Regents Opera

When Keel Watson’s Wotan sang of “der Gottheit nichtigen Glanz” (“the empty splendour of the Gods”) at Freemason’s Hall on Sunday it seemed like a wry comment on the venue. With every surface overlaid with marble, gold leaf or mosaic, the Grand Temple outdoes even the most lavish opera house and seems to compete with Valhalla itself. Did Regents Opera have this in mind when choosing it as the location for their shoestring Ring cycle, now on its second instalment with Die Walküre?

Director Caroline Staunton’s programme note concentrated on the personal aspects of the story, the consequences for the characters of decisions already made and the tensions between their own needs and desires and the world’s demands. Her production worked best when it concentrated on those relationships rather than abstruse visual symbolism. The art-gallery conceit of last November’s Rheingold re-appeared in the final act, which, seeking to evoke the Nazi campaign against “degenerate art”, presented us with a rather bohemian set of Valkyries rescuing paintings (not particularly degenerate ones) rather than fallen heroes. The paintings were later smashed by a masked female figure credited in the programme as “Wotan’s Will”, who proceeded to wrap the condemned Brünnhilde in masking tape marked “Entartet”. They finally provided fuel for the magic fire with which Wotan encircles his daughter, recalling the burning of 5,000 artworks in Berlin in March 1939. It may all make sense by the time we get to Götterdämmerung, but for the moment it seemed shoe-horned in to the narrative.

As the wanderer Siegmund, Brian Smith Walters presented a convincingly weatherbeaten figure, toughened as well as beaten down by suffering. But his diction was muddy and there seemed little passion between him and his sister-bride Sieglinde, limpidly sung as she was by Justine Viani. Gerrit Paul Groen‘s Hunding introduced a swaggering figure of menace and mostly implied violence, despite an incongruous brown check suit. The arrival of Catharine Woodward‘s Brünnhilde, a day early for World Goth Day in black leather and eyeliner, raised the dramatic and musical temperature for Act II. Launching her initial war-cries with athletic precision, she brought vulnerability as well as volume to the role, and the father-daughter relationship with Keel Watson’s Wotan was affectingly realised. Watson was in every respect a worthy war-father for such a daughter, by imposing, fearsome and finally broken. The trinity of gods was completed by Ingeborg Novrup Børch as Fricka, an authoritative and powerful presence in her pivotal scene with Watson.

Some musical compromise is inevitable when Wagner is performed in the round with only 22 instrumentalists, and I couldn’t help missing the extra firepower of the full Wagnerian orchestra during the “Ride of the Valkyries”. But the band under Ben Woodward played superbly, sounding more bedded-in than they did in Rheingold, and Woodward’s arrangement showed astonishing ingenuity in reproducing Wagner’s orchestral colours on a smaller scale. As before, there was judicious use of Paul Plummer at the Freemason’s Willis organ, adding sonority to bass lines and providing an unearthly background for Brünnhilde’s message to Siegmund. With the postponement of ENO’s Siegfried Regents’ is now the only Ring in town – Wagnerites should not hesitate to join this Rhine journey.

At Freemasons Hall, London, Saturday 27th May, 5:30 pm https://regentsopera.com/

William Hale

During Covid when the only live music I had access to was the stuff I played myself – if I was very lucky in duet with my “bubbled” son – I yearned and yearned to hear a big orchestra with five percussionists, a harp and lots of brass. I was like a starving person fantasising about food. And I thought of that, gleefully, at this concert as it launched into the opening Roman Carnival which, almost literally, has all the bells and whistles. Brian Wright took the big melody much more slowly than I’m accustomed to and the fugal string passage wasn’t quite together but the tambourine work was delightful and the mood vibrantly joyful. Yes, this is the sort of thing I dreamed of when we weren’t allowed to have it.

Talented Mayumi Kanagawa is an unshowy performer. The music, her fingers and the violin –a 1725 “Wilhelmj” Stradivarius on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation– make all the statements. She delivered the lyrical passages in the outer movements of Prokofiev’s first concerto (1923) with sumptuous, decisive precision. The middle movement is a virtuosic show piece in which Kanagawa rose to every challenge including some arresting left hand pizzicato and accurately dramatic, double stopped glissandi. It was an outstanding performance. And the choice of the familiar Rondo from Bach’s Partitia in E major was such a well chosen contrast that it felt like sucking a mouth-cleansing orange segment.

The grand finale both for this concert and for the 2022/3 MSO season was Tchaikovsky’s grandiloquent, sometimes anguished fourth symphony. And it was a fitting choice which certainly fed my ongoing longing for the big orchestra sound. With five desks of first violins we got a rich string sound to complement the brass. Over the years, Brian Wright really has perfected a strategy for getting the balance right with this orchestra in this rather unlikely venue whose day job is a sports hall. The second movement really leaned on the tortured melodies, written only a year after the composer’s disastrous marriage. The exquisite bassoon solo over pizzicato strings at the end was a high spot.

The famous long, finger-aching pizzicato passages in the fourth movement are notoriously difficult and a pretty adventurous idea for 1878. Here it was generally cohesive and full of all the right narrative tension. Then, to cap it all, we got the fourth movement at a really exciting speed, exploding with all the fuoco the composer wanted. And I suppose the drama of those terrific cymbal clashes at the end will have to last me until the next MSO concert when the new season opens on 14 October.

Susan Elkin

What would Anton Bruckner think of the Mass in Blue? This question occurred to me during the Hertfordshire Chorus’s concert on Sunday afternoon, when Will Todd’s work received its twentieth anniversary performance in the Cadogan Hall, paired with Bruckner’s Mass in E minor. It may seem an odd pairing, though both set the same text and are accompanied largely by wind ensembles. Bruckner would probably be baffled if not appalled by the Mass in Blue’s jazz idiom, but it’s anything but a frivolous work, engaging with the text as fully as Bruckner does, and obviously the product of a faith as real, if less conventional, that that of the Austrian master.

We began with the older work, written to be performed in the cathedral square in Vienna, and perhaps not entirely at home in the comfortable surroundings of the Cadogan Hall. With his eyes set firmly on God, Bruckner makes no allowance for human frailty, routinely sending all four (sometimes eight) voices to the extremes of their range in the Mass and demanding great feats of sustaining power. The wind band functions almost as a separate choir, providing minimal support to the singers and frequently leaving them on their own for extended passages. This and the chromatic choral writing would leave any choir with intonation problems horribly exposed, but the Hertfordshire Chorus is not such a choir, and apart from one slightly eyebrow-raising moment near the beginning, singers and instruments remained in concord. The choir’s transparent sound, mercifully free of “wobble” in all parts, made for clarity, though a little more resonance might have given extra edge to Bruckner’s often dissonant writing. They were otherwise fully equal to the composer’s demands, negotiating the tricky counterpoint in the Amen of the Gloria with practised ease.

The Chorus under their enterprising conductor David Temple gave the first performance of the Mass in Blue in Cambridge in 2003, and (rather to its composer’s surprise) it has since become one of the most frequently performed of modern choral works. Sunday’s rendition benefited not only from the original chorus and conductor, but also the Will Todd Ensemble, who must know the work inside out by now, and the composer himself on piano. Soprano Hilary Cronin has won prizes for her Handel singing (what would Handel think of the Mass in Blue? – now there’s a thought) but demonstrated that if the early music work dries up she should be able to make a very good living as a nightclub or gospel singer. Again I wished for more presence from the choir, who couldn’t always hold their own with the band, and found myself wondering if some discreet amplification, surely not out of the question in a work of this kind, might have helped. Nonetheless the singers’ rhythmic responsiveness and natural tone was a great asset and they brought all the warmth and precision which the music required. The ending had a real sense of elation and the warm reception from a sadly less-than-capacity audience suggested that the Mass in Blue will be with us for at least another twenty years.

William Hale

Eight talented musicians gave us a varied programme starting with a brand new composition from Paul Saggers, moving on to Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet and finishing with Mendelssohn’s String Octet.

The world premiere, Saggers’ Dear Nan is a musical depiction of the composer’s beloved grandmother’s journey through the different stages of dementia. The piece begins with galloping rhythms threaded through with broad optimistic passages that together give an impression of the joyfulness of Nan’s personality. Even this has a few sinister moments from repeated notes in the lower strings which suggests the disease lurking in the background. Soon the music contrasts with alternate quicker and slower passages which show the essential joyfulness of Nan pierced by moments of anxiety, as if her normal cheerful character is breaking down. The third theme is a beautiful melody representing the slowing down of that busy brain.

Throughout, the clarinet, played by Fiona Cross, acts as a solo voice, representing the questioning mind or soul of Nan herself as she wonders what is happening to her. The slowing down of her brain is emphasised in the final stages by long sustained notes which finally arrive at a full stop.

Having not so long ago lost my mother to dementia, I found this piece very moving and as accurate a musical picture of the terrible dissolution of human personality caused by Alzheimers as can be shown through the medium of music. It was interesting to read in the programmme that work with dementia patients is a large part of the community work that this musical group undertake in Manchester.

Paul Saggers introduced his piece to the audience as he was born and brought up here in Cornwall, cutting his musical teeth in the local brassbands as a cornet player, which is why the world premiere occurred here. I look forward to hearing more of his music.

The second piece on the programme was Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A major, K.581, a piece of music so familiar that one finds oneself humming the tunes in the head along with the players. Of course hearing something live brings a new sparkle of life to even the most familiar music and so it was here.

The piece was a late work from Mozart, written just before the similarly famous Clarinet Concerto. The clarinet as an instrument was discovered late by the composer, who fell in love with it when he heard the playing of Anton Stadler, the virtuoso of his day. Originally it was written for the older basset version of the clarinet but nowadays both these famous works are performed on more modern versions.

This gorgeous piece was played with an obvious enjoyment by the quintet as they brought it to life afresh for the audience, swaying like birch trees in a variable wind, as if the music itself resided deep in their bodies, while the eyes flickered, always alert to their fellow players. The leader, first violin player Caroline Pether’s whole face reflected her love of the music and all were similarly engaged as their bodies and minds became one with the instruments, the themes and the rhythms. In chamber music particularly no one instrument is more important, not even the soloist. The ensemble is all.

The flowing first movement with its repeated themes gives way to the second, where the clarinet more clearly has the melody line, the others acting mainly as a background except when the first violin takes the tune, which at times becomes a kind of conversation between violin and clarinet.

The third movement opens emphatically with first violin and viola and then passes to a conversation between second violin and cello before the clarinet enters with panache. Enjoyment and humour is evident throughout this minuet and the accompanying two trios, the first violin player even bouncing in her seat, while below, adding depth to the music, the cello growls.

The fourth movement is marked allegro con variazioni. The musicians take it at a cracking pace building up through a variety of playful variations contrasted by more thoughtful ones until it finally soars into a repetition of the first theme, faster and more jaunty than ever. Wonderful!
After the interval we were treated to Mendelssohn’s String Octet in E-flat major, Opus 20, an innovative work composed when Mendelssohn was only sixteen. Not only is it amazing that he should write such a piece at such a tender age but he also dared to experiment with a doubling up of instruments – eight instead of four – which is still only rare in chamber music, the norm being quartets or quintets.

After the classical treat of Mozart it was a lovely contrast to be carried along by the lusher romanticism of the young Mendelssohn. The first movement is scampering, joyful and youthful as if it were a grand adventure, exploring all the wonders of the world. The initial melody is returned to again and again with different combinations of instruments. The centre of this first movement leads into a slower more mournful section, as if a running youth has experienced something more thought-provoking before the instruments in staccato unison climb upwards and suddenly we’re off again on a new exciting adventure.

After a slower, thoughtful second movement the adventure continues in the last two movements which follow each other without a break. It starts once more as a scamper where each instrument passes the buck to the next as if in tumbling relay. The voices of the instruments suggest the kind of animals a youngster might notice when running through a wood: birds twitter, amphibians hop, small creatures rustle in the undergrowth and at one point a heavier animal stamps through the undergrowth. The whole of this second half is humorous and light. At the end the first violin leads the rest in a helter-skelter of sound which gathers enormous speed until it reaches a breathless full stop. Wow!

This was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and I congratulate the whole of Manchester Camerata and Fiona Cross for the sensitivity of her clarinet playing for treating the audience to such a joyful and spring-like experience. Even the sadness of Saggers’ opening composition was not out of place, for his depiction of his grandmother when healthy was also joyful to hear.

Jeni Whittaker