Back to the Future - Aldeburgh Festival 2020

Exciting news about the 2020 Aldeburgh Music Festival.   Back to the future, in the sense that  the festival is returning to its roots, and to the musical ideals that Britten and Pears sought to achieve.  Aldeburgh is absolutely unique.  British music is like a grand river, into which flow many differnt streams and tributaries, which go on to fertilize creative fertility.  There are many different threads and traditions. Diversity, in all aspects of life does matter. That's why there are so many different music festivals. The Three Choirs Festival focuses on cathedral based, communal performing traditions.  Oxbridge College traditions, epitomised by King's College, are different, too, even different from other colleges. There are other regional and specialist festivals all round the country which encourage greater focus on whatever theme they dedicate themselves too.

The last thing Britain needs is a bland, all-purpose quango run by suits with non-musical agendas, catering for theme-park values rather than for musical quality. Aldeburgh's identity is unique. Right from the start, Britten and Pears believed in the concept that music doesn't have to be populist to be popular.  much of Britten's music was indeed written for the specifics of Aldeburgh and the region around it.  Had the Aldeburgh Festival existed in 1945, chances are that it woud have been heard there, too.  That emphasis on smaller, community based music making which brought forth Albert Herring represents anothrer Britten-Pears ideal that ordinary people are capable of responding to excellence without  compromise. The Aldeburgh Festival is just the high profile face of what the Britten-Pears Foundation stands for all year round.  Nearly every leading British composer has benefitted form the creative fertility that was Briten and Pears' dream.   So thank goodness after a few fallow years when Aldeburgh seemed to be turning into an outlet for BBC Radio 3, the 2020 Festival promises new hope.

Tom Coult's opera Violet, an Aldeburgh Commission,  has its world premiere starting 12th June. Coult is an extremely interesting younger composer, highly regarded by many.  Coult's  St John's Dance kicked off the 2017 First Night of the Proms . An exercise in perpetual motion and tempi, it was engrossing enough to hold attention, while being concise. Certainly better than some of the mindless pap the Proms assumes new music must be.  But beware! St John's Dance was a form of mass hysteria, where people kept dancing on, unheeding to their deaths.  With a libretto by Alice Birch, Violet promises to pack an even more subversive punch. "With the townspeople in crisis, can Violet finally escape?" Maybe this Violet's not shrinking anymore. Andrew Gourlay conducts the London Sinfonietta. Coult's Violin Concerto features in the 19th June concert, Ilan Volkov conducting the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

Allan Clayton and Mark-Anthony Turnage are featured artists this year. Turnage's Silenced is a song cycle receiving its wold premiere on 17th June,  to be heard with Steven Osborne in Britten's Piano Concerto. and Percy Grainger.   This concert is paired with another on 20th June, also Britten, Grainger, Janáček and a new work by Cassandra Miller. Clayton's seciond recital on 27th June features Britten, Michael Berkeley and Priaulx Rainier.  Other good concerts with Imogen Cooper (Mozart)  and lots of the early and baroque music which shaped Britten's outlook so strongly that they've always been a major theme in the Festival.

The really big moment everyone will book for will be Britten's War Requiem, on Sunday 21st June, with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Allan Clayton, Florian Boesch and Tatiana Pavlovskaya. In the Maltings, Snape, the impact should be overwhelming. Ryan Wigglesworth conducting the Knussen Chamber Orchestra on 25th June is a classic Aldeburgh programme - Mozart, Elliott Carter and Messiaen.  Gala final concert on 28th June with Martyn Brabbins conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with Britten Les Illuminations (Julia Bullock), Pictures at an Exhibition and another Turnage work, Frieze from 2012.

Mark-Anthony Turnage Refugee, Allan Clayton Britten Nocturne

Allan Clayton, courtesy Maestro Arts

Mark-Anthony Turnage Refugee (for tenor and orchestra) with Allan Clayton, the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Andrew Gourlay, premiered last month now broadcast on BBC Radio 3.  Five movements, four with texts - Emily Dickinson These Strangers (1864), Benjamin Zephaniah We Refugees (2000), WH Auden Refugee Blues (1939) and Brian Bilston Refugees (2016). Five vignettes (the fourth movement is orchestral) together forming a diverse collage. For refugees are everywhere - human history is shaped by mass population movements of one kind of other.  Being a refugee is not normal but is the norm.

The first section (Dickinson) is brief - a single verse.  Brief orchestral fanfare raises the curtains, so to speak, for the Benjamin Zephaniah poem, (full text here). "I come from a musical place where they shoot me for my song". Turnage's settings arealmost theatrical, for each verse is a drama encapsulating many tragedies. "Nobody’s here without a struggle, And why should we live in fear. Of the weather or the troubles? We all came here from somewhere.".  Auden's Refugee Blues is more savage. Urban and urbane, showing that even in supposedly civilized societies, evil reigns. "Say this city has ten million souls,Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us"  Since Brexit, Britain has changed. Now all that matters is The Will of the People, a slogan Auden would have known all about.  Auden himself is attacked in some newspapers for being too arch and too intellectual.  So much for his being one of the greatest poets of 20th century Britain. Auden's lines curl languidly, but each word drips poison : elegant subversion, way above the heads of Brownshirts and their one track minds. Turnage's setting reflects the bluesy ambiguity that gives the poem such power ; jazz musicians, cabaret artists, gays, Jews, blacks, leftists, non-conformists, the Weimar Auden knew so well.  It's also natural Turnage territory, given his background.  (Oddly enough the poem was also set by Elisabeth Lutyens). The fourth movement sets no text, but no words are needed. This is Turnage's own voice, a tone poem which says what words cannot say. Bristling with nervous energy, it's pugnacious and irrepressible.  A mournful melody, with hollow percussion, introduces the final movement.  The mood is desolate, Turnage's setting almost post-apocalytic. Woodwinds wail, string sounds hover like smoke.  In Bilston's poem people object to outsiders ("scroungers, we need to see them for who they really are"), but he is not on that side. Nor is Turnage. "Oh, do not tell me they have no need of a hand", sings Clayton, his pitch taken up by a cor anglais, ringing pure and clear.

Oliver Knussen's legacy lives on:  his influence on British music and musicians is profound. Knussen's  Songs without Voices (1991/2) . Songs without voices?   Their subtlety frees the listener who is freed creatively to "hear" in the imagination, becoming part of the creative process.  For me, the quiet stillness of Fantastico (Winter’s Foil)  suggests the pale light of winter and the way one's breath become visible in cold air. I visualize the long outward reaching lines in Maestoso (Prairie Sunset) translated into long, horizontal vistas. In the third song Leggerio : The First Dandelion , the stillness is shattering. In the final song, Adagio: Elegaic Arabesques, the cor anglais leads, delineating elegant patterns.well thought programming.

Britten was an outsider too, escaping the fascism sweeping Europe in his time : no-one really emigrates for fun. Fortunately he could return to his roots and destiny.  As a child, Oliver Knussen discovered Britten's Nocturne (Op 60, 1958). Knussen must have been an unusually perceptive child, responding instinctively to musical undercurrents which many adults still can't comprehend. (the animal sounds probably helped).  The scope is ambitious - eight very varied settings by Shelley, Tennyson, Coleridge, Middleton, Wordsworth, Owen, Keats and Shakespeare - put together with structural cohesion that's panoramic in scale though scored for only seven instruments and soloist. The ensemble is unobtrusive, commenting on and extending the vocal line. The voice part itself seems to reflect the sounds of an instrument, twisting and shape shifting, like an exotic oboe or clarinet, weaving and curling. The effect is like a seamless dialogue between human and non-human sounds, absolutely of the essence in  texts that address strange, otherworldy concepts where things might not be what they seem to be.

"On a poet's lips I slept/Dreaming like a love-adept"  is just the starting point as we enter this phantasmographic journey "Nor heed nor see, what things they be;But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurseling of immortality!" - the word "nurseling" twisting and turning, very different from the cadence of normal speech. In the second song, we encounter the Kraken, a monster that sleeps in the ocean depths in "ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep" until summoned by the bassoon, which lumbers and coils like the mythical beast, aroused. As he rises to the surface, wind instruments evoke "bubbles". But the kraken dissolves as he reaches light,. the last word "Die" is clipped, strangled mid-note.  The third song describes a young boy, alone beguiled by the night. The lines of the text curve, round and round : almost circular breathing for voice. The effect is claustrophobic.

"Midnight's bell goes ting, ting, ting, ting"  a pause betweeen each"ting" so the ensemble murmurs around it. Dogs howl, but the nightingale sings "twit, twit, twit" and the nibbling mouse goes "peep, peep, peep, peep". Britten plays with this text to enhance the individuality of each creature's expressiveness. The “mew, mew, mew” of the cats is plausibly feline, yet also surreal. Indeed, it  reflects the bizarre setting of the word"be-au-u-teous boy" in the previous song, suggesting that the doomed boy may be prey, to be hunted down.  Here this had me thinking of the young Knussen, and of the composer grown up, but still fascinated by "Where the Wild Things Are".

The fifth, sixth and seventh songs form an internal group. Ominous drumrolls introduce "But that night, when on my bed I lay", where the voice projects, like a trumpet, as if the protagonist were trying to be brave. The ensemble rises around him,with hard staccato chords. The final cry "Weep no more!" may be cried in vain. In the setting of Wilfred Owen, "She sleeps on soft last breaths" the drumstrokes are muffled like a heartbeat, a clarinet calling in the background.  The pace is steady,like breathing, but the voice and its wind counterpart curve long lines.  Peace is an illusion.  When the voice falls silent, the ensemble continues, murmuring without words, "The Kind Ghosts" of Britten's title.The Shakespeare sonnet "What is more gentle than a wind in summer" dances gaily, but what is Britten's intent? When the sleeper wakes, will the nightmare end ?  The ensemble surges, menacingly, the voice ending on a very high note, held as silence falls.  Britten's Nocturne  is such a strange beast that interpretation is tricky.  Peter Pears's instrument wasn't beautiful but he intuited Britten's possible meaning. The English tenor voice, which Britten understood so well, is unique in that it can express otherwise inexpressible undercurrents that lie hidden beneath the words and sounds. A most idiomatic performance from the Britten Sinfonia, Allan Clayton and Andrew Gourlay, capturing the claustrophobic inwardness that makes this masterpiece still so disturbing for some listeners. 

Joyous but sharp - Rattle, LSO, New Music Britain

Sir Simon Rattle, photo; Oliver Helbig, courtesy Askonas Holt

Sir Simon Rattle and the  London Symphony Orchestra marked the opening of the 2018-2019 season with a blast.  Literally, for Sir Harrison Birtwistle's new piece Donum Simoni MMXVIII was an explosion of brass - four trumpets, trombones, horns and tuba, bursting into the Barbican Hall. When Sir Harry makes a statement, he makes it big and bold !  Short as it was, this fanfare was more substantial than it might have seemed at first.  Like the composer himself, it was forthright and direct - no messing about.  Hence the gruff low timbres and pugnacious sassiness, punctuated by percussion, with woodwind interjection, and later a tuba solo. Characteristic Birtwistle quirks and earthiness.  Oddly enough the piece sounded like the way Birtwistle speaks in conversation. Since Birtwistle and Rattle have had a long relationship that goes back to the mid 1970's, Donum Simoni is personal, like an autographed portrait of the composer with an affectionate dedication to an old friend.

In a masterstroke of provocative but inspired programing, Rattle followed Birtwistle with Gustav Holst. Holst's Egdon Heath (A homage to Thomas Hardy) op 47 (1927) is rooted in the idea of timeless landscape.  Like Hardy's Wessex, Egdon Heath doesn't exist, though it feels as though it should.  Low rumbling harmonies, long, ambiguous string lines that seem to be hovering between tonalities: like mist above a heath.  Tempi speed up, but clear, long lines return and an anthem-like motif emerges : almost Elgarian in the way that it evokes time and place.  A single trumpet rang clear and the sounds dissolved into the ether around them. Though Rattle has built his reputation on new music, he has done a lot of Elgar and Sibelius. This Egdon Heath was a beautifully textured tone poem rich with feeling.  Rattle is making connections between Holst and Birttwistle, who creates imaginary landscapes, rough hewn from almost organic forces, merging past, present and future in co-existing layers.  Some may scream that Holst isn't "modern" but yes he was, in his own way.

Rattle's gift for intelligent musical juxtapositions is one of his strengths, from which we can learn.
Rattle and Mark-Anthony Turnage have worked together for decades, too. Rattle premiered Turnage's Remembering 'in memoriam Evan Scofield'  with the LSO at the Barbican last year (read more here) and with the Berliner Philharmoniker in Berlin. Turnage's Dispelling the Fears from 1994/5 is a much earlier work.  Trumpet players Philip Cobb and Gábor Tarkövi are principals of the LSO and the Berliner Philharmoniker respectively, so this performance was also a drawing together of past, present and future.  The two trumpets stalk each other in dialogue and at cross-purposes, connecting and disconnecting with the orchestra around them.  Though it is a serious work, there's wit in it too, which connected it, in turn, to Benjamin Britten's Spring Symphony.

Britten's Spring Symphony (1948) is big, flamboyant and bursting with good-humoured high jinks -  an excellent choice with which to open a new season.  Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra were joined here by soloists Alice Coote, Elizabeth Watts and Allan Clayton  with the London Symphony Chorus (Simon Halsey), the Tiffin Boy's Choir, the Tiffin Girls' School Choir and the Tiffin Children's Chorus (James Day).  The Spring Symphony is more than symphony : it is a piece of music theatre, where visuals count.   Here, the  youth choruses walked into the Barbican Hall and sang from the edge of the platform, up one aisle and on the stage itself.   Not quite as stunning as last year's Berlioz Damnation of Faust when Rattle and the LSO were joined by young singers who seemed to materialize everywhere (Please read more here).   But the difference lay in the music itself.  Cheerful as the Spring Symphony is, there's something very "English" about it, and its high spirits need a certain degree of discretion.  In terms of Britten's output it occupies a strange place. It's not Peter Grimes, but closer to another genre dear to Britten's heart : community music-making for the sheer pleasure of making music together.  

Thus the sprawling structure, four parts with twelve distinct sections, which together form a large, impressionistic portrait of Spring in its many manifestations. A Birtwistle "landscape" of sorts   If there's any symphonic predecessor, it might be Mahler's Symphony no 3 where summer rushes in with exuberant vigour.  Like the god Pan, artists don't follow rules : they create.  Thus the many different texts from various sources,  some medieval, some modern, and the variety of settings and styles.  Wisely, Rattle didn't try to homogenize them, but kept the separate parts distinct, so each shone on its own merits.   A blazing "Shine out, fair sun !" set the mood. There are many Brittenesque elements in the piece which would be fun to isolate, and relate to, later works, but it is enough that the work as a whole flows naturally as a series of tableaux.  Lively performances : everyone having a good time.  whih is as things should be. Rattle, a consummate communicator, knows how to share his enthusiasm with performers and with audiences. A lot of fuss these days is made of grim-faced pious "music education" but this is how things actually work in the real world.  Note the final section "London to thee I do present the merry month of May". 

Please see my review of Rattle's second concert with the LSO Britain and European New Music - Britain's connections with Janáček, Szymanowski and Sibelius.

Bubbling brew : Turnage Hibiki, Prom Ravel Debussy Kazushi Ono

Mark-Anthony Turnage Hibiki (2014) at the BBC Proms, with Kazushi Ono and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sally Matthews, Mihoko Fujimura, the New London Children's Choir and the Finchley Children's Music Group, preceded by Debussy and Ravel Piano Concerto in G major with Inon Barnatan, so beautifully played that even someone like me, more into voice and orchestra, could throroughly enjoy.

Ono conducted the premiere of Turnage's Hibiki in Tokyo in December 2016 with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra of which he is Music Director.  Hibiki is a substantial work for large orchestra, two soloists and childrens' choir. According to the publishers Boosey & Hawkes, it "offers consolation after loss – whether from war, earthquake or tsunami". That's a tall order, almost impossible to fulfil.  Consolation is trivial band aid in the face of such extreme horror.   It's meaningless unless we reflect on the causes of catastrophe and resolve that such things should never, as far as possible, happen again.

Numerous Japanese writers, composers, film makers and artists have reflected on and examined the issues arising from war and nuclear annihilation.  Indeed, you probably can't be an East Asian  intellectual and not ponder 150 years of war and traumatic social change, not only in Japan but in China and the rest of Asia.  Masao Ohki's Hiroshima Symphony, written only 7 years after the bombs fell, is graphically descriptive (read more here) . Ikuma Dan's Hiroshima Symphony (1985) is even more sophisticated.  It's an important piece of world significance. Please read more here)

There's no reason why western composers shouldn't engage with these subjects. We're all part of humanity.  But it's difficult to approach specifically Japanese aspects without an understanding of the cultural, social and historical background.  Mark-Anthony Turnage is good on music with social conscience. Once I got over the shock value of Anna Nicole, I grew to love its insights into consumer-obsessed society and the degradation of those who buy into the scam. Read more HERE  But Anna Nicole is a western icon, and Turnage likes Americana. That doesn't necessarily mean he can't write about other cultures, but I'm not sure how to take Hibiki. Does it penetrate much beneath the surface? Is it enough to address the many long-term implications of Fukushima simply by repeating the name over and over? I'm no composer but I'd rather that the music itself spoke, not the words.  No disrespect to Turnage. Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem had so little to do with Japan that he really should not have compromised himself by taking the money.  It would probably take a Beethoven or Bach to write something truly transcendant. "Consolation" isn't enough.

Kazushi Ono did Turnage's Hibiki more than justice. From the BBC SO he drew some very committed playing. They don't do as much Turnage as they should and this is a bit more than typical Turnage, so all honours to them.  Hibiki unfolds over seven sections, like a postcard book..  But Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't actually lead to Tohoku or the Tsunami or to Fukushima.  Natural disasters aren't man made or specific to any one country.  Nuclear power on its own isn't evil, it's misused and abused. As anyone who's ever watched Japanese movies should know.  See my piece on Godzilla and the Tsunami,  The seven parts together don't cohere. This weakens the impact of the whole and undercuts the claim that it's an act of consolation.  Wisely, Ono marked the breaks with long silences, so each section can be heard alone, without a thread.  Unfortunately, substantial parts of this year's Proms audiences are obsessed with clapping any chance they get. They don't care enough about music to pay attention and listen.

The first two sections are named after Iwate and Miyaga, two of the areas hit by the 2011 Tsunami.  Blocks of sound bubble in the first movement, in jerky ostinato with nice jazzy trumpet calls, high pitched winds and swathes of strings. Oddly cheerful! A long ominous wail marks the start of the second section, suggesting perhaps the flow of the waves rolling onto land. No-one will ever forget the footage caught on film or the frightening silence, broken only by crushing debris.  The timpani pound, brasses wail and the orchestra plays a long line of multiple fragments and layers.  Fearsome growls and the sound of a bell.   There certainly is scope for a piece in which music could translate the idea of multiple fragments and layers of density, flowing and churning in different sequence, but Turnage can't develop the concept in the space of a few minutes.

The third section "Running" represents a poem "Mother Burning" by Sou Sakon which describes the poet running from flames. But the mother, following behind, is engulfed.  Rapid fragments of words and sound, the two soloists singing lines that intersect rather than connect.  Turnage's thing for percussion and screaming brass is used to good effect, the vocal lines more choppily employed: but that's what happens when you're running for your life and can't take long breaths.  The childrens choirs sing an adaptation of a Japanese children's song similar to "Twinkle, twinkle Little Star" The English accents of the young singers, singing in Japanese, add a surreal touch, more poignant than if they were singing in a language they'd normally speak.  The melody is taken up by the mezzo, Mihoku Fujimura, a much welcome regular visitor to the UK.

Suntory Dance , the central movement, makes a striking diversion from the threnodies before and after.  It's also the best section, so good that it could act as a stand-alone concert piece.  Here, Turnage's facility for strong brass and percussion comes to the fore: quirky, wayward rhythms, angular blocks and more busy, bubbling figures from which the idea of "dance" might come.  I don't know why "Suntory", which is the name of the concert hall and of the company that financed it.  They manufacture alcoholic drinks, and one of their big brands is named Hibiki, "Japanese Harmony". The piece is so lively that it could be an  anthem for the company, used in encores and social occasions. So much for the BBC translation that Hibiki just means  "beautiful sound".

After this interlude, darkness returns. Brooding timpani and moaning brass, string lines shining with metallic edge. Lovely woodwind passages: Fujimura sings lines from texts from Monzaemon Chikamatsu’s The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, a  Bunraku drama from 1703. It's such a classic that it's been adapted for cinema, its tale of doomed love a recurrent meme, though what connection this has to Hiroshima or to the Tsunami, I don't know.  Much has been made in the publicity material for Turnage's Hibiki about the Mahler connection, but frankly I cannot hear any resemblance to Das Lied von der Erde,.  But the real subject of Das Lied von der Erde is Mahler himself, and his metaphysics  The orientalism in that piece reflects the original poems Mahler used and adapted for his own purposes. And in any case, they weren't Japanese but Chinese.  No doubt much will be made of this in the media by those who don't really know Das Lied von der Erde.  Double-dose cultural appropriation.

The final section, for orchestra and children's voices, is swirling abstraction, the word "Fukushima" repeated, almost mechanically.  Turnage's Hibiki is good listening but it  doesn't really hold together. The parts are greater than the sum, aside from the vivacious Suntory Dance.   That's excellent, and parts 1, 2 and 4 work well together musically, but parts 3, 4 and6 are weak : No fault of the performers, though.  It's not nearly near the level of Turnage's Remembering : in memoriam Evan Scofield, a work of heartfelt sincerity. (Read more about that HERE)

Simon Rattle LSO Turnage Mahler Barbican

This was no "ordinary" event! When Simon Rattle conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in Mark-Anthony Turnage and Mahler at the Barbican, a statement was being made, of much wider significance than the concert itself.  Consider the context.  Though he formally becomes the LSO's Music Director later this year, their association goes way back. Rattle is perhaps the greatest mover and shaker that British music has experienced since Sir Henry Wood.  His whole life has been dedicated to a love of music that goes beyond conducting, and reaches all aspects of cultural experience.

This concert was mega-profile for many reasons. This was the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Remembering 'in memoriam Evan Scofield' , a joint commission between the LSO, the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Turnage is one of the great British composers of our time, and also international, given his long association with the US and his interest in jazz.  Remembering was written about a promising young man whose life was cut short by cancer at the age of only 25.  Before he died, however, Scofield asked that those who survived him might have the adventures he missed out on. By scattering his ashes, those who loved him could travel with him where he could not have otherwise gone: imagination transcending the annihilation of death. A metaphor for creativity, whose results live beyond their maker.

Rattle and Turnage, when they were young

Remembering is a long way from the wildness of Greek and the audacity of Anna Nicole. It resembles Frieze, but may well mark a new period in Turnage's development. It's a very personal work, since the composer knew the dedicatee extremely well. Turnage and John Scofield, the jazz guitarist, Evan's father, collaborated on many projects, including Scorched in 2004.  Written in four movements, Remembering resembles a symphony. The first movement is fast and angular, with whips of jerky expression typical  of Turnage's funky jazz-influenced style.  Suddenly the pace speeds up and the movement ends abruptly.  Elongated lines mark the second movement, purposefully dragging as if it were possible to hold back time. Metallic percussion, the cool, pure chill of high flutes.   Quiet. ominous rumblings underpin the sharp protests in the scherzo, which cuts out abruptly, like the previous movements, its mood left hanging in the air.  Cello and viola duet in the finale. The pace is elegaic, deliberate, cut by a moment in which the orchestra suddenly flares up with sudden energy, before retreating into passages of great refinement and beauty.  Muted trumpets, elegant winds: ultimately the mood is transcendence, far from the jerky rhythms of the world. Two "hammerblows" struck on tubular bells.  The third is beyond our ken.

It was in context with Turnage's Remembering that the Mahler 6th performance which followed can be appreciated.  Audiences are used to listening from recordings, but musicians hear from the experience of concert performance.  Rattle has been conducting Mahler for forty years,  and was, indeed, instrumental in bringing Mahler to widespread public attention in this country. The LSO have also been playing Mahler since way back, under numerous different conductors.  On this occasion, Rattle and the LSO approached Mahler through the prism of Turnage's Remembering, which being new,  would have taken more rehearsal and study time.

This "Tragic" was tragic, but also non-tragic. The hammerblow didn't cut him short – yet – and he went on to greater heights.  Andante-Scherzo worked well in this performance, reinforcing the idea of memory.  The "Alma Theme" represents happiness, summer, nature, all those good things that make life worth living. When the chill descends, the iciness is all the more poignant, having looked back on what will not come again. A beautifully poised andante, the LSO playing with a tenderness that takes more skill tio achieve than big, noisy outbursts.  If music can be as sublime as this, it can never be extinguished, it lives on forever, whatever happens to the individuals playing it at any given point in time. Thus the grotesque absurdity of death which the Scherzo represents is but a setback on a longer journey. The fierce driving passages, and the wailing brass give way to a macabre dance,and eventually to much sparer figures from which the Alma theme can be perceived, before the screams start again.  The Finale didn't feel depressing, but why should it have to?  I liked the punch with which Rattle and the LSO concluded : more defiance than defeat. Things are not alright when someone dies, but if you know your Mahler, you know that the end is not the end.

Last week, Rattle and the LSO announced plans for a future which gives prominence to new British music. Given that London might miss out on a world-class concert hall, and that Paris and Berlin might supplant London as a centre for excellence, focusing on British music might be compensation, up to a point.  This season at the Barbican sees several premieres of new British work, Turnage's Remembering being the high-profile first.  But whether our politicians like it or not, classical music is a European thing, a  culture of such richness and depth  that it would be churlish to blank it out in favour of insularity.  As Rattle also said last week, the point is that London concert halls just don't have the capacity to do good music justice. It's not just a question of acoustics.  At the Barbican and Royal Festival Hall, players are squashed together like sardines. What the public doesn't see is that backstage working conditions aren't up to scratch, either.  Read my pieces on why we need a world class concert hall in London HERE. 

This concert was also the first full concert-length live broadcast by the London Symphony Orchestra, which has done podcasts before but nothing quite as high profile as this. Through the Digital Concert Hall. which originated in the Rattle era,  the Berliner Philharmoniker reaches audiences anywhere, breaking down insularity, benefiting all who care about excellence.  Musician-led broadcasts are a good way forward, keeping profits in house and breaking the artistic dominance of third parties.  Perhaps equally important, audiences get to listen the way musicians listen, through whole concerts and in context.  Listen to the Rattle LSO Turnage Mahler concert on medici tv and on the LSO YouTube channel (which flopped out for part of the live broadcast).  

Barbican Spring programme picks

At last, green shoots of Spring emerging from the gloom. The Barbican Spring schedule offers plenty of hope

First off from 13-15 January, Simon Rattle conducts György Ligeti Le Grand Macabre, with the LSO and a strong cast headed by Peter Hoare as Piet the Pot. I love Ligeti's quirky music and enjoyed the ENO production by Alex Ollé and Las furas del Baus back in 2009  Read more here   That was the one with the giant woman whose body "was" the stage.  Le Grand Macabre is as frustrating as it is inventive, so staging it takes some doing  But I'm not sure what Peter Sellars will do to it  No doubt it attracts the mega-trendy crowd as it's selling fast though very expensive. (ROH balcony prices)  On 19/1, however, and just as high profile, Rattle is conducting  Mahler Symphony no 6 together with the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Remembering 'in memoriam Evan Scofield'.  This is a keynote concert, which will also be streamed on the LSO website, a wonderful development, since it brings the orchestra to the world

Another British music world premiere the next day, 20/1, Philip Cashian's  The Book of Ingenious Devices, conducted by Oliver Knussen, together with Strauss Macbeth and Elgar Falstaff  An intriguing programme in true Ollie style – will Cashian's piece have Shakespearean connections?  Huw Watkins is the soloist so presumably it's a piano concerto of some sort. A big theme this season is "Russian Revolutionaries",  so plenty of Shostakovich, but more unusually, Galina Ustvolskaya's Symphony no 2 with the Melos Ensemble at LSO St Luke's on 21/1  That weekend, a Philip Glass Total Immersion with better choices than some recent Total Immersions.

All ears and eyes alert for Jonas Kaufmann's four-day residency at the Barbican at the beginning of February That's been sold out for months, so let's hope he will be well enough   Wagner, Strauss (Vier letzte Lieder, nach!)  he's also doing an "in conversation".  Sakari Oramo with the BBCSO and Antonio Pappano with the LSO, both interesting non standard programmes, and Daniel Harding with the LSO on 15/1 with Rachmaninov Symphony no 2 and another Mark-Anthony Turnage premiere,  Håkan with dedicatee Håkan Hardenberger as soloist.

Yet another British composer premiere, Nicola LeFanu's The Crimson Bird for soprano (Rachel Nicholls) and the LSO, conducted by Ilan Volkov on 17/2 and  a Detlev Glanert premiere on 3/3 with Oramo and the BBC SO.  An extended Nash Ensemble residency at LSO St Lukes (lots of RVW chamber music)  and Andreas Scholl on 14/3  Then two concerts with Fabio Luisi on 16th and 19th March I'm opting for the second, with Brahms's German Requiem

François-Xavier Roth starts another After Romanticism series on 30/3 with the LSO - Debussy Jeux, Bartok Piano Concerto no 3 and Mahler Symphony no 1. Then a three-concert series with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert - John Adams, Mahler, and the European premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen's Cello Concerto.  Janine Jansen, Murray Perahia and Mariss Jansens with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and a keynote Dvořák Requiem on 13/4 with Jiří Bělohlávek, the BBC SO, the BBC Symphony Chorus, Brindley Sherratt, Richard Samek, Jennifer Johnston and Katerina Kněžíková   Then Easter is upon us!

Music Theatre Wales goes international

Music Theatre Wales goes international!  Britain's most adventurous smaller opera company presents two productions, on the same day on opposite sides of the world. On April 2nd, Philip Glass The Trial opens at Theater Magdeburg, Germany, while Mark Anthony Turnage's Greek opens at the 2015 Tongyeong International Music Festival, South Korea  Both pieces are classic MTW. Glass wrote The Trial  (reviewed here) specially for the company, who have championed his work almost since the company started more than 25 years ago, including outstanding productions like In the Penal Colony (reviewed here). Turnage's Greek is also a MTW classic. Greek was shocking in 1988/9 because it was a primal scream of protest. Although it's set in the East End of London, it's based on Oedipus, a drama so universal that it's inspired many retellings.  Korea should have no problems connecting.

Two productions 5000 miles apart ?  Ever resourceful, MTW divided the work between two conductor/directors. Michael McCarthy's directing The Trial , with Hermann Dukek conducting, and Michael Rafferty's conducting Greek, with Rhian Hutchings as revival director. Both McCarthy and Rafferty have worked on both productions, so they'll be good.  Here's a link to the Music Theatre Wales website, for more information.

Royal Opera House 2014-15 season analysed

The Royal Opera House's 2014-15 season is a good balance of artistic venture and business savvy. London must be doing something right with sales running at 96% capacity and HD broadcast attendance running neck and neck with live performances. When opera houses and orchestras seem to be imploding elsewhere, it's worth taking careful note of the ROH strategy.

Seven new productions in the main house, plus others in the Linbury Studio, mixed with regular revivals.  In tough times, it's easy for houses to play safe but that is not good for the long term health of the arts. The Royal Opera House thus offers a well-planned balance of familiar and new

Shock! Horror! the new season opens in September not with a glizty gala but with something truly provocative - Mark Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole. Not only that, but with prices max £25. The catch is students only but that's a positive. It will get the kids into the house on their own terms with their own peers.  BRILLIANT idea. No doubt there will be spoilsports who think young people shouldn't be exposed to four-letter words, but that's patronizing. Kids are sharper than they get credit for. Do-gooding "outreach" means zilch if you don't trust kids to think for themselves. What happened to Anna Nicole was obscene and Turnage tells it like it is. Although I didn't like it at its premiere Anna Nicole grew on me the more times I heard it. I'm going again and taking a whole bunch of under 30's. Read more HERE.
 
Other revivals include Der fliegende Holländer with Bryn Terfel, Adrianna Pieczonka  and Andris Nelsons - definitely not to be sniffed at! Terfel is also singing his signature Dulcamara in Donizetti L'elisir d'amore. I'm also looking forward to Tristan und Isolde with Stephen Gould and Nina Stemme in the greatly misunderstood Christof Loy production, the first ROH production to face orchestrated booing. Booing is intimidation, the denial of artistic expression. But I guess those who get their kicks from bullying will be out in force. Read my "More tradition than meets the eye" HERE and  HERE.

 Very exciting fare for those who like interesting repertoire:

1. Umberto Giordano Andrea Chénier with Jonas Kaufmann, making his role debut. Any role debut with Kaufmann is big news, and he can probably do this notoriously difficult part better than anyone else in the business these days. This opera isn't standard rep because it's hard to pull off without ideal singers but with this cast (Kaufmann, Eva-Maria Westbroek and Željko Lučić) the ROH will probably leave the Met's current production for dead. Antonio Pappano conducts  He's been  confirmed Music Director "at least" until the end of the 2017 season.

2  Karol Szymanowski's Król Roger with Mariusz Kwiecień . The music in this opera is ravishingly beautiful, expressing the love that dares not tell its name. It's a fabulous opera but its depths aren't often plumbed as deeply - and disturbingly - as they could be. Kwiecień pretty much "owns" the part of Król Roger, the king hypnotized by a beautiful, mysterious stranger. I can't imagine Kwiecień being coy.  Kaspar Holten directs, which I think bodes well. 

3 Rossini Guillaume Tell, is one of the hallmarks of Antonio Pappano's career : Listen to his recording with his Rome band, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia.  He's bringing the same soloists to London - Gerald Finley, John Osborn and Malin Byström. We are in for a treat. This is another opera that's not easy to stage but will be directed by Damiano Michieletto. This is the French version of an opera by an Italian  It's not so much "about" Switzerland (which has French, Italian and German -speaking communities) but about freedom, the essence of creative art..

4  Verdi I due Foscaro . "Maybe", says Pappano, "not one of Verdi's finest works but important because it deals with an elderly father, who's seen a lot about life". Which may suit Plácido Domingo at this stage of his career - life imitating art. Francesco Meli sings the son and Maria Argesta (handpicked by Pappano in Italy), sings the son's wife.

5 Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.  Kasper Holten says he wants to do a lot more operas from the first part of the 20th century, which should be really interesting. What lies in store in future years ?  A Janáček project, he hints. Possibly more? Rupert Christiansen complained that there was too much Italian repertoire and no Russian. So what, I thought. We can't have everything all the time.  We've had Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, The Tsar's Bride, Tsar Saltan and Eugene Onegin. This year we have Król Roger (in Polish) , decidedly "East" German Brecht and Weill and Czech/Moravian Janáček to come. Mahagonny is an excellent choice because it's quite flamboyant by Brecht standards, with big choruses and bizarre situations. John Fulljames should bring out its subversive anarchy well. 

6. Verdi Un Ballo in maschera. with Calleja, Hvorostovsky, Monastryka and Serafin. Worth going to for the singing alone. The director is Katharina Thoma, so be prepared for erudite, intelligent  dramaturgy. She does not dumb down: we're well advised to study the score as carefully as she does. 

7. Mozart Idomeneo with Matthew Polenzani, conducted by period specialist Marc Minkowski, in his debut at the Royal Opera House - hooray ! Director is Martin Kušej whose work in Zurich sticks in  my mind. Should we expect feathers?

 8. Philip Glass The Trial (based on Kafka) - specially commissioned for Music Theatre Wales, with which the ROH has a long and fruitful partnership . Lots on MTW and Glass on this site - please explore).

9. Harrison Birtwistle The Cure, a co-commission with the Aldeburgh Festival, with support from the London Sinfonietta, paired with Birtwistle's The Corridor, which I heard at Aldeburgh a few years ago.

10. The Royal Opera House's role in promoting British opera should not be underestimated. That's MUCH more important than promoting Russian opera! The ROH is also presenting David Sawer's Rumplestiltskin (read more here)  and The  Lighthouse Keepers.  Sawer is emerging as a genuine talent, so don't miss this double bill when it reaches the Linbury next year. This is a joint ROH/BCMG venture. Don't underestimate the importance of these partnerships.

11. Monteverdi L'Orfeo at the Roundhouse. This is significant because it links ROH's stagecraft expertise with the Roundhouse's extensive work with students and young people, which I've written about in some depth here.


photo of Pappano and Holten, : Johann Person, photo of Eva Maria Westbroek : Bill Cooper

ROH 2013-2014 Linbury Studio Theatre

The Royal Opera House main hall season 2013-2014 is good. The more you delve the more intriguing it gets. Same, too, for the 2013-2014 season in the Linbury Studio Theatre. Real cutting edge stuff coming up, but tried and trusted too. What a pity that the Linbury is too small to accomodate the audience it could attract. Plus, the seating is so cramped that anyone over 40 or 5 foot 6 cannot sit in comfort. Perhaps ROH should be thinking like Nicholas Kenyon at the Barbican, who is outsourcing medium sized events outside the main building.  The Linbury is fine for bijou miniatures, but some of the performances here are important enough, and popular enough, to merit the performance spaces they deserve.

First off : The Wasp Factory, based on Iain Banks's cult novel, with a libretto by David Pountney.  It describes "the disturbing acts of a psychopathic teenager ..... as part of a self-invented warrior cult, he uses a home made apparatus called the Wasp Factory to determine whom he will kill next and how.". Composer and director is Ben Frost.  This is a co-production with Bregenz, Hebbel-am-Ufer, The Holland Festival and the Cork Midsummer Festival, which sounds promising.

Then a really big double bill: Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek and Salvatorre Sciarrino's The Killing Flower (Luci mie traditrici) which tells the story of  Carlo Gesualdo, artist and murderer.  Sciarrino is one off the biggest names in contemporary music, His music is beautifully poised and magical. Don't let the subject matter deter you any more than the subject matter of George Benjamin's Written on Skin. (reviewed HERE).  Sciarrino is a sensitive and very well informed composer, so it's quite possible the work will be filled with references to Gesualdo's music, interpreted through a modern perspective. Read more about Sciarrino HERE. That's him in the photo above. Cool dude!

Another reason Sciarrino's The Killing Flower should not be missed is that it's being produced by Music Theatre Wales, the innovative company that specializes in interesting new music, like Philip Glass's Into the Penal Colony (reviewed HERE) which Glass liked so much that he's written a new opera specially for them, also based on Kafka. The Trial is in the pipeline for 2015. We're truly lucky that they have an arrangement with ROH. The only other place they're doing this double bill is at the Buxton Festival. The Killing Flower is being paired with Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek, not in the original production but a relatively new Music Theatre Wales exclusive from 2011.  This is the opera that made Turnage's name when he was an angry young man. Read more about it HERE. Music Theatre Wales is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a good touring programme. More about that HERE. 

For the Christmas/New Year season, a family opera from Julian Philips, whose The Yellow Sofa is a big hit at Glyndebourne Touring Opera. Philips used to be a fixture at the Wigmore Hall, a genuinely erudite and perceptive man, of whom there are far too few. His music is good, too, accessible and stimulating. When he writes for kids he doesn't write "down" at all. This is how you capture the imagination of future audiences : give them good work and all else follows  How the Whale Became, to a libretto by Edward Kemp, is based on Ted Hughes's  The Dreamfighter and Other Creation Tales.

In February, a curiosity, Tippett's King Priam paired with Britten's Paul Bunyan. Tippett and Britten aren't natural bedfellows, and one might say this combines the best of Tippett and worst of Britten.  Anyone familiar with both operas will gasp at the logistics, particularly in a place like the Linbury. There's something so strange about this that a friend suggested that each might be done on different nights, which makes sense, but why do both?  I won't speculate as uninformed guesswork is the enemy of good sense. The English Touring Opera toured with King Priam (on its own) last year.

Luke Bedford's F4u5T sounds like a big departure from his usual style.  It was devised as a companion piece to Gounod's Faust which will be on at the Main House in April 2014, so it might be a humorous experiment rather than a through-composed new opera. Working with electronic sound artist Matthew Herbert, F4u5t is about a composer frustrated by convention, who is seduced by Mefistofeles in the form of a super computer. "Soon he is using his music to manipulate and physically control the world with thrilling but deadly consequences". Probably witty and this time not above the heads of the London press.

ROH is collaborating with the Aldeburgh Music Festival and Opera North for another double bill, featuring as yet un-named operas by Elspeth Brooker and Francisco Coll.  This will be Brooke's biggest ever break. Coll is a protégé of Thomas Adès who calls him "strikingly individual". But the libretto is by Meredith Oakes, so the Adès connection may weigh heavily.

Luca Francesconi's Quartett  will have its UK premiere at the Linbury in June 2014. This is a major work, premiered at the Salzburg Festival  in 2011 and then at Teatro alla Scala, Milan. It was produced by La Fura dels Baus no less.  This will, however, be a completely new production co-produced with the London Sinfonietta  and Opéra de Rouen, directed by ROH Associate Director John Fulljames. That alone guarantees it will be good.  Quartett is loosely based on a play itself based on Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses, which isn't a novel so much as a series of letters through which the tightly plotted strategems are revealed. I think it would suit Francesconi, whose chamber music is exqusitely detailed and tightly constructed, The Arditti Quartet champion his work: he's very good indeed. Surprisingly, Tony Pappano is another fan, which ups his street cred no end. Although the opera is as compact as the story, this will be one of the most important new music events in years: the Linbury just doesn't have the capacity to give this opera the space its audience needs.  Why this isn't at Snape or QEH or even Spitalfields, I don't know. It needs only two singers but "a vast symphony orchestra and chorus" plus recorded samples over live music.

Linbury 2013-2014 ends on a fun note with HK Gruber's Gloria - a pigtail. Anyone who knows HK Gruber will know how eclectic his inventions can be, mixing genres with wit and dark humour.  Gloria is the story of "a pig princess looking for love who is dazzled and wooed by a prince who turns out to be a butcher but at the last moment is saved from the chop by Rudi The Wild Boar".   Shades of Gesualdo thru Austrian comic book?  The director will be Frederic Wake-Walker, the production by The Opera Group, Fulljames' original company. Again, their work is so good that this will be a season highlight.  

Anna is back! Royal Opera House 2013-2020

Announced 20 minutes ago,  plans for the Royal Opera House for 2013-2020. Run-in times for any production at a house like Covent Garden are long, so it's hardly surprisinmg that they have a good idea of what they're planning to do years in advance. Kaspar Holten is adamant. "New work is not and should not be at the periphery of our programme, but right at the core of what and who we are." as ever the case in opera  in the past.  Even classic staples were once "new". Those who want endless revivals of old productions will still get their fill, but ROH is doing its bit to keep the art alive with new work and new commissions.  Please see also my latests piece analysin g the situation more broadly HERE.

For really new work, the run-in time is even longer. For 2020, ROH plans to "challenge leading European composers Kaija Saariaho (Finland), Mark-Anthony Turnage (UK), Luca Francesconi (Italy) and Jörg Widmann (Germany) to create large scale new operas. The vision is for four distinct operas, each one in part inspired by the composer’s response to a set of questions developed in collaboration with the philosopher Slavoj Žižek: “What preoccupies us today? How do we represent ourselves on stage? What are the collective myths of our present and future?”

Scandal is nothing new to opera. Think of the extremely hostile reception of Carmen.  After the initial shock of Mark Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole wore off, the opera and production grew on me. I think I'll get a lot more out of next time round in 2014/15. (read what I wrote of the premiere and aftermath).

Music Theatre Wales is back with a new commission for Philip Glass based on Franz Kafka's The Trial, also 2014/15. This should be a major event if it's anywhere near asd good as Glass's In the Penal Colony (reviews here and here), whose success inspired Glass to work again with Music Theatre Wales, one of Britain's most innovative smaller companies. What a pity the Linbury Studio Theatre is so small and cramped. Hopefully, they'll do a longer run to compensate. If only there were a mid-size theatre at ROH! Could they not do a deal with somewhere else?

The Royal Operas House doesn't go out on a limb alone but works with other houses like Bregenz, Opera North., Houston and the wonderful Holland Festival. So we can look forward to Ben Frost’s adaptation of Iain Banks’s cult novel The Wasp Factory, and Luca Francesconi’s Quartett, (a new version directed by John Fulljames and co-produced with The London Sinfonietta and Opéra de Rouen after the piece's 2010 premiere at La Scala Milan).  A new opera from Luke Bedford, too, who is one of the most interesting of all youngerr British composers.  Read what I wroite about his Seven Angels here and here - another opera completely misunderstood by some, which also deserves to be heard again. Really good things need time to percolate past first impressions. Bedford's new opera is on the theme of Faust which shouldn't be too hard to take on board. A new Christmas opera from Julian Philips, whose The Yellow Sofa was a huge hit for Glyndebourne Touring. And we''ll get Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland hot on the heels of the WNO.

Lots more to read - HERE is the press release. .

Maximum Impact First Night of the Proms 2012

MAXIMUM IMPACT for the First Night of the BBC Proms 2012. My review of the First Night of the Proms 2013 is here.  Big choirs, big orchestras, Four big name conductors and the cream of British composers. No flag waving, except for someone waving an Olympics flag to upstage things. It was a sorry sight, since the BBC Proms stand for everything the paranoid, sponsor-obssessed Olympics are not. Fortunately thousands in the Royal Albert Hall and listening on the net/radio  had their minds and ears on less squalid things. Glorious music, glorious Britishness in the finest sense, genuine, sincere pride. Listen to the interval commentary on i-player which describes the difference between a plodding Land of Hope and Glory and the much more sophisticated version we heard tonight, freer and more positive. My mother was a destitute refugee liberated from camp in 1945, who attended the Last Night of the Proms in 1946. For her it was an overwhelming, cathartic experience which banished sufferings past in a blaze of genuine Hope and Glory. This Coronation Ode shows that bigots can't hijack the idealism Elgar and his contemporaries must have felt 110 years ago. Utterly stunning performance led by Edward Gardner. . Listen and read more about the cast HERE

What does being British mean, after all. Frederick Delius's UK connections were so tenuous that he'd fail the Immigration test questions. Born German, he left Bradford as soon as he could get away, fathered a child with a Florida black woman, partied in Paris and paid homage to Grieg in Norway, and wrote music that recalls Debussy. But "British" he became because the nation needed an icon. And when British music circles have heroes, they're fanatical about them. Delius Sea Drift is for me beautiful as abstract music, since I find the poem mawkish even though it's by Walt Whitman. Fortunately Bryn Terfel gives it vigorous, even gruff treatment which lifts it above sentimentality and gives it extraordinary power. Boyo Delius works well! Mark Elder conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

Elgar's Overture Cockaigne (In London Town) is a regular Proms perennial, but it was good to hear  Roger Norrington's warm hearted, lively account, perfectly in tune with the good natured Coronation Ode. Martyn Brabbins conducted Michael Tippett's Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles, which fitted the mood of optimism at the time the Prince was born. God Save the Queen, Long May She Reign!  Even to age 116. Couldn't they have chosen something to praise a woman who has done more for the monarchy than anyone else? Including Princess Diana, who deserves much more attention than she's had this Jubilee year. Mark Anthony Turnage Canon Fever (note one "n", it's a pun) was a reminder thast British music is alive and well. Much quirkier and original than he's been for a while. Some First Night Fanfares disappear without a trace. This one will stay fresh.

Speaking of Britishness, the Olympics and British music, there was some discussion on the BBC Proms site, which I can't track down (might have been pulled). Someone objected to having Beethoven 9 at the Proms on the opening night of the Olympics, because Beethoven wasn't British. "Would the Germans have played British music at the 1936 Olympics opening?" someone asked.  But Beethoven transcends national borders. Alle Menschen werden Bruder. That's the real spirit of the BBC Proms and should be of the Olympics, too.

Turnage Greek - back with a vengeance

Mark Anthony Turnage's Greek hits the streets again. Thursday it's at the Cheltenham Festival as part of a tour. It's Turnage's first opera, written at the age of 28 when he was mean, lean and thornily edgy (and maybe still is). Good pedigree - it was commissioned by Hans Werner Henze, no less, for the Munich Bienniale. Henze taught Turnage briefly so knew what he was letting himself in for. Greek, in typical punchy Turnage mode, is based on the Stephen Berkoff hit play Oedipus the King, itself based on Greek legend.

This will be worth catching as it's produced by Music Theatre Wales. They're an innovative company, who achieve great results. Remember their In the Penal Colony (Philip Glass), at the Linbury Theatre, ROH,  last year ? (review HERE). Music, subject and staging drilled precisely  together, so painful it was almost impossible to watch. Which is what Kafka intended. Turnage, on the other hand, can be surprisingly lyrical sometimes, so don't be put off by image.

Greek was shocking in 1988/9 because it was a primal scream of protest. Those were the last, anguished years of Thatcherite Britain. The Oedipus story was a frame for rebellion. It wasn't coincidence that Thatcher's sex caused more resentment than any male politican might get. There have been far more unethical politicans since, but protest was/is curiously mute. Anyway, Greek is set in the urban jungle of East End London. Tough Eddy kills a man, marries his wife and takes over the pub (kingdom). Years later Eddy discovers that Wife is his long lost mother....  maybe 80's misogyny has deep roots.

HERE is a link to Music Theatre Wales's website where there a video about the production and lots more detail. "Turnage had no qualms in tearing up the rule book and producing a ground-breaking contemporary classic: an opera fizzing with high voltage energy and raw emotion."  If ENO really wanted to be radical, they'd could do worse than revive early Turnage.

Sense not scandal - Turnage Anna Nicole

Moral outrage about Anna Nicole has been the best publicity Anna Nicole Smith has ever had. It's raised her value on the celeb stock market by billions. No-one benefits more in the long term than her estate. So what's the deal about the "family" suing Turnage and ROH? First basic rule of journalism -  check the source.

The family in question is Larry Birkhead who came into the picture at a late stage because he had a fling with AN which made her pregnant. Ergo, he gets millions because the kid is his. The most lucrative x of all time! He doesn't want the image harmed? This is the man who has no qualms about flaunting the kid publicly like some kind of freak show. Even AN had a healthier childhood. So promoting this contributes to the "care" the kid is getting. Congratulations, moral outragees.

So the opera is luridly colourful and expletive-laden? It's a style thing, and ironic. Indeed, Anna Nicole the woman comes out rather well in the opera. She's a poor kid who reinvents herself to escape. She was a product of the world around her. "It wasn't God who made Honky Tonk Angels", sang Kitty Wells, C&W star of the 50's.

Turnage has said, "We haven't been cruel about people". Despite the manic mountains of smut the opera is careful not to stray too far from previously published facts. The Larry King scene for example, was seen by millions. Reality like this hardly needs sensation. Indeed, sticking close to public domain may have muted the opera. Gerald Finley's Howard Stern's neutral, almost nice. In January, the case against him was overturned and the opera had to be revised.

Mark-Anthony Turnage is a very major British composer, with a respected body of work - Greek, Three Screaming Popes,  Scherzoid, From the Wreckage, The Silver Tassie (with Gerald Finley) - a random sprinkling over 30 years. He's been resident at the South Bank, the CBSO and the Chicago Symphony. His pedigree's solid. Any important new work is therefore an event, so it's perfectly natural that his latest opera should be a high profile event. This could have been the big break in British opera, given  that Birtwistle is over 75, and no-one but Adès really comes close. (George Benjamin's   Into the Little Hill  is a masterpiece but for chamber settings) Turnage is a good choice from the Royal Opera House bceause his music is not "too" innovative to scare away those who don't like hardcore modern music, and not too dull to drive most serious music folk to tears.  Lots of people had fun at Anna Nicole, who would have run screaming from Ferneyhough.

But the tabloids (and some music writers) don't know anything about modern music. So they focus instead on the lurid subject not the opera.  They don't realize that Turnage's trademark has always been Fusion, blending classical ideas with jazz, pop and rap. He studied with Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood. The big difference is that Turnage actually loves jazz and pop, and doesn't use them like fashion accessories. Turnage's fascination with the US is a very English thing in some ways, I think. Some see in Graceland, Las Vegas and Hollywood something completely alien to the dull grey skies and identical grim terraces that epitomize much of Britain. The very unreality and self-invention of America has an appeal, when Britain is still fairly class bound.

Because Anna Nicole is such a powerful symbol, she obliterates all else. I'd  wondered why the publicity focused on her rather than on Turnage's music but the short answer is that most people have no idea who Turnage is or even care much about new music. Which is why most of the publicity focused on Anna Nicole the person not Anna Nicole the music.

Anna Nicole the opera isn't great music, partly, I suspect, because it's subservient to the cleverly strident text, and also to the inhibitions inherent in dealing with real life subjects. John Adams's Nixon in China, for example, is limited because Adam's doesn't have a grip on geopolitics. His Dr Atomic, however, works better because he uses Robert Oppenheimer's own words which open out poetic vistas that can be translated into drama. Turnage's real musical instincts break through in the musical interlude based on Hammered Out which for me forms the centre of the opera. It's punchy, dramatic, energetic and a lot of fun, even if it's not intellectually rewarding. Believe me there is a lot of unbelievably pointless music around that makes Turnage sound like Mozart. Sensation's often been a Turnage thing. There were queues round the block for his The Silver Tassie at ENO in 2000. Less so in revival, but that doesn't change what the music was.  It's life. Turnage's early opera Greek is being revived this summer by Music Theatre Wales, who did Philip Glass's In the Penal Colony so well that it was painful, but artistically potent.

Turnage Anna Nicole Royal Opera House

Paparazzi were flashing cameras outside the Royal Opera House for the premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole. Like Hollywood!  Inside, shopping bags with Anna Nicole's face  emblazoned over the heads of statues in the foyer. The historic dioramas  of past productions inside the orchestral stalls area were replaced with sneakers, and a bra with cups so huge you could put balloons in them.  The famous red curtain looks amiss - it's been replaced by gaudy pink.  Bodybuilders in stilettos and Old Glory bikinis instead of  lion and unicorn. Anna Nicole's face beams down surrounded by the motto Honi soit qui mal y pense. "Stuff those who'd sneer" Which expresses the impact of this opera. Given what happens, I shouldn't use the term "in your face". Or as the fake Americanism of this libretto  (Richard Thomas) would put it, "in YER face".

Anna Nicole explodes immediately in a torrent of expletives delivered with the mindlessness of machine gun fire. So much so that it's incoherent, for meaning doesn't really matter so much as spewing forth. You start to think speech rhythms. But Turnage isn't Janáček. This was pure noise, calculated to disconcert. Because Anna Nicole Smith was an incoherent mass. Tacky trash as she was, her story is an indictment of a world that exploits and destroys. We ought to be cussing.

Unfortunately, the opera doesn't develop past this stage. It celebrates superficiality every bit as much as the society it might perhaps excoriate. There's no psychological insight into how a mess like Anna Nicole came to be. Instead a warped version of set piece musical biopic with stock characters that circle round the issue getting nowhere.

On the other hand, it's deliriously, hilariously funny! So much energy has gone into this production that you can't help be borne along by the enthusiasm.  Richard Jones was born to direct hyper-burlesque like this. He's helped by brilliantly imaginative set designs and costumes (Miriam Buether and Nicky Gillibrand).  Remember Richard Jones's Rhinemaidens from ten years ago? This time everyone's in a fat suit with mammaries the size of mountains. The sheer absurdity of the whole enterprise gives it a kind of manic thrust that replaces  the lack of momentum in score and libretto. In other hands, Anna Nicole could have suffocated under the sheer weight of  gibberish. Anna Nicole's boobs aren't real, and neither is this opera, but the impact is impressive. Just don't look too close!

Without Eva-Maria Westbroek's portrayal, this opera might fall flat. The strains are there throughout, like Anna Nicole's inflated front dragging her down and breaking her back. Westbroek  nonetheless manages to make the young Anna Nicole believable while she slowly morphs into the myth she creates for herself. She even makes the part sympathetic, for to some extent Anna Nicole knew full well she was playing a role in a fantasy. Now you see why I thought Westbroek's Elisabeth in Tannhäuser wasn't tame. Remember her Elektra from Zurich even earlier, where Westbroek's Elektra was a streetwise tough punk bursting with aggro.

Gerald Finley is Howard Stern, boyfriend and lawyer. Schemer as he is, he's small beans compared with Anna Nicole herself who engineered her own creation as much as he did. Even scarier, the baby she bears is now being groomed for exactly the same media-mania by her father who wasn't Stern. Anna Nicole at least grew up in a relatively normal home. Perhaps part of Finley's muted portrayal stems from the fact that real-life Stern's culpability was overturned as recently as last month.  Depicting living people in opera is fraught, so the script had to be amended at the last moment to reflect the latest position. Shocking as the incidents are, all are taken from the public domain in the sense that they''ve previously been televised and reported. Relatively little was made up that wasn't there in the first place. Even the costumes in some tableaux come from press photos. Ultimately this opera is no more invention than documentary.

Susan Bickley sings Virgie, Anna Nicole's mother. Not quite the harridan her daughter claimed she was, but sorely put upon. Alan Oke sings J Howard Marshal II, the billionaire. He looks and moves like a geriatric, but how his face lights up when he sees Anna Nicole! He gets one of the best vocal opportunities, singing a whole aria reflecting on his life. Everyone else gets interjections, even Westbroek, who is often made to sing scales.

Despite all the publicity, hardly any mention anywhere of the music. Is this significant? While there's next to no music as such in the first act, there's more in the second and even a long instrumental. I hesitate to call it an orchestral interlude, because it doesn't develop themes like orchestral pieces usually do. It's certainly punchy and vivid, though what it has to say isn't much in terms of ideas.  I don't know if this is an adaptation of Hammered Out at the Proms last year, which I thought would be a great hit.  It turned out that it was based on a hit, by Beyoncé. In fact I thought the papparazzi were out in force because she was coming. She sounds like a real diva and should have been in the Royal Box.

Turnage has been through a long creative drought, and this is his first really big breakthrough in years. Because the performances are electric and the staging gives the opera life,  In some ways maybe Anna Nicole is Turnage's story, too. With this he's found fame and wealth but he's had to make trades to get there. Anna Nicole is a load of tosh as music, but as theatre it's glorious, guilt-free pleasure. It's tremendously good fun if you let your hair down and switch off your brain. I had fun bopping along. On the plus side, there were lots in the audience new to the Royal Opera House, clearly enjoying themselves too. And why not ? Presumably they'll move on to more and keep coming back. Beyoncé.herself starred in a hip hop version of Bizet's Carmen. A creative adaptation of a universal meme. 

photos copyright : Bill Cooper, courtesy Royal Opera House, 2011 details embedded

New Greek by Young Turk Turnage

Vintage Turnage returns! Music Theatre Wales, which produced the shocking Philip Glass In the Penal Colony last year, is reviving Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek. It's a "re-working of the Oedipus myth for the age of discontent".

Commissioned by Hans Werner Henze in 1988, it's an angry protest against Thatcher's Britain. What followed Thatcher, however, makes anything she did seem oddly innocent in comparison,  even selfless, if misguided. At least she read policy briefings and didn't deliberately invent things to please George W. Invading the Falklands was a no-brainer compared with invading Iraq, Afghanistan etc. Greek was the piece that helped make Turnage's name, so it will be interesting to compare it with Turnage's new Anna Nicole, premiering next month at the Royal Opera House. The inspiration for that was Beyoncé.

The New Greek by the Young Turk Turnage is being directed by the same team who did In the Penal Colony, headed by director Michael McCarthy. Simon Banham designs and Michael Rafferty conducts. On past form this should be good. Music Theatre Wales is small, but impressive. Singers include Marcus Farnworth, Sally Silver and Louise Winter. The tour starts in Brecon, Wales, on 2nd July then moves to the Cheltenham Festival on 7th July, and thence to the Buxton Festival. Possible London dates in the autumn? Incidentally, Music Theatre Wales is working together with Philip Glass on a new piece based on Kafka The Trial. If In the Penal Colony was anything to go by, The Trial from this team should be gripping.