Garsington Opera is celebrating its thirtieth birthday this summer, secure in its new home on the Getty estate at Wormsley. What started life as a few performances on a terrace in Leonard Ingrams back garden has developed into a festival of exceptional musical standards which commands international respect. The new opera house (which it is, regardless of what title it was originally given) has proved itself to be a highly versatile space with splendid acoustics, and one which has encouraged the development of new approaches to staging and to relationships with other organisations.

The continued involvement of the Philharmonia Orchestra will come to fruition in the 2020 season when they will support three of the four operas – the English Consort playing for the new Mozart production. This is in no way to disparage the Garsington Opera Orchestra, which has given sterling support over the years, but marks a shift towards a longer term professional partnership.

I have been reviewing Garsington Opera since 1996 when I first came up for Albert Herring and it has been the highlight of my summers ever since. The transition to Wormsley was remarkably seamless in retrospect and the subtle annual upgrading to the building and surroundings always add to the experience. Even a summer where it poured with rain every time I was there did not deter my enthusiasm or damage the performance – unlike the first Fidelio I attended in the old house which was washed out when the pit flooded and the rain drummed on the roof louder than the music. No chance of that now at Wormsley and though blankets are still provided you would need to be very unlucky to really need them.

The season opened this summer with Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, a work surprisingly rarely seen in this country given its overt festival appeal with familiar music, lots of dancing and a real circus! Director Paul Curran had moved the story to an English village c1960 allowing the chorus to create a wide range of individuals who never needed to be simple stereotypes. The opening conceit – the villagers are learning a Czech dance based on Smetana’s music – gently makes the transition from central Europe to middle-England but for the rest of the evening the local setting is remarkably effective. The only minor quibble for someone of my age is that pubs in that period rarely saw that many women in the public bar – all rather too European for the period!

However the first act is delightful with Brenden Gunnell’s emotionally charged Jenik taking his frustrations out on the corned-beef sandwiches with aplomb, while Natalya Romaniw’s Marenka tries to keep him under control while constantly wanting to show how much she loves him. The relationship blossoms well across the evening and is very strongly sung and characterised throughout. Joshua Bloom’s brash Kecal throws his weight about and has a vast bass voice in keeping with his character. Stuart Jackson underplays Vasek’s potential as the village idiot, making him more appealing and sensitive that is sometimes the case though his very large physical presence makes him a gentle giant without any effort. The circus in the final act is magnificent and the dancing throughout compellingly effective.  The Philharmonia Orchestra under Jac van Steen gave an emotionally charged and frequently thrilling account of the score.  I don’t know if this is to be recorded but it certainly deserves to be.

Garsington Opera have had an uneven history where Mozart is concerned ranging from John Cox’ definite Le Nozze di Figaro to some less than involving other stagings. Michael Boyd’s new Don Giovanni looked at first as though it was going to be firmly in the latter camp with its Jackson Pollock paint flinging and its unconvincing setting of picture frames. However once it got firmly into its stride – in this case after the death of the Commendatore – it suddenly flowered dramatically and was gripping for the rest of the evening. When the quality of acting and singing is added to this, it really became a very impressive evening. At its heart was the sense of ensemble rather than individual characters. The up-dating worked perfectly well when the Don becomes a vile, louche, aggressive serial rapist who clearly has too much money and no sense of purpose other than to indulge himself. For once, the catalogue aria comes across as repellent rather than comical. This is not to imply that Michael Boyd takes a significantly feminist approach, just that we are as an audience far more aware of the way individuals abuse power. There was always the potential problem of the conclusion to the work – if the audience don’t believe in hell and damnation, what happens to the Don?- but Michael Boyd took this at face value with the Don dragged off screaming attached to the metal ladder and the evening ended there, as did Mozart’s version in 1788. There is no comfortable denouement, no winding up of loose ends, just a sense that one problem has been dealt with even if many more remain.

The young cast make much of the dramatic interplay. Jonathan McGovern’s Don is highly mobile as well as vocally exciting, and always just one step ahead of the capable Leporello of David Ireland. Trystan Llyr Griffiths is one of the most convincing Don Ottavio’s I can recall. His singing is magnificent and he is a genuinely convincing foil perfectly capable of standing up to Giovanni . Thomas Faulkner’s Masetto is equally virile and his anger is always dangerous, even when Zerlina appears to get the better of him.

Camila Titinger’s Donna Anna is strongly sung, her character hinting at rather than over-playing her aristocracy. Sky Ingram’s Elvira never lets us forget her passion for Giovanni is very real even when she knows how despicable he is. Her Mi tradi was dramatically carried throughout and her presence on stage never in doubt. Mireille Asselin’s Zerlina was a very different kettle of fish. A working class woman who has to use all her wiles to maintain her place and dignity, as much within her own people as with the wider social world. Paul Whelan’s Commendatore is very much of an older generation, his return as a statue placing him firmly in the world of elder statesmen passing judgement.

Douglas Boyd moved the score on with consummate skill, allowing moments of ornamentation to peep through without any sense of indulgence. The Garsington Chorus were their usual joyous self.

Next time I will be covering Offenbach’s Fantasio and Britten’s The Turn of the Screw.

The Dome, Sunday 26 May 2019

The Brighton Festival closing concert is by definition ‘The Big One’. But this was bigger.

The decision to perform Michael Tippett’s celebrated British wartime oratorio A Child of Our Time, with its subtly powerful pacifist’s outcry against racism, fascism, bigotry and xenophobia at such a febrile time in home and European politics, was potently relevant enough.

But then to cast the conductor and all four vocal soloists as not only non-British but three Afro-Americans and a Maori appears a decision of insightful brilliance. A deed far from daring or audacious and entirely logical as the final bequeathing to the Festival by its 2019 guest director Rokia Traoré from Mali, working with resident Australian Festival chief executive, Andrew Comben..

The Festival closer is never more spectacular than when the Brighton Festival Chorus are towering above the orchestra to create a wall of bodies, instruments and sound confronting the surrounding 1,700 seats of the Dome audience. And now, the focal figure directing these forces of 243 performers was the young, lean, 6ft-plus Roderick Cox, taking calm, graceful, composed command while adorning the podium with at once distinctive long legs, arms and directing fingers.

The potential of A Child of Our Time to move listeners musically was guaranteed the moment Tippett heard ‘Steal Away to Jesus’ and was instantly captured by the world’s favourite Spiritual. This black slave song and four others he recruited strategically as choruses expressing both neutrality and universality inside a musical framework moulded on successful Baroque oratorio models such as Messiah and the Bach Passions, but inflected occasionally within Tippett’s own sound world with afro and Latin rhythms.

The Brighton Festival Chorus revelled in the opportunity and unfailingly elevated the occasion. Jonathan Lemalu’s narration darkly told Tippett’s parable of hope for the world once again turning ‘on its dark side’.

Noah Stewart’s crystal words bit home as the scapegoat Child of Our Time, and Gweneth Ann Rand was the softly desolate mother with Ronnita Miller luminously steadfast as the Aunt.

The performance, which ends in an unexpected and counter-affirmative sudden minor chord, was greeted with huge warmth by the audience whose cheers had earlier been directed towards Trio Isimsiz after a Beethoven work that ended in a largely sunlit polka.

Isimsiz means ‘nameless’ in Turkish, the half-ancestry of Erdem Misirlioglu, their prizewinning pianist and their only member to have reached age 30 in a trio whose own prizewinning includes European triumph in Beethoven repertoire. Brighton’s own knowledgeable chamber-music-loving Coffee Concert public already rate and love them for their two charmingly accomplished performances in recent years at The Attenborough Centre.

After two intended performances that conspired not to materialise this was finally their first one of Beethoven’s pioneering, underrated and still under-performed Triple Concerto. And in less than ideal circumstances, on a bulging stage forcing a compromise playing layout whose challenges involved Misirlioglu having to play with his back to the others.

But Isimsiz succeeded, and one looks in coming years to tracking their growingly authoritative account of a work of authoritative material during the relatively few performance chances they will get.

Petrov and Pablo Hernán Benedi on violin were, as expected, in total alert accord in their melodic and passage work together, and the awaiting power was obvious when joined by the piano. Benedi has a subtle characteristic style, sometimes understated, sometimes delivering familiar passages seasoned with the freedom of a street fiddler and imparting that welcome sense of spontaneous newness.

Richard Amey

Mote Hall, 18 May 2019

Tom Poster is a distinctive pianist. His account of the Schumann concerto was full of warmth and verve especially in the flamboyant third movement. What made this performance exceptionally memorable, though, was his sensitive rendering of the pianissimo passages which had the entire audience listening spellbound probably in incredulity that anyone could play the piano so softly. An accomplished speaker, he then gave us a perfectly judged  Clara Schumann nocturne, having explained that she is “in” all of Robert’s music as well as having given over a thousand recitals herself. How appropriate, Poster also observed, to play music by both Schumanns in Mental Health Week.

The rest of the programme was upbeat, dance focused and Russian.  We began with the orchestral version of Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor complete with lots of attention to dramatic crescendi with some attractive quiet passages interspersed with tension especially from busy, rhythmic strings.

After the interval came the Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances. It’s a big play by any standards but Brian Wright grabbed it by the horns to good effect. The driving rhythms of the first movement and the lilting lyrical minor key work in the second were particularly attractive. Of course this 1940 piece is a bit of a percussion showcase – including xylophone, glockenspiel, tubular bells and gong along with bass drum, timps and various other things – and the six players here did a spectacular job.

This well attended event was the orchestra’s annual charity concert. His Honour Jeremy Carey DL spoke briefly at the beginning and thanked MSO for supporting his chosen charity HearSay which works with local children and families affected by the Autistic Spectrum. It was a rousing and very successful end to the 2018/19 season. I look forward to the first concert in the 109^th season on 12 October.

Susan Elkin

Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 9 May 2019

Part of the Philharmonia’s now established – and very welcome – annual residency at the Marlowe, this concert packed a lot of variety.

We began with a workmanlike account of Beethoven’s 1810 overture Egmont. I liked Paavo Jarvi’s elegantly pointed dynamics and the seating arrangement with second violins to the conductor’s right meant that none of the complementary melodic elements were lost. Jarvi’s conducting style here was a bit odd, though. In places he was busily signing every semi-quaver. It must be very tiring.

Viktoria Mullova is a very charismatic performer. Tall, sinewy and oozing musicality she gave us a Sibelius violin concerto which was spirited without being showy, especially in the third movement with its nearly executed double stopping passage. It’s a pity this concerto, which dates from 1904, doesn’t get played more often. I can only suppose that it owes its relative unpopularity to its failure to create an audible Finnish landscape, unlike the symphonies and overtures.  After the concerto, Mullova pulled up a music stand and, accompanied by the orchestra, played Arvo Part’s Passacaglia as her encore – technically fiendish as well as good fun.

But the highlight of the concert came after the interval in one of the best performances of Tchaikovsky’s 6^th symphony I have ever heard. Jarvi brought out every ounce of drama, colour and tension from the electrifying bassoon solo at the beginning to that extraordinarily soulful final bar dying away to silence – and by golly, was Jarvi cross when some enthusiastic audience member started to clap before the final notes had gone. He is obviously a man who dislikes applause at the “wrong” time, incidentally. He did his best to pre-empt the inevitable applause at the end of the resounding third movement by sailing straight into the finale. Every note of this work was given loving, intelligent attention by a conductor who evidently admires and respects the piece.  And the orchestra rose to this with some magnificently playing. The brass, in particular, did a fine job in the third movement and bassoons, Robin O’Neill  and Shelly Organ shone through like sombre stars in all three works.

I’m not sure this concert needed the rather laboured title “Romantics and Rebels” but it’s good to hear in a single evening three contrasting works from three different countries spanning over a hundred years.

Susan Elkin

Glyndebourne, Lewes, 5 May 2019

While most regular concert-goers will know Rameau and Lully few I suspect will be familiar with the court musicians of the previous century. All the more welcome then Music from the Court of Louis XIII recreated for us to sublime effect by Ensemble Correspondances.

The king had three sets of court musicians. We are possibly more familiar with the idea of music for the liturgy and for state occasions but all the works we heard at Glyndebourne were secular compositions for court entertainment – frequently for very small gatherings in the evening. As such they are intimate, personal and often exquisitely crafted. Most of the music was drawn from scores by Antoine Boesset and Etienne Moulinie who set contemporary romantic verse, almost all of it focussed on unrequited love. Unlike the Italian approach which is the basis for so much of our understanding of Baroque composition, the French composers have a far greater reliance on the metre of the verse being set and don’t break their compositions into the more familiar recit/aria structure. Consequently the scores flow with remarkable ease, often ignoring the creation of an individual character, as they pass the text from one group of singers to another.

Soon after the opening of the concert came Boesset’s Dialogue for Orpheus and his Wood Nymphs, which unfolded with a gentle beauty, an approach taken up again in Me veux-tu voir mourir with its reserved intensity.

Throughout, the text was always immaculately clear, even though it was written in sixteenth century French which is as removed from modern French as pre-Shakespeare is from modern English. This was particularly important in Recit de la Nuit where the chorus for the stars developed in its complexity as the work progressed. Dance rhythms also underpinned many of the works, with the rhythmic lilt pervasively obvious in Ne vante point, flambeau des Cieux.

The final item was Moulinie’s Flores apparuerunt – unusual for being a Latin setting – whose harmony seems to hint at all the riches which were to flower in later French baroque.

A magnificent afternoon, leaving us wanting to explore this period ever more deeply.

Southbank Centre International Organ Series

Royal Festival Hall 29^th April 2019

Wayne Marshall continues to be an excellent ambassador for the organ and in this concert presented the RFH’s fine organ in its symphonic and improvisatory modes. There was a clear historic progression in the programme which consisted of works by teacher and pupil – Widor and Dupre.

The opening work, Symphony No 6 in G minor, Op 42 No 2, by Widor, was the longest in the programme, although Wayne Marshall’s tempo ensured that the music did not drag! Clearly in the Romantic vein this music shows just how varied a palette of timbres had become available in France thanks to the new technologies of Cavaille-Coll as the mid nineteenth century organ developed into the versatile and gargantuan instruments now in existence.

To my ear Mr Marshall’s tempo was more suited to the remainder of the programme but from the outset he was in command of the instrument and performed with great panache. Some particularly well selected registrations transported us from bombastic to the tremulant muted reeds and strings, so associated with the French instruments of that time.

Dupre’s Symphony No 2, Op 26 followed. Despite being linked to the previous piece through its form and composer we were very definitely in a different place with this music. With more angular melodies, and hugely developed harmonies, together with jazz and other influences this music speaks in a much more modern language. I particularly enjoyed this performance which reflected the performer’s love of different musical genres – a position I hold to myself! Once again the organ’s resources were used to the full with contrasting and sudden changes of registration producing some startling effects.

In introducing the work by Dupre Wayne explained that the basis of his previous Symphony was found in a large-scale improvisation which he then went on to reconstruct. The art of improvisation has for a long time been an integral part of the Parisian organist’s work. It was fitting, therefore, that the culmination of the evening came with a superb Improvisation on themes previously submitted via the Southbank Centre’s website. There seemed to have been some lack of clarity as to what was intended – the usual request to be for a musical theme – when the first suggestion on the long list presented was “climate change”! This produced a rather bemused response from our organist and was subsequently rejected along with many others, finally resulting in the choice of “Music of Beethoven” and “Happy Birthday to You” (in honour of someone in the audience).

The resulting improvisation, lasting around 15 minutes, ranging in style and content, showed to great effect how accomplished and inventive Mr Marshall is. Beginning with prominent – but disguised – repetition of the familiar opening motif of the 5^th Symphony it culminated with a combination of Happy Birthday combined with Ode to Joy. Along the way were many interesting twists and turns together with snatches of Fur Elise in a performance that wowed the audience and brought this very entertaining and educative evening – and sadly, this season – to a close.

SP

Barbican Hall, 14 April 2019

Kirill Gerstein’s account of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto was very arresting. You could see and feel him breathing the music, especially in the first movement and he makes sure you notice every flamboyant, jubilant grace note in the finale. I liked the yearning intensity he brought to the beginning of the largo too, going on to play it with so much rubato that it sounded in places almost like a smoochy jazz arrangement. I was not surprised to read later in the programme that Gerstein originally trained partly in jazz piano before deciding to specialise in classical.

Gerstein – who looks more like a nightclub bouncer than a stereotypical virtuoso pianist – has a palpable rapport with Mark Elder on the podium and brings an intimate chamber music quality to the work as he leans round sensitively to look at the string principals. There was some splendid work from the orchestra throughout the concerto too. The impressively played bassoon and flute duet in the largo was a high spot, for example.

Then we nipped forward a century and went from a work I have heard performed many dozens of times (and twice played the second violin part in) to one I had never before heard played live: Charles Ives’ Second Symphony written in the early years of the 20^th century but not performed until Bernstein finally premiered it in 1951. As Elder observed in his illustrated introduction after the interval, Ives followed the advice of Dvorak in America ten years earlier, that American composers should exploit their own heritage rather than slavishly emulating Europe. The piece is so referential – hymns, band tunes, square dance music, popular tunes and more – that it’s almost more of a sectional medley than a symphony but the imaginative scoring and orchestration must mean it’s fun to play and it’s certainly engaging to listen to.

Elder brought out all the beauty in the central cantabile and I admired the warm richness of the string sound in the third movement. First violins did well with the square dance theme and getting the two trombonists on their feet to play the big, overstated tune at the end was an inspired musical joke like the cacophonous final chord – the traditional way a dance band indicates that the party’s over.

An interestingly programmed concert of contrasts from the LSO in good form.

Susan Elkin

Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 13 April 2019

You’d expect mature, measured work from octogenarian Herbert Blomstedt and that, in this enjoyably focused concert is what we got. Mr Blomstedt now moves stiffly when he reaches and exits the platform but his unshowy, baton-less conducting is free and fluid, mostly from the wrist, with little or no reference to the score in front of him and rarely anything as humdrum as beating time. He reminded me, in different ways, of both Boult and Klemperer – both of whom I caught live towards the end of their careers. And the Philharmonia clearly responds well to his understated style.

Rather unnecessarily entitled Musical Heroes, this two work concert brought together Mozart’s powerful 40th symphony with all its stirring G minor and Beethoven’s Eroica – larger forces on stage –  which unfailingly manages to sound ground-breaking over 200 years after it was written.

Blomstedt gave us plenty of understated elegance in Mozart’s opening molto allegro followed by an exquisite andante. I really liked the way he allowed the woodwind interjections to glide through the texture – which also speaks volumes for the pleasing acoustic in the Marlowe which, unusually, works just as well as a concert hall as it does as a theatre. There followed an incisive third movement and a fourth characterised by mercurial tempi and precision.

And so to a memorable Beethoven performance. Blomstedt had the Philharmonia configured with first and second violins facing each other with timps angled off to his right and basses to his left. This meant that the principal cello struggled for eye contact with the leader and, owing to the conductor’s forward position, the leader couldn’t see his face most of the time. It looked awkward but didn’t seem to affect the sound.

Blomstedt doesn’t do everything at “authentic” Beethoven prestissimo as Norrington or Eliot Gardener routinely do which means we were treated to a lot of detail – with every rhythmic and melodic nuance coaxed and shaped by his expressive hands. I especially liked the management of the tension preceding the convention-breaking horn discords in the first movement and its contrast with the lyrically evocative passages. The second movement was, frankly, eccentric with too many exaggerated dynamic and tempo changes but the nicely judged fugal section and the rich string sound in the scherzo made up for it. So did the grandiloquence of the finale in which friskier moments highlighted the strength of the legato, fortissimo sections.

Susan Elkin

London Coliseum, Friday 12 April 2019

Iain Bell has a distinctive voice as a composer. His WNO opera In Parenthesis was one of the most impressive new works I have encountered in a very long time. It was also a superb piece of theatre, combining the mystical with the stark reality of the trenches. If this seems a strange way to start a review of ENO’s new Jack the Ripper; The Women of Whitechapel it is that, while I have no doubts about Iain Bell as a composer, I have serious reservations about the dramatic impact, or lack of it, of the new work.  To take a pro-feminist approach to the myths surrounding Jack the Ripper makes good sense but Emma Jenkins libretto fails to create female characters with whom we can empathise or really engage. The first murder is of a woman we have never encountered, and the death of Polly makes little more impact as we have had virtually no emotional engagement with her.

The problem is made all the more obvious with the characterisation of the men. Alan Opie’s Pathologist comes across as a rounded and significant human being as does Alex Otterburn’s delightful Squibby. By contrast we gather virtually no sense of individuality from the women who live in the doss house. Only Josephine Barstow’s magnificent Maud brings us anywhere near a credible and identifiably strong woman. (and it seems impossible that I first saw her as Violetta in 1968!)

The approach seems to be caught between wanting to show us the drab reality of doss house living and the everyday reality of prostitution and abuse, and the need for opera to work on a heightened level which will quickly engage with us. To take a few examples. In Peter Grimes Britten gives remarkably little time to Aunties nieces but they stick in the mind as real people. Their from the gutter immediately pin-points the reality of their life in an unsentimental but very moving way.

Similarly Phyllis Tate’s The Lodger gives us a gutsy pub chorus which I still recall even though I only saw the work once many years ago.

There is no need for Jack the Ripper to appear but any work based on the myths needs to have a strong narrative and stark reality which this new opera simply side-steps. Put bluntly, for all that we should care about the women in the doss house, by the interval we don’t. Yet this is not in any way the fault of the excellent cast. Beside Dame Josephine Barstow the women are sung by Natalya Romaniw, Janis Kelly, Marie McLaughlin, Susan Bullock and Leslie Garrett, any one of whom could potentially attract an audience in their own right. Yet the opportunity is missed to allow them to carve out a space for themselves. Arias for individuals could have gone some way to help this but the ones they are given lack the bite and individuality to sear them in our minds.

In terms of dramatic impact one has only to think of Janacek’s House of the Dead to realise what potential there could be here and what, ultimately, was missed.

The setting by Soutra Gilmour is suitably oppressive and this has to be one of the most sensitive productions Daniel Kramer has provided for ENO to date. Martyn Brabbins handles the large forces sensitively but in many ways he is not given a lot to do.

I wish I could be more enthusiastic. I want to be, as there was so much here that was on the cusp of being superb but it never tipped over into the frisson of excitement and excellence which the combined forces had led us to anticipate.

Maybe there is a concert suite lurking within the work which could rescue the many splendid passages – or maybe we could persuade ENO to mount In Parenthesis which is a greater work on all levels.