Requiem : The Pity of War - Bostridge Pappano

"Requiem: the Pity of War with Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano.  The inspiration came from Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, which Bostridge has done numerous times. Britten's War Requiem," he writes "seems to express in art Winston Churchill's notion of the 1914-18 conflict as the initiator of the 20th century's own Thirty Years War" since it spans the First and Second World Wars, blending the poetry of Wilfred Owen, poet of the trenches and the spirit of reconciliation that motivated the commission marking the  rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. Thus the quotation from Owen, "My subject is War, and the Pity of War". "How might one reflect the experience and significance of the conflict" writes Bostridge "in a song recital ?". The answer might be this excellent programme, with interesting repertoire choices and approaches to more familiar material. Bostridge and Pappano, whose partnership is long and fruiful, are doing this recital live at the Barbican Hall on December 5th. The recording, from Warner Classics, is now available, well produced with good illustrations.

Bostridge and Pappano begin with George Butterworth's Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad, perhaps th best known English song cycle with a connection to war, given that Butterworth  was killed in the Somme in August 1916.  Housman's poems were published in 1896 : the war they pertain to might  be the Boer War, or colonial wars, but the connotations are not specifically military. They deal with more generalized concepts of youth and death, impermanence and loss.  Even though Butterworth collected folk song, a quasi-folk song approach doesn't necessarily apply.  Bostridge and Pappano demonstrate an art song approach, which may at first seem unsettling, but works on a more esoteric level  In "When I was One and Twenty" the last words "'tis true, 'tis true" are held open ended, suggesting possibilities beyond text. If the dynamic lines in "Look not into mine Eyes" are more extreme than usual, this emphasizes the unease that lies behind the poem : the lad "that many loved in vain" does not reveal himself, to anyone. "A Jonquil, not a Grecian Lad". "Is my team ploughing" feels decidedly supernatural.

This disc is worth getting, though for a superlative performance of Rudi Stephan’s song cycle Ich will dir singen ein Hohelied. Stephan was an extremely promising composer as his best-known works, the two Musik für Orkester in einem Satz attest, his opera Der ersten Mensch being a prototype of Expressionist music theatre.  The six songs in this cycle, to poems by Gerda von Robertus (1873-1939) inhabit a world much closer to aesthetics of the period when exoticism was heightened  by an awareness of the dangers of the subconcious.  The poems are terse aphorisms, Stephan's settings concise. The nearest equivalent might be Alban Berg's Altenberg-Lieder, also from the same period (1911-12) In "Kythera", "Der Rosen Düfte liebeatmend schwingen in welchen Weilen" while the sound of aoelian harps drifts from afar. The setting floats gently, held sotto voce.  In "Pantherlied" the piano line ripples, suggesting pent-up animal energy.  The text in "Abendfrieden" is little more than a series of broken phrases which Stephan uses to create a song so delicate that it seems to hover in stillness. This oscillation occurs also in individual words like "Sonnenfeuer" which need careful shaping, but Bostridge captures the right vulnerabilty.  "In Nachbars Garten duftet" describes a linden tree, which shivers "dammerlauschig kühl". Yet this is no pastoral. Lovers embrace, but why do the poet's eyes "overflow in burning pain"?  The song is as magical as a song by Hugo Wolf, but with a kick in the tail.  The mood of secrecy continues in "Glück zu Zweien" where "in the hubbub of the crowd, we found the silence of shared feeling".  The vocal line stretches and curls, twining like "Zwei Könige wir, die finden das Reich ihrer Einsamkeiten". Throughout this cycle, tension has been building up, which finds release in the final song "Das Hohelied der Nacht". Yet again Stephan observes the fragmented nature of the phrases,  using them to proceed rapidly to the last line "Du küsst es mir vom Munde", which rises like a cry of sudden triumph.  These songs are miniature masterpieces and are done reasonably often, but Bostridge brings out the inner musical logic better than anyone else, with his intuitive feel for meaning and the curling, curving timbre of his voice.  Incidentally,  Stephan died in strange circumstances. The night before he died, he could not sleep, surrounded by the agonized cries of the wounded all around.  In the early hours of the morning, he stood upright in his trench at Tarnopol in Galicia on the Eastern Front, and shouted  "Ich halte es nicht aus!" and was promptly shot by a sniper.  He was barely 28.  

From the sophistication of Rudi Stephan to the relative straightforwardness of Kurt Weill's Four Walt Whitman Songs.  Bostridge varies the marching rhythms in "Beat ! Beat ! The Drums" with articulation that twists in protest. If  "Captain ! My captain !" is a strophic ballad, "Come up from the Fields, my Father, there's a letter" is dramatic, delivered here with appropriate portent.  The military antecedents of "The Dirge for Two Veterans" are impeccable. Gustav Holst set this text ("The Last Sunbeam") in 1914, and it was also set by Vaughan Williams (in Dona Nobis Pacem).  Weill wrote these songs after Pearl Harbor, when the United States joined the Second World War.  Like Britten's War Requiem, they help this Bostridge and Pappano programme bridge two World Wars.   
Three songs from Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn conclude the programme. Again, these are not folk songs, but art songs.  Significantly, the songs chosen here are ghost songs, which suit a singer who is a superlative Peter Quint. In "Revelge", skeletons march through a town at night, and "Der Tambourg'sell" is a death knell, Pappano's piano "drumming" as Bostridge's voice rises to near-scream before descending to the low rumble of the refrain "Gute Nacht".  Best of all, though, is "Wo die Schöne Trompeten blasen" where Bostridge and Pappano capture the spookiness that pervades the song even before the girl knows what's going on. She, too, will die before the year is over.

Ian Bostridge Winterreise Wigmore Hall Thomas Adès

Ian Bostridge and Thomas Adès in Schubert Winterreise at the Wigmore Hall. Please read Claire Seymour's review here in Opera Today.   Like all good artists, Bostridge doesn't do autopilot but keeps searching for more. Which is the whole point of Winterreise.  The protagonist doesn't stop searching, even when he's reduced to following a beggar, or an apparition thereof.  Once it was fashionable to assume that the protagonist must go mad and die, because sensible people don't search. Now, thank goodness we realize that there's more to the human psyche than Biedermeyer home comforts. For goodness sake, think about the text ! 
Will dich im Traum nicht stören,

Wär schad’ um deine Ruh’

Dark Mirror Bostridge Zender Winterreise Part Two

At the Barbican, London, Ian Bostridge's "Dark Mirror", a brilliant response to Hans Zender's response to Schubert's response to Wilhelm Müller's poetry. Bostridge's journey into the dark soul of Winterreise explores uncharted territory, opening new routes into meaning. Winterreise is a work of such genius that you can, like Bostridge, spend a lifetime contemplating it yet still find more to learn. Hence the numerous reworkings and stagings to which Winterreise lends itself so well. This, however, must be one of the most fascinating, since it generates so many insights.

Zender';s Winterreise delves into the inner musical logic, bringing out the  mechanics of the protagonist's mind, going round in obsessive circles. yet always compelled forward.  Hence the mysterious rustlings, and almost hypnotic pizzicato heartbeats, and tense bursts on wind instruments, exhaling and drawing breath. Very physical. As the pace picks up, a familiar melody, but oddly mechanical. The protagonist is determined to keep going lest his feelings overwhelm him. The vocal part starts normally enough, but suddenly, from "von einem zu den andern", words repeat mechanically, and the orchestra whizzes into a manic march.  Just as suddenly, a switch back to normal with Fein Liebchen, Gute Nacht but now we know the lyricism is forced. The protagonist can't give in to mere beauty but must struggle on.  The stops and starts and sudden flurries of recitation illustrate the protagonist's dilemma. Like a machine, he winds down, yet lurches back into life. Like an animal, he listens, picking up clues as to direction. Schubert's music is often quite driven - think Der Musensohn - so this obsessiveness is valid. 

Zender's music is graphic, but also abstract enough that it's not mere illustration. Sudden turns, strange distorted sounds. Sometimes the singer recites rather than sings, as if he's trying to pick up an invisible trail.  The music throws you off-course, so you're as disoriented as the protagonist and  start thinking like him. The instrumentation evokes the sound of wandering folk musicians, reminding us of the tradition from which the Leiermann comes. The protagonist rebels against constraining systems.  It's no accident that he strides away from houses into the wilderness. The "Expressionist" visuals were also a good reminder that the boom in German art film in the 1920's had its roots in Gothic Romanticism.

Netia Jones's images focus, too, on this "inner landscape". Though we see the ghost of a tree and glimpses of barking dogs, the stage resembles an infernal machine, with dangerously sloping angles and hard metallic surfaces. We catch glimpses of cogs and wheels, grinding relentlessly together. The hurdy-gurdy is a primitive instrument which drones, and is ground relentlessly, rather than played. At the end, we don't see the Leiermann as bedraggled beggar, but the image of the cogs and wheels grows huge, behind Bostridge's gaunt figure. Seldom has the identification between the Leiermann and the protagonist connected with such power.  "Wunderlicher Alter ! Soll ich mit dir geh'n ? Willst zu meinen Liedern, Deine Leier dreh'n ?"  Jones's images also connect the first song with the last. Dogs howl. The protagonist will ever be an outsider, threatening  conformity, whatever might be his fate.  Is the Leiermann a harbinger of death or the hallucination of a deranged mind? Perhaps some need such comforting thoughts to distance themselves from the protagonist, but I think there is much evidence to suggest an even more challenging outcome. Although the images in Winterreise are pictorial, their symbolism runs much deeper. 

This Dark Mirror Winterreise also benefits from the unique quality of Bostridge's voice. He can infuse seemingly straightforward lines with layers of complex meaning. His voice stretches, as if probing the recesses of the mind, teasing out the surreal from the straightforward.  He's incomparable in Britten.  Bostridge's voice curls, tightly coiled like a spring, leaping upwards when Zender's lines erupt. There was a wonderful, haunted quality to this singing,  utterly faithful to the undercurrents in meaning. The wunderliches Alter is a vision, whether he's real or illusion.  Bostridge's hushed tones  suggest both horror and wonder in the English sense of the word.  As so often, Bostridge's timbre suggests an exotic instrument, again, in this case , in keeping with the implicit musical logic of Zender's conception.  Baldur Brönnimann, a sensitive interpreter of new music, conducted the Britten Sinfonia.  When - it's not a question of "if" - Bostridge's Dark Mirror reaches DVD, it will be a must for anyone seriously interested in Winterreise. Those of us fortunate enough to experience it live will never forget the experience.  Please also see my previous post on Hans Zender's Winterreise.

Photos: top, Hugo Glendinning; bottom, Roger Thomas

Bostridge Zender Winterreise Dark Mirror Part One

Ar the Barbican, London, "Dark Mirror", Ian Bostridge in Hans Zender's Winterreise, or, to use Zender's full title "eine komponierte Interpretation",a creative response to Schubert's original, not merely an orchestration.  Schubert's response to the poetry of Wilhelm Müller produced a masterpiece  so powerful that it has continued to inspire creative minds ever since.  Read my review here.  It's not a work for passive disengagement. It's been examined and revisited dozens of times in many different ways.  Winterreise lends itself particularly well to visual imagery: every song is a scena, built around a symbol. This is no passive, meandering journey. but purposeful. For the protagonist learns from the crow, the graveyard, the three suns in the sky. These are signposts  - Wegweiser - constantly pointing the way forward.  Die Nebensonnen is remarkable not simply for its hallucinatory effect, but also because it is based on physical observation. In Nature, strange things do happen. After Die Nebensonnen, we're prepared for the resolution (of sorts) with Der Leiermann.

Bostridge's Dark Mirror collaboration with Netia Jones is at least his third realization of the piece as theatre,  There have been numerous others, like Matthias Goerne at Aix with wonderful visual imagery images, (read more here) and Simon Keenlyside's "dance version" with Trisha Brown.  Even Bostridge's book Schubert's Winter Journey is a creative response to the work, much more than yet another commentary. The book, already a classic, is itself tactile, and visual (read more here).  Winterreise is compelling : the more you love it, the deeper you can go, and still find more to marvel.

Zender's Winterreise begins so slowly and quietly that you'd miss it if you weren't paying attention. We hear the sound of muffled footsteps, as if someone were trudging in deep snow.  The  sounds are made by brushing metal sheets on the skin of timpani. Steady pizzicato heartbeats, and tense bursts on wind instruments, exhaling and drawing breath. Very physical. As the pace picks up, a familiar melody, but oddly mechanical. The protagonist is determined to keep going lest his feelings overwhelm him. The vocal,part starts normally enough, but suddenly, from "von einem zu den andern", words repeat mechanically, and the orchestra whizzes into a manic march.  Just as suddenly, a switch back to normal with"Fein Liebchen, Gute Nacht" but now we know the lyricism is forced. The protagonist can't give in to mere beauty but must struggle on.

Zender's music is graphic - including wind machines and guitar - but this is in keeping with the original. Indeed, Zender marks short pauses for contemplation. Years ago, at a Wolfgang Holzmair masterclass, Holzmair told us to listen, like an animal might, sensing which trail to follow. Nonetheless, Zender's music is abstract enough that it's not mere illustration. Sudden turns, strange distorted sounds. Sometimes the singer recites rather than sings, as if he's trying to pick up an invisible trail.  The music throws you off-course, so you're as disoriented as the protagonist and  start thinking like him. The recitations also remind us of the literary background to the cycle: Wilhelm Müller is most certainly present here, for Zender's making a connection to "pathetic fallacy" and the way art interacts with experience.

I first heard Zender's Winterreise in 1994, conducted by Zender himself, with Ensemble Modern and Hans-Peter Blochwitz at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. The musicians moved around the auditorium, like the kind of wandering peasant bands that used to travel from village to village. This is an insight, for the Leiermann is a wandering musician, albeit reduced to the lowest order. But he doesn't stop making music.  And neither will the protagonist stop trying, The idea that he goes mad or dies just doesn't fit the evidence,  Zender's Winterreise is a good "learning" piece because it's so inventive. Coming up next, my response to Bostridge and Netia Jones's Winterreise - HERE IT IS !

Ian Bostridge - Schubert's Winter Journey : Anatomy of an Obsession

Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, by Ian Bostridge, isn't yet another book about Winterreise.  Like the cycle, it is a journey of exploration. charting Bostridge's lifelong saga into the heart of the music, and into the world from which it came. Goethe may have been more of a classicist than a true Romantic, but his never ending search for knowledge defined his era and remains an inspiration for our own. In an era of instant expertise, this spirit of eternal discovery seems to have been replaced by fast-food thinking, instant expertise and Tea Party Intellectuals. We need books that don't leap to conclusions but focus, instead,  on the process of learning itself.

Questions are far more important than answers. This book is a Rückblick on a never-ending journey, whose goal lies not in conclusion but in the search that goes into understanding. It's a journey that takes courage and integrity. There used to be a body of opinion that the protagonist in Winterreise must have been mad, and must die in the end because he doesn't conform. But the protagonist, poet and composer deserve more respect.  In each chapter, Bostridge engages with the background to the ideas in the cycle, and with the wider social and artistic context.  "Winterreise is a historical artefact", he writes, ""made in history, and transmitted through and by it".  The poet, Wilhelm Müller, was a soldier who served in the wars against Napoléon in Russia, a "winter journey" if ever there was one. The chapter Der Lindenbaum opens up a panorama of ideas, which range from the symbolism of the Linden tree and its associations in folk magic, to a particularly thoughtful essay on Thomas Mann and the winter journey in The Magic Mountain.  Bostridge then proceeds to a technical discussion of triplet assimilation, then forwards to geology and the physical phenomena that are so much part of the cycle.  Many interesting observations. "To write on ice is an image of ambivalence, like writing on water but not quite letting go,.....Freezing feeling is....both to preserve and to anaesthetize it". Utterly relevant to interpretation of meaning.

Bostridge's sensitivity picks up on details like "eine Köhlers engem Haus" in Rast. Why such a specific reference, and not something more generic? Bostridge discusses charcoal burning and its economic context. Obviously we don't "need" to know this to enjoy the song, but the knowledge opens up new vistas which deepen our appreciation, and exposes the political undercurrents in Schubert's world. Incidentally, charcoal-burners were men who worked alone in the wilds. Is the charcoal burner an invisible precursor of Der Leiermann? Or another expression of the lonely mission the protagonist is driven to undertake?  Or a metaphor for artist and intellectuals and their role in society?  These questions matter, if we really care about the cycle and its deeper meanings.  Schubie doobie doo Schubert and Mahlerkügeln may be more popular with the masses, but as has been observed , the
"m" in "masses" might be silent.  Lieder is an art form of the intellect, a voyage into emotional depth, which all can undertake if they so wish. For this reason, Bostridge's book, with its wealth of ideas on art, literature and history, informs and stimulates. Had Bostridge stayed in academia, he might have been one of those truly good teachers who teach students how to think rather than what to think.

He also writes in a clear, elegant style with little of the logorrhea too many writers use to hide the fact that they aren't really saying much. His translations are simple yet emotionally direct.  Although he digresses, he always returns to the music and to the point.  Physically, this is a beautiful book, with thick, satiny paper and relatively few words per page,  and extremely well-produced illustrations. It is a throwback to the time when reading was a sensual  pleasure, to be savoured without rush. In some ways. it's like poetry, to which one can return to again and again and find more inspiration. Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an obsession might enrage those who expect confirmation of what they already believe, but for me, and, I think, many others, it's a springboard for ever greater engagement with the miracle that is Winterreise.   

Ian Bostridge, Wigmore Hall, Schubert

"In this Schubert Liederabende — the second in Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake’s planned series of four recitals at the Wigmore Hall — dark, sombre worlds evoking the romantic turbulence of Death and the Maiden were only briefly alleviated by radiance and light."   Claire Seymour reviews  Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake's Schubert recital at the Wigmore Hall in Opera Today.  

Please take the time to read this - extremely erudite yet sensitive and perceptive writing :

"This haunting intimation of mortality at eventide was followed by just a single verse of the intimate ‘Ins stille Land’ (To the land of rest) which perfectly expressed the Sehnsucht that Schubert instructs. ‘Totengräbers Heimweh’ (Gravedigger’s longing) brought the first half to a close. Nicolaus Craigher de Jachelutta’s somewhat melodramatic poem describes a gravedigger increasingly seduced by the lure of the burial places he digs for others. But, while there was force and anger in Bostridge’s frustrated cries at the start, there was no undue exaggeration in the performer’s depiction of mental distress and decline. The weaving semiquavers of the second stanza were skilfully controlled, the mood first elegiac then more restless and exposed. Drake’s transition to the slower third stanza was eerie, an apt prelude to the mysterious, mournful unison which follows, the latter disturbed by the piano’s rustling ornaments. As the gravedigger’s energy gradually dissipated, Bostridge increasingly withdrew: indeed, so introspective was his longing for release — ‘O Heimat des Friedens,/ Der Seligen Land!’ (O homeland of peace, land of the blessed!) — that there was a rare rhythmic error which Drake subtly resolved. A remarkably hushed sense of heavenly yearning infused the arcing lines, the piano’s diminished harmonies suggesting an unearthly transmutation. Bostridge’s final cries had an uncanny, sweet lightness; the extreme registral contrasts of the piano postlude evoked the expanse between man and celestial realms."

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Britten Canticles Bostridge Broadcast

Revelatory and Rare! Britten's Canticles, though individually well known, are seldom performed together because the forces they require are so diverse. But they need to be heard together so their significance can be truly appreciated. Although written separately over thirty years, they "embody a musical journey" as Roger Vignoles has written. "Not quite the Seven Stages of Man, but at the very least Five Stages of Britten". 

Watch the performance of Britten's Canticles recorded at the Linbury Theatre ROH in July this year. Brilliant performance from Ian Bostridge who catches the many complex moods and undertones. "My dear Darling" his Abraham sings to Isaac, sweet words laced with poison, for dad intends to kill.  The Third Canticle, Still Falls the Rain is powerful. Bostridge captures the very non-Christian mix of religious piety, erotic tension and anti-war protest.  The staging adds political context, fundamental to its meaning. Listen to the "sour" horn, a pointed subversion of the way the instrument is so often used in military music. There's also a connection to Britten's Serenade for Tenor, horn and strings, where sweetness conceals death "O Rose ! Thou art sick", completed in war time, nearly twenty years before Still Falls the Rain. .

In 1947, homosexuality was illegal and careers could be destroyed if any whiff  of scandal became public. Canticle One, My beloved is mine and I am his is a shockingly bold statement of The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name.  "I give him songs, he gives me the length of days". The text is Biblical, and refers - we assume - to the relationship between God and man. The piano introduction is tender, almost lullaby-like. Perhaps it is a morning after, as this Jones staging suggests. The juxtaposition between religious text and homosexual love is audacious. This Canticle could still shock the pants off Middle England and the Choral Evensong culture.

Abraham and Isaac, the second Canticle (1952), takes its cue from medieval mystery plays, but revitalizes them with Britten's characteristic asperity. A dominant God, for which one might read authority, society and patriarchal values, demands that Abraham sacrifice his beloved son. Exquisitely beautiful cadences, gruesomely horrible meanings. Iestyn Davies is a much better Isaac than David Daniels was eleven years ago. Davies's voice is purer, stronger, less rococo and much more idiomatic. Isaac agrees to being sacrificed, which suggests that he's more than a typical "innocent". Like the Boy in Curlew River, (another key work in which Britten explores stylized symbolism), Isaac's death has redemptive power. This time it's God who is moved and relents. Britten's Innocents are not as passive as one might think.

Still Falls the Rain (1955), based on Edith Sitwell's poem about the Blitz, is even more equivocal. A horn drones (Richard Watkins). It evokes the sound of an air raid siren, the drone of a bomber's engine, the sound of vast mechanical processes grinding away, mindless and impersonal. The staging was particularly evocative. We saw the white cliffs of Dover, as pale as the bodies of innocents, then shots of munitions factories churning out missiles - pointedly phallic. The gloom is punctuated by staccato piano,  making the connection between bombs and the hundreds of nails in the Holy Cross, and in Christ's body. Julius Drake played with adamant ferocity. This isn't pretty music, even when the horn leaps into a jaunty march. Bostridge sings the long arching lines so they ache and tantalize. Wails of agony or something more?  The poem is a curious blend of religion and the horror of war. Britten suggests that there might be even stranger, possibly erotic elements. Consider Isaac's sacrifice, and ultimately the surreal imagery in Canticle Five, written when Britten himself was confronting death.

Bostridge, Davies and Drake are joined by baritone Benedict Nelson for the fourth Canticle.  The Journey of the Magi (1971) may seem oddly quaint after the drama of Still Falls the Rain  The Three Kings speak in matter-of-fact conversation. They're preoccupied with the coldness of the night and the physical difficulties of travel. The birth of the child at Bethlehem seems almost an afterthought. Yet listen to the curious blending of the three voices. This isn't a chorale.

In 1974, Britten was so ill that he could not play the piano. The Death of St. Narcissus is thus scored for harp (Sally Pryce). The harp gives this last Canticle a curiously ethereal quality. Its strings seem to shimmer, evoking light and frragility. But is this light the natural light we'd expect from the modern equivalent of an arcadian lute?  At first, we're lured into the shadow of a rock, lured by "something different". The poem, by T S Eliot, blends references from classical antiquity with the image of St Sebastien, pierced by arrows, dying for one he loved. Quite probably, Britten didn't read Yukio Mishima on St Sebastien, but he must have understood that the symbolism wasn't strictly Catholic.  Someone, perhaps a tree, a girl, or a fish, has been ravished and corrupted. But the poem continues. "because his flesh was in love with the burning arrows, he danced on the hot sand until the arrows came. As he embraced them, his white skin surrendered itself to the redness of blood and satisfied him". How does one read this image?  One thinks of Tadzio, dancing on the beach in Venice, watched by dry, doomed Aschenbach. Perhaps Britten is contemplating beauty, fragility and the nature of creative life.

Barbican Britten Curlew River Bostridge review

Perhaps if I hadn't been looking forward so much to the Barbican Britten Curlew River, I would have been less disappointed. Tradition dictates that Curlew River should be done in a church because that's how it was first done in Britten's time. But what counts above all else is artistic merit.  If this had been a concert staging, in the Barbican Hall or Barbican Theatre, this Curlew River might have worked. St Giles Cripplegate is just all wrong for this. It's the wrong period, for one thing, its late Reformation and Puritan connections unsympathetic to the mysticism of the early Dark Ages fens, where being a Christian was something to be remarked upon. As a work of art, Curlew River is strong enough to make a powerful impact on its own terms, without needing a specific setting.

The physical constraints of St Giles don't make for good theatre. The nave became an extended stage,. Netia Jones's film projections were good, their monochrome starkness appropriate for the piece, but their impact was  spoiled because they could only be seen in full by the orchestra. Sightlines were blocked by pillars. The audience was crammed into the margins of the building. Perhaps one should not feel comfortable in Curlew River, but neither should the experience be penitential. Stages are usually horizontal for a very good reason. The Procession is important to the meaning of this piece,. Though the monks did walk down the nave,  they were kept busy changing their clothes while the Britten Sinfonia played. While the monks do become protagonists in the drama, this re-costuming is a clumsy misuse of space.

Fortunately, when Ian Bostridge started to sing, the drama at last began to kick in. The Madwoman is sneered at because, in her extreme grief, she has lost all conventional decorum. She''s an aristocrat but wanders alone in the wilds, wailing. Her speech is too "high born", too alien for the Fensmen. For me, this is critical to interpretation because the Madwoman is an outsider, a refined person of taste, driven to behave in extremes by the loss of her son, her pride and joy. Bostridge sings the part with all its contortions, fragments and wayward swoops, but does the staging show him trying to knit while he sits on the ferry?  She's no ordinary Mum. After the Madwoman hears the story of the Boy and his death, Bostridge's voice became firm, with almost demonic force. For all we know,  the Madwoman conjures up the vision of the Boy in her mind? Bostridge's purposeful singing suggests that she does have that kind of creative strength. Bostridge was  relatively restrained, considering what he could do with the part, given the right staging, but this bland directing was not the occasion. .No doubt the Madwoman finds peace hearing that the dead will rise. But why do the river people treat the Boy as a saint and giver of miracles?  The plaintive cry of the curlew recurs, suggesting primitive animist mysteries, and the "Japanese" cadences suggest alien worlds where western doctrine has no meaning. There is a lot more to Curlew River than straightforward Christianity.

Mark Stone sang the down-to earth Ferryman  and Neal Davies the Traveller, like the Madwoman, an outsider from places beyond. Gwynne Howell sang the Abbot, grown weary with experience, and Duncan Tarboton sang the Boy, as youthful as the Abbot is old.  William Lacey directed the Britten Sinfonia. Unfortunately, St Giles is perpendicular, so voices are funnelled upwards and muffled. Only Bostridge, right in the middle of the nave was fully audible. With a cast as good as this, it was a waste of good singers.

More thoughts : fomal ritual is central to the interpretation. In the original production Britten supervised, the ,monlks worte masks, the way Noh actors did.  It intensifies the surreal emotional distance so important to the piece. If Britten was writing "naturalistric" why then the use of Japanese form and cadences ? Why not simply writre it like Waly Waly ? Perhaps audiences prefer Britten minus his music.. It's sad that this anniversary years should be taught to disregard the music. If German directors tr8ed this, audiences would scream "Regie!"

More on Benjamin Britten on this site than only any other non specialist site. Please explore ! For Curlew River please read here and here. For Netia Jones please read here and here. (Knussen's Sendak operas, Jones's best work to date. This Curlew River,was an amateurish, superficial  Sunday School homily in comparison. See also the comment below. The Barbican should be professional enough to look after its customers properly.

Britten War Requiem Pappano Bostridge Hampson Netrebko

The new EMI  recording of Britten's War Requiem with Antonio Pappano, Ian Bostridge, Thomas Hampson and Anna Netrebko could re-shape the way the piece is heard. That's not necessarily a bad thing as we get into lazy habits if we expect to hear the same thing done the same way all the time. All too often, performance practice smothers music under a fire blanket of false familiarity. Instead of listening to the music, we end up listening to what we think the music "ought" to be, which is not at all the same thing.

Britten's War Requiem is specially prone to that kind of non-listening. It's dangerous. With so many performances of the piece coming up, it's high time to ditch the baggage that's accrued to the piece and listen to it on its own terms.  What IS the War Requiem ? Everyone knows it was written to mark the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral, but what does it really mean?

First piece of baggage to ditch: it's not part of the British choral tradition, unless we assume all choral music is "British" and traditional. Britten uses the Requiem Mass format, just ass hundreds of composers have done before and since. But is he using it in a traditional, religious way? Yes, in the sense that the piece concludes with virtues Christianity espouses, in theory. The Mass gives the piece structure but it's a starting point, not an end in itself. Far more original is the way Britten creates the piece as a paean to Wilfred Owen.

Wilfred Owen came from a family who had aspirations far greater than their actual income. He couldn't afford public school or university so his route to education was to enter the church. It wasn't a vocation. He suffered what seems like a massive breakdown and went to France - before the war. Joining the army came later. Not at all a steady career progression. Owern was middle class, "new" Britain, gay and an outsider, who made his own way. A lot like Britten himself. So approaching the War Requiem as music, and through Owen, suggests very different interpretations from than conventional performance practice - a "tradition" of only 50 years.

Antonio Pappano's Britten War Requiem is electrifying. He approaches the piece as drama, ditching the baggage of piety. Pappano understands the violent climaxes and sudden, shattering cut-offs into silence. This is "modern" music, just as Coventry Cathedral was rebuilt as modern architecture. Angularity, strength, unsettling discordance - much closer to meaning. Ditch Abraham's willingness to sacrifice, and Isaac's meek subservience. If people break the cycle of blind obedience, they can stand up to society's dependence on war as a means of resolving conflict. Pappano conducts the Choir and Orchestra of the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome, who aren't subservient to British and Brittenish baggage. This orchestral playing and choral singing is exceptionally intense, so the piece re-emerges vividly and violently anew. I'm reeling from the impact. I don't know where this was recorded, but it puts paid to the myth that the War Requiem "needs"church acoustics. Packaging doesn't make a piece work. Performance (and intelligent listening) does.

Soloists are Ian Bostridge, Thomas Hampson and Anna Netrebko. Bostridge is the ne plus ultra of Britten performance. His voice evokes the elusive qualities that make Britten so unique - qualities so disturbing that society in his time might not have been able to cope with. Britten's a hard nut to crack because he's oblique, evading easy scrutiny, even perhaps to himself. Now perhaps times have changed and we can begin to grasp his true originality. Bostridge's Agnus Dei suggests a terrifying image, glowing with surreal, apocalyptic light.

Hampson's anti-war credentials run very deeply indeed, and here he sings with sincere commitment, striking even in a career full of intense, passionate performances. He's too honest to attempt to sound German though he probably could since he sometimes slips into the accent when he's not singing, since he speaks German all the time. For Wilfred Owen, "war" meant the Somme. First World War propaganda was crudely racist. By connecting to The Boche as human beings rather than as barbarians, Owen was making a powerful statement. What Coventry suffered was minimal compared with what was happening elsewhere, but it was symbolic. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's presence at the premiere was essential. This is a performance practice worth respecting because it embeds meaning on a very deep level. On the other hand, it's not easy to sing, so if top German soloists like DFD or Goerne aren't available, it's better to use a good non-German, and Hampson is as German as any native English speaker could be.

Anna Netrebko, a Britten specialist?  I wouldn't expect her to sing The Governess or Les Illuminations but here's she's excellent. Britten's championship of Shostakovich and Rostopovich gave them an international profile that protected them from the full force of Soviet repression. A Russian soloist is also valid performance practice, though the text is in Latin. The soloists doesn't have to sound "Russian" whatever that might be, as long as she can create the part musically. It functions at the pinnacle of the choir, surrounded by other voices, much in the way the Archangel St Michael stands out from other angels. St Michael is a warrior who, in the Book of Revelation, defeats Satan and heralds the End of Time when the dead shall be raised. He's also one of the few angels in the Old Testament. The part brings Russia and the Holocaust into the War Requiem, otherwise so much a memorial to the Western Front. Netrebko sings with fiery, operatic intensity, absolutely in keeping with what the part may mean.  One reason why the War Requiem is often misunderstood is because listeners are more attuned to conventional big displays rather than to the real narrative of the piece which pivots around the quirky, surreal settings of Owen's poems and on the two male protagonists. The female soloist and the choir(s) serve as illuminating backdrop. The female soloists shouldn't dominate, but Netrebko' projects such strong personality that she makes you want to cheer.

More on Britten here than on any non dedicated site

Britten War Requiem Jurowski Bostridge Goerne LPO

Ian Bostridge and Matthias Goerne are an ideal partnership in Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, as demonstrated at the Royal Festival Hall with Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Bostridge and Goerne's voices complement each other perfectly. Between them they cover the whole range in the score but, much more importantly, they access the deepest levels of meaning.

Britten's War Requiem is now played so often that it's become the very kind of warhorse Britten did not want it to become.  It's often performed in churches because it was written for Coventry Cathedral,. But few remember that the Cathedral was completely built anew, a statement of faith in modernity and the power of change. The War Requiem references the past, but celebrates new beginnings. Far too often, it's performed as a soothing act of public piety, instead of challenging complacency. How can we, who have known the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Stalingrad, Dresden, Nanjing  and the endless wars of attrition in the Middle East, find meaning in a piece which refers to the Western Front in the First World War and the Latin Mass? By treating Britten's War Requiem as music, as opposed to reverential ritual, Jurowski and his soloists restore it to a drama of human conflict and surreal transformation.

As with his Peter Grimes (reviewed here) Jurowski's approach focuses on the intrinsic musical form, free from received performance practice. The very structure suggests fragmentation, which Jurowski wisely doesn't smooth over. An unusual chamber orchestra, with two harps, emerges from a more conventional full orchestra and choir. The brass in the Dies Irae sounded military rather than heavenly, matching the tense march rhythms in the chorus. An explosive, violent atmosphere, for war is neither romantic nor patriotic. "Bugles sang, saddening the evening air", sang Goerne, dark tones supported by horn, lit up by solo flute. The tenor/baritone passage felt like a joust - short, sharp thrusts, parried swiftly.  Brief choral respite before "Great gun towering toward Heaven" Goerne sang."May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!". No solace here. When Bostridge sang "Move him into the sun", he created an eerie atmosphere, suggesting the strange, unsteady light and stillness that can descend over battlefields when tumult subsides. Far more perceptive than pure sweetness of timbre. "Was it for this the clay grew tall"?

The "Abraham and Isaac" passage in the Offertorium was superbly surreal. One minute, we're in a battlefield and now witness Abraham in biblical times slaying  his son and "half the seed of Europe, one by one." Then suddenly, we're transferred to the Sanctus and its ringing bells, suggesting a holy point in the Mass.  The soprano, Evelina Dobraceva, substituting for Tatiana Monogarova, sang with great purity. But what sort of "Hosanna" is this?  Tiny, tense figures in the orchestra, suggesting unease. Pounding timpani. Goerne sang powerfully, but with restraint and clarity "Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified, nor my titanic tears, the sea, be dried". The baritone part is traditionally taken by a German, for extra-musical reasons, but I think it also works because the singer's accent emphasizes the universal timelessness of the piece.  Latin, furthermore, is a language everyone can connect to but no-one really knows how it's pronounced, nor ever will.

From this arises the Agnus Dei. Bostridge sang with truly incandescant intensity. This is no conventional "Lamb who takest away the sins of the world"..The text is Wilfred Owen, who gave up the church. Bostridge held the high, final "Dona nobis pacem" so it seemed to float off into the ether, suggesting cosmic mysteries we can intuit but not completely comprehend.

Swirling dissonance in Libera Me, cross-currents in the choruses well articulated. "Tremens factus sum ego" sang Dobraceva, her voice rising to near-scream. The orchestra seemed to explode, cymbals crashed, and a wall of wild, waving sound engulfed the auditorium. Then Bostridge with minimal accompaniment. "...no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan".  Perhaps we are in some strange no-man's land, or afterlife? Bostridge's instinctive feel for the surreal reached apotheosis. "Strange friend", he sang "Here is no cause to mourn". The depth of Goerne's timbre suggested a voice rising from the grave, or from the depths of the earth. The men were surrounded by the small ensemble, so each subtle detail can be heard clearly: two violins, oboe, two harps, creating a sense of separation from the orchestra and from the world.  Owen's Strange Meeting describes enemies meeting on common ground, away from past conflicts, so it's a good reason for using German singers. (Russians and women weren't really in his remit).   "I am the enemy you killed, my friend" sang Goerne with gentleness, "I knew you in this dark". No rancour, no bitterness now, but a new dawn of reconciliation.

Please see my review of the new CD Britten War Requiem : Pappano, Bostridge, Hampson, Nebtrenko.   Orchestrally and choir wise, Pappano/Accademia Ste Cecilia Rome leaves Jurowski/LPO for dead  Bostridge and Goerne, however were outstanding because they fitted so well together and got the surreal, danegrous quality of the texts more instinctively.
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Claire Seymour, author of The Operas of Benjamin Britten, reviews this concert for Opera Today.

Exceptionally well written review Tippett Britten Elgar Prom 51

An exceptionally well-written review of Prom 51 Tippett, Britten and Elgar, Daniel Harding and Ian Bostridge. Read it HERE in Opera Today. It's by Claire Seymour, which is why it's so well informed and analyzed. If only more music writing were on this level!

On Tippett : "In the Adagio cantabile Harding placed more emphasis on the adagio than cantabile. The conductor took a risk not only with the tempo, but also with the dynamics, resisting the temptation to let the arching lines grow and swell, restraining the strings to a mezzo piano.

On Britten : "Bostridge totally immersed himself in this work, musically, emotionally and physically, at times leaning (dangerously?) far backwards, elsewhere thrusting his hands nonchalantly in his pockets, sometimes fixing his eye confrontationally on the audience. Willing to throw caution to the winds, Bostridge gave a technically flawless account, the arresting characterisation absolutely convincing. It is hard to imagine a better performance of Britten’s thrilling song-cycle. "

.On Elgar : "The racing scherzo, by contrast, wickedly transformed the theme of the first movement into a nightmarish vision of horror, and there was plenty of pomp and majesty in the final ‘Moderato e maestoso’, although here again the recapitulation did not fully achieve a sense of liberating affirmation. But, the final bars were wonderfully contemplative and whispered; a shame, then, that the spell-binding silence that Harding desired was shattered by overly hasty, impatient applause."

Dangerous Britten, Tippett and Elgar Prom 51

Rebels at the BBC Proms? In Prom 51, Daniel Harding conducted Tippett, Britten and Elgar with the LSO and Ian Bostridge. British greats, yes. But nothing Establishment.The Fanfare from Tippett's The Mask of Time might have heralded a conventionally stolid celebration of British music, but Harding drew out the "secret" background. This time, the Fanfare blasted us back to 1939, and the Concerto for Double String Orchestra. Context matters, for England was on the verge of war. Tippett, being politically aware could hardly have been confident or cheerful.  In the Concerto, Tippett builds conflict, pitting the two parts of the orchestra against each other and creates a sense of divisiveness by combining themes that seem loosely connected. Free of slogans and earnest wordiness, he expresses himself more effectively through abstract music. The Concerto works in purely musical terms because it isn't elevated agit prop (though that can make great music too). Its angular, jagged edges engage us in self doubt and contradiction. Prince Charles might find it all a bit too "modern" but this is Tippett at his best.

Benjamin Britten's Les Illuminations also starts with a Fanfare, but the strings are jerky and nervous, crackling with tension.  Les Illuminations was also written on the verge of war, when Britten was in despair about the future of Europe and his own future as a composer who wanted to create something new and original but hadn't quite found his mission. Although the text is in French, it is a mistake to assume that Les Illuminations is French music or that it must be performed in a French style.

It's vital, in performance, to appreciate what Britten (whose command of French was poor) was trying to do. Rimbaud's poems are short outbursts of feverish emotion. The imagery is highly condensed  meaning elusive. You can almost feel Rimbaud hyperventilating. Having escaped the bourgeois confines of provincial France, Rimbaud was intoxicated by London and its frantic sense of modernity but he was desperately poor. He completed Les Illuminations while working in a garrett in Reading, trying to scrape a living. Britten respects the almost kaleidoscopic fragmentation of ideas  by breaking words up into individual sounds, then elides lines into dizzying freefall. The last thing you want is "conversational". Bostridge captures the sense of surreal, almost hysterical psychic dislocation, so fundamental to interpretation. Again and again, the phrase ""J'ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage!" explodes  as ecstatic revelation, but each time with slightly different colouring. Perhaps there is no "key" other than the immediacy of the moment.

"Tourillons, tourillons", turbulent, sudden switches of timbre and pace. Bostridge draws out the extreme in the music, reaching ethereally high pitches, growling along low passages, colouring sounds with sensual nuance. The piece was originally performed by a soprano, perhaps because the deepest levels in the piece might have been too hard to cope with in Britten's buttoned-up Britain.. Bostridge brings out the profound danger in the piece, twisting his tongue and projecting sound as if savouring some mind-altering potion, enjoying the delicious challenge of things unknown. Perhaps the violin solo functions as the snake offering an apple in Eden? Bostridge and Harding have been doing Britten together for years, developing a singularly original and very perceptive approach. Their recording of Our Hunting Fathers is absolutely brilliant, as is their Billy Budd. (more here). Perhaps some might prefer their Britten sweeter and prettier, but for me Britten's music can't really be performed by "ordinary" tenors. Imagine Placido Domingo!

Elgar's Symphony no 2 (1911)  is stylistically so adventurous, (for its time and place) that one wonders if the composer might have felt he was entering new territory he might not want to examine too closely, rather like Sibelius on the completion of his last great works. Harding emphasizes the clarity with which Elgar contrasts divergent themes. We hear the familiar "warm" Elgar confidence, but also a more subtle sense of unease, in the best and most creative sense of the word. Without a degree of soul searching and questioning, can good art exist? Elgar, despite his worldly honours and clubbability, was essentially an "outsider" as all true artists are on some level.  Listen to the whole broadcast HERE.  And for an exceptionally well informed and well written review of this Prom, read Claire Seymour in Opera Today.

Night and cloud : Britten Sinfonia, Bostridge, Barbican

Here is a link to Claire Seymour's review in Opera Today of the Britten Sinfonia concert at the Barbican.  Interesting that they paired Schubert's Notturno for piano trio with Britten's Nocturne. Hands down Britten came off best. I wondered how the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth would work out with small (ish) ensemble

"Although technically accomplished, the Mahlerian climaxes were a little underwhelming; it’s just not possible to attain the lustrous, penetrating string sound required with such a small number of players. But, there was a clear sense of contour and overall structure, and a haunting ambience was established.

"............Fortunately, Bostridge raised the level of expressivity and musicianship in Britten’s Nocturne for tenor, seven obbligato instrumental soloists and strings. Here Britten’s nuanced scoring allowed the voice, and text, to come across clearly, even in the more dream-like, shaded passages. The individual movements melted into one another as Bostridge conveyed both the rapture and ethereality of night-time worlds. The woodwind soloists were all excellent - the cor anglais was touchingly beautiful in Wilfred Owen’s ‘The Kind Ghosts’, in Keats’ ‘Sleep and Poetry’ clarinet and flute danced an elegant arabesque, and there was some impressive virtuosic bassoon playing. The final movement, a setting of Shakespeare’s ‘When most I wink’ (Sonnet 43) possessed a rhetorical stateliness which was quite troubling, Britten’s setting of the final lines - ‘All days are nights to see till I see thee,/ And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me’ - disturbing in its restless intensity and visceral impact."

Wolf with Wit - Bostridge Daneman Drake Wigmore Hall

Fun and Hugo Wolf ? Wolf's songs are the epitome of art song, due great reverence. But they're also vibrant with good-hearted wit. This latest concert in Julius Drake's ongoing "Perspectives" series at the Wigmore Hall brought together  Sophie Daneman, Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake, all of whom have been working together for many years, and the chemistry was almost palpable. The Wigmore Hall, with its small size and good acoustic, is specially suited to Lieder recitals, but this concert had an unusually intimate immediacy.

Given Wolf's exceptional feeling for poetry, any interpretations must be influenced by the texts he chose. In this recital, we heard songs by Eduard Mörike.and Goethe, each of which Wolf turns into a miniature opera distilled into purest form. Some of these songs are character studies like Abschied where a critic is kicked downstairs to mock waltzes and garishly manic melodies. There's so much action in this song that it could be expanded into monodrama, but Wolf doesn't overpower the simplicity of Mörike's text. Apart from the droll, and very pointed, reference to Viennese taste,  Wolf writes with the precision of a Lieder composer. Even when Wolf sets more abstract texts, like   Selbstgeständnis, a soliloquy where the single child considers a family dynamic different to his own, the focus is on the protagonist's inner life, and on the poem.

Wolf may have been prickly, but he was an acute observer, and very empathic towards others. From Frank Walker's biography, still the best after 60 years, we get a much more rounded sense of his personality than accounts of his death might suggest. Perhaps his sensitivity to others might explain his respect for the individuality of the poets he set. Wolf's songs, be they settings of Mörike, Eichendorff, Goethe or Heyse, are informed by an interest in people and the siuations they get into.  This good-hearted warmth runs throughout his work. This Wigmore Hall recital was a delight, because it connected to that fundamental humanity in Wolf's music.

Wolf creates character with great subtlety,  In Agnes, for example, a young woman has a ribbon in her hat, which flutters gently in the wind. Daneman sang quietly, as a maiden might. The piano, however,  expresses what a demure girl dare not say. Just as the ribbon flutters. the girl's heart beats wildly at the thought of the man who gave her the ribbon, who has now betrayed her. Often the postlude fades unnoticed, but Drake emphasizes the "fluttering" figures, reinforcing their impact by following Agnes with Lied vom Winde, where notes explode forcefully,  "Sausewind, Brausewind, Dort von hier!". Drake reinforced the connection with the "fluttery" images before the final strophe. "Lieb ist wier Wind....... nicht immer beständig". This wind is capricious but not destructive.  As it blows away, the words "Kindlien, Ade!" repeat three times, suggesting that winds, like love, can return. The connection was made again in An eine Äolsharfe where Drake played the postlude so beautifully that he evoked the magical world of nature spirits that inspired Eduard Mörike.

Like Wolf, Mörike had what we might today recognize as psychological issues, but he also had a jaunty sense of irreverence that gives so much of his work a defiant vitality, which Wolf picks up on. Abschied, for eample, touched on a painful subject for Wolf, who was a music critic as was Eduard Hanslick. Behind the slapstick humour in this song lies the suffering and frustration that would later drive Wolf insane. Sensitivity is important in an artist, so ill-intentioned nit-picking isn't constructive.  Wolf and Mörike.suggest that an artist, being creative, will triumph over the venality around him. Bostridge's performance was superb, conveying bite as well as wit. Every consonant sharply enunciated, crisp, confident, even defiant.

Storchenbotshaft  has long been a Bostridge/Drake speciality. The song is funny, and we join in the shepherd's shock as he learns he's become the father of twins. Yet the poem is Mörike, and there's an element of the supernatural. Wolf writes jerky, angular figures into the music which suggests the way storks move, but also conveys a heightened sense of excitement that borders on panic. "Ein Geistlein, ein Hexlein, so wustige Wicht", each phrase defined by just the right short gasp. Is the shepherd altogether happy?  One of Bostridge's great strengths as an artist is his intuitive ability to access deep, often disturbing undercurrents in the music he sings. His Britten is exceptional.  Over the years, his Wolf has developed true maturity.

In the Goethe songs, Daneman was charming. Her Blumengruß was lustrous, and her Cophtisches Lied I and II nicely articulated. Bostridge was frech und froh in the two Frech und Froh songs, and created Gutmann und Gutweib bringing out the riotous humour. For an encore, Daneman, Bostridge and Drake did an excellent Schubert Licht und Liebe (Matthäus von Collin). As duet, the words "süßes Licht" entwine deliciously.

The surprise of the evening, though, happened while Daneman sang Wolf's Epiphanias.  The door behind the stage opened. In walked a boy dressed as a Wise Man, bearing a gift. He was followed by two other boys in costume, and then a little girl, dressed asd a fairy, waving a wand with a star at its apex! The song was written on 27 December 1888, while Wolf was spending the holidays with the Köchert family. In Goethe's time and quite likely in late 19th century Vienna, household masques like this weren't unknown: indeed, Goethe staged a presentation of this very poem at Weimar in 1781. Moreover, people used to have processions door-to-door bearing a star. The parallel with Wagner's children serenading Cosima on her birthday wouldn't have been lost on Wolf if he'd known.  Wolf had a long-term love affair with Melanie Köchert, with the tacit approval of her husband, Wolf's patron and friend. Evidently they all got on, so Wolf was able to rehearse the Köchert children and play the piano. The song was a gift of friendship, a love song in code (Read more here). This time, at the Wigmore Hall,  two of the children were Bostridges and the younger pair were Daneman's children.  All four moved solemnly in time to the music, with great dignity.  It was hilarious, and also magical. It showed Hugo Wolf as "family man", loving and loved. For years, I've dreamed of interpretations that would access this aspect of Wolf's idiom. Thanks to Drake, Bostridge and Daneman (and their kids), that dream is  fulfilled.

For more detail, read the full review in Opera Today

Henze Six Songs from the Arabian, Bostridge, Wigmore Hall

Hans Werner Henze's Six Songs from the Arabian is a masterpiece,  perfectly tailored to Ian Bostridge for whom it was written. It captures the unique qualities of Bostridge's voice which so intrigued the composer, who could recognize originality when he heard it.  Thirteen years ago, Bostridge and Julius Drake premiered the cycle at the Wigmore Hall,  so it was fitting that it should feature as the finale of the current Wigmore Hall season.

Henze is a dramatist, and each of the Six Songs from the Arabian is a miniature drama. Selim the seafarer laughs as he sails into a storm. Drake makes the piano growl and rumble. This is a psychic storm, whipped up by supernatural beings. Henze quotes the witches' song from Goethe's Die erste Walpurgisnacht. It's a reference to Bostridge's doctorate in witchcraft studies, and to the undercurrent of cosmic chaos that runs through both Goethe and Henze. The piano part rumbles, then breaks into choppy ostinato. "Sieh, da flammt, da zieht das Böse!", Bostridge cries out of the silence, the key word "Böse" leaping out of the line like a whip of thunder. "Es pfeifen die Windsbräute, heulen und scrheiun" (Henze's text). Selim is shipwrecked. The storm is also a reference to Prospero and Caliban, to Bostridge (who was to create a magnificent Caliban in Thomas Adès The Tempest) and to Henze's interest in Britten, Britain and Shakespeare. Suddenly the storm stops and the true horror sinks in. "Selim, ach, Selim", growls Bostridge sotto voce, "was hast du gemacht"?

Similar multiple references in Die Gottesanbeterin.  Henze writes this as an arabesque, with exotic melismas that suggest Islamic prayer, for Selim needs divine help. Henze is also establishing an "oriental" otherness. The text describes a praying mantis. It's a reference to Alberto Giacometti's sculptures, to the insect with its hard exoskeleton, and to mating rituals that end in death.  Henze writes with symbolist intensity : the insect, for example looks powerful but is vulnerable within. "I am not praying" says the seductive female, "I seize my lover and subdue him at our wedding feast". Henze has said that Selim and Fatuma were real people he knew in Kenya. What must he have observed from their relationship?  Their lives were humble, but Henze gives them mythic status/ The song is not a poem but a monologue where phrasing is critically important. This is where Bostridge shows his virtuosity, his voice curling round words then spitting venomously as he describes the heterosexual act. There's little room for rest, since the lines twist and turn in one long sequence.

To emphasize the supernatural trauma, Henze does not follow normal syntax, stressing words for their musical quality. Hence stresses on words like "Baum" "das", "schreit", "auf" to throw the listener off track. Bostridge knows that the last thing Henze wants is for these songs to be delivered in a straightforward manner. I've heard this cycle done as "normal" song, which completely misses Henze's point.  The composer knew that Bostridge understood.  Ein Sonnenaufgang describes sunrise over a desert Neimansland where volcanos shoot lava (also a reference to the insect ritual) and jewel colours are bleached white by the overpowering heat of the day to come. Drake plays adamant, sharp chords. Bostridge's voice elides and twists round Henze's bizarre legato. Landscape painting this is not.

At this stage in the cycle, Henze introduces Fatuma, though one might say that she's present in the praying mantis and in the female witches in the storm that destroyed Selim's ship. Cäsarion is also a reference to Shakespeare, Ceasar and Cleopatra, and power struggles of war and love. Again, Henze plays on words like "Runen", "unendlichkeit" and "Sensucht", stretching the vowel sounds so the voice resembles the call of a muezzin, reaching out over vast open spaces. Henze also references the European tradition of a dance of death, in the wildly rhythmic piano part. As Drake beats out the ritual dance, Bostridge's voice sails forth in long, keening lines: the contrast reinforcing the spirtual struggle in the cycle.

"Weh!" cries Bostridge as the mood switches to Fatuma and her side of things.  She loved Selim, but he brutalized her and cast her our to die in a cave where the life giving sun cannot reach.  "Fatuma genannt, die schonste Fatuma in ganzen Land", Henze replicates Selim's cruelty, making Bostridge sing superhumanly extended lines. I once counted the number of ululating aaaaaaaaa beats in these lines, astounded by the vocal gymnastics Henze puts Bostridge through, knowing he can deliver. It's the cry of a wounded Fury, a wild animal making one last gasp. In Fatumas Klage, Henze connects to the women in Die ertse Walpurgisnacht, and to all victims of cruelty and injustice through history. One could possibly read a whole political analysis into this work. Bostridge wrote that witches were victims of conformist societies who were threatened by those who were different. Henze experienced a form of witch hunt himself. This work shows how Henze's socialist conscience remains undimmed.

What does this cycle mean, with its intense, elusive symbols? Henze concludes with a poem by Freidrich Rückert, just as he began by quoting Goethe. Das Paradies is a fairly undistinguished poem, where the phrase "reiche mir dein Hand" ends nearly every line. Henze turns this weakness into a strength. He makes the phrase into a natural chorus, repeating like the waves beating on the beach where Selim washed ashore. He writes the phrase so it recalls the long aaaaa's and ooooo's that have gone before, but not the deliberately disjointed synrtax. At last, the significance of the Imam prayers is revealed, in secular context. "Meiner Erden Reisen is bedroht vom Fiend, wehre seinem Hasse, reiche mir diene Hand". In his spiritual maelstorm, Selim beats up Fatuma. Perhaps Henze is suggesting that an alternative might be to reach out and touch in a non-violent, non-erotic way. The turbulence that went before gives way to relative simplicity.  It's a moving tribute to the value of friendship.

Since Bostridge and Drake first recorded Henze's Six Songs from the Arabian in 2001 (buy it here), Bostridge's voice has developed and life experience has added immense maturity to his interpretation. This performance was an astounding tour de force, infinitely deeper than before, the technical challenges overcome with ease. Henze was right. Bostridge can bring out the surreal, psychic intensity in the Six Songs like no-one else. This concert was recorded, though there's no mention of for whom. If there'll be a CD release, grab it and marvel.

Bostridge should also be praised for the brilliantly intelligent concert programme itself, the culmination of his Wigmore Hall series "Ancient and Modern".  In the first half, he combined John Cage's Seven Haiku for piano  with Schubert's Four Rückert Lieder in a new arrangement for piano, guitar and voice by Xuefei Yang, and Britten's Songs from the Chinese. John Cage believed in the role of random chance. Each of the three times Cage's Seven Haiku were repeated they took on the coloration of what they were heard after. Cage felt that what we process what we listen to based on our expectations and experience. Beautifully pristine playing by Julius Drake,

 Xuefei Yang's transcription of Schubert for guitar were good. Schubert loved the instrument dearly and wrote for it.. Henze is one of the greatest modern composers for guitar, as did Britten. Yang played her lithe transcription with sparkling grace, so one could hear the connection between guitar, pipa and erhu, a stringed instument that often seems to sing like voice. This was particularly apposite for the Britten Songs from the Chinese op 58, where Britten captures the spirit, though not the form, of Chinese music.The Songs from the Chinese were written after Britten's visit to the Far East but reflect his lifelong interest in non-western music.  These influences are obvious, and cannot be underestimated, though they're ignored by those who don't know their Britten. Please read my piece on The Prince of the Pagodas and on Mervyn Cooke here.

In The Old Lute, Britten evokes not a western lute but the sound of the Chinese pipa, which is quite different. Yang's delicate playing suggests that Britten knew exactly what a pipa should sound like. Those who haven't heard the pipa miss out on the subtlety of Britten's writing. Henze was greatly influenced by Britten, and understood the strangeness that lurks behind Britten's music which many performers miss, no matter how superficially correct their singing.  It's not for nothing that Henze fell in love with Bostridge's voice after hearing him sing Britten at Aldeburgh in 1996. Henze's extensive experience in writing for voice meant he could appreciate how unique Bostridge is, and inspired him to write music no-one else can do justice to.

There'll be another review of this concert by Claire Seymour in Opera Today.Please explore this site, more on Britten, Henze, Bostridge, Schubert and Lieder than any other

Another pansy comes out too soon

Some of the live Lieder performances last week on the BBC Spirit of Schubert series were unremarkable but Ian Bostridge's Viola D783 was very good indeed, fresher than on his recording with Leif Ove Adnes (which is recommended). Viola isn't an easy song to pull off well, as there are 19 minimally varied rhyming strophes that take nearly 15 minutes to sing. But Bostridge does it sincerely, revealing its delicate sensitivity.

The text is by Franz von Schober, whose songs (like Die Forellen) often have raffish undertones. A snowdrop rings its bell to announce that Spring is on its way. The viola leaps awake, adorned as a bride in "den Mantel sammetblau, Nimmt das güldene Geschmeid, Und den Brilliantentau" (in a blue velvet cloak, adorned with gold and dew like diamonds). But it's not Spring yet. No bridegroom, no sister flowers. The viola hides, ashamed. Soon, roses, tulips, hyacinths and lilies come out in their finery but it's the humble viola whom Spring calls his "favourite child". The flowers are sent to search her out. (How Disney would have illustrated this!) The viola is found,  her head buried beneath her leaves. It's charming, but any gardener knows roses and lilies don't come out til much later. Or walk. Or think about bridegrooms. This is not a nature song!

Be charmed, too by Hugo Wolf's setting of Eduard Mörike's poem Zitronenfalter im April (HERE) and Karwoche, where violets are portents of death (HERE)

Aldeburgh Britten Rape of Lucretia Kirchschlager

Limited internet access just yet so I'll be brief,  but major news!  Last night at Aldeburgh, Benjamin Britten's Rape of Lucretia. Astounding performance, conducted by Oliver Knussen who understands Britten's deep inner quirkiness. Britten was never "Establishment". Snape is surrounded by reed beds. An outside observer might assume that they look orderly and tame, like soft grasses. But venture in and nothing is as it seems. Reeds are tough, they're used for building. They grow in marsh which is neither land nor water. Myriad wildlife - birds, insects, animals you won't find elsewhere. And through the reed beds at Snape continue on through the  whole delta to Aldeburgh and beyond.

So too with Britten. He's spikier, tougher, rougher than one might think, and the undercurrents in his work flow in murky, mysterious ways.  The orchestra was the Aldeburgh Festival Ensemble, thirteen hand-picked musicians,  top players from big-name orchestras.  Knussen's quirky too, in a different way, but that helps him access the more disturbing currents in Britten that perhaps reveal more about his art.  Knussen  highlights the dark murmurings, the shimmering harp and violins.  Vocal parts merge with orchestral. Britten opera isn't like conventional opera,  the dramatis personae grow from the music, rather than from the narrative as such. Hence the Male and Female Chorus, which comment, fill in background, and expresses what the characters cannot say. Britten's drama isn't naturalistic, but stylized. It isn't simply because Britten's writing quasi-Greek (Early Roman) narrative.

This emotional opaqueness is very much Britten's personal signature. As a man and as an artist, he shielded his deepest sensitivities. Clubbable he wasn't. Thank goodness! But that is also why The Rape of Lucretia is dismissed by those who don't realy understand Britten's work.  He was fascinated by early forms of music, seeking means oif expression that weren't 19th century verismo. Hence Midsummers Nights Dream and Gloriana, for example where form itself becomes integral to meaning. Britten uses structure as an emotional cloaking device. Penetrate the code, as Knussen does, and The Rape of Lucretia makes even more sense. Lucretia  is yet another Britten innocent, destroyed by the venality of the public world. This rape isn't erotic but a weapon of political aggression.

Ian Bostridge and Susan Gritton sang the Male and Female choruses. Both excellent, but Bostridge was outstanding. He can be very variable, but when he's inspired like this, he's transformed.  No-one , not even Peter Pears, intuits Britten's inner conflicts like Bostridge does.  His voice seems to hover, suggesting cryptic nuances beneath the surface. His voice curls and twists, slithering along the arch, stylized lines, so the sharp, crisp consonants cut into the legato. Diction as drama. This duality expresses the quirkiness of Britten's way of disguising emotion behind studied reserve.

Britten's female characters aren't often particularly feminine, but Angelika Kirchschlager brings out Lucretia's vulnerability so well that the horror of what happens to her is heart-rending. Kathleen Ferrier's Lucretia created the mould, but Ferrier's personal vulnerabilities were never far from the surface. She was statuesque but not a statue. Kirchschlager doesn't look quite so imposing, but she expresses her emotional strength with a combination of gentleness and firm modulation.  She feels like a real woman, in contrast with the male-oriented power politics of the world around her. Kirchschlager's Lucretia is an uncommonly prescient understanding of Britten's psyche.

Non-staging concentrates minds on the music, which in Britten is so much a part of the drama that it's clear why he didn't worry too much about writing symphonies per se. In his opera, the orchestra functions as part of the narrative. Male, female and orchestral choruses, one might say.  Excellently focussed,  Claire Booth in fine form as Lucia; Hilary Summers not at her best, but still better than many.  Christopher Purves sang Collatinus, Benjamin Russell Junius and Peter Coleman-Wright Tarquinius. When Christopher Maltman did the role ten years ago, he did it naked. Marvellous sexual malevolence, like a wild animal.  Coleman-Wright instead develops Tarquinius's inner animal, for his Etruscan origins make him an outsider in the competitive, macho world of new Rome.

This production moves on the Holland Festival in Amsterdam next week, and then on to the Grand Théatre de Luxembourg. It was also as being recorded, so let's hope it's released on CD, as well as the broadcast on Radio 3.  This performance is a landmark in Britten interpretation, so it needs to be heard.  Longer review to come when I can use 2 windows at once.
PS !!! A reader just told me that there is a very rare recording on Amazon - Britten's Rape of Lucrezia Borgia ! Sure enough, click on the link. Imagine.....

Winterreise Bostridge Uchida Wigmore Hall

I've heard Winterreise so many times over the years I've lost count. Hundreds! And I've heard Ian Bostridge and Mitsuko Uchida do Winterreise several times (their CD is good). What could be new? But my friend who has heard almost as many Winterreises as me (and as many Bostridge recitals) went to Bostridge and Uchida at the Wigmore Hall last week and heard refreshing and rethought. READ the review in Opera Today. Really good Lieder performers are doing a kind of emotional workout as they connect to the music and poetry. In fact it's much the same too for the listener. The more you put in, the more you get out.

Coming up : Pelléas et Mélisande at the Barbican - wonderful and truly Francophone, even Keenlyside. But what happens? Loud, long boo from some smartass in the audience. Someone so clever he needs to prove it to the world. Some people are only happy when they're miserable, and make sure everyone is miserable too. It was Natalie Dessay's Birthday. Extra bunches of flowers, and the whole cast and orchestra sang "Happy Birthday".