ENO: The Merry Widow

London Coliseum, Friday 1 March 2019

No-one could surely doubt that The Merry Widow is a masterpiece but in recent years I can’t recall a production which did it justice. At last, we have one. In one way this is a refreshingly old-fashioned approach. Solid naturalistic sets, sensitively lit to reflect the shifting emotions, and costumed in a way which is securely Edwardian even if it drifts comfortably out of period when it needs to. But the other side is a master-stroke. The new book and lyrics by April De Angelis and Richard Thomas are the best we have heard for many years and surely on a par with Ira Gershwin and Cole Porter. There are so many felicitous lines, and ones that spin so easily with the music that this should become the accepted version for many years to come. The jokes come thick and fast but are always within the context of the action and any apparent reflections on Brexit are quickly picked up by the willing audience.

The work is cast from strength with Sarah Tynan a riveting Hanna Glawari. This is no genteel aristocrat but a woman who has seen difficult days and worked her way up. For once, her ability to dance as well as the Grisettes seems quite feasible, and her rendition of Vilja perched high above on a crescent moon was a moment worthy of Busby Berkeley. Her relationship with Nathan Gunn’s Danilo is also more complex. There seems to be a strong back story here and I can’t recall before being so aware of how close the relationship is to Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. They care deeply but are never in a position to disclose it, even in the mixed social setting which Max Webster’s production creates. Not until they get to the point where money can be ignored can love begin to flourish.

The other romantic interest – Rhian Lois’ forceful Valencienne and Robert Murray’s Camille – are more obviously physical than usual and she takes the lead where he might hang back. Andrew Shore’s Zeta is the connecting link between the two couples and shines as ever with his comic timing as well as his credibility.

The dancers are nicely over the top and the Maxim’s scene hints towards Cabaret in a not unpleasing fashion. There is decadence here as well as potential debauchery. The ENO chorus provides many of the smaller roles and proves once again what a depth of talent is available. In the pit Kristiina Poska drives a sparkling account of the score which never drops for a second.

Though it has not happened recently, could a west-end transfer be in the offing? Audiences who flock to 42nd Street would surely love this and I assume ENO would not begrudge the extra income?

 

 

Philharmonia Orchestra

Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 20 February 2019

The now well-established partnership between the Philharmonia and the Marlowe Theatre continues to bring out the best in both. On this occasion the orchestra was in pleasing form and the auditorium full of enthusiastic concert goers – and it always surprises me just how well the Marlowe works accoustically: a rare thing for a multii-purpose performance space.

We began with Bach’s third Orchestral Suite – not a common choice for the overture slot and therefore good to hear.  Some of the openings were ragged (possibly because Philippe Herreweghe’s understated, baton-free conducting style was initially less than incisive) but the sound soon settled. They played the famous second movement with lots of appropriate sustained piano in the upper strings and well controlled underpinning accompaniment in the lower.

Bertrand Chamayou trotted out Mozart’s piano concerto no 23 in A (K488) with assurance although it was a bit odd to see him peering into the music he’d laid flat on top of the strings of the fully open grand he was playing as if he were at a rehearsal. His tender account of the lyrical middle movement was attractive and he played the finale with lots of French insouciance. Lovely work from the bassoons in the allegro assai too.

And so, in a concert, with the rather contrived title Gods and Mortals to the glories of the Jupiter symphony, in which the single flautist did a magnificent job and the whole focus was suddenly much sharper. The orchestra found real warmth of tone in the first movement and give us very clear finale in which the busy string work was delivered with  admirable precision.

Herrewghe had configured the orchestra for this concert with second violins to his right and cellos and violas in front of him half left and half right. As this arrangement usually does, it made the string sound seem more coherent and it was good to be reminded  how well both Bach and Mozart balance their string writing.

Susan Elkin

 

Noteworthy Voices: Music for Epiphanytide

St Nikolas, Pevensey, Saturday 16 February 2019

It was good to welcome back Noteworthy Voices to Pevensey under their conductor Alexander Eadon. While to most of us Christmas is long gone the church’s calendar extends well into the new year and so it was not stretching things too far to mount a concert of a cappella music focussing on the scores created for the period immediately after Christmas Day.

Their eclectic programme ranged from early fifteenth century settings to the present day and ranged across the world for its sources. They opened with a group of English settings – Richard Rodney Bennett’s Out of your sleep, the quiet beauty of Britten’s A boy was born, the rolling cascades of Wishart’s Alleluya! A new work is come and the poignancy of Chivers Ecce puer.

We were then whisked back to the sixteenth century for Victoria’s wonderful setting of O Magnum Mysterium which was immediately followed by a more recent setting of the same text by Morten Lauridsen with its dense harmonies and superbly low lying ending.

Hymns to the Virgin followed with three modern works by Lennox Berkeley, Chris Chivers and Arvo Part surrounding the anonymous Ther is no rose of such vyrtew for high voices.

After the interval the male voices, positioned deep in the chancel, gave us the chanted phrases for the Magnificat, interspersed with improvisations for organ by Jean Titelouze dating from c1600, and played with convincing simplicty by Alexander Eadon. Mateo Flecha the Elder’s Riu riu chiu could hardly have been more different, coming as it did before Kenneth Leighton’s dark setting of the Coventry Carol. The section concluded with two familiar and beautiful works by Peter Warlock –Bethlehem Down and Benedicamus domino. The coming of the Kings brought the evening to a close with Philip Lawson’s Lullay my liking, the very familiar The three kings  by Cornelius – though on this occasion the solo voice almost disappeared within the enveloping warmth of the chorale – a traditional carol, Sing Lullaby, and finally, Jonathan Dove’s The three kings. This concluding item was somewhat disturbing. After the enthusiasm of so much of the music hailing the birth of Messiah and praising Mary, here was a setting darkly aware of the reality of the future for the family – the move into exile, the loss of status, the prophecy of death. It was a strange ending but none the less moving and effective.

Let us hope Noteworthy Voices return again soon.

 

Bizet: Carmen

Kings’s Head Theatre, 13 February 2019

This is Bizet’s Carmen as you’ve never seen it before. Reworked for 2019 Britain, it opens in an NHS hospital. And it’s a bijoux version simply pared down to a 90 minute three hander love (or something) triangle. Musically, under the charismatic direction of Juliane Gallant from piano, it’s spikily strong and the new translation by Mary Franklin, who also directs, and Ashley Pearson is very funny.

What an inspired idea to have mobile phones playing Carmen tunes and blending them in. At one point the radio is playing in a bar and the presenter is announcing and playing extracts from Carmen. Dan D’Souza, a deliciously gravelly baritone as Escamillio, becomes a posturing football star (“Can I get a cup of coffee, ‘cause I’m not really fit to drive my maserati”) who sings the Toreador song badly in a karaoke bar as a way of showing off to Carmen.  When Carmen is singing the Habenera, Jose bounces a rubber ball in perfect rhythm to provide a gentle percussive underpinning. The whole piece is a light, witty enjoyable concept and full of imaginative ideas until, of course, the last five minutes because, as well all know, it can’t end happily.

Ellie Edmonds (alternating at other performances with Jane Monari as Carmen) has a rich warm singing voice which she uses crisply. She sails adeptly through all the big numbers and acts convincingly which is especially important in the intimate space of the King’s Head. The absurd hip-hop dance she does to Bizet’s music at the beginning of Act II is a moment to treasure too.

Roger Patterson sang Jose on press night – the role is shared with Mike Bradley – and brings a great deal of appropriate tenor angst and passion to it. He is compelling, first as a disillusioned NHS nurse coming to the end of his shift, then as a young man in love, changed after three months in prison and eventually as a thwarted, angry man.

This is a feminist take on Carmen. Written and directed by an all-female team it presents Carmen not as a femme fatale but rather as unfortunate, very plausible, young woman who makes a few fatally bad choices. I rather like that angle.

Susan Elkin

Worthing Symphony Orchestra – Children’s Concert

CHILDREN from 10 primary schools and other being taught at home were hit for six in The Assembly Hall last week. Totalling nearly 800 including their teachers, they were bowled over by Worthing Symphony Orchestra and conductor John Gibbons.

Free of charge as usual, the 40-piece orchestra invited them for this fourth such new concert in the three years they have been established. The object? As composer Edward Elgar would have put it: to “knock ‘em flat” with their first experience of the sound of a live professional symphony orchestra.

And Elgar helped them, with three of his Enigma Variations about his friends – one a woman, Ysobel, whom Elgar was teaching to play the viola. Another about a blustering heavy-handed man he was teaching to play the piano. The other about an organist’s bulldog, Dan, jumping into the river to retrieve a stick and shaking himself dry on bank afterwards and barking in triumph.

The children, organised by music teaching and instruments hub, West Sussex Music, were welcomed into WSO’s huge den by Rosie Secker, who got the hundreds singing together. Then the orchestra, in formal evening dress, took the stage, and sprang straight out of trap, tambourine rattling, with the Cossack Dance from Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker.

Gibbons, now 21 years the WSO artistic director and conductor, introduced the music. He smuggled a tuba and three sliding trombones into his own jokey arrangement of the famous movement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. William Alwyn got the WSO Scottish Dancing, then Dvorak took the children onto the night time of his New World.

The Suffolk Morris dancers of Doreen Carwithen got them going again. Sussex composer Paul Lewis suddenly had them trembling to his Abject Terror sequence from Spongebob Squarepants. Then Gibbons trained them to clap soft then loud to Strauss’s Radetsky March.

If there had been room to dance, a Highland Festival –cum-celidh-cum-military parade would surely have broken out among the children and teachers. But the dance floor lay beneath the seating so instead everyone sat, many children absorbed or transfixed, others semi- disbelieving, others jubilant and revelling at the fun and wonder of their experience.

All led up to a seriously exciting finish in which the WSO – the children now ready for anything – blazed, crashed and eventually strutted out the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.

John Gibbons said: “It was thrilling to see a sea of enthusiastic young faces at the WSO Schools Concert on Thursday morning.

“It always brings joy to me and the orchestra to watch their excited reactions to each piece that we play for them – from the power of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, the subtle surprises in the Haydn and the beauty of the cor anglais in Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony.

“I was also pleased to meet a group of Home Educated children and their parents who had obviously got an enormous amount out of the concert.”

Cumbrian saxophonist Jess Gillam, a musical celebrity at 20, who has twice soloed with WSO, wrote to The Guardian this week. School music cuts, she warns, threaten fundamental life-giving creativity, understanding and enjoyment.

These occasional WSO concerts – this one the first for a year – constitute an educational oasis for so many school children. And what about the other thousands for whom there is no room in the hall?

Richard Amey

 

ENO: Akhnaten

London Coliseum, Monday 11 February 2019

ENO and Philip Glass have become a powerful partnership, and in a time when audiences can be thin on the ground his works are immensely popular – and rightly so. Phelim McDermott’s immersive production of Akhnaten returned to the Coliseum last night in all its splendour and visual appeal.

When it first opened in 2016 the jugglers seemed like an interesting idea but possibly additional to the narrative. Seeing them again I was far more aware of the visual impact they make as a whole. Time and again they are like fountains, as if the Pharaoh is surrounding himself with light and life. The parallel with Louis XIV is subtly drawn and creates a stronger link with the ancient past that was at first obvious.

Musically this is as secure as ever, under Karen Kamensek’s deft work in the pit, controlling not only the large orchestra but the many choral groups scattered both on and off stage. Anthony Roth Costanzo returns as Akhnaten, his virile counter-tenor easily riding the large orchestral forces, but finding the gentle intimacy for his prayer at the end of Act Two. Rebecca Bottone returns as Queen Tye but Katie Stevenson is new to the role of Nefertiti, bringing a relaxed regality to her performance.

Tom Pye’s designs are as fine as I recall them to be and are persuasively lit by Gary James.

I wonder when we might see Einstein on the Beach?

 

Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra

The Dome, Brighton, Sunday 10 February 2019

On paper the three late romantic works looked as if they should make up a well-balanced programme but the outcome was not quite as one might have hoped. The first half was magnificent. Stephen Bell’s handling of the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde was flawless. The limpid phrasing, the gentle, surging rubato and the intensity of the ensemble as a whole was magnificent. Would that we could hear him conduct a complete Tristan!

Then the orchestra was joined by soprano Camilla Roberts in Strauss’ Four Last Songs.  The sense of reconciliation with death was beautifully captured. There is no pain here, just acceptance, and the bird-song throughout – woodwind in glorious form – was particularly effective. A Wagnerian soprano, Camilla Robert’s voice carried with ease over the weight of Strauss’ orchestration and was breathtakingly effective in the third song Beim Schlafengehen. Here, leader John Bradbury’s lyrical violin solo lifts the expectation of the listener before the voice takes over to float effortlessly above. It is one of the finest moments in all of Strauss, and beautifully captured for us.

Understandably, after these heights it was going to be difficult for the second half to compete but Gliere’s First Symphony proved to be a limp and at times bombastic counter-weight. There was little either orchestra or conductor could do to make up for the banality of much of the writing and even where the orchestral colour impressed, the melodic invention seemed remarkably limited. The Russian textures carry the work forward but it regularly fails to engage. Only the third movement with its deep and sombre opening reaches any sense of nobility.

After such a moving first half this was a real pity. The BPO are too good an orchestra to be wasted on second rate music.

 

Maidstone Symphony Orchestra

Mote Hall, Maidstone, 2 February 2019

Three big works meant an enlarged orchestra (85 players) which included four percussionists, piano, celeste and harp as well as big string sections. And they were all in pretty good form despite the off-puttingly cold weather (which had cost the orchestra a rehearsal, Brian Wright informed us at the beginning) and the sparser than sometimes audience.

The star of the evening was American soprano April Fredrick who sang Wagner’s gut-wrenching Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde followed by Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. She is an unusually charismatic performer, engaging herself emotionally from the first bar of that arresting Wagnerian string passage – nicely played here by MSO players rising in a body to the occasion. By the time Fredrick actually began to sing (off-book) I was mesmerised by the power of her voice, her control and her communication of musical passion. She had me on the edge of my seat and in tears.

Strauss’s Four Last Songs is a very special valedictory work and it was quite a treat to hear (and see) this final homage to the composer’s soprano wife and their long marriage performed so well. Fredrick sang Fruhling (Spring) with smiling eyes and joy in every note before finding mellow melodiousness in the lovely low register, sostenuto notes of September. She then gave us poignant assertion of that beautiful tune in Beim Schlafengehen (Going to Sleep) which she sang through tearful smiles. Finally came a resolute, immaculately sung, sombre Im Abendrot (At Sunset) with Andy Bridges doing a splendid job with muted tuba and Wright managing the pianissimo ending with adept tenderness as it dies away.

And so to Shostakovich’s magnificent fifth symphony. Wright provided masses of D minor mystery in the opening movement and made sure we heard lots of orchestral colour including drama from the xylophone and fine flute and clarinet solos. Also noteworthy was the crisp pizzicato work in the allegretto and the sensitivity the orchestra achieved in the largo. Shostakovich, of course, knew a thing or two about contrast and Wright took the loud, rhythmic, grandiloquent finale at a suitably cracking pace. This striking movement is always a field day for the timpanist whose part is anything but subtle and Owain Williams was clearly enjoying himself. No wonder he looked exhausted at the end.

Susan Elkin

Roman Rabinovich: A Showcase

Steinway Hall, 29 January 2019

Haydn’s piano music is much less well known than his symphonies, choral works and chamber music but they’re well worth listening to especially in an intimate space such as Steinway Hall which sits behind the Steinway showroom in Marylebone Lane.

Roman Rabinovich is working with The Haydn Society of Great Britain to promote a wider knowledge of Haydn’s piano sonatas by recording them all for CD. This showcase was designed to draw attention to the project and to launch Haydn Piano Sonatas Vol 1 (First Hand Records) which was on sale at the event.

We began with Sonata in D Major Hob XVI: 37 which Rabinovich told the audience he would personally nickname “The Chicken.” He then stressed that clucking (as it were) motif on a rising triplet. In the middle movement he leaned quite heavily on the contrasting sober chordal D minor section before treating us to chirpy, witty finale.

Then we got Sonata in C Major Hob XVI.48 written 15 years later for the “newfangled” fortepiano. Rabinovich observed the difference in mood which is thoughtful until the finale, which he played at high speed like a rather jolly race. Later he played – with verve – the two-movement Sonata in B Minor (unusual key!) Hob XV1:34.

It was more than a piano recital, however. Sandwiched in with the sonatas was a short film by Ruth Schocken Katz documenting Rabinovich’s life, background and music. The son of two pianists he moved, aged 10, from Uzbekistan where opportunities were very limited to Israel where they weren’t. He is also an accomplished artist and a series of his drawings called “Imaginary Encounters with Haydn” has been animated by Adam McRae – fun to see pianist and composer enjoying a beer together, taking a selfie, going on a flight and more.

We were also treated to a very short (I’d have liked more) Q/A with music journalist Jessica Duchen who, among other things, got Rabinovich to talk about different sorts of pianos then and now. In the recording he plays a Steinway model D.

It was an enjoyable and informative 75 minutes. It’s just a pity that Steinway – of all companies and on its own premises – couldn’t find a creak-free piano stool for an internationally acclaimed virtuoso to sit on. The noise was both loud and distracting.

Susan Elkin

Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra

The Dome, Brighton, 20 January 2019

The highlight of this concert was an enjoyably intelligent account of Mendelssohn 3rd Symphony – the Scottish – with which it ended. After a slightly wobbly start to the ever-challenging opening andante, Thomas Carroll found lots of colourful detail in the scherzo and the closing maestoso. And third movement, the allegro cantabile (surely one of the most lyrically eloquent and sublimely beautiful movements ever written?) was in very capable hands here: plenty of tender power coaxed out of every player.

I was less happy about the Schumann cello concerto which Carroll conducted from the cello. Of course he played this undersung, and actually rather underwhelming, concerto well enough but the orchestra was, at times, audibly rudderless. It took a while to coalesce and settle, although it warmed and thickened as it progressed through its three, continuous, quite succinct movements. There are plenty of precedents for cellist conductors (Rostropovich, Alfred Wallenstein et al) but I think in this case, one or the other might have worked better. Multi-tasking isn’t always a good idea musically.

Over two thirds of this concert was in A minor and, as Carroll pointed out when he addressed the audience before the Mendelssohn, the concerto and symphony have a lot in common which was the rationale for programming them together. Both works, for example, start on the same four notes, have a movement in F major, include a fugue and conclude joyfully.

It was refreshing, therefore, to precede them with something completely different – another key (D Major), country, century and mood. Prokofiev’s first symphony makes an good  concert “overture” (as it were). As in each of the three works in this concert the first few bars were disconcertingly uncertain but then we got lots of delightfully insouciant leggiero string playing, some bouncy, syncopated woodwind work in the elegantly delivered gavotte and a saucy molto vivace which included some nifty flute playing.

Susan Elkin