Festival of Friendship : George Benjamin : A Duet and a Dream

George Benjamin conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, London on 5 March, with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, in Olivier Messiaen Le merle bleu and Benjamin Duet for Piano and Orchestra, Oliver Knussen Choral, Janáček Sinfonietta and Benjamin Dream of the Song. Interesting programme with obvious connections and some more provocative.

This concert celebrates that special bond between Benjamin, Aimard and Knussen, whose presence will be felt by many, and that of Messiaen, too.  Aimard was one of Messiaen's "sons", studying with Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod aged 12, so close to the composer he was like family.  Benjamin joined Messiaen circles when he was 16, hence their special relationship.  At Aldeburgh, and for decades before, Aimard, Benjamin and Oliver Knussen were stalwarts. I remeber an occasion when Knussen was driving Benjamin to London, waved off by friends saying "No stopping off at Little Chef on the way". Little Chef too is now long gone.

A very thoughtful choice as introduction, with Knussen's Choral (op 8, 1970-72). Choral isn't chorale, so much as an exercise in using instruments as vouces operating as a small choir.  It dispenses with high strings altogether. Four double basses march against counter processions of trumpets, horns and mournful trombones. Flutes and percussion cry out against the dirge. Eventually the different parts of the orchestra coalesce, not in unison, but in chorus.  More "chorus" in Messiaen's Le merle bleu No 3 from Book 1 of  the Catalogue des Oiseaux, written for Mme. Loriod.  Aimard would have heard her playing this, with the composer himself listening. He understands it thoroughly "from source". At Aldeburgh he performed the whole series at the right times of the day and night.  I woke in time  to greet the dawn chorus at 3 am. This consideration is important as it enhances the atmosphere, since Messiaen sought to recreate the whole environment from which the birds come. Le merle bleu is one of the more exotic sections,with scintillating moments of display, yet joyously natural, since birds sing from sheer exuberance.

More congeniality : Benjamin's Duet for Piano and Orchestra (2008) which Aimard premiered at the Lucerne Festival. Benjain has written "With its vast range and virtuosic capacities the piano is in its own right almost the equivalent of an orchestra. So this Duet is an encounter between two equal partners, partners whose capacities, however, diverge in numerous essential ways. The piano can traverse over seven octaves with the greatest ease and, with the help of the sustaining pedal, accumulate harmonies containing literally dozens of notes. These are feats with which no orchestral instrument can compete. And yet every note of the piano begins to die away immediately after being struck, a characteristic so different from the legato capacities of string and wind instruments. I have attempted to cross the divide between the soloist and the orchestra by finding compatible areas between them, specifically by dividing the piano into a few distinct registers with timbral equivalents in the orchestra. At the same time the piano remains an alien figure in the orchestral landscape and often treads an independent path through instrumental textures that can seem intentionally oblivious of it. The orchestra employed is somewhat reduced, above all by the absence of violins. A certain prominence is given to the piano's nearest relatives in tuned percussion and, especially, the harp".

Of the UK premiere in 2010, I wrote "It's a new departure for Benjamin, his first piece for piano and orchestra. Benjamin’s own notes describe it succinctly. “The piano has an enormous pitch compass and is capable of accumulating complex resonating harmonies, but each note begins to decay as soon as it it is sounded. On the other hand, stringed and wind instruments can sustain and mould their notes after the initial attack”. Thus Benjamin tries to find common ground, restricting the pitch range of the piano, avoiding the higher registers where decay occurs quickly. Percussion, harp and pizzicato create attenuated sounds that meet the piano on its own ground. The piano part isn’t elaborately flamboyant: rather it’s spare, single notes occurring in series, like flurries. It evoked the movement of birds – short, quick jerks expanding into flourish as they take flight. Duet for piano and Orchestra is a different kind of concertante, where soloist and orchestra don’t interact in the usual way, but observe each other, so to speak. Then, with a punchy crescendo, it’s over. Benjamin’s music often sounds pointilliste, like detailed embroidery, but here there’s sharpness in design, and clarity of direction. Piano and orchestra warily stalk each other's moves, so Duet is a kind of furtive, circulating dance."  Not all so different from birds calling out to each other.

Though the concerts ends with Janáček Sinfonietta  the big draw for me will be Benjamin's  Dream of the Song.  Benjamin uses texts from three poets, two of whom lived in Granada, the jewel of Islamic civilzation, where education, art and philosophy were honoured.  Samuel Hanagid (993-1056) and  Solomon ibn Gabirol (d. approx 1050) were Talmudic scholars but also fluent in Arabic, for this was a time when Granada was a haven of tolerance in a Europe plagued with prejudice. Benjamin's third poet is Federico García Lorca, the radical modernist  who was assassinated by fascist forces in Granada in 1936.  Songs silenced across the centuries: chances are that the "Dream" Benjamin is referring to is no reverie.

Significantly Benjamin blends and combines the poems into a seamless flow.Strange rustling bell sounds and a cry that sounds like the call of a mullah; "Naked" sings the counter-tenor, the word broken into fragments but reiterated. An epigrammatic opening, opening out, like a window onto another vista. "The multiple troubles of man" The oboe calls out plaintively, its firm, clear sound probing outward as if searching across time itself.  In the central section, the countertenor's lines are haloed by a chorus of female voices intoning Lorca. the words don't really matter. In Andalusian art, images aren't representational but  myriad intricate patterns and colours, in Islamic tradition, epitomized by the Palace of Alhambra.

Thus Benjamin writes patterns of sound which serve the purpose of rhymes.  Brief images float into the foreground in typical Benjamin style "A girl in a garden" elides smoothly, to suddenly switch to terse staccato "tending her shrubs".  a transition built on pizzicato - suggesting the passage of time, perhaps, or splashing water, a concept fundamental to Andalusian metaphysical thought.  The women's voices herald a change of direction - bright, sharp and urgent. Then a brief pause, the silence almost imperceptibly interrupted by quiet tapping.  The male voice returns, singing strangely abstract semi harmony  "Written", the soloist sings but the sound is  magically clean and pure, shining all the brighter against a backdrop of a murmuring horn.  "The stars....." sings the countertenor,  and suddenly, sound seems to break off.  But perhaps that is the point ; the music, the "Dream of Song" does not die with its makers, however doomed their lives.

Benjamin's Dream  of the Song is a milestone. It represents a return to the meticulous craftsmanship of his work before Into the Little Hill and Written on Skin, though the operas are distinctively Benjaminesque.  Although it's written for small orchestra, it's  ambitious  compared with some of his earlier output, utterly assured and confident.

George Benjamin Ensemble Modern Into the Little Hill

Ensemble Modern

George Benjamin and Ensemble Modern at the Wigmore Hall with Anu Komsi and Helena Rasker in Benjamin's Into The Little Hill. There have been many George Benjamin Days at the Wigmore Hall (also featuring this piece) and  Ensemble Modern are welcome regulars in London   But this was a historic occasion since Benjamin's Into the Little Hill was written for Ensemble Modern, who gave the world premiere in Frankfurt in November 2006, conducted by Franck Ollu, with Anu Komsi and Hilary Summers.  For me, the highlight was hearing Anu Komsi singing it live.  Though other singers, have done the part well, Komsi is much more than just a singer.  She's a phenomenom, a true coloratura with an unusually wide range and the agility to use her voice in the service of Benjamin's fiendishly tricky score, where extreme changes of register and technique continuously contort and challenge. That, in essence, is what Into the Little Hill is about. The tale predicates on the idea that nothing is safe, or can be what it might seem.  It is a horror story so surreal that it invades your subconscious.  It represents a turning point in Benjamin's career : after years of writing meticulous, near pointillist miniatures, Into the Little Hill surged into life in a matter of months.  Benjamin's collaboration with Martin Crimp unleashed a rich new vein of creativity which has led to Written on Skin, the biggest hit in modern opera, and Lessons in Love and Violence.  To my mind, though, Into the Little Hill, with its deliberately claustrophobic atmosphere, remains the masterpiece. It needs to be heard in cramped spaces like the Wigmore Hall for full effect.

Into the Little Hill starts before it begins, with almost inaudible rustlings before the screaming starts "Kill them ! They bite". At this point, the singers are together, representing a mob. Thus the chilling "Kill, and you have our vote". Into the Little Hill is much more than nursery tale. As we know now, Pied Pipers are running the world.  Rasker's monologue (describing the Minister) is undercut by ominous rustlings in the orchestra.  "Kill them ! They bite" screamed Komsi, Rasker joining in.  Pairings develop and change throughout the piece : two violins (one doubling mandolin), two violas (one doubling banjo), two cellos, two horns, two trombones, a prominent bass flute, alternating piccolo, sometimes paired with double bass, a cimbalom and an array of exotic percussion.  Instruments and singers trapped in schizoid lockstep, clouded by opaque non-harmony.  Balances shift. The contralto dominates at first, but the soprano (as The Stranger) sings a seductive tune "I charmed my way in...  with music I can open a heart as easily as you can open a door... with music I can make death stop, or rats scream"  Komsi stretched the word "rats", drawing out the vowel so it moved swiftly, as rats do, at once suggesting innocence and malevolence. "But the world - says the Minister - is round" sang Rasker, but Komsi's lines continued to fragment, perfectly pitched shards of sound that ripped any illusions of comfort: strings became weapons, bows beaten against wood, plucking, tense sounds, the winds gasping in outbursts.  

Anu Komsi , photo : Uupi Tirronen

The First Interlude is a transition, the bass flute a sorcerer pulling the strings behind the dialogue between The Mother and Child.  The depth of Rasker's voice suggests authority, subtly undermined by the flute and by Komsi's lines that stretch like unanswerable questions, syllables twisting and shattering   Komsi's personality also contributes : her child-like innocence convinces, yet her high pitches carry a whiff of dangers to come. Her voice also takes on the colourings of the instruments in the orchestra : suggesting a descent into a world where nothing can be what it seems.  The Second Interlude is even more noctunal, quiet horns and trombones muted, suddenly exhaling when the mutes are pulled away.  "Each cradle rocks empty - each cage-like cot":  sounds rock back and forth,  more dirge than lullaby.  Komsi's voice now glowed with almost surreal brightness.  "Streams of hot metal, ribbons of magnesium, particles, particles of light".  The Mother doesn't get it, but the Child delights . "Our home is under the Earth, with the angel under the earth, and the deeper we burrow the brighter his music burns".  In the past, I've enjoyed performances where the soprano and contralto are relatively close, but Komsi shows how the soprano part defies easy interpretation : Is the child purer than the adults around her ? Or a force of something much less easy to pin down. What is this "music" that seduces people from where they think they belong and what lies ahead ?  Komsi's part and her singing suggest that her role represents something elemental: a force almost beyond mortal comprehension.  The depth in Rasker's singing presented a perfect foil.  In the very elusiveness of Crimp's text lies its depth, and inspires the wonder of Benjamin's setting.

The programme began with Cathy Milliken's Bright Ring, a lively piece with much incident, and Christian Mason's Layers of Love, very well structured and designed - very interesting instrumental pairings. a good choice in the overall programme. Even more pointedly in the context of  Into the Little Hill.  Luigi Dallapiccola's Piccola musica notturna (1954/1961), a lyrical nocturne, where sinister shadows hover, almost imperceptibly.

 

George Benjamin Lessons in Love and Violence - Musically brilliant, dramatically inert ?

George Benjamin at his writing desk. Photo :Matthew Lloyd, courtesy Askonas Holt

Musically brillliant, dramatically inert ? First thoughts on the world premiere of George Benjamin's Lessons in Love and Violence at the Royal Opera House.  Something wonderful happened when Bejnjamin teamed up with Martin Crimp the poet.  It's no accident that The Boy in Written on Skin was an illuminator, meticulously gilding and polishing his work to perfection.  And so he might have continued but for events unfolding around him.  A lot like George Benjamin himself !   Working with Martin Crimp unlocked something in Benjmain.  His first opera, Into the Little Hill was radically different from anything Benjamin - or indeed anyone else - had done before. It's an astonishing bizarre work, at once anarchic and disturbing.  As if arising straight from the subconcious it defies logic yet is highly intuitive and emotionally true. (Please read more here).  Written on Skin was more ambitious yet also slightly more conventional, following a vaguely realistic narrative.  Both operas deal with creativity and destruction, sexuality and repression, conflicts and pointless non-resolution.  In some ways, Lessons in Love and Violence continues the saga, through different characters    If anything, Benjamin's writing is even more assured and asssertive : daring crescendi, screaming chords, quirky combinations of instrumental colour that are more expressive than words alone could ever be.  But why does it feel like a remake of Written on Skin ?  

In Lessons in Love and Violence, we again have a dominant male figure bumbling his way ineptly through the lives of others, with horrific repercussions.  Based loosely on Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II, the opera reflects upon the relationship between Edward and Piers Gaveston,and the court around them. As The King  (Stéphane Degout) sings the first scena, ."Money... money...money", a symbol of something more in this intensely psychological  approach to the drama.   Fathers dictate what should happen to sons, kings dictate what should happen to subjects, sons become Kings themselves and so the cycle of love and violence continues.  The first scene is dominated by an enormous tank of (real) tropical fish, swimming aimlessly in an unnatural environment.  A metaphor for life in this kingdom ?  The tank must weigh several tons, and is being slowly rotated by stage machinery at the Royal Opera House, which has often been used extremely effectively.  But it is extraordinarily extravagant as stage prop. For such a relatively obvious statement, the expoense is way out of proportion.  But perhaps that is the point : ludicrously extreme solutions for problems that coul;d be resolved in other ways.  Crimp's libretto doesn't define what "entertainment" the Queen will witness at the end of the drama. But we know what is supposed to have happened to Piers Gaveston.  (and those who don't, will have nothing on which to vent their self righteous indignation).

Benjamin constructs Lessons in Love and Violence as a series of tableaux, divided by orchestral interludes which serve as "curtains" separating each section. These provide a formal structure,  and operate as commentary, expressing more through abstract music than can be said in the text.    Benjamin's writing in these interludes is even more impressive and sophisticated than in the scenes themselves, where he is constrained to some extent by the need to write for voice.   In the interludes, he creates astonishing orchestral colours, varied and tantalizingly elusive.   Low timbred brass and winds howl and growl, lines rising forth, grasping out into nothingness. Two off stage harps plus what sounds like a zither sing sad exotic songs.  At other moments strange sounds emerge, deliberately throwing you off track, like the twists in the plot.  With a story like this, you're supposed to feel ill at ease and uncertain.  Bows are beaten against wood, augmented by unpitched percussion, creating "primitive" effects, which intensify the rising sense of tension and violence as the narrative draws to its gruesome end.  Lessons in Love and Violence would work extremely well as symphony and might well be best heard semi-staged.  I would love to study it audio-only to better appreciate its depths. 

Therein, though, lies the problem.  Though the structure Benjamin uses is beautiful, like a series of miniature paintings in an illuminated album, it is also stylized and creates a sense of emotional disengagement.  It's as if we're observing specimens from a distance :the idea of fish in fish tanks, again. Nothing wrong with stylization, per se.  It was a feature of Greek tragedy, and is relevant to the wider implications of this tragedy, too. Thus the vocal lines are semi-abstract too, reflecting Crimp's background as poet. Some charcaters are fully fleshed, like The King (Stéphane Degout) and Gaveston (Gyula Orendt) and Mortimer (Peter Hoare), helped by very strong performances, by singers who are also instictive actors.  The role of Isabel, the Queen, might well have been written expressly to suit Barbara Hannigan, who sang The Woman in Written On Skin.  The part of Isabel  makes the most of Hannigan's ability to project coloratura lines. At times she sounded like a soprano clarinet with an extended range.  Something to marvel at, though the character itself isn't specially developed.  The Woman in Written on Skin at least found her identity. "I am Agnès" she cried, "I am not a child!"  Maybe Isabel is a plot device, a foil to the other characters.  Still, having Hannigan on board ensures the success of this opera,  and adds variety in an otherwise all-male cast. There are small roles for other women (one of them particulary striking)  and for younger singers, like Samuel Boden as the  King’s son.

Staging a stylized opera is a specialist genre in itself. Unlike verismo, where letting it all hang out is a good thing, in stylization, less can be more. At times, Lessons in Love and Violence seems to teeter on the edge of Pelléas et Mélisande.  It's as if the starving peasants Yniold spots outside the castle have breached its defences.  Benjamin's music broods and seethes with barely suppressed violence.   It can't be easy to reconcile stylization with  angry crowd scenes, but I'm not really sure about Katie Mitchell's direction. There are very good moments, such as when the younger actors move  in slow motion, suggesting the passage oif time. Almsot like a silent movie !(Movement director Joseph Alford). But there's a little too much stage decoartion for its own sake, large portraits, big beds, bookcases etc.  (designs by Vicki Mortimer).  Perhaps it's not Mitchell's fault. London audiences seem to need lots to look at so they don't have to think.  The enormous fish tank disappeared after the second section.  It almost stole the show, so removing it removed a distraction from Benjamin's drama in music.  Benjamin himself conducted  which made the music even more special. 

Unfinished Business: London Sinfonietta 50 years

"Thank goodness for the London Sinfonietta!" (as the London Sinfonietta quotes me on the front page of their website. True, indeed ! without the London Sinfonietta, music in this country would have been dull indeed. The London Sinfonietta were pioneers, much more than "just" an ensemble. They were a powerhouse of creative, innovative thinking, generating a sea change in musical thinking which continues to flourish today.  Thus Unfinished Business, marking the forthcoming 50th anniversary of the London Sinfonietta, which starts Wednesday 11th October at St John’s Smith Square, starts with Hans Werner Henze's iconic Voices. Henze  himself conducted it with the Sinfonietta on their 1978 recording, re-released a few years ago. Please read my summary here.
 
Henze was closely associated with the London Sinfonietta who played a lot of his music, composer and orchestra both defined by the events of 1968.  They hosted a major retrospective to mark his 75th birthday, which is when I  met him.  He was a lion, but kind hearted enough to be nice to a nobody like me.  Henze is dead, but not forgotten. Currently I'm enjoying a new recording of his Neue Volkslieder und Hirtengesänge  and Kammermusik 1958 with Andrew Staples and the Sharoun Ensemble Berlin, conducted by Daniel Harding - it's wonderful, read more here.  This time round, David Atherton conducts Voices.  He's a Sinfonietta veteran too : the concert should be an almost historic occasion. 

Later in the season, Iannis Xenakis, Luciano Berio, Harrison Bitwistle, Gyorgy Ligeti, Wolfgang Rihm, Karlheinz Stockhausen and others, just a few of the numerous composers who have been associated with the ensemble from way back. The London Sinfonietta has a lot to be proud of !   A welcome return to its Glory Days, when it presented excellence with style and commitment.  For a while, it seemed that the ethos had changed. Governments promote the idea that orchestras should make education a priority but that's a political argument, not artistic logic.  If governments really cared about education they';d fund it in the first place, and let orchestras do what they do best., which is make music that inspires listeners to learn.   Excellence itself "is" education.  Please see a few of the numerous concerts and recordings I've covered over the years, including:
Beat Furrer FAMA 2016

Hans Abraham Schnee Simon Holt

George Benjamin Into the Little Hill

Stockhausen Trans und Harmonien

  and loads more ........click on composer names

Ollie and George Benjamin's Dream of the Song

Ollie and George: powerhouse pair! George Benjamin's Dream of the Song , given its UK premiere by Oliver Knussen and the BBCSO at the Barbican London.  Listen here on BBC Radio 3.  Benjamin's Dream of the Song starts at 1h:11. One of the perils of modern writing is the rush to instant judgement as quickly as possible even if such comment is so shallow as to be utterly meaningless. No point in rush if you have nothing to say! That might well be George Benjamin's motto. Benjamin works with the meticulous  pace of a medieval illuminator working with gold and precious powders.  And so I've tried to live with Benjamin's Dream of the Song to give it some of the care Benjamin put into it. I don't know if I'll succeed, but it's better than to try than gloss over it.  Thank goodness for the BBC's Listen again policy.

Dream of the Song is based on texts by three poets. Two of them lived in Granada, the jewel of Islamic civilzation, where education, art and philosophy were honoured.  Samuel Hanagid (993-1056) and  Solomon ibn Gabirol (d. approx 1050) were Talmudic scholars but also fluent in Arabic, for this was a time when Granada was a haven of tolerance in a Europe plagued with prejudice. Benjamin sets their poems with one by Federico García Lorca, the radical modernist  who was assassinated by fascist forces in Granada in 1936.  Songs silenced across the centuries: chances are that the "Dream" Benjamin is referring to is no reverie.

Significantly Benjamin blends and combines the poems into a seamless flow.Strange rustling bell sounds and a cry that sounds like the call of a mullah; "Naked" sings Iestyn Davies, the word broken into fragments but reiterated. An epigrammatic opening, opening out, like a window onto another vista. "The multiple troubles of man" The oboe calls out plaintively, its firm, clear sound probing outward as if searching across time itself.  In the central section, the countertenor's lines are haloed by a chorus of female voices, from the BBC Singers, intoning Lorca. the words don't really matter. In Andalusian art, images aren't representational but  myriad intricate patterns and colours. epitomized by the Palace of Alhambra.

Instead, Benjamin writes patterns of sound which serve the purpose of rhymes.  Brief images float into the foreground in typical Benjamin style "A girl in a garden" elides smoothly, to suddenly switch to terse staccato "tending her shrubs".  a transition built on pizzicato - suggesting the passage of time, perhaps, or splashing water, a concept fundamental to Andalusian metaphysical thought.  The women's voices herald a change of direction - bright, sharp and urgent. Then a brief pause, the silence almost imperceptibly interrupted by quiet tapping.   The male voice returns, singing strangely abstract semi harmony  "Written", Davies sings but in what /the word is unintelligible but the sound is  magically clean and pure, shining all the brighter against a backdrop of a murmuring horn.  "The stars....." Davies sings, and the sound seems to break off. But perhaps that is the point ; the music, the "Dream of Song" does not die with its makers.

Benjamin's Dream  of the Song is a milestone. It represents a return to the meticulous craftsmanship of his work before Into the Little Hill and Written on Skin, though the operas are distinctively Benjaminesque.  Although it's written for small orchestra, it's  ambitious  compared with some of his earlier output, utterly assured and confident.

Also on the programme, the UK premiere of Dreamscape (2012) by Gunther Schuller , who mentored Knussen in his youth.  Nontheless, Schuller's late  work reminds me a lot more of Knussen than of Schuller. It's quirky, humorous in an episodic way and worlds away from Benjamin's Dream of the Song.  Very good performances, too,  of Debussy Nocturnes and Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements. 
photo of Geirge Benjamin courtesy Askonas Holt

Benjamin Aldeburgh London Sinfonietta Birtwistle Knussen

At Aldeburgh, George Benjamin, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Birtwistle, Knussen - a veritable roll call of big names in contemporary music in modern Britain.In some ways, it was a bit of history, too, since the three major British pieces are fairly early, but have connections with the London Sinfonietta.

Harrison Birtwistle's  Carmen arcadiae mechanicae perpetuum ("a perpetual song of mechanical arcady") was a London Sinfonietta premiere, conducted by Birtwistle himself in 1978. Like a Klee painting, it's built from six basic "mechanisms" which fracture and regroup to form 22 blocks. Each is distinct, some punctuated by percussion, others by dark splats of brass. Each tableau is heralded by a high horn call.  Benjamin's precision allowed individual cells to be heard clearly, as if illuminated, creating an aura of perpetual motion. The piece sparkled, much like the way brushstrokes in an Impressionist  painting let light shine through.  The craggy, zig-zag rhythms sounded gloriously wayward, and the sudden ending bristled with a lively twist.

Benjamin loves Oliver Knussen's Songs without Voices (1991/2) . It's easy to hear why. The exquisite delicacy of these pieces lends itself well to Benjamin's refined sensibilities. Songs without voices?  Because they aren't tied to any specific text, other than the brief title, the listener is freed creatively to "hear" in the imagination. The listener becomes part of the creative process.  For me, the quiet stillness of Fantastico (Winter’s Foil)  suggest the pale light of winter and the way one's breath become visible in cold air. I've never seen open plains, but I could visualize the long outward reaching lines in Maestoso (Prairie Sunset) translated into long, horizontal vistas. In the third song Leggerio : The First Dandelion , I could hardly breathe for fear of shattering the stillness  One could read the original poems (Walt Whitman) but I think the pieces work better as more abstract conceptua, so every listener will have a different experience. In the final song,  Adagio: Elegaic Arabesques, the cor anglais leads, delineating elegant patterns.

George Benjamin's At First Light was premiered by the London Sinfonietta in 1992, with Simon Rattle conducting. The piece was inspired by JMW Turner's painting Norham Castle at Sunrise, an early modern "abstract" painting  Benjamin has said, "A solid object can be formed as a clearly defined punctuated musical phrase". A short, brisk opening dissipates into extended silence.A second movement full of incident - something's stirring! This unfolds into a final movement where long, continuous harmonies interweave.

This concert at the Britten Studio mirrored the concert Benjamin conducted at the Maltings, both ending with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, whose Ravel Piano Concerto in G major in the earlier concert was the impassioned highlight of an oddly lacklustre evening, which began with a soggy Wagner Siegfried Idyll and included Benjamin's very early A Mind in Winter with Claire Booth as soloist. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra are very good indeed, so it was a relief to hear them back on form the next night with François-Xavier Roth. Read my review of that concert HERE. Tom Coult's Beautiful caged thing sounded like early Benjamin, too, but then he's young and a Benjamin pupil.  But it's good that new work by young artists gets heard at Aldeburgh. That was Britten's objective. Saed Haddad's In Contradiction for two cellos and ensemble was more engaging, contrasting ideas and blocks of sound in a tight, energetic structure. Haddad was a Benjamin pupil more than ten years ago, and has found his own, distinctive voice. If Aimard's Ravel was good, his Ligeti Piano Concerto was even better. He traversed its lively, zany high spirits with joyous delight. Aimard has performed most of the key modern works for piano, and knew most of the composers personally, including Ligeti. We are very lucky indeed to have him at Aldeburgh. 

It is set in three movements: in the short, opening one, superimposed fanfares burst into hazy, undefined textures. After a pause the extended second movement follows, itself subdivided into several contrasted sections, full of abrupt changes in mood and tension. The concluding movement arrives without a break, and progresses in a continuous, flowing line illuminated with ever more resonant harmonies. - See more at: http://www.fabermusic.com/repertoire/at-first-light-761#sthash.q7E7q1ka.dpuf

A ‘solid object’ can be formed as a punctuated, clearly defined musical phrase. This can be ‘melted’ into a flowing, nebulous continuum of sound. There can be all manner of transformations and interactions between these two ways of writing. Equally important, however, this piece is a contemplation of dawn, a celebration of the colours and noises of daybreak. - See more at: http://www.fabermusic.com/repertoire/at-first-light-761#sthash.q7E7q1ka.dpuf

A ‘solid object’ can be formed as a punctuated, clearly defined musical phrase. This can be ‘melted’ into a flowing, nebulous continuum of sound. There can be all manner of transformations and interactions between these two ways of writing. Equally important, however, this piece is a contemplation of dawn, a celebration of the colours and noises of daybreak. - See more at: http://www.fabermusic.com/repertoire/at-first-light-761#sthash.q7E7q1ka.dpuf

Elegiac Arabesques) Songs With

Elegiac Arabesques) Songs With

Brilliant pairings : François-Xavier Roth Mahler Chamber Orchestra Aldeburgh

François-Xavier Roth's concert with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Aldeburgh Festival will probably be the highlight of this year's festival. That the print media ignored it speaks volumes about the London press. Roth is one of the most exciting conductors of his generation because nearly everything he does is musically astute and well informed. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra is a superlative ensemble, and with Roth they achieve great heights.  Absolutely this was the concert to go to. Fortunately the BBC recognized the significance and recorded it for broadcast, still available HERE.

Roth is a fascinating conductor because his background lies both in baroque and in new music,  He has conducted Lully, using a staff like Lully did, but without mishap, giving physical emphasis to the underlying rhythm and liveliness in the music. Roth's musical intelligence generates great energy and insight.  Read more here about some of the connections between French baroque and new music. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra  is part of the network of orchestras founded by Claudio Abbado,. Standards are exceptionally high.  It's an exclusive network that includes the Berlin Philharmonic and the Lucerne Festival. Musicians are chosen individually for the quality of their work. Because they work together a lot, they know each other well. But they're fresh and fluid because they work with different orchestras, within the network and beyond. No fossilizing here!

The programme was eclectic. This was Roth's debut at Aldeburgh. He loves it as the regulars do because it promotes new music in context with what's gone before, exactly as Britten himself  wished.  The Overture to Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro exploded into life, reminding us how audacious Mozart must have sounded when he was writing "new music". Figaro the servant will outwit his master. Subversive stuff in a era when authority could not be challenged. Rarely can it have been performed with such vivacious energy. But that's the joy of hearing it in a mixed performance, with a chamber orchestra. They can put everything into the moment without having to save themselves for the rest of the opera, knowing that the audience can figure Figaro for themselves.

Hearing audacious Mozart prepared us for the inventiveness of Luke Bedford's Wonderful Two Headed Nightingale.  The connections are deep. Bedford uses the same instrumentation as Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante. The purity of concept enhances the intricate interrelationship between the violin (Matthew Truscott) and viola (Joel Winter) and the orchestra. The title refers to the conjoined twins Millie and Christine McCoy, who became singers, escaping a lifetime of slavery or freak shows through their music. As a piece of "pure" abstract music Wonderful Two Headed Nightingale works well  because the dialogue between the soloists is reflected  sensitively in the orchestra, suggesting intricate patterns of harmony and non-harmony. Like conjoined twins, the soloists have to co-operate, yet their voices are - literally - very different. The violin line soars and moves with graceful ease, at times flying so high that it seems to dissipate into the stratosphere, like "a lark ascending". The viola supports it, but , more earthbound, discreetly demurs. playing chords that prod and provoke. Altered tuning adds to the sense of mystery. The "voices" are echoed by pairs of oboes and horns - more "conjoined twins" adding haunting, almost mournful texture, reminding us that the twins' situation would only end in death and silence.  It's an exquisite piece, utterly original and distinctive, fast becoming part of the canon. 

The connection between new music and the baroque was further emphasized with Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin. In 1919, this was new music too, even more radical than Ravel's original version for piano. In many ways, it's more "baroque" in spirit , for the delicacy of the orchestration mimics a harpsichord, Couperin's own instrument. Under the baton of a baroque specialist like  François-Xavier Roth, the dance elements seem liberating, the oboe part seductive, like a lithe dancer. The strings played with such grace that the notes seem to dissolve into sheer light: an approach very close to much contemporary music.


George Benjamin loves Le tombeau de Couperin., for it fits well with the pointillist refinement of his own style.  Benjamin's  Three Inventions for Chamber Orchestra diverges from much of his earlier work, in that its last movement goes for maximum impact, with huge gongs placed antiphonally, encircling the rest of the orchestra in their embrace. Yet, tellingly, the percussion did not overwhelm: loudness for its own sake is for boors.  I was sitting barely three metres away, yet could hear musicality, not noise.  Sensitive playing!  The combinations of flugelhorn, euphonium and contrabassoon (good to see Gordon Laing again)  evoke a sense of strangeness, lightened by bright, bell-like percussion and pizzicato.  One could imagine the sounds of a forest, birds in the canopy, rustlings in the undergrowth below, through which one progresses with purposeful deliberation.

Schubert's Symphony no 5 reiterated some of the themes of what went before, the pairing of instruments, the values of purity, and even the audacity of Mozart, which so appealed to Schubert, who was only 19 when he wrote the piece. Far from being "minor" it's Lieder ohne Worte, where discipline of form enhances expression, ideal for a Liederabend of chamber musicians.  The Mahler Chamber Orchestra responded with grace, the playing so lyrical that one could dream of dancers. Roth gets such brightness and energy from this orchestra that it's hard to believe that it's the first time he's worked with them in public. They seem an ideal fit, in the Abbado and Daniel Harding spirit, though Roth is a quirkier character. Great hopes for the future!

More Written on Skin - broadcasts updates

George Benjamin's Written on Skin  (recorded at the Royal Opera House) will be broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on 22 June 2013 at 6pm and on BBC 4 TV on 28 June 2013 at 7.30 pm. The CD recording made in Aix-en-Provence is available from Nimbus Records (Catalogue Number NI5885), from the Royal Opera House shop and from Amazon. Opus Arte will be releasing Written on Skin on DVD and Blu-ray in January 2014. Just announced (though long rumoured) is a new Benjaimn opera. Kaspar Holten says :

"As a part of our focus on new commissions on all scales over the next years, this will obviously be a key project. It is hard to imagine a better match between a composer and a writer than Benjamin and Crimp, we have enjoyed doing Written on Skin immensely and we are extremely proud that they will be writing a new piece for Covent Garden".


Please see my review of Written on Skin HERE and of Into the Little Hill Here. Lots on George Benjamin on this site, more than anywhere else.

George Benjamin Day Into the Little Hill Wigmore Hall

The Wigmore Hall's George Benjamin Day followed on from the success of Benjamin's Written on Skin at the Royal Opera House. It was a wonderful opportunity to reassess Benjamin's first, ground-breaking opera Into the Little Hill.  

The world of Into the Little Hill is deliberately mysterious and confusing. Two singers  (last night Hilary Summers and Susanna Andersson) present different parts, They use indirect speech, so phrases like "...said the man" carry as much weight as the words themselves. This unusual device, which Benjamin also uses in Written on Skin thus has an almost ritualistic significance. Perhaps Benjamin is creating distance between narrative and audience, redirecting attention onto the drama in the music?  As pure music, both Into the Little Hill and Written on Skin are fascinating. Images and forms emerge and dissipate. The big, dramatic chords in Written on Skin operate like the cinematic "curtains" between scenes in Berg's Lulu. There are less big moments in Into the Little Hill but a concert performance gives us a chance to hear the close-ups in stronger focus. 

At the Wigmore Hall, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group gave an account which showed the intricacy of Benjamin's construction. Martin Crimp's narrative may be confusing, but that's the whole point. It is poetry, not prose.  In the strange world of Into the Little Hill, all the normal signposts we use to navigate a plot are hidden. We have to be alert and listen  acutely. As rats do. That in itself is disturbing, for the Rat is sinister. But is he any more sinister than the Minister?

"I followed the sound, said the man with no ears". The Pied Piper led the children of Hamelin from their homes into the bowels of the earth. Given the repressive nature of the Minister's regime, perhaps the Way of the Rat might be oddly liberating.  What are Benjamin and Crimp hinting at when they use the image of music?  The  minister tries to sanitize the extermination, but the man witrh no ears keeps asking "and music", the word shining with lyrical beauty, illuminating the murkiness around the lies. The narrative is not linear but progresses in stages, with tunes. In the final section, the children burrow under the earth, "into the little hill". Yet the music becomes transparent, like "particles of light".  "Our home is under the earth", both singers intone together. "With the Angel under the earth, and the deeper we burrow the brighter his music burns". 

In Written on Skin, the Boy is a painter, but the Woman, with her child-like innocence, intuits that art can represent a higher level of truth.  In Into the Little Hill, music, an intangible form of art, leads us away from the poisoned double-think of the minister's regime. In both operas, the purity of Benjamin's music rises upwards, leading us out of  nightmarish tangles. Instead of conventional plot resolution, the "answers" are indirect. In Written on Skin, the woman becomes Agnès, no longer anonymous but a person with purpose. She becomes a figure who transcends time and place, suspended forever in the painted illumination.  Please read my review of Benjamin's Written on Skin HERE and of Into the Little Hill HERE.

The impact of Into the Little Hill was reinforced by being heard with David Sawer's Rumplestiltskin Suite (2011) and Francesco Antonioni's Ballata (2008); both also inspired by folk tales. Anyone who still believes that "fairy tales" are not grim probably believes in fairies, or rather the kind of vacuous mindless fairy of cartoon stereotype. Antonioni says of Ballata that "the iambic rhythm that flows throughb the piece is commonly associated with the narration, the conversation, the litanies of women in churches, the gradual revelation of a secret".

Much more revealing for me was David Sawer's Rumplestiltkin Suite. because it was more concise, the intensity concentrated into a brief, sharp shock. Rumplestiltskin's psychotic rage is violently dramatic, but the music that describes the miller is even more intriguing. The miller plays mind games. He's dishonest and cruel. Like the Rat in Into the Little Hill, Rumplestiltskin isn't necessarily the villain. Sawer's Rumplestitlskin Suite is very good indeed. I liked the "straw and gold" of the original opera (see review here), so hearing the Suite makes me hope that we''ll be able to see Sawer's Rumplestiltskin again soon.

George Benjamin Day Wigmore Hall

Benjamin  is next year's Wigmore Hall composer-in-residence, so the Wigmore Hall is doing a Benjamin series culminating in George Benjamin Day on April 6th. HERE IS MY REVIEW.The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group will be doing Benjamin's first opera, Into the Lttle Hill, this time in concert performance with Hilary Summers and Susanna Andersson singing. This was a watershed for Benjamin, previously known for his painstakingly meticulous working methods.  Working with Martin Crimp, the librettist, challenged Benjamin, who worked at what was, for him, breakneck speed. Taking risks makes for highly charged drama. Into the Little Hill is a tightly focussed chamber opera, whose depths reveal themselves obliquely. I love Into the Little Hill. I've written about it extensively. Read my piece on the performance at the Linbury  HERE.

The programme will also feature Francesco Antonioni's Ballata and David Sawer's Rumpelstiltskin Suite, based on Sawer's opera Rumpelstiltskin, another BCMG speciality. Read my article "Gold and Straw" HERE about the full opera when it wass staged at the Spitalfields Music Festival. The concert will be preceded by a talk with John Gilhooly.

Illuminating George Benjamin Written on Skin Royal Opera House London

George Benjamin's Written on Skin sinks deeply into the psyche. A  Protector wants brightly coloured images to display his power and wealth. He is a megalomaniac brute who thinks he can control everything in his domain from the fruit on his trees to his wife's "obedient body".The Boy dutifully creates exotic images of "azurite and gold" on precious parchment, meticulously executed in fine detail.  Medieval art wasn't representational.  Stylized depictions were meant to suggest concepts, not literality. Perhaps medieval art and modern art have more in common than we realize. Uneducated as she is, The Woman intuits that art can take on meaning of its own. Images can lie, yet also reveal eternal truths.

This, no less, may be what Written on Skin is about, despite the sensational narrative. Ostensibly the action takes place in a medieval manor house. The Protector thinks wealth will buy him eternity. A thousand years later, the lands he knew have been obliterated by "Saturday car parks" and multi-lane highways. Even the Occitan has been absorbed into France. In this exqusitely poetic libretto, by Martin Crimp, past and future are superimposed on each other, reinforcing the idea that worldly certainities are impermanent. Things change, but artistic vision is timeless.

This sense of duality operates throughout the opera. The Protector thinks he controls everything around him. The Boy thinks that being an artist (and presumably a monk)  protects him from earthly engagement. Both are trumped by The Woman, who wants the Boy to paint a a "real woman" with passions and eyes that "grow black with love". The boy can see the flecks of gold in her grey eyes, but his eyes, too, turn black. The Protector sees the painting and suspects. The Boy lies to protect the Woman, but she's having no more subterfuge. "I am Agnès" she cries, "I am not a child!" 

Benjamin's Written on Skin is a departure from the 19th century idea of what opera should be. Despite the vaguely modern set, and very modern music, Written on Skin is much closer to the medieval approach to art.  The narrative is oblique, despite the barbarism in the plot.  We cannot, and should not, impose our own ideas on what the Middle Ages "should" be. "Wild primroses and the slow torture of prisoners"  as the Boy sings in Act One. Crimp's text is exquisite allegory. Poetry doesn't operate like prose: overstated literalism would kill the gossamer magic.

Thus Benjamin's music operates as poetry, elusively, obliquely, but with enough passion to make the drama progress even when the words seem static. The illustrations in medieval manuscripts depict cataclysmic scenes as if they're suspended in time. Perhaps in a past incarnation,  Benjamin painted  illuminations, where detail is captured with surreal intensity. Although Benjamin's writing makes a virtue of ambiguity, his orchestration is stunningly pure and clear textured. Low-timbred strings like double basses and a viola de gamba, high-pitched keening woodwinds, a glass harmonica and an unusual percussion section which includes bongoes, a whip and Indian tablas. This replicates the clean outlines of medieval illumination: no muddy shadows, but intense, unnatural colour. The percussion also suggests the vigour and simplicity of early music. We can "hear" the musicians of the Occitan in the sophisticated Royal Opera House orchestra. It's curiously unsettling, but perfectly in keeping with the opera.  Benjamin himself conducted.

As in their previous opera, Into the Little Hill, Benjamin and Crimp use indirect speech. Phrases like "Said the Boy", or "Said the Woman", are embedded to the text, intensitfying the unsettling sense of allegory. Yet character is very well defined. The Boy and the Woman are playing the roles the Protector wants them to enact. Their long, wailing lines with strange distorted syntax suggest the stylization of mystery plays, or even Greek chorus. Individual words are gloriously embroidered and illuminated, so they shine out from the background of wavering rhythms.

Bejun Mehta sings the Boy, his countertenor at once disturbing and beautiful. Barbara Hannigan sings the Woman, her part even more demanding because the personality develops so dramatically. It is she who is the catalyst for action. As the Woman sits bowed but uncowed, Hannigan's voice expresses the frustration the Woman cannot articulate. When she suddenly pounces on the Boy, Hannigan's voice explodes with sexual tension: animal-like but desperate. She throws herself at her husband who, despite his macho image, can't cope with her being anything other than "pure and clean". At this point, Benjamin's  music for the singers changes. The Protector (Christopher Purves) now gets the long, wailing legato, where previously his music erupted in short, brutal staccato. Now Agnès has the short, punchy lines and spits them out with new-found assertiveness.

When the Protector kills the Boy, we can hear his compromised feelings in the music. Is the Protector himself secretly attracted to the Boy? Purves sings with a strange tenderness suggestingb that the Protector might be killing his own desires.  Agnès is fed a meat pie. "How does it taste"? sings her husband. She understands the horrible truth. "I shall never, never, never get the taste out of my mouth" she sings, her voice reaching heights of horror, her lines once again stretching out in extended wailing.

Mehta appears as an Angel, surrounded by other angels who had also appeared as Marie and John, Agnès's sister asnd brother-in-law, now supposedly dead. Victoria Simmonds and Alan Clayton sang the roles. The Boy is now  a protagonist in a painting, no longer man but immortalized as a work of art.  Just as he had painted a woman falling, suspended in mid-air, Hannigan mounts the stairs at the side of the stage and disappears, followed by a group of retainers moving in slow motion. We don't need to see her fall. We already know. "Art" has become "life".

I'm not generally a fan of Katie Mitchell, but her directing in this was perrceptive. She and her designers, Vicki  Mortimer and Jon Clark, have made split-level sets something of a signature, but in Written on Skin the style works well with the meaning of the opera.  Most of the action takes place, claustrophobically, in one room. The other rooms on other levels show the world that goes on outside the trapped manor house. Perhaps the Boy is a quintessential Artist, who consciously enters other worlds when he creates a work of art? He leaves his street clothes behind when he enters the Protectors's realm. Later, he's dressed as an Angel. Perhaps it's a subtle reference to the relationship between artist and patron, as well as to the relationship between art and artist.

Written on Skin is only Benjamin's second opera. His first, Into the Little Hill, also to texts by Martin Crimp. was a highly condensed chamber opera  about which I've written extensively. Read more HERE. Since Benjamin was hitherto a miniaturist, who worked slowly because he took such meticulous care, I was concerned how he'd write a full-scale opera for a large house like The Royal Opera House  and the seven other houses in which it is touring, I needn't have worried. Working with Martin Crimp seems to have stimulated Benjaminto new levels of creativity. Although Written on Skin is stylized and abstract, it is inherently dramatic, on its own terms. Dare I say it, but I do feel that this will be one of the defining operas of the early 21st century, because it is so visionary.George Benjamin's Written on Skin will be broadcast (audio only) on BBC Radio 3 on 22nd June. Please see the full review with cast list in OPERA TODAY.

photo : Bejun Mehta as The Boy, Christopher Purves as The Protector, Barbara Hannigan as The Woman, credit Stephen Cummiskey

George Benjamin Wigmore Hall series

George Benjamin's Written on Skin is on at the Royal Opera House from tomorrow.  HERE IS MY REVIEW. There is no way I am missing Written on Skin. To appreciate Written on Skin, get to know Into the Little Hill.   Opera is a relatively new genre for  Benjamin, so it's also good to  approach it in context with his other music. AND HERE IS MY REVIEW OF THE WIGMORE HALL CONCERT comparing Into the Little Hill with Written on Skin.

Benjamin  is next year's Wigmore Hall composer-in-residence, so the Wigmore Hall is doing a Benjamin series culminating in George Benjamin Day on April 6th. The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group will be doing Benjamin's first opera, Into the Lttle Hill, this time in concert performance with Hilary Summers and Susanna Andersson singing. This was a watershed for Benjamin, previously known for his painstakingly meticulous working methods.  Woring with Martin Crimp, the librettist, challenged Benjamin, who worked at what was, for him, breakneck speed. Taking risks makes for highly charged drama. Into the Little Hill is a tightly focussed chamber opera, whose depths reveal themselves obliquely. I love Into the Little Hill. I've written about it extensively. Read my piece on the performance at the Linbury  HERE  Given Benjamin's penchant for detailed embroidery, I wondered how he'd cope with Written On Skin, to be heard in a large House. If the stunning Aix-en-Provence premiere is anything to go by, he's mastered larger form. Perhaps on some level, Benjamin identifies with the artist who creates detailed, glowing illuminations.

The programme will also feature Francesco Antonioni's Ballata and David Sawer's Rumpelstiltskin Suite, based on Sawer's opera Rumpelstiltskin, another BCMG speciality. Read my article "Gold and Straw" HERE about the full opera when it wass staged at the Spitalfields Music Festival.

The concert will be preceded by a talk with John Gilhooly and a concert at 11.30 featuring Benjamin's music for small ensemble (Carolin Widmann, Adam Walker and Marino Formenti)  which will include the beautiful Shadowlines. played by Benjamin himself.
If you can't wait til April 6th, don't worry. On March 20th Benjamin is pianist at a concert with Fretwork, the viol consort, Tabea Zimmermann, Antoine Tamestsit and Susan Bickley. For me the draw will be Upon Silence, a very early piece from 1990 for mezzo soprano and seven strings. They'll also be doing Benjamin's Piano Figures (2004) and Viola, Viola (1999) .  Piano Figures is a series of ten miniatures each built around a mood growing from a simple motivic cell. As in many things in life, "simple" doesn't mean "easy". These pieces don't demand extreme virtuosic technique, but they do challenge the mind. Each vignette builds on a mood or image ("Spell", "In the mirror", "Whirling") but moves on swiftly without exhausting the possibilities. That sense of rapt listening comes through in Viola, viola (1999). Themes bounce between each player, the balance constantly shifting. Long, exploratory lines, countered by affirmative semi-staccato, a pulse connecting, then gracefully receding. The rest of the programme will include works by Alexandcer Goehr, Benjamin's mentor and teacher.

George Benjamin Written on Skin - Amsterdam

George Benjamin's Written on Skin is making its way across Europe. It's presently in Amsterdam, where Jim Sohre caught it :

"Written on Skin was that all-too-rare treat, a compelling new piece of writing that spoke with its own affecting voice, performed by a peerless cast and band, matched by an enthralling stage production that served to make for a potent evening of musical drama. Here’s wishing it many more successful first nights and an enduring presence in the repertoire."



"I shall not soon forget the coup de theatre at opera’s end as the misused wife flees her murderous spouse up a white staircase extending into the loft, running to leap to her death, pursued by the rest of the cast, all in excruciatingly. Slow. Motion. Ironically, this is one of the few instances where the production fails the script since it calls for her to leap but be suspended mid-air, but then who has ever seen Brűnnhilde ride Grane onto the pyre? (So there.) Never you mind, it is spell-binding nonetheless."


Read the full review with production photos in Opera Today HERE

More George Benjamin Written on Skin (Aix)

HERE is my review of the London premiere of George Benjamin's Written on Skin. Last week I wrote about George Benjamin's Written on Skin at the Aix Festival and gave links to two reviews, one quite detailed, from Michael Milenski in Opera Today (with photos). It's now a great pleasure to present another well written review from Liam Cagney in the Telegraph.  It's good that there are writers around who think analytically. I like reading reviews to learn how a performance fulfils the music, so appreciate writers who care. Benjamin's Written on the Skin is an extremely important piece, innovative in many ways. Although I've listened to it several times, I still can't do it justice in a few brief lines. Today I've been listening to Into The Little Hill and reading the score of Luke Bedford's  Seven Angels which was way above the heads of most London critics, who couldn't get past the idea of role-playing angels acting out scenarios. Now perhaps they can. All three operas, Into the Little Hill, Seven Angels and Written on Skin predicate on the concept of multi level, stylized narrative. Benjamin's Written on Skin is amazing, and the more you put into it the more you get.

George Benjamin Written on Skin - world premiere

George Benjamin's eagerly awaited new opera Written on Skin received its world premiere this week at the Aix Festival. Michael Milenski was there, and writes in Opera Today.

"Not since Monteverdi have music and words combined with more force and clarity. Playwright Martin Crimp distills a thousand years of images and issues into a brief text that composer George Benjamin embodies in one hour and forty minutes of sounds that defy definition. If opera is essentially sex and violence Written on Skin well qualifies. Benjamin’s score magnifies the strange and delicate sexual stirrings that Benjamin Britten musically discovered and carries these urges to powerful and violent climax, rendering Britten’s guilty regret into utter hopelessness. And there is the sonic scope of timeless Messiaen transferred from God’s lofty nature to the creator’s own, base human nature. It is the sonic gamut of human nature." Hyperbolic, but said with a smile.  Read more, and see the photos in Opera Today.

The idea of a protagonist who illuminates medieval manuscripts is slightly unsettling, as Benjamin is himself a meticulous miniaturist.  His Into the Little Hill is a masterpiece (read more about it here), but it's a chamber opera and very compact. I was worried that writing for a large house might push Benjamin too far, but from all accounts, Written on Skin works very well. Andrew Clements in the Guardian likes it too, though he's not keen on the staging. Oh, for John Fulljames who made Into The Little Hill the experience it was!  But Fulljames is busy at the Royal Opera House, which will be bringing Written on Skin to London from 8 March 2013.
photo Robert Millard

Jubilation - George Benjamin South Bank

"Jubilation", the title of a South Bank semi-retrospective on George Benjamin and the title of his 1985 work for large orchestra and massed chldren's ensembles. Jubilation opened the Sunday Night concert at the Royal Festival Hall. Almost certainly the young George Benjamin himself must have attended concerts here at some time. As the various school choirs and ensembles filed onto the platform, my heart leapt with joy that a new generation would be able to take part in a musical experience  like this. The audience was filled with family and friends, and some very young siblings indeed. So well behaved that they were a credit to enlightened parents. Even if the very little ones cried, that was fine. When children are brought up like this, they learn to listen, not only to music, but to themselves and to others.

Jubilation mixes "difficult" music with the freedom of music even those without much formal traing can join  Quite complex sections with unusual instrumentation blend with a recorder band and vocal ensembles, whose variety allows each a special voice, not submerged in the mass. The big minus was that Jubilation wasn't immediately followed up by Ringed by the Flat Horizon, a strikingly advanced work written when Benjamin was only 19. That should have stunned the students, some of whom were in their teens, too, and perhaps spur them on. The photo shows George Benjamin aged 16, Myung-whun Chung aged 23 and Olivier Messiaen. Would that these youngsters had such enlightened teachers! When teachers impose their own limitations, they destroy the creativity that proper teaching should inspire. Benjamin shows what can be done with an open mind. Hopefully, these youngsters will learn from him and from their enlightened parents.

Benjamin knows how to communicate. "You've heard Ligeti", he told the students. "It's the scariest music in 2001 Space Odyssey". Even if Kubrick was before their time, they got that new music doesn't have to be difficult to respond to emotionally.  "It's very slow, like it's underwater", he said, describing Ligeti's Lontano.  Instead of describing his Palimpsests (2002) in technical jargon, he explained what palimpsests are, so the idea of cross and counter layers in music is easier to visualize in a vividly non abstract way. This is one of Benjamin's "greatest hits". perfectly accessible even for those who don't normally listen to new music.

Benjamin also made Ligeti's Double Concerto for flute and oboe sound fascinating. "The bass flute is a monster!" (or words of that effect), so the work can be heard as drama, the different voices of the different flutes (Samuel Coles) conversing with oboe (Gordon Hunt) and the Philharmonia Orchestra.  A pity that the programme was planned so the gaps between pieces were inordinately long. Music like this weaves its magic when you're properly paying attention. When the gaps are filled with noise, movement and trivia, the spell is broken.

The previous evening, Nicholas Collon conducted the London Sinfonietta in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in a much more focussed programme that highlighted Benjamins's more chamber oriented music. Flight (1979) for solo flute, (Michael Cox) inspired by the sight of birds soaring afloat, and Antara (1987) where panpipe sounds are expanded and developed by computer ((Benjamin's stay at IRCAM). These blend with flutes played in  vibrato-free "medieval" style, then growing in sophistication. "Deep, growling trombones" and metallic perecussion "invoke the real power of computerized keyboards- huge sustained microtonal chords , sweeping glissandi, ....all derived from the original pan-pipes" says Benjamin in his articulate programme notes. "At the largest climax the orchestral anvils in a myriad of metallic sound ...towards a coruscating but tranquil conclusion".

From panpipes to Ligeti's Horn Concerto where the soloist (Michael Thompson) is supported by a team of other horns (rather like a South American pipe ensemble), and then to Benjamin's Duet for Piano and Orchestra (2008), soloist Tamara Stephanovich, closely associated with the dedicatee Pierre-Laurent Aimard., who played it at the Proms in 2010. It's s a different kind of concertante, where soloist and orchestra don’t interact in the usual way, but observe each other, so to speak. Then, with a punchy crescendo, it’s over. Benjamin’s music often sounds pointilliste, like detailed embroidery, but here there’s sharpness in design, and clarity of direction. Listening this time, I realized how muscular Benjamin's music can be.  One oif the highlights oif next year's Royal Opera House season will be Benjamin's first big opera (100 minutes, full orchestra) Written on the Skin. I adore his Into the Little Hill (see more HERE) but have been worrying if Benjamin, a notoriously fussy writer, could produce for the big house.  Hearing the inherent drama in his Duet for Piano and Orchestra, I'm pretty confident Written on the Skin will be good.

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Odd that Gillian Moore didn't mention the Queen's Jubilee in her opening speech, particularly as the South Bank is so closely identified with the optimism that marked the Festival of Britain and the Queen's coronation.  What a very different place this country is now. The Thames still flows past the South Bank, but was used recently for full scale military manouevres to "protect" the Olympics. Fortunately Moore was wise enough not to make too much of the Cultural Olympiad business, which claims credit for many things which would have happened anyway, even the Proms.

Daring and purpose - Royal Opera House 2012-2013

Fascinating Royal Opera House 2012-13 season mixes daring with prudence – passionate. "Opera is an emotional fitness centre", says Kasper Holten, Director of Opera, because it exercises many different feelings. Through opera, we engage with the drama of being human. Running an opera house is more than just business. Its "product" is creativity. If opera houses scale back and play safe, they lose the vision that makes opera thrilling in the first place. Holten's strategy for straitened times is daring. Grow the audience from strength, giving patrons something to get excited about, whether they're new to the genre or not.

Six new opera productions, higher profile revivals and an ambitious programme of external events that will expand the reach of the Royal Opera House far beyond Covent Garden.  More live HD broadcasts, so ROH premieres can reach wider audiences. More links with smaller, independent companies. Even an experimental pricing structure. The whole atmosphere is a buzz, reflecting Holten's dual responsibilties as manager and as creative artist.

Obviously the big Wagner Ring will dominate the autumn season. It's sold out, despite sky-high prices, but Wagner's anniversary is most definitely a special occasion. This production is aimed at a more general audience than a core of Wagner aficionados. Bryn Terfel, Susan Bullock and other stars ensure its success. This is a new Keith Warner production, conducted by Antonio Pappano. Wagner is always interesting and the sheer sense of occasion is part of the attraction. It takes the Met to really destroy the Ring. The ROH Ring should keep the house afloat for years.

In December, Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert Le Diable makes its first London appearance since around 1890.  Once, Robert Le Diable was un succès fou, a sensation to which all Europe flocked, for it marked a new style in French opera. Heinrich Heine attended, incorporating it into his poetry "Es ist ein großes Zauberstück, Voll Teufelslust und Liebe" (read the full story here).  The painting at right is Degas, Ballet from Robert le Diable (1876). Some of the arias are very well known, since Joan Sutherland was very fond of them. So hearing it in context is a great opportunity. There's a renaissance in 19th century French opera, and the ROH has been on the crest, with Massenet, Berlioz and Gounod. The cast is superb. Brian Hymel who so impressed as the Prince in Rusalka, will be singing with Diana Damrau, Marina Poplavskaya, John Relyea and Jean-François Borras. This repertoire diverges from the Italianate style so fashionable at present, so  it's good news for opera adventurers exploring "new" perspectives.

Benjamin Britten's centenary falls in November 2013, so the eyes of the world will be on how Britain honours the greatest opera composer it has produced. Britten often visited the ROH (he used to eat at Bertorelli's) but he wasn't really part of the ROH in-crowd then. So it's good that the Royal Opera House is giving him his due, and with a twist Britten would have appreciated.  Had the ROH been boring and played safe, we'd get another Peter Grimes. Instead, Holten has chosen the extremely rare Gloriana, which even Britten true believers don't know well. This is thrilling, as Gloriana is problematic to stage, for Britten experiments with Elizabethan form.  There's only one recording (dull) and an Opus Arte DVD with Opera North (brilliant) which treats the work in cinematic style, which is an excellent solution. (review here). It would be hard to top that but the Royal Opera House has resources few other have, and Richard Jones as director could make it work. Strong British cast:: Susan Bullock, Kate Royal, Toby Spence, Mark Stone and other stalwarts, conducted by Paul Daniel. Definitely a "historic event".

Three of the most important British composers are highlighted this year. Britten, Harrison Birtwistle and George Benjamin, "The 3 B's" quips Holten. Perhaps the most significant British opera in recent years, Harrison Birtwistle's The Minotaur, is revived at last in January. Get to this, since the DVD is inertly filmed, something I hope Holten will address at some stage, since film is the next frontier in bringing opera to audiences outside the house. Like any other part of staging it needs to be done well. John Tomlinson, Christine Rice, Andrew Watts and Johan Reuter return, and Alan Oke sings the part created by Philip Langridge (read the interview I did with him here about The Minotaur and about Birtwistle, his close friend).

George Benjamin's new opera, Written on the Skin, premieres March 8 2013. This is a very important occasion indeed, and will be heard in eight European cities. Benjamin's not a fast writer, but painstakingly scrupulous, and this is his most ambitious large work to date. The libretto is by Martin Crimp, with whom Benjamin created the masterpiece Into the Little Hill. Read more about that here. The plot's dramatic. A rich man hires an artist to illuminate a manuscriipt. The rich man kills the artist when the latter falls in love wuth the former's wife and has him baked into a pie and served for dinner. Barbara Hannigan sings the wife,  which means the part will be fiendishly inventive and demanding. That's Hannigan's speciality (read about her singing Boulez here on this site). Obviously a countertenor role to match, this time Bejun Mehta. Benjamin is a quinessentially European composer, so it's good that Written on the Skin will be broadcast live, internationally in HD.

The Royal Opera House has always been good for Verdi. The new season brings a Verdi Immersion, three operas in sucession, a sort of Verdi Ring, since his anniversary coincides with Wagner's. The series starts, appropriately, with Nabucco, in a new production by Daniele Abbado and Alison Chitty. Plácido Domingo and Leo Nucci alternate Nabucco. Domingo's presence alone will make this an attraction. He's an icon as much as a singer. Acting isn't affected by age. Domingo can project character, which is what this role needs.  Since it's Nabucco, the Royal Opera House chorus will be in their element. and they're so good they could carry the show. Nabucco is followed by Don Carlos in May and Simon Boccanegra in June/July. Although the latter are revivals, if they're worth doing, they're worth doing well, so the ROH is are injecting high-quality standards worthy of the best new productions. Antonio Pappano is taking over the conducting and Verdi is his speciality. Absolutely top quality singers - Harteros, Kaufmann, Kwiecień, Furlanetto, Halvarson, Hampson. Even if you've seen these umpteen tmes before, this time they will sound fresh.

It's good that the Royal Opera  House has in Holten a director who is a hands-on theatre person, because that ensures he's on the ball as an artist. February brings his first ROH production, Tchaikovsky's  Eugene Onegin.  Partly Russian cast with Simon Keenlyside for popular appeal. Robin Ticciati, the new incumbent at Glyndebourne, conducts. Since the ROH will be working more with other houses like the innovative Music Theatre Wales, what might this signify, if it means anything at all? Chances are that this time the audience won't mindlessly applaud the scenery as they did at the ENO, but instead pay attention to the music.

Also an indicator of new creative times is Gioachino Rossini La Donna del Lago in May, a new production directed by John Fulljames, Associate Director  This is significant because it was to have been a co-production, but the Royal Opera House pulled out and created their own.  This is radical, but it's much better to do good work than regurgitate a turkey. Operas have a long run in time, so it's a wonder this doesn't happen more often and save more reputations, time and money. Holten describes Fulljames as the ROH "dramaturge", an artistic philospher with very strong theatre skills, as anyone familiar with his work over the years will recognize. Fulljames's new production was put together efficiently, using pre-existing technical resources for new purposes. This isn't recycling, but resourcefulness, as it takes a genuinely creative mind to work round difficulties. Much trickier than working from a blank canvas. Perhaps this is a good way forward at a time of budget restraint?  The cast includes Joyce DiDonato, Juan Diego Flórez, specialists in this repertoire, so for singing alone, this new La Donna del Lago will be intriguing.

The more you look into the Royal Opera House 2012-13 season, the more there is to look forward to! Further details on the ROH website HERE and on Opera Today.
photo: Peter Suranyi