Glyndebourne magic at home - Ravel L'enfant et les sortilèges

L'enfant et les sortilèges - Teapot (François Piolino) Child (Khatouna Gadelia) Chinese Cup (Elodie Méchain) Credit Simon Annand

 Glyndebourne at home, minus the garden. Champagne and strawberries optional. But a glorious chance to experience once more the magic of Ravel L'enfant et les sortilèges, in the Laurent Pelly production.  In L'enfant et les sortilèges, the world is seen through the eyes of a child, still full of wonder, too young to be locked into rigid assumptions : innocent, yet still  aware that there might be darker forces lurking just beyond.  This isn't an opera that can be approached literally, with the judgementalism that some adults might prefer.   Pelly, however, captures its elusive delicacy, where magical thinking co-exists with an awareness that harsh reality will eventually intrude, even on the pure in spirit.  "L'enfant et les sortilèges" said Pelly, "lasts about 45 minutes, but has the depth of an opera of three or four hours".This production's timeless, endlessly refreshing. What a joy it is to experience its freedom again via Glyndebourne streaming, especially in these times when it seems that the world seems bent on self destruction.

The combination of this L'enfant et les sortilèges, from 2012, with Pelly's much earlier L'heure espagnole underlines the freshness of Pelly's conception.  In  L'heure espagnole the adult figures are cynical, as inhuman and as inhumane as the clocks Torquemada surrounds himself with. Machines can be controlled to suit. Torquemada's a classic case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, where process means more than goal, the need to regulate a mask for existential anxiety.  Concepción thinks she can escape by playing men off against each other, but she, too, is operating on clockwork. Everyone in  L'heure espagnole is trapped in an infernal machine they don't even recognise : no-one's happy, or innocent.

The 2012 Glyndebourne cast was brilliant - Stéphanie d'Oustrac and Kathleen Kim, for starters ! Altogether unforgettable !  Please see my original review from the premiere  and also my interview with Laurent Pelly.

Longing for Paradise : Albrecht Mayer, Strauss Oboe Concerto

"Longing for Paradise", oboe concertos by Richard Strauss, Elgar, Ravel and Goosens with Albrecht Mayer, and Jakub Hrůša conducting the Bamberger Symphoniker, new from Deutsche Grammophon.  "How does an emotional, sensitive and romantic composer react when faced with the reality of war and a destroyed homeland"?  writes Mayer, describing the choices on this eclectic programme - Richard Strauss's Oboe Concerto, Elgar's Soliliquy for oboe and orchestra, Eugene Goossens Concerto in One Movement and Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin.  An intelligently planned programme, executed extremely well, makes this disc a top recommendation.  It soothes my soul and stretches my mind !

Richard Strauss's Concerto for Oboe and small orchestra in D major (AV 144), receives an outstanding performance, Mayer navigating the technical complexities with finesse. The Allegro moderato begins with a tour de force section of 57 bars which focus attention on the oboe. Gradually, orchestral textures build up around the oboe.  If Metamorphosen was written in response to the destruction of war, the Oboe Concerto might represent a reflection on the past and future, the strings in Metamorphosen replaced by the deeper sounds of winds, the oboe supported by flutes, cor anglais, clarinets and bassoons.  The serenity of Mayer's playing has purpose, evoking the balance of an idealised past.  As he notes these beauties are "perhaps an intimation of Paradise". There are no hints of Strauss's typically ambivalent waltzes, no ironic fractures. Instead interpretation requires "maximum effortlessness. Perhaps Strauss himself soared in something like the pure riches oif its euphony when he wrote it". The Andante is exqusite, enhanced by a sense of melancholy, the oboe singing gracefully.  The Vivace-Allegro is lively. With extended solo passages the oboe leads the orchestra in full flow towards the confident conclusion.

Edward Elgar's Soliloquy is also a late work, written in 1930 for oboe and piano for Léon Goossens, though only the second movement was completed.  The arrangement for oboe and small orchestra heard here was made in 1967 by Gordon Jacobs. The oboe line stretches expansively, the orchestra responding with hushed tones, before fading elusively away.  Also originally conceived for oboe and piano, is Eugene Goossens's Concerto in One Movement for oboe and orchestra  (op 45, 1927).  The  piece traverses different styles - pastoral, energetic, and exotic - the oboe part redolent of Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faun or even The Firebird, though with a touch of wry humour.  

Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, is as much an hommage to French style as a a series of memorials to Ravel's friends who died in the 1914-1918 war.  A vivacious Prélude, with the oboe as lithe and athletic as a creature of the forest. The dance origins of the Forlane are sprightly,  every "step" in the music vivid.  The more formal Minuet and the Rigaudon are vigorous, but beneath this lies sorrow,  Oboe and strings interact, two voices entwining like partners in a dance, an allusion that connects the living and the dead.

Ravel at the Barbican - François-Xavier Roth London Symphony Orchestra

An all-Ravel concert with François-Xavier Roth and the London Symphony Orchestra.at the   Barbican Hall, London.  Rapsodie espagnole, Boléro and L'heure espagnole :  "Spanish" spice, but to describe it thus would be painfully superficial. Boléro, of course, was the crowd pleaser, because it's fun and everyone knows it.  But this was yet another intelligently planned programme which emphasized the underlying musical concepts.

The Rapsodie espagnole (1908) was exceptionally refined. The first theme of the Prélude à la nuit,  played with such poise that it seemed to oscillate. Yet beneath these transparent hues, steady, purposeful rhythms. Immediately, connections with L'heure espagnole, (1911) written in the same period.  Not for nothing is Torquemada a clockmaker! In both pieces, rhytms tick quietly but with persistence, forming a bedrock for more flamboyant invention.  Watch out when the rhythms go awry.  Thus the dance forms which form the inner movements, the Malagueña and the Habanera. Dance is disciplined movement, dancers following structure to express emotion.  In the Feria this tension between restraint and freedom breaks through: burgeoning crescendoes, lit by cymbalas, note sequences that descend and rise again.  Boléro got the wildest applause, and a standing ovation, because it’s a showstopper, but the sheer quality of the LSO's playing in Rapsodieespagnole  was far higher.

Luxury casting for Ravel's L'heure espagnole: Isabelle Druet, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, Thomas Dolié, Edgaras Montvidas and Nicolas Cavallier.  Hearing it in concert performance illuminates the orchestral logic which underpins the plot.  The clocks are invisible, but they're everywhere - ticking relentlessly, imposing form on time, the way dance inmposes form on motion.  En masse, they can be manic.  Torquemada (Fouchécourt) is regulated by machines, which is why Concepción (Druet) needs to find human pleasures elswhere.  But with whom ? Gonsalves (Montvidas) is romantic but he's a bad poet, as his music suggests : overipe flourishes that go awry.  It takes a good singer like Montvidas to make you realize that Ravel is satirizing cliché, much in the way that Wagner wrote Beckmesser's song.  Gonsalves doesn't have what it takes, anymore. Gomez (Cavallier) at least can provide other delights. The real hero is Ramiro (Dolié) who understands that clocks have minds, and that women have minds as well.  But nothing goes quite to plan.  Bassoons blow rude raspberrries. Tight rhythms deliberately come apart, each clock slightly out of synch. Boléro too is a study of sequences and rhythmic patterns. Again, this requires much more skill from players (and listeners), which can be hidden even in a good staged performance.  

What a pity that these good performances were spoiled by some in the audience.  I kid you not but someone kept rummaging through various bags throughout the evening,. Fidgetting is OK and normal but this was not. Eventually the person took off her boots, then her socks  Repeatedly, she put her hands in her mouth and massaged her feet, then wiped her bare feet on the Barbican floor.  The ushers tried their best but there was no stopping someone like this. Thank goodness the concert was recorded and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 30th April 

 Photos: Roger Thomas 

No leaden boots - Rattle's Ravel Prom

Sir Simon Rattle's all-Ravel BBC Prom 48 was a highlight of the season. Rattle's Ravel is highly individual, alert to whimsy and adventure in the music.  Sparkling performances from the London Symphony orchestra.  Such animation and vivacity is of the essence in Ravel’s Ma M ère l’Oye, heard here in its full ballet version, rather than the better known suite.  Agility and fleetness of foot - no room here for leaden boots !  Magdalena Kožená joined her husband and his new orchestra in Shéhérazade, and later was part of the team in L’enfant et les Sortilèges.  The dimensions of the Royal Albert Hall are too vast for diaphanous magic, so I stayed home and listened to the broadcast, but my friends were present.  Here is Claire Seymour's review in Opera Today : Please read it in full.  Anyone can write, but not everyone can write well, mixing knowledge with analysis, bringing the experience to life. Listening link HERE

Magical Ravel Ma mère l'Oye. Le Tombeau de Couperin - FX Roth Les Siècles

François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles Ravel Ma mère l'Oye, coupled with Le Tombeau de Couperin with Shéhérazade between them, latest in Les Siècles's Ravel series for Harmonia Mundi which began with their Daphnis et Chloé, so exquisitely beautiful that it remains by my desk for frequent listening.  This new disc focuses on two main works initially published for piano, but conceived with potential for orchestra. "To orchestrate, for Ravel" said Emile Vuillermoz, was to "exploit the colour of the istruments , to atch their timbres, to vary and nuance them down to the slightest detail, without ever losing sight of the overall balance". Ideal for Roth and Les Siècles whose forte is clarity and exqusite clarity, clean jewel-like sparkle enlivened by a feel for the passionate imagination that inspired the composer.  Ma mère l'Oye may have been written for children, but its magic is so strong that adults. too, can be drawn under its spell. With Roth and Les Siècles you don't get "kid stuff".  Indeed, the more sophisticated the players, and the more sensitive the listener, the stronger the sense of enchantment.

This performance of the full 1912 ballet version of  Ma mère l'Oye is almost too exquisite to be earthbound,  though it bristles with energy.  The first notes of the Prelude suggest the pipes of Pan, the switrl of flutes, the movement of some mysterious creature. Winds blow, and dizzying strings - spinning wheels - hypnotize us into reverie so we can dream, like the Beauty, sleep in the forest. More shivers and shimmerings, as the Beauty awakes to meet the Beast. the woodwinds sing,  and the lower strings growl : suggesting the Beast whose form is brutish but his soul refined.  In this mysterious realm (tender strings) lives too Le petit Poucet who is small and frail (birdlike woodwinds) but outsmarts the Ogre.  Magical harps, tremulous woodwinds evoke the even more exotic kingdom of Laideronette. Percussion in "oriental" patterns, as angular as the shape of pagodas, building up to elegant, though wistful melody.  Laideronette and her serpent friend are under a spell.  Roth and Les Siècles alternate slow and more agitated passages enhancing the flow. The Apothéose, in the jardin féerique is delicate, yet magnificent.

Thus to Shéhérazade, ouverture de féerie (1898). Although this was to have been part of an opera,  Roth and Les Siècles bring out the tightness of its structure, demonstrating the strength of its design, as purposeful as a ballet. Though Stravinsky would not have known it (it remained unpublished until 1975),  this performance is so well-defined that the piece feels like a prototype for something Diaghilev might have considered for the Ballets Russe.

Roth values the importance of structure in French repertoire, evolving as it did from the baroque, where elaborations are built upon firm, disciplined foundations influenced by dance and formal patterns.  Thus Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, in his four movement orchestration, premiered in 1920. Thus the piece is as much an hommage to French style as a a series of memorials to Ravel's friends who died in the 1914-1918 war.  A vivacious Prélude, with the oboe as lithe and athletic as a creature of the forest (an unexpected link to Ma mère l'Oye). The dance origins of the Forlane are even more evident , a forlane being a folk dance form from Italy which Couperin adapted.  Hence the sprightliness, every "step" in the music sharply articulated and vibrant.  The Minuet is more formal but equally well  presented.  This is what period inspired performance means, not instruments per se but an understanding of repertoire itself.  The Rigaudon here is particularly impressive, combining elegance with boisterousness, and a tinge of sadness. Oboe and strings interact, two voices entwining like partners in a dance, or the two brothers Ravel knew, who went cheerfully to war and were promptly killed, by the same shell.  

Stéphane Degout : Poulenc Ravel Saariaho

Stéphane Degout (photo: Julien Benhamou)

Stéphane Degout at the Wigmore Hall, London, in Poulenc and Ravel with Cédric Tiberghien, joined by Matteo Cesari (flute) and Alexis Descharmes (cello) for Saariaho. Thanks to rain and traffic chaos, the house wasn't sold out, as it should have been, but those who attended were there because they can recognize genuine quality. We were well rewarded - excellent programme, delivered with idiomatic stylishness. Degout is one of the most distinctive voices of his type around, the ideal Pelléas, for example, and Tiberghien is a star in his own right, as well as song accompanist. Dream Team .

Poulenc and Apollinaire featured, starting with the much loved early songs from Le bestiare (1919) where serious thoughts are disguised beneath playful images. These songs are funny, but also wistful. "Est-ce que la mort vous oublié, poissons de la mélancholie? " So much for the image of the golden carp, cavorting in unthinking bliss.  Apollinaire's elegant insouciance acts like armour plating, protecting the soul from the cruelty of the world.  The door to the hotel in Montparnasse (1945) is decorated with plants that will neither flower nor fruit.  There are "raies sur lesquelles il ne faut pas que l'on marche" - thresholds that must not be crossed.  "O, bon petit poète un peu bête trop blond " . Degout shaped that wonderful short phrase, bringing out its ironic anguish. the poet is pretty, and means well, but will always be a tourist, living on the surface, never connecting to reality. There's much more to these songs than charm, Degout brought out their painful undertones. 

Degout and Tiberghien let Apollinaire himself speak, playing a recording of the poet himself reciting. A tiny fragment, preserved on grainy tape, a ghostly but powerful presence.  "Joy and Melancholy" said Degout, "what Poulenc liked in Apollinaire". Thus we listened to the Calligrammes (1948), epigrammatic miniatures that seem torn from greater dramas beyond our knowledge.  In Aussi bien que les cigales, the piano part evokes the stultifying heat of the Midi. where people seem hypnotized by complacency. "Que vous ne savez pas vous éclairer ni voir" sang Degout with a poignant mix of anger and sorrow.  Lest we, too, be lulled by these moments of direct confrontation, Degout and Tiberghien launched into the livelier Quatre poèmes de Guillaume Apollinaire (1931)  and Banalités (1940). In photographs,  people pose and smile, masking whatever might really be happening. Apollinaire and Poulenc create snapshots, freeze framing human experience in tiny, concentrated fragments. It's up to the sensitive interpreter to develop them into wider scenarios.  Alors, Avant le cinéma, where the text plays with words like "cinéma", "ciné" and "cinématographie".   Degout paused, briefly, to highlight the irony.  "Aussi, mon Dieu faut-il avoir du goût"   ie, some folks don't care about what's really going on as long as they can be seen to have taste.  

Alexis Descharmes, the cellist, introduced Kaija Saariaho's Cendres (1998) for alto flute, cello and piano. Saariaho's aim in this piece was to create musical tension by "sometimes bringing the instruments as close together as possible in all compositional aspects (such as pitch, rhythm, dynamics, articulation, colour), sometimes letting each of them express the music in their own most idiomatic way". The result is a well-balanced flow which generates colour and movement. The flute cries: is it the wailing of a wild bird  ? Elaborate patterns in the piano part, the cello part full of invention.  The piece is lucid, yet elusive by turns. Hearing Cendres in context with Poulenc and Apollinaire underlined the idea of listening simultaneously on different levels.  The joy of mixed programmes like this which stretch the listener's experience!   

Then, just as we began to appreciate the emotional sophistication of this programme, Degout and Tiberghien switched away, elusively, to Ravel.  Chansons madécasses (1925-6) made use of the same forces as Cendres, Degout singing withn the same ensemble, so Ravel seemed to evolve out of Cendres as if a strange, exotic creature was being conjured up by magic. Nahandove, "L'oiseau nocturne a comencé ses cris".  Delicious  sensuality, yet also a tease. Degout emphasized the menace in the second song Aoua!, where the innocence of the islanders is betrayed . "Méfiez-vous des blancs, habitants du rivage".  Promises poisoned by slavery and death.  Just as Poulenc ended Calligrammes with a warning about complacency,  Ravel ends with the image of an island girl who doesnt think about much beyond her immediate self.  In  Histoires naturelles (1906),  the peacock, the cricket, the swan , the kingfisher and the guinea-fowl are beautifully observed nature portraits, yet they share something in common with the creatures in Poulenc and Apollinaire's Le bestiare because they are also oblique comments on the human condition.  

Please also see my piece on Poulenc Apollinaire Les Bleuets

Gergiev smiles Prom 4 Ravel Ustvolskaya

Valery Gergiev in a happy, sunny mood at BBC Prom 4.  Gergiev always springs surprises but this was a surprise beyond expectation. When Gergiev is good, he's very good but when he's bad, he's very, very bad.  This "new" Gergiev should come out more often.


The programme was fairly standard - Ravel, Rachmaninov, Strauss and Ustvolskaya, but Gergiev animated it by emphasizing each composer's individuality.  Fidelity to idiom does matter!  Gergiev is musician enough to know that the score does count, however his  more extremist fans might think.  Thus the discipline with which he conducted Ravel Boléro, observing the progressions as they unfold.  New elements enter as the music builds up until it reaches its climax. Each element adds new flavours, but fundamentally the traverse is defined by the steady beat of the drum, reflected in the strumming pizzicato. In flamenco, rigid rhythmic discipline is part of the style,  creating a ritualized tension that makes the brief flourishes seem even more like explosive release.  As the piece progresses, the energy builds up as a natural result of what's gone before. Just as dancers and athletes train hard to build muscle, Gergiev shows how disciplined conducting serves music much better than fake, flashy "excitement".

Rachmaninov Piano Concerto no 3 has a reputation for flamboyant display, but its wonders lie in the piano part. Gergiev wisely gave Behzod Abduraimov pride of place. Abduraimov isn't the most spectacular of players, so the restraint Gergiev brought to the orchestra was sensitive, supporting the soloist.

Galina Ustvolskaya's Symphony no 3 Jesus Messiah, save us!  is based on the life of an 11th-century monk, Hermann of Reichenau, aka "Hermann the cripple" who was born with so many birth defects that he lived in constant pain and had speech defects. Nonetheless, he became a theologian, an astronomer, a mathematician and wrote a treatise on the science of music. He lived to age 44, ancient by the standards of the time and was canonized in 1863.  A paralysed musician without a voice? What a metaphor for a composer in the Soviet era ! 

Ustvolskaya's music is certainly very different from conventional Soviet music, but it does have deeper antecedents and connections.  Pounding blocks of form, percussion-led  rough-hewn sounds and spoken narrative that speaks fire and brimstone (speaker Alexei Petrenko)   Its "primitivism" is deliberate for it evokes the idea of  strength in times of hardship. Petrenko recites so forcefully that it hardly matters whether you speak Russian or not: you can imagine the monk/saint defying the odds stacked against him, firm in his faith in God. 

Ustvolskaya didn't fit in with Soviet convention but her music does have antecedents. She may or may not have known Janáček's Glagolitic Mass but she would have known Stravinsky's Rite of Spring which evokes even older beliefs. She would also have known of Orthodox Church music and the Russian hermit tradition. The "primitivism" in this symphony also connects to Futurism, which flourished in the early years after the Revolution, and produced works like Alexander Mosolov's The Iron Foundry (1925-6) and also influenced film makers like Sergei Eisenstein.  By 1983, when this symphony was written, Ustvolskaya would also have been aware of music in the west,, particularly Messiaen, who also had a thing for huge blocks of rock-solid sound and ecstatic visions of the glory of God.  Ustvolskaya's Third Symnphony is highly individual, and shows that Shostakovich was by no means the only modernist in town

Gergiev still lives in one of the several oligarch enclaves in London, from which he can jetset with ease. Munich is a smaller city,  so chances are he'll spend even less time with the Munich Philharmonic than he did with the LSO, but if he has good rehearsal conductors and musicians he can add the finishing touches.  Like the LSO,the Munich Philharmonic is one of several top notch orchestras working in close proximity and stimulating each other.  In recent years it's been somewhat outshone, but if this prom with Gergiev is anything to go by, good things lie ahead.  And judging from their performance of this Suite from Richard Strauss Der Rosenkavalier, they are teaching Gergiev to be lyrical.

Time travel Aldeburgh : François-Xavier Roth Rameau Ravel

François-Xavier Roth brought Aldeburgh "through the centuries" when  Les Siècles played Rameau and Ravel on Saturday, the first in a series by this most fascinating of ensembles. Roth and Les Siècles are innovative, dispensing with the whole idea of boxing music into stereotypes of period and genre.  For them, music is a life force so vital that it transcends boundaries.  Period performance isn't just about instruments or even style. It's a whole new way of thinking, which respects the music itself, as opposed to received tradition.  In his own time, Jean-Philippe Rameau was avant garde, so shockingly different that he was lucky to have patrons in high places.  Rameau changed music.  Thus Roth and Les Siècles paired Rameau and Ravel, innovators across the centuries, both working on themes from classical antiquity.  Time travel on every level !

Significantly, both Rameau and Ravel were writing for dance.  Dancing is a physical activity, which requires co-operation. Dancers co-ordinate with music, and with each other. Rameau's music takes its very structure from the discipline of dance, with its intricate formal patterns and abstract expressiveness. In 1722,  Rameau wrote the Traité de l'harmonie réduite à ses principes naturels, building firm theoretical foundations for musical creativity.  The baroque aesthetic "contained the world" to borrow a phrase from Mahler, encompassing worlds beyond time and place.

Rameau's Daphnis et Eglé (1753) illustrates the composer's basic ideas.  It was created for Louis XV at Fontainebleau, as entertainment after days spent in the forests hunting animals for sport.  This context matters.  The dancers, singers and musicians act out a fantasy which has little bearing on real life. Yet it's so beautiful that it takes on a logic of its own.  Think about baroque gardens, where the abundance of nature is channeled into formal parterres, though woodlands flourish beyond, and birds fly freely.This tension between nature and artifice livens the spirit: gods mix with mortals, improbable plots seem perfectly plausible.  We enjoy the music as abstract art.  The whole  Daphnis et Eglé unfolds over 16 separate tableaux each of which illustrates a type of dance, the whole piece thus forming an intricate unity of patterns and sub-patterns.   I've seen the piece choreographed which reveals the way the music reflects physical form: a wonderful experience !   At Aldeburgh, Roth and  Les Siècles don't have the resources of Les Arts Florissants to hand, and also dispensed with the sections for voice, but this hardly mattered.   By focusing on the purely musical aspects of the piece, they brought out its innate energy, its liveliness deriving from its origins in dance. This performance was even more muscular than when Christie and Les Arts Flo did it in 2014,  bringing out the forceful, physical quality in the music to great effect.   Baroque dancing, particularly before Louis XIV, was more athletics than ballet as we know it now.  Like fencing, it was physical fitness for aristocrats, training the mind as well as the body.  In this superb performance,  Roth and Les Siècles proved, if any further  proof were needed, that period performance is not for wimps !

This performance of Daphnis et Chloé was even more revealing.  So often the piece is heard as dreamy colorwash, for it is so beautiful,  but its foundations are much firmer. Ravel was writing for the Ballets Russe, for larger and more opulent orchestras than Rameau.   Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé is a descendant of Debussy La Mer, an impressionistic fantasy, yet it is very much a work created for dance.  Ravel gave more room to characterize the narrative, but the spirit of the work is deliberately alien. Thus Ravel's wind instruments and strings evoke otherworldly atmospheres. The solo parts are exquisite, suggesting pan pipes and delphic voices.  . There's even a suggestion of a wind machine (though it's done by more conventional means).  The offstage horns, trumpets and voices evoke mystery, suggesting states beyond mortal comprehension (that's why the singing is wordless).  Yet the aesthetic of Ravel's period embraced modernity, the stylization of art nouveau, where plants, flowers and people were depicted in twirling, twining contrast, influenced heavily by art from beyond central and western Europe. As in the baroque, nature cannot really be tamed even in an era when people lived in cities lit by electricity and rode in tramcars.  Fokine's angular choreography horrified audiences used to mid-19th century ballet, where ballerinas fluttered in tulle.  Bakst's designs for this ballet were decidedly "modern" in comparison, evoking the formality of ancient Greek art.  This superb performance seemed informed by insight into the context of the piece.  Roth and Les Siècles  brought out the innate energy in the piece, reminding us of the angular, "primitive" style of the Ballets Russe, inspired by prehistory and ancient myth.  A vivid performance, bristling with verve and physicality.  Listen again here on BBC Radio 3.

Subdued BBCSO Rophé Franck Ravel Berlioz

At the Barbican, Pascal Rophé conducted the BBCSO,  replacing  François-Xavier Roth who was indisposed.   Cancellations happen (as I wrote in my piece on Jonas Kaufmann HERE), so even though Roth wasn't there, the serious music lovers were. Not that Roth appeals to the glitzy fashionista crowd.  The regulars were there anyway, since Rophé has conducted the BBCSO many times.

 More disappointing,the programme changed.  Boulez Livre pour cordes was meant to be the highlight of the evening. It's not all that frequently heard, and Roth is perhaps the most intriguing Boulez conductor around.   Rophé conducts a lot of Boulez too, but this piece is one of the few he can't pull up at short notice. Hardly surprising  since it's a demanding work, not to be attempted at short notice.

Wiser then to substitute César Franck, Le chasseur maudit, a cracker of a show-opener. It's theatre in orchestral sound, beginning with a deliciousl fanfare of hunting horns and low brass and winds, evoking the idea of a huntsman enjoying the hunt. But a darker mood haunts the piece: we hear the suggestion of church bells tolling in the distance. The piece is based on a popular meme in European and French folk culture, wherein those who don't go to church but fool around otherwise will be doomed. Think Gurrelieder, and even Goethe's  Die wandelnde Glocke where the clock jumps out of its case and chases the kid who won't go to church on Sunday, set gloriously by Carl Loewe. Franck evidently takes the side of the rebel rather than the dour, unforgiving church. The piece rollicks on merrily, its moments of shock-horror melodrama delivered with delicious wit.  I don't know how much rehearsal time the BBC SO had with the piece, or whether it's part of their repertoire, but it was jolly enough, though not by any means a great work of art.

Perhaps we need such fairground pleasures on this cold and wet evening. Surprisingly, the lobby at the Barbican was almost empty, and there were many seats unfilled. Perhaps people stayed home to listen on the radio? But BBCSO concerts are frequently broadcast. The arrangement works extremely well because then you get the intense kick of live performance and also a chance to listen again for detail. So what was the strange mood in the Hall? Most unusual.

Spirits lifted again for Jean-Efflam Bavouzet,, playing Ravel's Piano Concerto for Left Hand, a piece which Bavouzet has played so many times that he's joked that he can play with the left hand and send texts with the right ("though only in rehearsal").   The BBC Radio 3 website had originally advertised Bavouzet as conductor of this concert, and I'd half hoped he might conduct from the piano.  No such luck last night,  A good performance and satisying but not perhaps the wildest Bavouzet has ever done. The piece was written for Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right hand in battle, so its virtuosity came at a high price. The spectacular turns are haunted by darker whispers : perhaps we can hear gunfire in the subtle suggestions of staccato?  Yet again, we needed to escape that grim thought. Bavouzet's encore was Ravel's The Girl with the Flaxen Hair.

Perhaops we needed light-hearted jollies before Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, which, when done well, can be a haunting nightmare lit up, sometimes, with a hint of bombast. But after last week, (in memory of which this concert was dedicated), we know where such things can lead. Another enjoyable experience, though a work as familiar as this should ideally yield more insight in good performance.  Lots of French people in the audience, most of them under 30's. If Parisians can come to London for a concert, why can't Londoners show ?

Prom 7 Hugh Wood Nielsen Ravel Delius Davis

At BBC Prom 7, Andrew Davis and the BBC SO gave the world premiere of Hugh Wood's Epithalamion.  New music has always featured at the Proms. Sir Henry Wood premiered Schoenberg. Some new music becomes immortal, some falls by the wayside, some is rediscovered by later generations.  Even Bach.The Prom began with Delius's In a Summer Garden. Gardens never remain the same.  Change is a natural process that cannot be halted.  And so, too, in music. Many Proms premieres these days play safe and beget mediocrity, but Hugh Wood's  Epithalamion  is genuinely new, and refreshing.

At the age of 83, Hugh Wood's creative powers are, if anything, refreshed. Epithalamion  is one of the composer's most ambitious works yet, imaginative and beautifully constructed. The title refers to the procession of a bride to her bridal chamber. Cue the idea of flowers, happiness, and the promise of renewed fertility. The text comes from John Donne's poem of the same name celebrating a royal wedding in 1613, but the concept is universal: procreation as a metaphor for endless change and regrowth.

The voices of the BBC Symphony Chorus call out, long, soaring bright lines, impatient excitement.. Wonderful circular lines in the orchestra, curving like an embrace. Glorious bells, hushed anticipation. Donne employs images of birds, including "the husband cock".  The newlyweds are "Two phoenixes, whose joined breasts /Are unto one another mutual nests,/Where motion kindles such fires as shall give" Lines stretch out and converge, commingling with fervour. A magnificent, dramatic interlude at mid point where the orchestra seems to explode into joyous fanfare, given depth by rumbling gongs and two harps,  with suggestions of night, stars and darkness. . In the fifth section, male and female choruses separate and merge, from which arises the voice of the soloist, Rebecca Bottone, one of the finest character sopranos in the business, with a particularly fresh, energetic style. A single male voice rises from the chorus and the music surrounding takes on quite explicit sensual frisson. This is seriously good, sophisticated writing for voice, the separate parts distinct yet well blended, sometimes hushed, sometimes triumphant, but vividly dramatic and tightly scored. Epithalamion should become a regular Proms favourite.

Cylcic figures also enliven  Carl Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto (1928). The clarinet moves like a living organism, with adventurous dynamic leaps and contrasts.  Mark Simpson's playing was fluid, capturing Nielsen's open spirit. "I have such free voicing in the instruments" wrote Nielsen of this piece, "that I really have no idea how it will sound".  Hence the cadenzas and boisterous inventiveness, captured by Davis and the BBC SO and ravishing BBC Symphony Chorus with great aplomb. Back to the theme of sensual love in a vernal setting with Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé Suite no 2, Lusciously played. I'm glad that Prom 7 of 2015 was one of my top Proms picks.

This Prom is available for 30 days on the BBC website and will also be broadcast on TV from 30 July.

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!

Glyndebourne 2015 season announced

Interesting Glyndebourne 2015 season announced! Three new productions, three revivals and one new commission.

New:

The FIRST EVER UK production of Donizetti Poliuto (from 21st May) will be conducted by Enrique Mazzola and directed by Mariame Clément, the duo behind Glyndebourne’s acclaimed 2011 production of Don Pasquale. American tenor Michael Fabiano, who made his Glyndebourne debut in Festival 2014’s new production of La traviata will sing the title role alongside Ana María Martínez.

Handel Saul will be the fifth work by Handel to be staged by Glyndebourne since the opening of the current theatre in 1994. Brilliant and provocative director Barrie Kosky will direct, with Ivor Bolton conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Christopher Purves will sing the title role, Iestyn Davies will perform David, the acclaimed British soprano Lucy Crowe makes a role debut as Merab and American tenor Paul Appleby makes his Glyndebourne debut as Jonathan.

Mozart Die Entführung aus dem Serail last seen in the Festival in 1988. Robin Ticciati will undertake his fifth Mozart opera for Glyndebourne, conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and a cast including Sally Matthews, Edgaras Montvidas and Mari Eriksmoen.

The revivals might be even better :

Bizet Carmen - David McVicar's 2002 production revived for the second time. Good performers: Jakub Hrůša conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with  Stéphanie d’Oustrac in the title role, Paulo Szot as Escamillo, Lucy Crowe as Micaëla.

Britten The Rape of Lucretia  - Fiona Shaw's production with Leo Hussain, Kate Royal, Christine Rice, Allan Clayton and Duncan Rock

Maurice Ravel -  L’heure espagnole/L’enfant et les sortilèges. Laurent Pelly's brilliant production of L’enfant et les sortilèges is back after only two years. It's wonderful - read my review of the premiere HERE in Opera Today

"Surrealist fantasy with wit and style! L'heure espagnole and L'enfant et les sortilèges, the Ravel Double Bill at Glyndebourne, mixes charm, intelligence and nightmare.The audience applauded the scenery, but this time the praise was sincere.  Ravel's music and ideas come alive. I'm tempted to say, "beyond our wildest dreams", because dreams release the creative imagination. .....L'enfant et les sortilèges" says director Laurent Pelly "lasts about 45 minutes, but has the depth of an opera of three or four hours". (read the interview in Opera Today here). Ravel's music is extraordinarliy vivid, but his concepts don't easily translate into visual images. Pelly, however, is a master at bringing abstract ideas to life, as anyone who has seen his Glyndebourne Humperdinck Hansel und Gretel would know. The Teapot and the Chinese cup dance, their "human" bodies exposed beneath the hard exteriors of their form. Ravel glories in mad chinoiserie......the words aren't real but dadaist invention, even in Colette's original."

 Danielle de Niese sings the two main roles. “Coming home to Glyndebourne to sing is hugely special to me. Playing both an adulterous femme fatale and an androgynous young boy in the same evening will be an exciting challenge and transformation for me as an actress. I have labelled it my 'Meryl Streep moment' - a chance for me to show different sides of my musical and dramatic palette. Glyndebourne and I share a common goal in constantly aiming to reach new heights and I am thrilled to be taking audiences on this artistic journey."

The new commission is Luke Styles' new opera Macbeth.

David Pickard, General Director of Glyndebourne, said: “I am delighted that, as well as maintaining our high artistic standards and international reputation for discovering exciting young artists, Glyndebourne’s 2014 Festival reached broader audiences than ever before. As a privately funded Festival, I am particularly proud that we are the only UK opera company to offer our performances for free online to be accessed by audiences right across the globe. Those streamings, together with the success of our dedicated Under 30s performance, were highlights of the season for me. I hope that all those who saw Festival 2014 operas, whether on stage, on screen or online went away with a new, or renewed, love of live opera.”

Consider:

• Box Office sales of 98% of financial capacity
• A doubling of the live audience of 98,000 who attended Festival 2014 in person through cinema screenings and free online streamings
• Sell-out of the first dedicated Festival performance for subscribers to Glyndebourne’s Under 30s scheme

 photo credit Simon Annand

Komsi Oramo Prom Russian (and other) Fairy Tales

Wonderfully evocative!  In BBC Prom 49, Sakari Oramo conducted the BBC SO showing how exotic dreams and magical tales still inspire creative art.  The soloist was Anu Komsi, Oramo's wife and twin sister of Piia Komsi, both coloraturas with such remarkable range that they've inspired several works written specially for them.. Although this Prom was billed "Russian Fairy Tales" it could well have been billed as a showpiece for Anu Komsi's exquisite singing. .

Ravel's Mother Goose Suite (Ma mère l’oye)  created the perfect mood. Lustrous, shimmering textures, sparkling with light and delight. Fairy Tales are beautiful, but strictly speaking they're wasted on children. As Bruno Bettelheim demonstrated decades ago,  fairy tales deal with the subconscious, and are a lot darker than they're made out to be.  Beneath the gossamer in Ravel's music lie details which suggest something more sinister. Hollow-sounding woodwinds, brass like the call of hunting horns. Could the high-pitched violins suggest pain and longing?  Do the horns suggest hunting, or death? Why is the princess of the pagodas, Laideronnette, supposed to be ugly? No answers.  In this magical realm answers mean less than dreams.

In Jukka Tiensuu: Voice verser (2012?),  Anu Komsi's voice operates like a magical force of nature. Her tessitura is so high it seems almost unearthly, and her projection so powerful that her voice seems to stretch into infinity. High winds and strings cry out, like high-flying sea birds.  Strings form elliptical sounds like waves.  Immediately I thought of Sibelius Luonnotar (more here) where the voice represents the primeval being who created the universe, after swimming for centuries in an endless ocean. When Komsi's voice switches from extended legato to sudden staccato, she makes gasping sounds that could be Luonnotar giving birth to the earth, stars and skies. Yet for all this extreme virtuosity, this is a quirkily humorous piece which  suggests play and joyful interaction between singer and orchestra. This is music with wit and and spirit, proving that "new" music can be fun and spark the imagination. We can also hear why so many are in love with Komsi's voice. She's technically superb but can also convey warmth and feeling.

Amazingly, Komsi recovered her voice after the interval, to sing Karol Szymanowski's Songs of a Fairy Tale Princess. Komsi and Szymanowski could have been made for each other. Both favour tessituras so high that that they seem to defy gravity.  Much of Szymanowski's output created parts for violin, where only the best violinists can sustain extended lines at the top of register. Komsi makes great feats sound easy. Szymanowski's fantasy was far more than lush reverie.  In the years before 1914, he visited the Middle East and North Africa, fascinated by the exotic sounds he heard. Like many composers in his time, Szymanowski was searching for alternatives to  western tradition.  There's nothing tame about this ulullating legato, these strange leaps up and down scales.

 In the first song, The Lonely Moon, the phrases cry out like imams calling the faithful to prayer, designed to carry over vast distances.  Perhaps this is intentional, for the mood suggests longing, reaching out towards something that can never be grasped. The trills and melismas in The Nightingale allow Komsi's voice to flutter like a bird trying to escape its cage. In The Song of the Wave, Szymanowski catches the idea of surging movement, sparkling arpeggiatos dancing over rolling rhythm. The ocean is beautiful, but the sailor might drown.  Whether the singer is lover or Nereid hardly matters. Szymanowski wrote the songs for voice and piano in 1913 orchestrating  the three above in 1933 when he'd rediscovered Poland and modernism. At this Prom we hear Sakari Oramo's new orchestrations for the three other songs,  sensitively  in keeping with Szymanowski's style yet sympathetic to the uniquesness of Komsi's voice. Infinitely better than the pointless, unidiomatic orchestration of Butterworth Andrew Manze used in his Lest We Forget Prom last week.

To complete this evening of exotic dreams, Rimsky-Korsakov Sheherazade. Yet again Oramo weaved his magic. The BBC SO played with great beauty, not disguising the little dark details that conceal what Sheherazade will be faced with if she can't spin more tales of fantasy.

Mysterious Lutosławski Ravel Salonen Philharmonia

Esa-Pekka Salonen's Witold Lutosławski series at the Royal Festival Hall confirms his reputation as an authoritative Lutosławski interpreter. He knew the composer personally, but more importantly understands his idiom intuitively. In this superb concert, Salonen and the Philharmonia brought out the strange, intangible duality that makes Lutosławski's music so intriguing. Salonen's Philharmoinia series follows Simon Rattle's  Lutosławski series last year with the Berliner-Philharmoniker. Both conductors bring their own insights. Comparison is pointless. Salonen, however, has the edge because he stresses the elusive nature of the music. In this programme, he paired Lutosławski with Ravel with surprising results: Ravel has rarely sounded so magical.

Ravel Ma mère l'oye is best known as a ballet, but it's not necessarily episodic story telling. Instead of crude cartoon colours, Salonen and the Philharmonia produced luminous, gossamer-like textures infused with light.  If the tempi were a little slow, it was defined with real delicacy of touch, so it really did feel that the music was hovering in mid-air. This was Mother Goose for adults, with hints of hidden terrors.

In his extensive writings, Lutosławski said that we hear music in the context of our feelings. Salonen's Ravel thus created a mood from which Lutosławski 's Symphony no 4 (1988-92) flowed naturally. This symphony is short, but in 22 minutes it unfolds with the compactness of a much larger piece. Dark chords suggest foreboding. A solo clarinet appears, its bright textures luring us deeper into the piece. Strident strings suggest alarm, or danger : the pace quickens, pauses and returns with wild, driven legato. Strings like whips,  faced off by a solo trumpet, piano, and a trio of trombones.  Perhaps we are in some strange forest, where the flute flutters like an elusive woodbird.  The whole orchestra soars towards a wild climax, which suddenly disintegrates once more to solo clarinet and flute.  A short passage for small drum and percussion, oddly reminiscent of The Rite Of Spring and the music disappears, elusively. What might Lutosławski  be suggesting? Primed by Ravel,  I thought of Jean Cocteau's film  La Belle et la Bête.  Lutosławski's 4th is a Salonen speciality. He recorded it within months of the premiere. We were privileged indeed to hear him conduct it with the Philharmonia.

Matthias Goerne was the soloist in Lutosławski's Les espaces du sommeil (1975). This was written for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, but Goerne is well on the way to putting his distinctive stamp on the piece.  The text is by Robert Desnos, the surrealist who died in Terezin. Lutosławski's setting has a hallucinatory quality. Extremes of pitch and volume unsettle any sense of repose. Fischer-Dieskau's voice has a lovely smoky quality on his recording, but Goerne's approach connects more deeply to the character of the music. "Dans le nuit....les forêts s'y heurtent confusément avec les créatures de légende  et cachées dans les fourrées." Goerne begins with a half whispered growl at the lower end of his register, blossoming forth into bright, clear colours that dissipate as soon as they're uttered.  Goerne makes us listen to the composer, rather than to the beauty of the singing per se. His voice is dignified, suggesting the hypnotic pulse of sleep, while his sharp diction reminds us that the mind is alert.  Les espaces du sommeil is a lovely piece but its true wonders lie in its mysteries. Protracted applause after this piece, and shouts of "Bravo!" which we don't often hear from staid RFH audiences.

Lutosławski's Chain 2: Dialogues for Violin and Orchestra (1984-85) is one of three otherwise unrelated pieces in which the composer explores the idea of a "chain" formed of interbraided links. It is almost more than straightforward concerto. In Chain 2, as Charles Bodman Rae writes in hisexcellent notes, "the strands are independent both melodically and harmonically, and their phrases begin and end in different places. The trick is in combining them into a coherent whole."  Jennifer Koh was the soloist, playing with great verve and freedom. Some passages reach such high tessitura that one thinks of Szymanowski, though that might not be deliberate on Lutosławski 's part. The two composers may be Polish, but they occupied very different worlds.

Salonen and the Philharmonia concluded with Ravel's La Valse. My companion had heard snippets of this as members of the orchestra were tuning. We wondered, surely they must know the work so well they hardly need to practise?  Perhaps the reason was that this wasn't any ordinary La Valse, but a much more unusual interpretation. This waltz sounds as if it were being heard through a dream, a dance recreated through the prism of memory and distance. Ravel himself described it as "an impression of a fantastic, fatal whirling motion"  Just as we'd heard Lutosławsk's Fourth through the prism of Ravel, we now hear Ravel through the prism of Lutosławski.  Mysterious, elusive and surreal. 
 
 Photo : Włodzimierz Pniewski & Lech Kowalski 1992

Glyndebourne Ravel Double Bill streaming broadcast

Ravel Double Bill streamed direct from Glyndebourne ! L'heure espagnole and L'enfant et les sortilèges. The live broadcast was extremely well filmed, so it's definitely recommended.

On demand viewing from Tuesday 21st August. Make time to watrch L'enfant et les sortilèges. above all. It's an extremely difficult opera to stage because it's full of ideas (How do you stage "Mathematics" for example?). That's why it's usually heard in the concert hall. This production is fantastic in every sense, absolutely true to music and meaning. If you can only spare an hour watch this L'enfant. It sets the benchmark. It's that good.

As always, repeat viewings bring out more detail.  L'heure espagnole, directed by Laurent Pelly but to designs by Caroline Ginet and Florence Evrard looks a bit dated as it was first created nearly 10 years ago. However seen together with L'enfant et les sortilèges it works rather well. The clutter in this set reflects the clutter chez Concepción and Torquemada. Piles of unsorted debris, threatening to suffocate the inhabitants. You don't need to be a shrink to think OCD, a behavioural response to anxiety. Torquemada uses inanimate objects to avoid having to deal with the messy emotions of living people. His obsession is both escape and control. Concepción fancies Ramiro because he carries heavy clocks, instead of getting himself stuck in one. Sharp acting and singing raised this performance above the ordinary. 

Thus the connection between L'heure espagnole and  L'enfant et les sortilèges , both operas exploring issues of fantasy and regulation. The Child in  L'enfant et les sortilèges smashes the Giant Clock but can't stop Time itself. He destroys his room in a tantrum, and the room fights back. Only when he learns that  the world is ordered for a reason (ie through Mathematics), does he begin to understand the value of balance. Kindness, not selfishness. When the Child learns empathy as an alternative to obsessive control. he can come back from his nightmare.

Laurent Pelly has said that there are enough ideas in this 45 minute piece to full a 3 or 4 hour opera. Watch this broadcast. I think he's right. Kazushi Ono's conducting is brilliant - incisive, idiomatic, sharp, every bit as intelligent as the staging.

Incidentally, it's good that Glyndebourne doesn't fill the interval with facetious chatter like the Met does.  What is wrong with audiences that need mindless babble? Attention deficit disorder? At Glyndebourne, audiences are treated like adults, who can fill time on their own. Simply muse on the shots of the garden, the patterns of clouds and light. And go get a drink and relax, as they do at Glyndebourne.

Glyndebourne Ravishing Ravel Double Bill

Surrealist fantasy with wit and style!  Ravel Double Bill at Glyndebourne,: L'heure espagnole and L'enfant et les sortilèges mixes charm, intelligence and nightmare.The audience applauded the scenery, but this time the praise was sincere. Ravel's music and ideas come alive. I'm tempted to say "beyond our wildest dreams", because dreams release the creative imagination. Ravel begins  L'enfant et les sortilèges with strange mock-orientalism, to emphasize the alien nature of what is to come. The child (Khatouna Gadelia) throws a tantrum, reflected in the stamping ostinato in the music, and the repetive, angular  vocal line. "Méchant! Méchant! Méchant!". Table, chair and Maman's skirts loom menacingly, overwhelming the child. This is what it feels to be little, dwarfed by the world of adults. The child rebels and rips his room apart. But the objects he wrecks have feelings, too.

"L'enfant et les sortilèges" says director Laurent Pelly "lasts about 45 minutes, but has the depth of an opera of three or four hours". (read the interview  in Opera Today here). Ravel's music is extraordinarily vivid, but his concepts don't easily translate into visual images. Pelly, however, is a master at bringing abstract ideas to life, as anyone who has seen his Glyndebourne Humperdinck Hansel und Gretel would know. The Teapot and the Chinese cup dance, their "human" bodies exposed beneath the hard exteriors of their form. Ravel glories in mad chinoiserie, which conductor Kazushi Ono plays up with manic relish. The words aren't real but dadaist invention, even in Colette's original. At Glyndebourne the surtitles flash "Sessue Hayakawa" .Since this Glyndebourne production is a co-production with Seiji Osawa's Saito Kinen Festival, it will be seen by Japanese audiences who will get the joke (and can read the nonsense "Chinese" writing). Hayakawa was a Hollywood megastar from the 1920's, who subtly subverted western stereotypes of Asian people. Ravel is sending up the whole notion of western attitudes to the East.

And by exploring exotic genres, he expanded the palette of mainstream western music. Even in Colette's original French text, the Teapot and teacup sing in cod-English "Sir, I punch your nose. I knock out you, stupid chose (thing)". Shepherds and Shepherdesses jump out of the wallpaper the Child has defaced, singing  of bizarrely coloured dogs and lambs. Everything safe and familiar is transformed. Ravel writes mock-pastoral,while the pastorals do a solemn mock baroque dance. Visions of Le petit Trianon! Revolution is afoot. The Fire explodes, threatening to engulf the room. Kathleen Kim shoots out of the fireplace in a structure that resembles flame. Kim also sings the Nightingale and the Princess. As theatre, the Fire is a dramatic stunning device, but also reminds us this Child has unleashed dangerous forces.

Some of Ravel's concepts are so abstract that they're a test of any director. Arithmetic, for example, which is so important to Ravel that he embeds the formal logic of mathematics into his music. (The connection with L'heure espagnole is obvious.) In the 1987 Glyndebourne production of  the opera, The Little Old Man who represents Arithmetic was surrounded by cardboard cut-outs of numbers. Pelly, however, brings out the true inner significance. The Child has rebelled against maths homework, and now the Glyndebourne chorus appears as identikit Child to mock him. The formality of rows and series - is this a droll in joke about Ravel's music, and the music which followed? Kazushi Ono defines the structure with clarity, and the chorus moves with precision. Surrealism liberates the imagination, but art needs an element of intellectual rigour,

Sofas, chairs and clocks, Cats, animals and insects, all confront the Child with their human-ness. In the Garden, adult values no longer dominate. Here, the Child will learn the true nature of humanity  Pelly, who designed the costumes,  doesn't trivialise the "animals" but shows them as realistically as is possible (given that Bats and Squirrels don't sing).  So different from the twee "animals" in Melly Still's The Cunning Little Vixen (review here). Here, animals are treated with dignity, for that's the message of the opera, that no-one is supreme in this universe.The Glyndebourne chorus transform into trees, each one individualized. Even "statues" move. The darkness now is less nightmare than transformative dream. At last the Child recognizes that selfishness is cruel. He caged and tortured the Squirrel, but now looks into her eyes and sees things through her perspective. The Squirrel was sung by Stéphanie d'Oustrac, who also sings the Cat. At last, the Child can be a child again and call "Maman! up towards the lighted window. Laurent Pelly's L'enfant et les sortilèges is  a masterwork of emotional intelligence and sensitivity,  absolutely informed by Ravel's music. 

Stéphanie d'Oustrac also sang the main role of Concepción in L'heure espagnole. Elliot Madore sang  Ramiro the Muleteer who carries clocks around so effortlessly  that he becomes a Grandfather Clock in L'enfant et les sortilèges  (where he also sings the Tom Cat). This constant role-changing might stress singers, but is very much part of the meaning of both operas.  They all performed extremely well. Torquemada the clockmaker thinks life can be regulated by clockwork, but as his wife discovers, things don't always go as planned. François Piolino sang Torquemada, and also the Teapot, the Frog and the Old Man of Arithmetic). The staging of L'heure espagnole seems relatively dated compared with the sheer genius of Pelly's  L'enfant et les sortilèges  but its clutter also suggests why we need clocks (and Arithmetic, and indeed of the mechanisms of the world around us).

This production will be screened online and in cinemas from 19th August.

Please see Opera Today for more detail and full cast list.

photos: Simon Annand

Glyndebourne Ravel - Laurent Pelly speaks

Fascinating Ravel Double Bill starts at Glyndebourne this weekend. L'heure espagnole and L'enfant et les sortilèges, two surrealist fantasies, so sharp they're hard to stage well. But if anyone can do them with style and depth, it's Laurent Pelly, who gave us the Glyndebourne Hansel und Gretel, and the ROH Manon and Cendrillon. With Pelly, you can count on intelligence and depth.  Go to the Glyndebourne website HERE and see a link to an interview with Pelly in Opera Today HERE. There's also a podcast.

“L’enfant et les sortilèges is a work that makes us understand what it’s like to be a child, maybe 8 or 10 years old. I was 14 years old when I first got to know it, and I was very moved. It lasts about 45 minutes, but it has the depth of an opera of three or four hours. There are so many images, so many personalities, and so many ideas! When I think about the music and its freedom and inventiveness, and the poetry in the text by Colette, I’m so happy that I’m doing it at Glyndebourne.“.......“L’enfant is about a nightmare, but the nightmare is the child’s vision of the world of adults. For me, the teapot, the teacup and the shepherdesses represent adults”. The child doesn’t understand the adult world, so he sees familiar objects come to life and threaten him. It’s fantasy but at the same time understandable “You see the world through the eyes of a child”, says Pelly."
photo courtesy ICA Management

Dangerous Ravel - Bernarda Fink, Wigmore Hall

The Wigmore Hall marks the 75th anniversary of the death of Maurice Ravel with a series of concerts that run through to June 2012. Mixing piano song with chamber music, Bernarda Fink's recital  titled "Une rare émotion",  placed Ravel's vocal music in the context of his era.

That "rare emotion" was a search for alternatives to mainstream culture, exemplified by exotic, alien places. While British colonialism infantilized other cultures, the French saw in "orientalism" potential for creative growth. Ravel's fascination with non-western concepts wasn't effete, but an act of affirmative courage.

Bernarda Fink began her recital with Ravel's Cinq mélodies populaires grecques  Their simplicity is deceptive for they represent a very different aesthetic to the often florid fin de siècle lushness of the time. Perhaps it's significant that the poet who wrote the texts, Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, persuaded Ralph Vaughan Williams to study with Ravel instead of with Vincent d'Indy. Fink and Christopher Glynn, her pianist, are right not to overdo the folk origins of these songs, for they herald Ravel's later work, like Rapsodie espagnol and even Boléro. Perceptively, Fink and Glynn juxtaposed these songs with Debussy's Chansons de Bilitis, written only 5 years previously, preceding the sensuality of La Flûte de Pan with Camille Saint-Saëns Une flûte invisible (Flautist : Adam Walker)

More stellar, however, was Fink's performance of Ravel's very early Shéherézade (1903). "Asie, Asie, Asie", she sang, her voice glowing with excitement, "Vieux pays merveilleux des contes de nourrice". Then, she intoned the words "Je voudrais voir des assassins souriant", almost parlando, hinting at menacing mysteries. Emotional extremes and daring - Ravel was by no means as mannered as the dandy image might suggest.

Jules Massenet's Élégie (1872) was a reminder of the French Romantic tradition, here transcribed for cello (Marie Bitlloch) which nicely complimented Fink's lower register. The highlight of the evening, nonetheless, was Fink's performance of Ravel's Chansons madécasses (1926). This is Ravel's exoticism in full glory. Fink's singing took on a shimmer that brought out the suppressed erotic tension. Her Aoua! was spectacular, vibrant with horror. "Méfiez-vous des blancs, habitants du rivage", she sang. Beware of the whites, who make enticing promises, but bring carnage. The violence is even more terrifying when Ravel follows this outburst with Il est doux. A man is sitting under a palm tree, a woman is preparing his meal. The music lilts languidly. But who is the man, and who is the woman? After Aoua!, we should beware. Ravel is provocative. Exoticism isn't safe.

Fink and Glynn sang Debussy's Trois mélodies de Paul Verlaine (1891) and a selection of Fauré songs from his op 39 and 76, including the lovely Les roses d'Ispahan which often makes me swoon,  but after that Aoua! anything but Ravel seemed tame. Glynn's transcription of Poulenc's Priez pour paix, for voice, piano, flute and cello ended the evening on a less disturbing note. Full review in Opera Today  here.