Simon Rattle's musical challenge : Koechlin, Varèse and William Walton

Sir Simon Rattle, photo : Doug Peters

Simon Rattle Prom with the London Symphony Orchestra, programmed with typical intelligence  - Koechlin, Edgard Varèse and Walton's Belshazzar's Feast.  Disparate pieces that did work together in context, enlivened by a conductor with a genuinely inquisitive musical mind.  What does Charles Koechlin's Les Bandar-log op 176 (1939-40)  have in common with Edgard Varèse's Amériques ? and with William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast ?

Koechlin 's Les Bndar-log is a late work, writtn towards the end of the composer's life. Koechlin was bitter that the world had moved on, nearly 40 years after Debussy and Stravinsky. In Rudyard Kipling's poems, the monkeys of Bandar-log are scrawny  - brown - upstarts - put in their place by a bullying bear.  The racist implications of the piece are never far away. Koechlin's subtitle "the scherzo of the monkeys " isn't meant to be Disney-cute, it's a scherzo. Some composers of Koechlin's period blamed modernity on Jews, (Schoenberg and oddly enough Kurt Weill, who wasn't particularly modern), so the racist implications of the piece are relevant.  It's ironic that it's become the work by which Koechlin is best  known ! By placing it together with Varèse's Amériques, Rattle, with his gentle sense of humour, brings out strange similarities. Both pieces are composites, smaller units put together like a mosiac to form something bigger. Koechlin veers from style to style, waywardly, like monkeys move in the jungle.  Varèse builds blocks of shape as a cubist painter might do, adding vivid impressionistic detail, creating a virtual city in sound, full of life and incident.  Here, we heard the original 1921 version, with a larger orchestra, and extended percussion, which includes klaxon. For him, the modern represented hope, and his music has endured, its influence far-reaching. Amériques was effectivelyVarèse's opus one, and the work expresses the thrill of moving to a new continent, full of promise. Hearing the 1921 original is a reminder of how strikingly innovative the piece is, still fresh and vibrant after nearly 100 years.

Walton's Belshazzar's Feast (1931) has been done numerous times at the Proms, including two First Nights, and for good reason. It's a blockbuster, the LSO augmented by Orfeo Catala, Orfeo Catala Youth Choir, the London Symphony Chorus and soloist Gerald Finley.  The setting is ostensibly Babylon and biblical, but Walton's approach was modern and secular.  It's a thrilling piece - long lines that zig zag and extend wildly, against thunderoyus timpani. The score is quasi Hollywood, maximizing excess, with brass bands thrown into the heady mix.  Biblical as its context may be, it's hardly pious, but very much a piece of its time (1931) when the jazz age still prevailed and the Bright Young Things partied like there'd be no tomorrow.  Long, zig zag vocal lines swaying exuberatantly, punctuated by timpani, heightended by brass.  Belshazzar's having a rave.  "Babylon was a great city" sang Finlay with solemn portent, enumerating the treasures: "...chariots, slaves and the souls of men". Singing with unbridled delight, the choir let rip, with great freshness.  "Praise thee !, Praise thee !"  But as we know, parties don't last forever.  Ominous sounds from the orchestra. The King sees a hand writing on the wall "Mene, mene tekel upharsim". The  "Hebrew" sound of trumpets. the choir emphasising the baritone's words with dramatic finality "Slain! Slain”. Then we're back to zany 30's celebration. "Hallelujah ! Hallelujah!" Flamboyant riffs give way to ecstatic swoons.  "And the Light of  e Lord shall shine on us".  Yet more ecstatic Hallelujahs. "Make a joyful noise!"  A wonderful, vivid performsnce: Rattle understands the modernity and freedom that makes this piece so much more than  yet another British oratorio. Most animated Belshazzar's Feast in years, and there's been lots of competition.

National Youth Choir of Great Britain Prom : Walton Prokofiev Karabits

Kiril Karabits conducted the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra  and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain in a Prom featuring Beethoven, Richard Strauss and William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast but the gem was a miniature, Prokofiev's cantata Seven, they are Seven op 30. If Seven, They are Seven could ever be a "miniature", that is. Though it runs barely seven minutes it's so concentrated that once heard, it's never forgotten.  Valery Gergiev conducted it with the London Symphony Orchestra in March 2007, nearly lifting the roof off the Barbican Hall.  At the Royal Albert Hall, with its cavernous capacity and raised dome, it might be less of a bone shaker, but is still an experience.  An ideal vehicle for the National Youth Choir of Great Britain to let rip.

The text for Seven, they are Seven is taken from a Mesopotamian script describing the beginning of time, when seven demonic gods control creation.  Malevolent gods, and violent.  Since Prokofiev was writing in 1917, we can reasonably assume he wasn't writing about Tigris and Euphrates 5000 years ago, but about Russia at a time of upheaval.  A loud crash, followed by a scream in which the whole choir can indulge in force. The piece is written for tenor, but relatively few have the dark timbre and forceful projection to carry off its vocal extremes, pitted against a huge orchestra and choir. David Butt Philip  manages well, his voice carrying over the thumping ostinato behind him. One man against the forces of hell.  The choral line is equally dramatic: repeated lines, some thumping, others wildly angular, wavering like flames and winds.  Suddenly the volume drops. Cymbals crash, timpani rumble. Butt Philip sings sotto voce, intoning mysterious prayer.

From a rarity to a hardy perennial, William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast. The setting is again ostensibly Babylon, but the real reason for including it in this Prom was to give the Choir another chance to shine.  And they did! The freshness of younger voices adds to the sense of excitement: Walton's score is quasi Hollywood, maximizing excess, with brass bands thrown into the heady mix.  Biblical as its context may be, it's hardly pious, but very much a piece of its time (1931) when the jazz age still prevailed and the Bright Young Things partied like there'd be no tomorrow,  Belshazzar's having a rave.  "Babylon was a great city" sang James Rutherford, enumerating the treasures: "...chariots, slaves and the souls of men". Singing with unbridled delight, the choir seemed to be having a good time.  "Praise thee !, Praise thee !"  But as we know, parties don't last forever.  Ominous sounds from the orchestra. The King sees a hand writing on the wall "Mene, mene tekel upharsim". The  "Hebrew" sound of trumpets. the choir emphasising the baritone's words with dramatic finality "Slain !" Slain!"  Then we're back to zany 30's celebration. "Hallelujah ! Hallelujah!" Flamboyant riffs give way to ecstatic swoons.  "And the Light of the Lord shall shine on us".  Yet more ecstatic Hallelujahs. "Make a joyful noise!"  The photo above, from the choir's 2016 Prom,  illustrates the vibe so well.

First Night of the Proms 2015 A Feast of Belshazzars

First Night of the BBC Proms 2015 with Sakari Oramo in exuberant form, pulling off William Walton''s Belshazzar's Feast with the theatrical flair it deserves. It''s a grand blockbuster on a biblical theme, but it's by no means part of conventional British choral tradition  Elgar, who was still alive when this was written in 1931, could not have tried anything like it at the Three Choirs Festival, and Benjamin Britten, I suspect, would have cringed at its excess. But think back to Facade: an Entertainment, (more HERE) with which Walton burst to notoriety barely six years before the BBC commissioned him to write for orchestra of "not more than 15 players". Instead Walton created the extravaganza that is Belshazzar's Feast. 

The BBC SO trombones blasted a single, savage wail. Did we hear the sound of ancient Biblical trumpets?  "Thus spake Isaiah", sang the male chorus. but the word "Isaiah" oscillated with oddly bluesy flourish. "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? "  Oramo's ear for quirky detail highlighted how Walton adapted the zeitgeist of the Jazz Age to underline the sense of dislocation the Hebrews felt in a new and alien world.  The saxophone, the angular percussion,  the slithering  swathes in the choral parts and even the brass bands are there for a reason.

Christopher Maltman delivered the passage "Babylon was a great city" with such ferocious bite that his voice bounced off the walls of the Royal Albert Hall. The part is created completely without accompaniment to demonstrate the austere values of the Hebrew God.  The massed voices of the  BBC National Chorus of Wales, the BBC Singers and the BBC Symphony Chorus were impressive, but the heart of the cantata takes place in near silence.  Maltman described the mysterious Writing on the Wall in hushed, horrified tones. When the choruses and orchestra resumed, the crosscurrents and interweaving they made, literally, "a joyful noise", complete with a merry, jaunty dance.

Jean Sibelius's Belshazzar's Feast (1906-7) may not be scored for voice, but is highly theatrical nonetheless. Originally written as incidental music for a play,the Suite (Opus 51) unfolds like a series of miniature tone poems, each vividly expressive. The first ,"Oriental Procession" sounds exotic in the way so much western music adopts Orientalism for colour, but Oramo brought out its connection to other Sibelius works.  The prancing bell-like sounds reminded me of the "sleigh" music in which Kullervo's sister rides, clothed in finery on her fateful journey.  The slow movements, though, are even more poetic, particularly the haunting "Solitude" with its melancholy part for solo flute. The dotted rhythms and swirling lines  suggest Nightride and Sunrise. The clarinet parts were played sensually. Spoken words or sung text were rendered unneccssary in he expressive beauty of Sibelius's music. 

The theatrical theme of this First Night of the Proms began with the Overture to Carl Nielsen's opera Maskarade (read more here)   Oramo has been conducting Nielsen symphonies with the BBC SO for some time, so this performance sparkled with vivacious charm and wit.  Perhaps they should do more music theatre. Dadaville, a premiere by Gary Carpenter (b 1951) was disappointingly derivative, added perhaps to fill some BBC quota of works that are newly written but not necessarily new. Fireworks as part of performance might work in something more original, but not in this case. Thankfully, Lars Vogt was a fine soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto no 20 in D minor K466, well supported by Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. .

 

English Sprechstimme : Walton Facade Prom

Calling Facade: an Entertainment the creation of William Walton is a bit unfair. The music in the piece comes primarily from Edith Sitwell's bizarre texts where meaning is subservient to the strange syntax and rhythms of the spoken word.  In this version of Facade, Walton's contribution serves as understated background   Everything in Facade predicates on the text, which isn't illustrated like song, and not even sung or spoken in a normal way, but in a kind of English Sprechstimme.

Everything rests on the innate musicality of the Speakers. At the Cadogan Hall in Proms Chamber Music 8 we had Dame Felicity Palmer and Ian Bostridge. They were a formidable partnership, She a Grand Dame with plummy tones that express the type of English Grand Dame whose like we may never see again. He, immersed in Britten (who adored Sitwell) and the wilder shores of British imagination. Facade isn't spoken, like speech. It's declaimed so the very nature of language is inverted  as musical form. There's something so deep and so hidden in Facade that that it's very title is a hint. "Jai'seul la clef de cette parade sauvage". Sitwell's inspirations might have been Rimbaud and Apollinaire, though she's not quite as incandescant. She's English,  after all, and more genteel. In early performances, the performers hid behind a curtain painted with a Grecian face, transmitting the words through a hole, rather like a Grecian oracle. Or, one might dare say, like the Wizard of Oz through an emerald palace. The speakers spoke through a Sengerphone, as pictured above, which would have further disguised and dehumanized the voices. That's Edith Sitwell herself in the photo. 
 
Bostridge did poems where extreme agility and rapid fire diction create jaunty staccato. Crisply defined word endings, sharp "d"s and "t"s, delivered deadpan: Sitwell didn't want soppy sentimentality. Yet Sitwell's Neue Sachlichkeit masked great sadness. An abused, awkward child, she hid behind strange costumes and affectation, as if the mask - the facade - of eccentricity could mask the pain within. Bostridge's perfect poise let just enough of Sitwell's singularity through so we could feel the person behind the arch cleverness. What a coyly secretive language English can be. Bostridge ever so subtly emphasized the silent "h" in words like "when" and "where" Even the way he clipped words like "room" to "rhum" as repressed,  upper class Englishmen still do, suggested meaning beyond the obvious play on words. 

Dame Felicity did poems where longer lines allow words to pop up like images in the subconscious. Once could analyze the words, like people do with Bob Dylan lyrics, but it's better I think to focus on the play of sounds within words, and the deliberate dissociation of fractured images. Hence the exoticism,, which constantly throw the listener off track. There are images of Spanish grandees ("mouldy" men with young brides) and Cockney couples whose accents Palmer mimics with great verve. We're in the world of Rimbaud's Les Illuminations, though Walton's music is far less inventive. In this version of Facade, Walton's contributions are subtle: jazz riffs on saxophone, which would have seemed much more daring and avant garde in the early 1920's then they do today, and sultry woodwinds. Even the Hornpipes suggest images hidden from plain view. And oh, that gorgeous Sir Beelzebub where both speakers and the orchestra dance in mock heroic glee. 

Before Walton's Facade, members of the Nash Ensemble, conducted by John Wilson, played Shostakovich's Four Waltzes (Op 97c) in a transciption by L Atovmyan. Delightfully cheery and cheeky.