make up the set mirror the anonymity of the killings and a world in which things, and people, can be moved around unnoticed, but this did not impinge itself on the action as such.

Janis Kelly is as good a Mrs Lovett as one could wish for with a keen sense of humour as well as a real moral ambivalence. Other characters are more two dimensional, though Aled Hall makes a sleazy and nasty minded Beadle. In the lead, David Arnsperger looks good and sings well as Sweeney but never really convinces us that he is a drive man – close to the madness which is supposed to lie at the heart of the season.

Apollo Theatre, Oxford, 3 November 2015

Madness is even more at the heart of Bellini’s I Puritani than either of the other two works in this season, for the heroine goes mad in each act. This becomes the lynch-pin for Annilese Miskimmon’s production as Elvira is never really sane across the whole evening. Setting the naturalistic story line in Ulster during the troubles makes sense of the civil war and gives an added bite to what might be romantically historical. We start in a bleak church hall where the Orange Order are assembling for a parade. As Elvira descends even further into hallucination we drift back to the seventeenth century and the hall physically collapses around her. This is very effective and manages at all times to make sense of the libretto, even the rather startling line in act three where she refers to waiting for Arturo for over three centuries.

Linda Richardson has now taken over as Elvira for the remainder of the tour. She sings strongly and the top of the voice is secure but her presence is rather two-dimensional and lacking the emotional dynamism the part needs given that everything hangs on her. Alessandro Luciano was a late replacement for an indisposed Barry Banks as Arturo. As with Linda Richardson he has no problem with the tessitura for the part, which is certainly demanding, but he did little to win our affection or convince us that he is in emotional and political turmoil. Only David Kempster’s sterling performance as Riccardo really gave us the sense of power that the work as a whole needs if it is to be lifted out of the canary cage.

Happily the best part of the evening came from the orchestra under Carlo Rizzi. It is always a pleasure to welcome him back to the pit (not that there is one in Oxford) and his sensitive, often deft handling of the score was a delight the whole evening. There was also some very fine solo playing, particularly from the first horn.

WNO returns in the spring with three – yes three – Figaro operas.

London Coliseum, Friday 16 October 2015

Benedict Andrews’ new production of La Boheme raises more questions than it solves. While the approach is updated and naturalistic, the settings consistently appear to be at odds with the narrative. Are these students actually impoverished or are they rich boys playing games? The waste of highly expensive paint in the final act is a case in point.

The vast studio of act one is shown in the final act to be a ground floor apartment next to a beautiful park in which is a children’s playground. How can impoverished students afford it? And why so many candles in the first act when there is more than enough light flooding the stage? These problems are exacerbated when Rudolfo and Mimi both shoot up while sharing their autobiographies. Are we to take O suave fanciulla as a drug induced delusion which then spills over into the rest of the evening?

While the sets for act one and four raise questions they are at least serviceable, and the simplicity of Johannes Schutz’ design for act three is highly effective. However, the Café Momus scene is a mess, lacking any sense of focus and ability to tell the story with clarity.

All of this would matter less if the musical side had been universally strong. The women could not be faulted. Rhian Lois is a feisty Musetta whose compassion shines through in the final act. Corinne Winters is more complex as Mimi. How far can we trust her girlish simplicity when she is clearly an addict from the start and remains so – Marcello checks her arm for marks at the start of act three? She sings with boldness and clarity, easily riding the orchestra and allowing her dying self to simply slip away. It is very effective.

The men never really reach this level. Duncan Rock’s Marcello comes closest and improves across the evening. Neither Ashley Riches’ Schaunard or Nicholas Masters’ Colline are given enough within this production to create any sense of individuality. Showing them all up was Simon Butteriss’ masterly doubling of Alcindoro and Benoit. Tiny parts, but etched into the memory by the clarity of characterisation.

Zach Borichevsky has shown in the past that he has the potential for Rudolfo but was not in good voice across the whole evening, straining at the top and unable to ride the orchestra in moments which really require it.

Xian Zhang has conducted La boheme before for ENO and her approach is solid if rather pedestrian for much of the time. The second act in particular lacked fire though there was some very sensitive playing in act three.

Any new production has the real challenge of being compared with the previous one. Jonathan Miller’s production, last seen only two years ago, may have been showing signs of age but actually worked far more successfully than this new one does. Maybe we will come to love this in time but the signs are not hopeful.