Verdi’s Otello is often seen as the most Wagnerian of his works and David Alden’s new production takes this at face value, giving us a psychological insight which is closer to Tristan than Traviata. Jon Morrell’s grey cavernous castle is a world away from the colour and excitement of Venice or North Africa, a womb-like space within which the tragedy unfolds. Even when sunlight pierces the space in act three it does so to highlight the darkness around it. There is no sense of comfort for any of the characters. The final act remains in the open courtyard, Otello snapping Desdemona’s neck and leaving her on the ground, taking his own life distant from her. As in the final scene of Tristan, the onlookers fade away leaving us with the bodies of the protagonists and the brooding, living presence of Iago. It is a magnificent, totally convincing, approach even where it moves away from expectations.

There is no attempt to present Otello as racially different. Stuart Skelton’s massive soldier, both physically and vocally, towers over the cast and brings a dangerous intensity which is at odds with all around him. When faced with the chorus in both the first and third acts he seems like a wounded animal with none of the civilised manners needed for the court. Leah Crocetto’s Desdemonda is similarly an outsider. Her dark hair and ample figure make her an excellent foil for Otello and even in act three where the court are in formal dress with hats she maintains the simplicity of dress she has had throughout. Her equally ample tones fill the theatre thrillingly. I can’t recall a Willow Song presented with such intelligence and power.

It is possible to regard the action as it unfolds as a nightmare within which the protagonists endlessly replay the events of that fateful last day. The English translation helps greatly here. Sung in Italian, it is easy to gloss over the constant nastiness of Iago’s language, but on this evening the incessant spite and vitriol which he spews out is shocking. Jonathan Summers is superb in the part, the voice rasping and aggressive when addressing us yet sycophantic and oily with those around him. Allan Clayton’s more lyrical Cassio and Peter Van Hulle’s sleek Roderigo and subtly sketched in. The choral movement creates a world of dangerous volatility, highlighted in the violence of the opening storm. I did wonder if the opening chorus was amplified in some so, so overwhelming is its impact, but it is surely the placement of the singers and the reflective qualities of the set.

Edward Gardner’s approach from the pit is electrifying and the orchestra were on superb form for the start of the season. How anybody could doubt the quality of ENOs work and justify the cut to their grant in the face of performances like this is utterly beyond comprehension.

WNO launched its new season in Cardiff on Friday with a new production by David Poutney of Rossini’s William Tell. It also welcomed Carlo Rizzi back to the pit and he galvanised his forces to bring us a fast-paced and frequently exhilarating musical experience.

Among a strong cast unfortunately Gisela Stille had been advised not to sing so walked through the part which was impressively sung from the side stage by Camilla Roberts.

Casting was from strength with Barry Banks heroic and secure in the high tessitura for Arnold and David Kempster a solid and dependable Tell. Fflur Wyn delighted as Jemmy, bringing sensitivity to her characterisation and flair to the vocal line. All smaller parts were strongly sung and the chorus was as virile as usual.

At which point readers may sense a rather over-large but and they would be right. David Poutney has brought us many fantastic productions over the years but things do not look good at present. His staging of the Debussy-Getty double bill last summer was unconvincing and the new William Tell is frequently dull, lacking any sense of dramatic impact. The set by Raimund Bauer does not help. A work that breathes the open air of Switzerland and the close relationship of the people to the landscape is here dominated by a tripartite grey translucent panel with what appear to be icebergs on it. Only in act three when these units are turned round to reveal the platforms and ladders does it make some sense for the interior of Gesler’s castle. At all other times it works against any action. Costumes are equally dull, being grey throughout. Barry Banks heroic Arnold is dressed like an escapee from an amateur performance of Patience. This would matter less if the action within it had real vitality but it resorts too often to cliché. Chorus positioning is static or so stylised as to be ineffective. There is no sense of place or action. It would be difficult without reading the programme note to work out what actually happens in the last act; and why is Gesler in a wheelchair? It worked for Russalka but here it is misplaced and almost laughable.

William Tell deserves better and these singers should have been given the support the quality of their singing deserved. Next month the same forces will be staging Rossini’s Moses in Egypt – let us hope for better.

My final visit this summer proved to be one of the most exciting. The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Alan Gilbert brought us a thrilling and beautifully crafted reading of Mahler’s Third Symphony. In many ways there is little more to say! What stuck forcefully was the amazing clarity of sound they produce. Where the Royal Albert Hall can still tend to fudge the tonal impact of large forces there was here a sense of openness and space within the melos which was retained even at the highest dynamic levels. At the other end of the scale, the hushed string tones, the solo harp, the distant rumbling of percussion hardly impinged upon us. Rarely has the hall this summer seemed so focussed and silent. There even seemed to be fewer coughs than usual.

Solo instrumentalists are world class, with exceptional performances from the first trombone in the opening movement and a sweet sounding off-stage trumpet in the third. Gerhild Romberger brought warmth and integrity to O Mensch! and the combined female forces of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Choir, Children’s Choir and Opera Chorus brought a lightness and fluidity to Es sungen drei Engel.

The final movement What Love tells me unfolded with a dignity and calm that had been prepared for in the turmoil of the earlier movements. Throughout Alan Gilbert brought a sense of the work as a single continuous whole which carries us on a traumatic journey to a triumphant conclusion. That a work of this brilliance was ignored for over half a century now seems difficult to believe.

Tonight the same forces bring us Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, back in its traditional place on the final Friday. Catch it some way or other – you will not be disappointed.

Birmingham Symphony Hall, 25 August 2014

Klaus Florian Vogt is probably the finest Wagner tenor we have today. There may be one or two other contenders for the position but few who have the heady lyricism combined with the sheer power to thrill the largest of venues.

His strongest characters over the last few years have been Lohengrin and Parsifal, and the evening drew on these. After a very subtle reading of the Good Friday Music from Parsifal under Andris Nelsons, he sang Amfortas! Die Wunde! and Nur eine Waffe taugt, the first so fresh and vulnerable that the pain of Kundry’s kiss seemed eminently real and the final narration radiated nobility as well as the cleanest of diction.

Changing the mood rather drastically we heard the concert version of the Prelude to Act3 of Lohengrin followed by two narrations also from Act3. Hochstes Vertrau’n proved to be heroic as well as deeply human, but it was the glorious outpouring of In fernem Land that galvanised the evening. His lingering over eine Taube, the high clear tones seeming to melt into the air around him, was breathtakingly beautiful. If only we had been able to hear at least the whole of one act, rather than these truncated sections.

Unfortunately this was the one slight draw-back of the evening. I had thought that we had disposed of bleeding-chunk concerts almost fifty years ago, and Wagner is now normally performed, if not whole, then at least in significantly large units and without sudden-death endings. Surely it would have been possible here to have created segues between the items to allow at least the three Parsifal pieces and the two from Lohengrin to be linked without the trauma of sudden endings and bursts of applause?

No such problems after the interval where we heard Elgar’s Second Symphony. The opening movement had great urgency with the music coming to us in warm waves of sound which made the quieter sections all the more poignant. Throughout, Andris Nelsons drew attention to the militaristic under-pinning of so much of the score, with its hints of violence and destruction beneath the potential for celebration. The second movement took this in its stride with a sense of both nobility and loss, looking backwards rather than dare to look ahead. However the future stares us in the face in the driven fury of the Rondo where odd moments of calm don’t last and the military percussion is ever present. The final movement brought some relief but often seemed on a knife-edge as if everything could still go wrong at any moment. A fascinating reading which made much of the wide dynamic range of the hall.

Before the Elgar, Andris Nelsons spoke to us about harpist Robert Johnston who, after 42 years’ service with the orchestra, was giving his final performance in this country before retirement. Alongside the anecdotes, he praised not only Robert’s long service with the orchestra but the sense of community within the orchestra itself which has seen a large number of conductors over nearly half a century while managing to retain its own sense of continuity and integrity.

Unitarian Church, Brighton, 24 August 2014

Christine Messiter joined the regular string players for the final concert in the summer series, rounding off the afternoon with a bright and fast paced reading of Mozart’s Flute Quartet K285. The brief second movement allows the flute to indulge itself in a lyrical development which floats above pizzicato strings before the more buoyantly brisk Rondo finale.

The performance had opened with Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet, its slow opening section poised between Haydn and Beethoven, a dichotomy which Mozart relishes as the work progresses. Rich, often very dense writing, suddenly flowers into the lightest of lyrical moments. The warmth of the Menuetto  gives way to a rather old-fashioned but none the less attractive Allegro molto which has just enough fire to challenge us.

Between them came the premiere of a work by a Sussex composer – in this case Adam Swayne’s Reaches. Written for string quartet, the nine short pieces flow in to each other to trace the course of a day at sea. The composer’s introduction was helpful in pointing out key ideas though the work is atmospheric rather than narrative. The regular use of pizzicato, often against long held notes on a single instrument, was very effective and the slap of strings against the shifting shimmer and sense of openness was moving. The piece is dedicated to Leo Dawkins and, as with other works in this summer series, let us hope it is not the last time it is heard.

The quartet have done a very fine job this summer bringing us a wide range of familiar works alongside more challenging recent compositions. The large and very responsive audience at each event shows there is a real appetite for concerts like these and let us hope they return next summer.

The Winter season of the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra opens at the Dome on 5 October with works by Glinka, Rachmaninov and Shostakovich. www.brightonphil.org.uk

21 August 2014

It was inevitable that we would find Britten’s War Requiem at this year’s Proms and after the superb performance by BBCSO last autumn I had expected a repeat with those forces. However, last night we heard the CBSO with the BBC Proms Youth Choir under Andris Nelsons. The same conductor and orchestra recorded the work in Coventry Cathedral, with different soloists, for the fiftieth anniversary of the first performance in 1962. That last night did not come up to the levels of either of these was obvious but the reasons were not as easy to detect.

The opening sections seemed oppressive, almost melancholic and despairing, with the boys’ choir so far removed as to be unemotional. Only the first conclusion, with its finely resolved cadence brought any hint of peace. Both of the men, Toby Spence and Hanno Muller-Brachmann, have warm voices but neither had the cutting edge to chill us with the impact of Wilfred Owen’s verse. Recalling both Peter Pears and Philip Langridge one was aware of the sort of sound Britten expects here. One ever hangs and the conclusion of So Abram rose were effective but other moments went for less than anticipated. Susan Gritton has a soprano to carry over the large orchestral forces and the Lacrimosa and Libera me both made a fine impact.

The Choral forces had a brightness of tone which was pleasing but lacked the precision and cutting edge the work requires. There were also some strange tempi. The Dies Illa after Be slowly lifted up seemed unnecessarily slow and calculated, lacking the emotional impact the score seems to require.

The final passages of the Libera me brought back the melancholic despair of the opening which was not countered in the final pages. The most poignant moment came with the reference to better men and greater wars as if Owen could sense the on-going bleakness of human existence.

At the end, Andris Nelsons held an extended silence, almost uncomfortably long. There are times when performances naturally require a time to recover before we applaud but this seemed to be out of keeping with what we had actually heard. An uncomfortable evening then, but perhaps, this year of all years, a good thing.

Saturday 16 August 2014

A delight as always to welcome Bernard Haitink to the podium and a surprise to find that so renowned a Mahlerian should be conducting the 4^th symphony for the first time at the Proms. The combination of Mahler’s Fourth and Schubert’s Fifth Symphonies may look somewhat strange on paper but they work remarkably well in performance. Both symphonies were overlooked for many years and it was not until Charles Grove reintroduced the Schubert in the early years of last century that its popularity began to grow, and enthusiasm for Mahler was only just beginning when I started going to the Proms in 1960. What is more, neither symphony requires trombones, understandable in Schubert but unexpected in Mahler.

Bernard Haitink did not go out of his way to stress the similarities but they grew out of the performances. Though tempi in the Schubert were on the fast side there was an intimacy, a delicacy, throughout which was captivating. The hints of early Beethoven – Schubert’s own orchestra had played the first two symphonies – are there alongside the more obvious Mozart, but above all, the later Schubert is there in essence.

The approach to the Mahler was equally relaxed with wind solos particularly impressive – a lovely bassoon solo in the first movement. There was an innocence to the second movement despite the occasional tensions, but these never resolved themselves into threats. The gentle inevitability of the slow movement was spell-binding with details subtly etched but never over-spun. Camilla Tilling was the soloist for the final movement drawn from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The programme note implied a potential dichotomy for the composer faced with a vision of heaven which includes death and even Herod, but this has always seemed to me to be the magnificence of the vision which is so inclusive it is forgiving of all. Heaven – this seems to say – is for everyone without judgement, and so it seemed to be for us.

Brighton Unitarian Church, Sunday 10 August 2014

Recent works by Rob Lane formed the heart of the third summer concert last Sunday the first of which, Evocations, was commissioned by the Brodowsky Quartet in 2012. Dedicated to Rosalind Kelly, the work shifts across a number of musical memories as if the listener is recalling a distant if elusive past. The strongest section is the central dance motive, finely focused in contrast to much of the rest of the work, which often seems to be just beyond our grasp. It would be worth hearing again if only to unpick the obviously sensitive internal connections.

Three poems by Sylvia Plath formed the second item by Rob Lane and were here being given their first performance. Edge is by far the most successful setting, its simpler lyricism seeming closer to the text and a more direct emotional experience for the listener. Mirror has an angularity to it which distances us from the text, possibly intentionally as the mirror itself seems devoid of emotion. A gentle waltz underpins Morning Song though its warmth rarely moves into the vocal line.

The instrumental setting for these songs was almost inaudible at times given the power of Katie Thomas’ voice. This was a problem throughout the afternoon, affecting the concluding Mozart. When she sang more quietly or in the lower register the voice was pleasing, but in the upper register and at greater volume the intensity of sound was simply uncomfortable and often painful. I am sure her voice would be fine in a far larger venue, but within the close confines of the Unitarian Church it needed reigning back to maintain comfort for the audience.

The afternoon had opened with a warmly spirited reading of Mozart’s Hunt Quartet K458, and concluded with his Exsultate Jubilate, which was enjoyable for most of the time, given the concerns noted above.

A Saturday Prom which lived up to expectations. Opening with a brash account of Berlioz’ overture Le corsair – the brass at their flamboyant best and a real sense of French style – the main work in the short first half was Elgar’s Sea Pictures. It is difficult to realise that for many years they were not performed complete and that a latent snobbishness surrounded Elgar’s choice of texts. What is unquestionable is that the texts are superbly reflected in Elgar’s settings and the sense of brooding melancholy whose constant images of death haunt the whole work. To take individual songs of context is to ignore the underlying narrative. No such problem here of course and Alice Coote is a renowned interpreter of the cycle. Her hushed, often parlando style heightens the dramatic impact of the text and allows us to sense the tensions which lie below it. There was a unexpected ominous weight to sections of Sea Slumber-Song with the bass gong overawing the orchestra. By contrast the simplicity of In Haven which can too easily seem naïve, was here a bastion of faith. There are pre-echoes of Peter Grimes in Sabbath Morning which Mark Elder caught with ease, and the operatic style of Alice Coote’s diction suited his approach well. All of these strengths came together in the Swimmer where mysticism and emotional turmoil unite to focus on the need to subsume all. A wonderful reading.

The second half opened with the London Premiere of Helen Grime’s Near Midnight. She is associate composer with the Halle orchestra and the work was written for them. There is a constant edginess to the score and an underlying tension which frequently explodes from within the overall calm and fluidity of the writing. Percussion is used to provide a liquid base for other sections of the orchestra rather than aggressive attack or power. Though the style is highly personal and there is a real sense of voice, in terms of comparison this leans more towards the impressionistic world of Ravel than more recent composers. A CD of her works is promised for later in the year.

The concert concluded with Beethoven’s 3^rd Symphony, the Eroica. Mark Elder draws on all of his experience with original instrument bands to give us a reading that is light, fluid and yet has real bite and terrific edge, particularly from the brass and wind. There was nothing ponderous about the Marcia funebre which constantly radiated hope. In the Scherzo the horns even managed some gentle ornamentation which was highly effective. The finale was brisk, business-like and impressively structured. The Halle may know this music very well but it never ever sounds as if they are not delighted to be playing it for us.

A capacity audience enjoyed a programme of the well-loved and the not so familiar presented by the BBC Philharmonic under the energetic baton of Gianandrea Noseda. Both soloists gave committed performances  whether soloing or blending with the rest of the orchestra.

The recent commemorations of the start of the 1^st World War provided the setting for the first piece of the evening. Written mid-conflict, in 1916, Alfredo Casella’s Elegia eroic, is an emotional tour de force. The music speaks of death from the outset and moves from  brash brass to more plaintive strings and woodwind, finally dying away to nothing. There are some remarkable effects, particularly in the most restrained passages. Some of this sound world is similar to Holst. There are allusions to the Dies Irae and an Italian patriotic song. Highly effective and emotive, this piece should be better known.

Benjamin Grosvenor took centre stage for Chopin’ s Piano Concerto No 1 in E minor (1830) . This popular young musician was greeted with huge applause and proceeded to give an assured and convincing performance of this well known Piano Concerto. Throughout there was great rapport between piano and orchestra. During the concerto we saw something of the enthusiasm of the conductor, demonstrated in his dance-like direction.

This was also the case in Cesar Franck’s Symphonic Variations for piano &orchestra (1885). This piece shows how the concept of variation developed from its earliest beginnings with distinct sets of variations to a more cohesive structure which develops aspects of the material as a whole. In both pieces Benjamin Grosvenor’s playing was superb and his manner refreshingly modest.

The evening ended with a spirited performance of Saint-Saens’ Symphony No 3 in C minor (‘organ’). The popularity of this piece is beyond doubt and the evening’s performance was exciting and very well received. David Goode had great command of the RAH organ from the subtle first entrance of deeply resonant pedals and soft accompaniment to the majestic chords that always cause some in the audience to jump at the beginning of the final movement. Although I really enjoyed this performance I do wonder why another symphonic work featuring the organ could not have been substituted considering this piece featured in the Proms last year and to my knowledge is the only outing for the organ in this year’s programme. That aside, this was a thrilling conclusion to a highly enjoyable and varied evening of first class performances.

SP