Jurowski : Kancheli and blazing Ralph Vaughan Williams

Vladimir Jurowski (photo : Thomas Kurek)

Vladimir Jurowski at his finest in last week's concert at the Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, part of their ongoing series Belief and Beyond Belief.  Jurowski is special to me because he's an extremely spiritual personality,  who thinks deeply about music as part of human experience. When Jurowski speaks, he's worth listening to;  he doesn't do small talk. A while back, he did a series in Russia about war and peace for audiences that didn't look like they spent much time in black tie. His choices were eclectic, even avant garde, but he described them in such a way that the audience held onto his every word. He communicated such sincerity that he drew respect even when the language barrier intervened. The South Bank is so full of hype these days that's it's annoying even to navigate the website. But there's nothing fake about Vladimir Jurowski.

In this concert, Jurowski and the LPO did an unconventional but thoughtful programme  Giya Kancheli Mourned by the Wind and  Bohuslav Martinů: Memorial to Lidice together with Ralph Vaughan Williams Symphony no 9.  Fortunately it's now broadcast on BBC Radio 3 , since going to the South Bank is more pain than pleasure these days.  The other big plus is that we get to hear Jurowski talk about the music, more fluently than most presenters. Third bonus, as interval feature Herbert Howell's a capella chorale Take him, Earth, for cherishing.

Kancheli called Mourned by the Wind (1988) a "Liturgy" but it's not religious so much as an intense, personal outpouring of grief for a dead friend.  It begins with a single chord which resonates into silence. The viola enters, quietly at first, playing a figure that hovers back and forth between two poles. Isabelle van Keuelen held the line firmly, unswayed by the sudden cataclysmic outburst in the orchestra behind her.  Fierce staccato blasts, another cataclysm, wilder than the first, with thundering timpani, and another "death stroke" single chord.  But the viola isn't defeated.  Emerging from a rumbling, shimmering background it defines a melody that evolves into delicately plucked patterns: resplendent like starlight.  The "death strokes" return, wave after wave, but the viola holds its plaintive line, until it evaporates into silence.  

Martinů Memorial to Lidice (1943) commemorates Lidice in Bohemia, obliterated by the Nazis. Again the subject matter is death but on a more abstract musical level; the connections include contrasting poles. In Kancheli the tension swings between staccato orchestra and solo viola, In Martinů, the contrast is between brute force and the innocence of folk music. 

Thus a dramatic context was set for Vaughan Williams's Ninth Symphony from 1956-7.  Whatever the symphony may or  may not be about,  Jurowski gave it a savage power and majesty one doesn't often associate with British music. All to the good, for here, at the very end of his life, RVW is breaking new ground. He will not "go gentle into that good night".  He uses saxophones in sassy chorus, and a flugelhorn, extending the low resonance of the brasses, which include tuba, and contrabassoon. Dark colours of foreboding and passages which march with demonic violence. 

It's also a strikingly modern work, vividly experimental and unabashed, as Jurowski's approach made clear.  No wonder critics 60 years ago didn't know what to make of it.  As Edward Said said, "late style" can be liberating since a composer no longer needs to conform. Elliott Carter joked that in his own "late, late style", he didn't have to seek approval from anyone but himself.  Yet RVW is totally in control of his powers, highly disciplined, attention focused on essentials, nothing superficial. He uses the flugelhorn for a purpose, as if blasting away at the veneer of conventional "good taste". Life's too precious to fritter mindlessly away!  The tightness of the orchestration was reflected in the strength of the performance, the LPO surpassing themselves.  An RVW Ninth that was monumental in every way.  If the LPO doesn't release this commercially, it will enter the bootleg market as a milestone in RVW interpretation. 

English Visionaries : A Vision of Aeroplanes

New from SOMM Records, English Visionaries, choral music by Vaughan Williams, Holst and Howells with Paul Spicer and the Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir.  Why "English Visionaries"?  Composers who weren't religious, writing music which connects to a long-standing British fascination with the more eclectic aspects of belief. One thinks of Blake, the Transcendalists, Milton and John Bunyan, not rigidly orthodox, but spiritual.

"I looked, and behold a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud and a fire unfolding itself". Vaughan Williams A Vision of Aeroplanes (1956) sets the scene on the Book of Ezekiel where the Prophet sees a chariot materialize in the sky, propelled by four angelic creatures each with four wings, joined together, operating as a single entity.  Vaughan Williams added the word "aeroplane" himself but it captures the idea of levitation, of perpetual movement, noise, wheels within wheels, wings fanning wind and even lightning and metallic brightness.  Ezekiel thought this was a manifestation of the Divine. To Vaughan Williams and many in the post-war era, the image might be far more ambiguous.  The piece begins with an astonishing blast from the organ (Nicholas Morris), the voices intoning lines that waver up and down the scale, suggesting unearthly motion.  Other lines arch outward in ellipse.  A solo voice emerges from the turbulence (Victoria Adams) and gradually the music subsides, like the idling of an engine.  This new recording is particularly welcome since Spencer made his recording of this piece with the Finzi Singers twenty five years ago.

Vaughan Williams's Mass in G Minor (1922) harks back to an earlier period, not only in terms of the composer's development but also to the influence of Tudor form on modern British music.  The text, in English, is sung with bright focus lighting up the lovely chromatics, also a feature of Holst's The Evening Watch (1924) which adapts the Song of Simeon as an exchange between soloists, representing bodily life, and the choir, representing the soul and eternal life.  Holsts's Sing me the Men (1925) continues a sense of dialogue, but in a much more robust mode, reflecting  the solid Muscular Christianity of the text by Digby Mackworth-Dolben (1848-1867).  Men's voices alternate with women's. Particularly lovely abstract vocalise in the women's parts.

This new recording also includes a new performance of Howell's The House of the Mind (1954).  The low rumble of the organ suggests, not so much an organ in a church, but a more elusive hum: perhaps the inner hum of meditation ?  The text, by Joseph Beaumont (1616-1699),  refers not to grand cathedrals but to a house that is small "girt up a narrow wall, in a clean and sober mind", in which man might make a humble abode with God. Though the house may be cramped, Howells's soaring lines suggest limitless boundaries, soaring upwards, faith that "can mock all hostile power".  An inspired choice which flows beautifully into Vaughan Williams's Lord, Thous has been our refuge (1922) to a text by Isaac Watts (1674-1748) paraphrasing Psalm 90.  Echoes of plainchant and melodies from hymns anchor this piece in conventional Anglican tradition, as does the dialogue between trumpet and organ. On a recording, context makes a difference. As Lord, Thou hast been our Refuge drew to a close, I pondered the Vaughan Williams of the Mass in G minor and of the Vision of Aeroplanes, in his maturity.

Prom 17 Uncomfortable Englishmen RVW Elgar Elder

Prom 17 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, Sir Mark Elder conducting Vaughan Williams and Elgar, with the Hallé, an orchestra with a golden Elgar pedigree.  No safe complacency in this programme though, because the two main pieces confront an uncompromising aspect of the English psyche.

Starting the Prom with Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune was a clue. Debussy, even before Schoenberg, was experimenting with tonality  and duality, breaking down the barriers of convention. The flute represents Pan,  and his disciple the faun. The flute solo was wonderful, but much of the beauty of the piece lies in its mysterious ambiguity and the multi-level interaction between the flutes and lower-voiced winds, strings and harps. The undergrowth in the forest sings, too, so to speak.

A good prelude to Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sancta Civitas (The Holy City). RVW called it an oratorio, but it harks back to the doughty non-conformism of William Blake and John Bunyan  and the militant idealism of the early Victorian age. In spirit it's akin to The Pilgrim's Progress ,which occupied RVW's mind most of his adult life. (Read more about that HERE.) The texts are drawn from the Book of Revelation, not from the Gospels, and it taps into millenialist Low Church concepts quite alien to Establishment Anglicanism. Outsider theology, which Vaughan Williams recognized, with his knowledge of High Church values and hymnal.  Down Ampney is very far away.

 From mysterious low rumblings in the orchestra, the baritone, Iain Paterson called out forcefully,  "I was in the Spirit and I heard the great voice of the people praising God and singing Alleluia". The voices of four choirs rang out, the Hallé Choir, the London Philharmonic Choir, the Trinity Boys Choir and the Hallé Youth Choir, in glorious tumult.  Note the word "spirit" for in Revelation, there are seven Spirits of God.  Yet man is mortal - what gives? The mood is apocalyptic. Heralded by trumpets the massed voices sang "King of Kings, Lord of Lords".  Heavens open, and an Angel appears. The swaying cross-harmonies in the voices, and the back and forth antiphonal exchange, emphasized chaos and disruption.  The kings of the earth are displaced and evn th great city of Babylon is no more.

The middle section, the Allegro Moderato, is defined by a solo violin, whose lines soar up the register, heavenwards, a clear reference to A Lark Ascending.   Here the violin serves an extra purpose, uniting the faithful on earth (the darkly undulating choirs) with Heaven. The choirs sang "Glo-o-ory", the legato swerving with  carefully judged  waywardness. The textures are dense, but Elder and the choirmasters ensured that the intricate cross-patterns were kept distinct,  Spatial textures were well executed, too. The Distant Choir of young voices floated across the vast distances of the Royal Albert Hall. The violin leads, like an angel, towards a grand climax, a blaze of trumpets and the booming of the organ led to temporary.detumescence. From near silence, the voice of the tenor, Robin Tritschler rose, from the balcony far above the huge auditorium. "Fear not" he sang. He's an angel, reassuring the faithful that they're at one with God. But listen to that ending, where a simple, tentative line  recurs and recedes,, suggesting that, for Vaughan Williams, the agnostic, there would be no easy resolution.

More Spirits followed in Elgar's Symphony no 2 in E flat major. The composer quoted Shelley "Rarely. rarely comest Thou, O Spirit of Delight" which might sound optimistic, but the poem continues with self-doubt. "Wherefore hast thou left me now/ Many a day and night? "Was Elgar intuiting the loss of creative powers, or expressing the anxieties  that may have been part of his outwardly peaceful life? He called this symphony "the passionate pilgrimage of a soul".  Elder defined the big opening outburst with assurance, the "spirit of delight" motif descending elegantly, leading  into confident expanses of sound, suggesting open horizons and open vistas. But the brass flared up, creating a jagged air of alarm,  Trying to explain, Elgar wrote that it was "a sort of malign influence wandering through a summer night in a garden."   Perceptively, Elder conducted the ending of the first movement so it bristled, the line ripping along with haunting, almost jazz liike tension.

The Larghetto began with the expansiveness with which Elgar's music is so often associated, but the emotional temperature dropped as the tempo slowed.  Elder shaped the measured pace of the recurrent waves of sound, building up to  a crescendo which, to me, felt like a last, fond looking back on the past. The colours darkened, as if night were falling . The  Rondo has connotations of Venice,  Elgar having written, enigmatically, "Venice and Tintagel" . Elder and the Hallé created the deceptively bright spirit: one could imagine a busy city with tourists on holiday. Elgar wasn't aware of Thomas Mann when the symphony was being written, but we, inescapably, cannot miss the imagery.  The bustle and wild, whipping lines with which the movement ends certainly suggest hurried departure, which may well fit in with the idea of the death of the King to whom the piece was dedicated, and to the idea of the creative despondency Elgar was to encounter.  Moderato e Maestoso, the final movement,  was played with beautiful richness, so when its dying embers faded, the sense of loss was profound.

Elgar told the orchestra who played at the premiere: "Some of you will know that dreadful beating that goes on in the brain which seems to drive out every coherent thought.....Percussion, you must give me all you are worth!" Certainly Mark Elder and the Hallé gave all they were worth, which was a lot. The percussion didn't need to crudely drown out the orchestra, but the sense of tension and foreboding Elgar wanted was most certainly part of this superb performance. Seriously idiomatic Elgar from Elder, one of the great Elgarians of our time, and from the Hallé who've been doing Elgar since he was "new music".

Listen to this Prom again HERE

The Elgar Symphony will be broadcast on BBC TV 4 on 2nd August.

Roderick Williams Finzi Ludlow English Song Weekend

Two hardy perennials of the English song tradition, Roderick Williams and the English Song Weekend broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The English Song Weekend — how I wish that I could have been in Ludlow to hear it live. At this time of the year, Shropshire is at its most beautiful, verdant with fresh growth and vigour.  The English Song Weekend, founded by JIm Page and the Finzi Friends in 2001, is a festival like no other. Everyone knows each other and welcomes those who share their love for English song, old and new. That was a Finzi principle, embracing the joys of the language, nature and abundant joy. Ludlow itself isn't, strictly speaking, part of the English music heartland, but fits the atmosphere perfectly. It's a lovely old market town which symbolizes so much of what makes England, and the quintessential Englishness of English song.

"When smoke stood up from Ludlow,
And mist blew off from Teme,
And blithe afield to ploughing
Against the morning beam
I strode beside my team",

Ivor Gurney, the poet, and also composer, was a townie who probably never drove a plough. Gerald Finzi was the English Gentleman, so perfect he could have been conjured up by Hollywood Casting, yet was very much an outsider by birth. Ralph Vaughan Williams may have been born in Down Ampney but resolutely spent his life in London. Even A E Housman's visions of Shropshire grew from the imagination rather than from lived rural experience. But that's exactly why I love English song. Dreams of "blue remember'd hills" and "the Land of Lost Content" evoke deep and deliciously complex instincts.  A kind of universal Sensucht, as Germans would say.

Roderick Williams is easily the best exponent of English song, ever. His direct, conversational style  communicates meaning without artifice or condescension. In real life, he's as posh as they come, but his personal warmth and intelligence transcend stereotypes. I shall never forget his Last Night of the Proms, where he eschewed cheap gimmicks for Rule, Britannia, and instead chose sincerity, idealism and conviction.  His eyes shone. No jokiness, but absolute faith in meaning  For me, one of the great things about Britain is that anyone can become somebody, hard as it might be. That's what inclusiveness is really all about. I once had the pleasure of telling a UKIP worthy that I, too, am an immigrant.

Williams began his recital with early Vaughan Williams, so early that the relative clumsiness of the settings makes one glad he went to France and found his voice via Ravel.  In contrast, Williams did RVW's Four Last Songs. Divest oneself of notions of  Richard Strauss.  RVW's songs aren't valedictory, but a loose compilation of ideas left unfinished upon the composer's death. Procris is based on a poem by Ursula Vaughan Williams, Menelaus on the Odyssey. the two last poems are more personal .The contemplative mood of Tired suggests a man assessing his past without rancour, and Hands, eyes and heart suggests inward, private emotions. Stylistically, they connect more to early RVW than to his great masterpieces, but reminded me how people in old age revert to their youth.

Williams and Burnside separated early and late RVW with Robert Saxton's Time and the Seasons, which premiered at the Oxford Lieder Festival in 2013, the best Lieder festival in this country.  With its "starlight" minimalism, and delicacy, this set of songs consciously evoked Gerald Finzi for me, specifically the transformational last strophe of Finzi's Channel Firing: when, after the big guns fall silent, "As far inland as Stourton Tower, And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.". The words aren't grammatic, but the music suggests that the meaning goes far beyond mere words. In the silence of the stars, we are at one with something primeval and magical : the soul of England no less, connecting to ancient mysteries.

In honour of Gerald Finzi and his ideals, and of Jim Page, without whose vision the English Song Weekend might not have come about, Williams concluded with Finzi's great song cycle Before and After Summer. Williams has sung them very often. For a change, especially piquant for an audience who knows him and Finzi practically by heart, Williams adopted a gentle Dorset burr, not too heavy or too intrusive, but just enough to remind us that the poems, by Thomas Hardy, are far more sophisticated than pseudo rural pastiche. Finzi's settings  bring out their philosophical depths and symbolism. Again, a reason why English song holds such a very special place in the English cultural psyche. Not bucolic at all! 

Lest We Forget Prom - RVW Butterworth Stephan Kelly Manze BBC SSO

 "They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man, The lads that will die in their glory and never be old." 

 A E Housman was writing about handsome farm boys going off to the Boer War. Maybe he was more concerned with the loss of their physical beauty but Prom 42 "Lest We Forget"  with Andrew Manze and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra reminded us of the lost music which the three younger composers featured in this concert might have produced.

Roderick Williams sang George Butterworth's Six Songs From a Shropshire Lad.  He never disappoints. He sang with the commitment and heroism the occasion of a keynote Prom warrants. I've written extensively about George Butterworth, (read more here) so I'll just comment on the version  we heard here. It's not strictly Butterworth but a modern orchestral adaptation. Butterworth wrote two separate pieces based on Housman's verse, one for voice and piano and an entirely orchestral version, A Shropshire Lad: a Rhapsody. where the themes are reiterated. Maybe piano song doesn't work so well in the Royal Albert Hall, but it would have been wiser to pick the orchestral piece. Much as I adore Roderick Williams, I think we need to appreciate Butterworth for more than his songs. When there is enough authentic Butterworth around, can't we "honour the fallen" by  using the man's own work?

Butterworth's orchestral A Shropshire Lad would have worked better with the rest of the programme too, especially with Rudi Stephan's Music for Orchestra no. 2 (1912, rev. 1913), Stephan's breakthrough piece which won him a publisher and a lot of favourable attention. It's superb. It's full of interesting ideas, crafted together with flair: definitely a distinctive voice. Listen to the rebroadcast : this isn't recycled retro but intelligent and highly original, reflecting the creative ferment of Secession Munich, and possibly the "modern" Germany of Weimar art and, film and literature. Stephan might have given Alban Berg (also a serving soldier) a great deal to think about. Stephan is definitely on the radar in Germany. There are no less than three recordings of his opera Die ersten Menschen on the market. I'll write about that when I have time - please come back.

In contrast, Frederick Kelly's Elegy for Strings was written in memoriam Rupert Brooke. Kelly is also remembered because he was born in Sydney of Irish parents and served in Gallipoli, and is thus a figure in Australian music history. It's a lovely, elegiac piece with a good violin part, but without the character of Stephan and Butterworth.

Ralph Vaughan Williams was too old to fight in the frontline but served in an ambulance unit, experiencing bombardment knowing he'd have to go out and pick up the carnage. Vaughan Williams's Symphony no 3 "The Pastoral"  may be "about " landscape in an abstract sense, but it's even more about the strange, new landscape of the trenches. Ancient farms and villages were flattened, pitted with craters like the moon. The terrain still hasn't recovered.  RVW's ambiguous swirling tonality suggests psychic dislocation. This isn't "cowpat school", though you can "feel" the mud. It's far more unsettling.

RVWs 3rd is a companion to his 2nd, the "London" Symphony, dedicated  to and inspired by George Butterworth, so hearing the 3rd at this Prom was particularly poignant. Andrew Manze and the BBC SSO  gave a dignified account. An excellent "distant" trumpet, and nicely defined references to typical RVW themes expressing nostaglia and, well, Sensucht,  and loss. Unusually, Manze used a tenor, Allan Clayton to sing the vocal part. A male voice is probably more appropriate in the circumstances  and RVW knew his Bible well enough to know that angels were often men. The trumpet can be diffuse, since RVW was remembering a real trumpeter playing in the landscape. But the dead and dying were all too present. Clayton's "manly" tenor rang out loud and clear. No, we must not shy from the reality of war. There's violence in the crescendi, and folk tunes pop up as  ghosts. Perhaps the voice, like the violin part, loosely reminiscent of The Lark Ascending, is reminding us that life, and nature, will soar upwards from the ruins.

Vaughan Williams Alwyn Oramo Prom 36

After ten days of safe but dull Proms, at last something splendid: Sakari Oramo conducted the BBC SO. Ralph Vaughan Williams's incidental music is far from incidental. William Alwyn wrote a lot of incidental music, but hearing his symphonic work with Vaughan Williams's incidental music puts it into context

Oramo conducts Vaughan Williams with an intensity that makes one appreciate the depths in RVW, often missed by the emphasis on the pastoral aspects of his work. The Overture to the Wasps dates from the same period as On Wenlock Edge, and marks RVW's creative breakthrough   Maurice Ravel liberated Vaughan Williams from himself, so to speak. No longer is he constrained by the comfortable certainties of Charles Villiers Stanford.  He'd learned "to orchestrate in points of colour rather than in lines", to be an artist foremost and above all.  Having faced that baptism of fire, he would go on to become a true original, reimagining the English experience in his own unique way.

Although The Wasps was written before the start of WWI, its subject is war. These aren't bucolic wasps buzzing around a nest, even though the composer depicts them figuratively. The famous Overture comes from a much larger piece for voice and orchestra, based on Aristophanes' The Birds. The Birds mock man's obsession with war, and the wasps protest. When wasps are disturbed, they attack. In Germany, Walter Braunfels (who served at the front) would soon begin Die Vögel, a work sadly misunderstood by conductors like James Conlon. Oramo emphasizes the suppressed violence in RVW. A lyrical melody hovers, harps suggesting peaceful reverie. The mood is soon broken. Sharp, crisp ostinato, an almost "Russian" angularity, whirring figures like a march. Are the wasps flying upwards in attack?

If only the BBC could have given us the full Wasps, rather than the disembodied Overture. It's utterly relevant this year when we remember 1914. Instead, we had William Alwyn's Symphony no 1. Alwyn is hardly obscure, even though he's not been heard at the Proms for 50 years. His work is well represented on recordings, and familiar to those who enjoy the Golden Age of British cinema. Like many other composers of his period, Alwyn wrote for film.  Alwyn's Symphony no 1 is ambitious, part of a grand scheme of related symphonies. Allusions to technicolor panoramas are approrpiate because the piece unfolds in a series of attractive vignettes which translate easily into visual images. Low, growling basses, giving way to open spaces, sudden surges of strings introducing changes of scene. It's picturesque and relaxing, so its appeal is easily appreciated.  On the other hand, it's illustrative, amiable rather than thought-provoking.  RVW can  say more in ten minutes, almost without trying.  It's totally irrelevant that Alwyn lived in Blythburgh while Britten lived in Aldeburgh. There are sections of the British music audience who need heroes for their own reasons, and don't necessarily do their heroes any favours.  Alwyn is not an incidental composer, but he's more genial than genius..

RVW's The Lark Ascending, however, is a true masterpiece, a work of such brilliance that it defies category. It is so beautiful, and so transcendent that it's almost pointless to analyze.  Perhaps RVW is describing a bird in flight, but that bird is escaping from the world into another more rarified plane of existence. It's exquisite, but also inexplicably, heart breakingly sad. It's much more than an "English Idyll", since it appeals to so many, and in different cultures.  Janine Jensen's performance was good, though there have been other, more powerful interpretations. Oramo's clear focus on the details in the orchestration brought out the connections between Tle Lark Ascending and The Wasps. Interesting insight.

Vaughan Williams's Job : a Masque for Dancing  (1931) was written to be danced to, yet it's no more a conventioinal ballet  than The Pilgrim's Progress is a typical opera. Dancers need more rests than orchestral players, so much music for dance evolves in scenic episodes. This also suits RVW's taste for the formality of Elizabethan music. Although I don't have the programme notes to quote from, and I don't feel like digging up a CD, I'm pretty sure, from memory, that Oramo was conducting the full  score, rather than the version for dancing. It's not a symphony, though the sound is full and rich, because it evolves in a series of scenes. Thus, however, it made a satisfying conclusion to the Prom, following as it did from Alwyn's Symphony. Listen how RVW defines "cinematic" climaxes. Even as audio, one imagines visual and dancers.  And from this emerges a solo violin, playing an elusive, nostalgic melody.  The Wasps, The Lark Ascending and Job: a Masque for Dancing have been heard together before, but Oramo reminds us why the combination is so good.

Henry Wood's Jubilee RARE film

Recently released Pathé film footage of Sir Henry Wood conducting the BBC SO in Ralph Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music with 16 soloists The film was made during a recording session atb the Royal Albert Hall - see the engineers and their state of the art technology! Hear  how the announcer calls RVW "R Vaughan Williams" to avoid confusing listeners with "Ralph" or Rafe"

Jacques Imbrailo Wigmore Hall

I'll be at The Royal Opera House Wagner Parsifal  Monday. Review here. But first: Jacques Imbrailo at the Wigmore Hall, with pianist Alisdair Hogarth.The programme didn't look promising in theory but Imbrailo is the kind of artist who can make anything interesting and individual.  At the end I was so glad I came that I didn't miss the rush at Covent Garden!

What thread would connect the songs of Liszt, Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth and Stephen Hough? Imbrailo's choices revealed great intelligence and sensitivity. He began with RVW's early Songs of Travel, unfortunately marred because latecomers were allowed in while he was singing.T he ushers at WH are kind hearted but it's really not fair on the audience and on the performer. Luckily the RVW songs are not the composer's finest works but served to highlight what was to come. Imbrailo sang them with his customary warmth. When Terfel and Roderick Williams sing these songs they sound robust, the kind of "Muscular Christianity" that appealed to Late Victorians. When Imbrailo sings them, his lighter, more lyrical voice broiught out something more sensitive. His "Let Beauty Awake", "Youth and Love" and "Whither must I wander?" felt like sincere songs of love and regret. RVW ends the cycle with  " I have tread the upward and the downward slope", where the piano describes clodhopping footseps : Hogarth played them with a flexible touch, to match Imbrailo's gentleness.

Only ten years separate Vaughan Williams's Songs of Travel from George Butterworth's Six Songs from a Shropshire Lad but the two cycles are worlds apart. The Songs of Travel bear the heavy, suffocating hand of Charles Villiers Stanford, from whom RVW only escaped when he went to France and studied with Ravel. Butterworth was only 13 years younger than RVW but his mindset was radically different. When Butterworth was a student at Oxford, one of the dons remarked "There goes more Red Revolution than in all Russia". Considering that the remark was made after the Uprising of 1905, this was not small talk. Butterworth was also far more upper crust and Establishment than RVW. He was an Eton man, not easily intimdated by Stanford, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music. This year, with so much attention on Britten's alternative British music, we should be reassessing Butterworth more deeply.

A E Housman's poems from A Shropshire Lad were set by Butterworth and RVW a mere two years apart. Anyone seriously interested in the composers would do well to compare them. It's not my job here in this review, but I might write more sooner or later. There is more on Butterworth on this site than most anywhere else, and some first-hand research. Please explore.

Imbrailo's "Loveliest of Trees" was thoughtfully phrased. He lingered on the words "stands about the woodland ride" so one thought about the tree, rooted to its soil. Then, when Imbrailo sang "wearing white for Eastertide", his voice glowed with beauty. Men grow old, but each Spring, the cherry tree blossoms and grows anew. English singers tend to stress vocal lines at the expense of more abstract musical values  Imbrailo, with his extensive opera experience, showed masterful control of the legato in "Look not into my eyes", revealing the beautiful structure of the song. Like the Grecian lad, its beauty is elusive : danger lies in those seductive lines.

Butterworth's "The Lads in their Hundreds" has become connected with the mass slaughter of the 1914-18 war partly because the composer himself was a casualty (Please read my account of his death in battle). Housman, however, was writing about the Boer War, and the terrible waste (to him)  of handsome young men. But the Boer War was gruesome. It saw mass ethnic cleansing and the invention of concentration camps. We would do well to ponder the Boer War as a prototype of what was to happen in Europe, in the mass public "celebrations" that start next year.  When Imbrailo sang "The Lads in their Hundreds", he sang with such poignant tenderness, that he made me think of the wide-scale human tragedy that lies beneath the song. My partner's eyes filled with tears. We've all heard this song s often that we forget what it really means.

"We couldn't follow A Shropshire Lad" with something upbeat, said Imbrailo, in his usual understated way, introducing his first encore. So he sang My Sarie Marais, an Afrikaans folk song referring to the Great Trek, the mass migration of the Boer people across Southern Africa, and the wars which followed. The song has been adopted by military marching bands, which is ironic. Imbrailo, however, sang it with exquisite tenderness, so it felt poignantly personal.  As music, the song is naive, but Imbrailo's performance gave it emotional power greater than the "art" folk songs RVW and his peers collected. Sincerity makes all the difference!


Imbrailo's many fans had come to hear him sing the gloriously Italianate star turns he does so well. With Franz Liszt's Three Petrach Sonnets S270/1 (1842-6) he delivered.  Exceptionally lyrical singing, richly coloured and resonant. Yet, being the opera singer he is, Imbrailo doesn't simply make beautiful sounds, but infuses them with meaning. "E nulla stringo, tutto l'mondo abbracio" he sang.  His technical control is superb - this is how rubato should properly be used. His chest opened out and soared so you could feel "i sospiri e le lagrime e 'l desio" welling up from deep within. The piano lines are almost more beautiful, delicately sculpted by Hogarth. He and Imbrailo are an excellent team.

Like Liszt, Stephen Hough is a pianist who writes song. Imbrailo and Hogarth premiered Hough's Herbstlieder at the Oxford Lieder Festival in 2010. Please see my detailed review here.  Hearing it a second time, I could appreciate the subtle images, diminuendos like falling leaves and mists settling on a landscape. Curling lines that circulate like autumn breezes, smoky lines that blur. As a mood piece, it's atmospheric. Yet there's suppressed pain here, too. "Welcher wie ein weisses Stadt" leapt high up the register like a scream of anguish. Hogarth's piano pounded like an oncoming train "Bestürz tmich, Musik, mit rythmischen Zürnen" sang Imbrailo. A good performance, but what weill remain with me is the meory of Imbrailo singing Butterworth and My Sarie Marais.

Prom 39 Nishat Khan a wider perspective

What to make of  the "Anglo-Indian Prom  39?  Nishat Khan, Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. I avoided writing first impressions. Like most non-Indians, and many Indians, I suspect, I'm in no position to pronounce on Nishat Khan's Sitar Concerto (The Gate of the Moon). He comes over as a man of integrity who genuinely wants to create a fusion of the instrument he knows and loves so well with Western classical form. So no cheap shots from me. I didn't "get it", even though I've spent my life on cross-cultural issues. To me it seemed very much the sort of thing a modern, Westernized composer might write in response to living in, say, Los Angeles, which is where Nishat Khan now lives. Fair enough! Then it seems perfectly reasonable, especially when we remember what liviung in LA and New York did to many other composers from Kurt Weill to Thomas Adès. Fusion is a lot more difficult than we think.

Nishat Khan is the genuine article, a seriously important Indian musician. Gustav Holst was fascinated by the Idea of India as an exotic dream. Raj imperialism trivialized Indian culture. On the other hand, Tagore  made Westerners aware of the higher levels of Indian culture. Holst wasn't alone in his fascination with things Eastern. Think Zemlinsky 's Lyric Symphony (read more here). Zemlinsky's piece works so well because he doesn't even pretend to write orientalism but writes what it makes  him feel. Holst's Indra (1903) sounds so completely of its period that tt might have disappeared entirely but for the composer's reputation. Perhaps we were only hearing it because the BBC is desperate to jazz up the occasion. The presenters get hysterical because Radio 3 is doing a joint event with The Asian Network. Better that they should give us real music instead. In comparison, Nishat Khan's Sitar Concerto sound better already.

Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony no 2 (London) sat oddly with Holst and Nishat Khan. Perhaps the logic was that, if you're going to do Tourism in Music, you might as well throw in a historic Trip Around London. As such, it was probably quite entertaining, though the performance was pretty bland. David Atherton (who is familiar with Chinese music – he was music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra for many years) is an excellent conductor but the BBC National Orchestra of Wales isn't the most adventurous of the BBC stable of orchestras. For me, RVW 2 works not as travelogue but as mood piece, evoking abstract emotions like loss and regret.

First Night of the BBC Proms 2013

The First Night of the BBC Proms 2013 marks the start of summer. At the Royal Albert Hall, Sakari Oramo, new Chief Conductor of the BBCSO, captured the sense of anticipation. Seldom does Benjamin Britten's Four Sea Interludes get a performance as vivacious as this.  And why not? We all know the piece and its origins in Peter Grimes. So it's good to hear it as a stand-alone celebration of the sea, of wide open horizons : freedom, exhilaration,  adventure. Of course we know what happens to Peter Grimes and his boys, and that the opera is grim. But for a moment we can think ourselves back to 1948 and feel the excitement. Peter Grimes was the "dawn" of modern British opera, and Oramo's bright, optimistic "Dawn" movement sparkled with hope and light. The high violins and flutes suggested soaring seagulls, and the lower strings and brass evoked the swell of the tides. The distinctive clarinet danced, like phosphoresence on waves. Then, woodwinds and brass suggested, well, "wind", stirring, heralding change. Grimes dies, but the sea renews itself with every wave and tide.

"In ceaseless motion comes and goes the tide Flowing it fills the channel broad and wide Then back to sea with strong majestic sweep It rolls in ebb yet terrible and deep".

Stephen Hough was the soloist in Rachmaninov's Variations on a Theme of Paginini. Hough is a Proms regular. I like the maturity of his playing, and his sense of assertiveness, qualities we value on an occasion like The First Night of the Proms. Hearing Rachmaninov after The Four Sea Interludes made me think of the many, fleeting moods of the sea. Hough's hands flew across they keyboard . In my imagination, images of change, energy and renewal. And perhaps, even the image of Paganini, the violinist, remade by Rachmaninov the pianist, and yet again by Witold Lutoslawski the composer. Lutoslawski's Variations  were new to me and thrilling. The familair basics are there,  but this time rejuvenated with a quirky, irreverent flamboyance. Paganini, who sold his soul to the Devil? Hough had been confident before : now he was almost demonic, pulling the orchestra in his wake.

For Ralph Vaughan Williams, A Sea Symphony marked more than a first symphony. (Note it's title "A" symphony, anticipating one of many). RVW lived in London and The Home Counties, unlike Britten who lived literally on the beach at Crag House in Aldeburgh. For RVW, the idea of the seas may have stimulated ideas of voyages of the imagination,  an expanded "Songs of Travel" for nearly 500 voices. It spurred – to use a bad pun – a sea change in his writing. He was making a transition from the safe world of Parry and Stanford into the great unknown. “Behold, the sea itself” could be an allegory for a young composer launching himself into uncharted waters.

RVW's  A Sea Symphony is an extravagant spectacular, ideally suited to the grand treatment it can get at the BBC Proms. A rousing, powerful performance. Roderick Williams sang the baritone part to perfection. His style is direct, almost conversational, yet carries thrust and authority without "period" ponderousness. If anything, he was even better in the quiet second movement "Alone on the Beach" than in the fairly truculent "public" first movement with its reference to imperial power. Even in the cavernous Royal Albert Hall, Williams could convey intimacy and colour. In the turbulent third movement, "The Waves", choirs came to the fore. Oramo's not a specially demonstrative conductor, but he could get the orchestra to deliver on a magnificent scale. You can hear why he was so popular with the CBSO in Birmingham during the Elgar centenary.

Oddly, the mystical final movement "The Explorers" evokes Elgar at his most spiritual. Solo violin, solo viola, solo horn, and Roderick Williams singing at the top of his register, quietly and with hushed reverence, awed by the power of God and of Nature. "O farther sail", Williams, the choirs and Sally Matthews the soprano repeat. The last chords of the orchestra fade slowly, suggesting distance and movement. We are on the way "Toward an Unknown Region".

As so often on The First Night of the Proms, the Prom opened with an extract from a larger work in progress by a leading British composer. This year, Julian Anderson's Harmony, a four minute choral work which may prove interesting on further hearing.

Here's a link to my Proms overview. Usually I listen to and write about 30- 40 Proms a season, so please come back for more.
And look at the SECRET TWINS - Roderick Williams and Benjamin Britten !
 photo:  Yuichi from Morioka, Japan

ENO The Pilgrim's Progress Ralph Vaughan Williams

The ENO production of The Pilgrim's Progress is a historic moment. This is what the ENO should stand for - pioneering good opera in English. This justifies the whole premise of the ENO philosophy.  For sixty years, The Pilgrim's Progress has suffered under the mistaken assumption that it is somehow "unstageable". Yoshi Oida and the ENO prove, indisputably, that it can be brought to vivid life and be restored to its deserved place in the repertoire. As Bunyan sings "This book will make a Traveller of thee". The "end" of the opera is just the beginning.

The Pilgrim's Progress  is a remarkable work that defies classification. Do not approach it as conventional opera, or you'll miss its fundamental originality. Vaughan Williams hiumself called it a "Morality", not quite a morality play in the medieval tradition, but much more sophisticated.
Approach it from  an oratorio background and you're on stronger ground. Yet Vaughan Williams was adamant that it was "essentially a stage piece, and not for a cathedral". These considerations are important, for they affect the way the Pilgrim's Progress can be staged. Vaughan Williams wasn't happy with the 1951 Covent Garden production., but I think he'd be pleased with Yoshi Oida's staging for the ENO because it blends Bunyan's steadfast beliefs with Vaughan Williams's distinctive artistic personality.

The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory, progressing in ritual stages as spartan as the militant non-conformist Protestantism that inspired it. The action evolves in the Pilgrim's soul as he visualizes his journey. Thus the bizarre names of those he meets, like his neighbours Pliable, Obstinate, Mistrust and Timorous. They are not real people but symbols. Oida and his designer depict them holding banners, alluding to the illustrations in typical 17th century religious tracts. Lord Hate-Good and Pontius Pilate are meant to be caricatures, as Bunyan's readers knew their Bible word by heart and understood how it applied to The Pilgrim. Perhaps modern audiences don't make quite the same connection between the Pilgrim's fate and that of his Lord, but again that is absolutely fundamental to meaning.

Bunyan was a non-conformist independent at a time of extreme religious intolerance. He wasn''t  Establishment, he wasn't dutiful Church of England.  He came from peasant stock and probably spole with a broad Midlands accent. Vaughan Williams is making a very specific point by explicitly framing the opera with references to Bunyan and later The Pilgrim in prison. It is not stylistic licence on Oida's part but fundamental to meaning. Furthermore, it's not simply a matter of poet in prison, but the concept that mankind is imprisoned until freed by spiritual awakening. The Pilgrim cannot attain grace unless he dies in faith. Oida's Pilgrim dies in the electric chair. Bunyan refers to a river of death. Electricity is a flowing current, so death is a quick transition, fitting well with Vaughan Williams's musical setting. Visually, the image is powerful because it also suggests the idea of sitting on a throne in judgement, for like God, Bunyan condemns the venal. "If this man cannot stand before the judgement of men, how shall he stand before the judgement of God?" Oida also show the river in a film projection above the stage, a detail which reinforces the depth of his interpretation.

Ralph Vaughan Williams was not Bunyan. He affirms Bunyan's basic principles but moderates them with his music.  RVW's glorious interludes add radiant lyricism, conducted by Martyn Brabbins so that the radiance is almost overwhelming.  Brabbins's understanding of RVW's idiom is profound, sharp and never sentimental. RVW's "pastoralism" isn't bucolic fantasy but "pastoral" in the wider meaning of the word, ideally suited to this piece with its implicit message of faith in the Good Shepherd. The Pilgrim sings" I will walk in the name of the Lord, my strength", and the colours in the orchestra illuminate the words, as if the Lord is walking invisibly with the Pilgrim. RVW's Interludes tell the story so vividly that the orchestra provides much of the drama the text alone eschews. In House Beautiful, the Pilgrim listens to angelic voices "Music in the house, music in the heart, music in heaven".

There are many references to Vaughan Williams's other music, especially the Fifth Symphony, since he laboured over The Pilgrim's Progress for many years. Indeed, The Pilgrim's Progress can e read as Vaughan Williams own spiritual journey. He put his failth in music, not in God. Listen to the entr'acte before the Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains, where the melody is bathed in the simple light of solo violin reminiscent of The Lark Ascending. Oida's staging captures RVW's music with remarkable sensitivity.  The prison paraphernalia (designed by Tom Schenk) moves swiftly, respecting the momentum of the music. Glowing colours of copper and amber, verdigris and subtle shadow : natural earth tones that reflect the music and also the idea of organic change that runs through the whole piece. This is why The Pilgrim's Progress is infinitely improved by visual images.  Most of us have grown up with audio versions. Now my love for this work is enhanced by recalling this production.  Even when Oida slightly  controversially uses film images of  First World War trenches to contrast with "God's straight highway", he is referring to RVW's career. Indeed, RVW seems to have made the connection himself, given the strident trumpet parts that accompany the text. That war was a watershed (his "river"?) for him and he did not forget.
 
This is a much deeper production than one might expect. It is an infiniutely greater homage to the composer than the superficial  ENO Riders to the Sea, or well meaning but limited productions of Hugh the Drover. Oida might even make The Poisoned Kiss work nicely.

Martyn Brabbins is another reason for catching this production, sharper than Adrian Boult, livelier than Richard Hickox. This should be immortalized on DVD.  It would create a new market, especially for those who don't as yet appreciate RVW.  Roland Wood sings both John Bunyan and The Pilgrim, but combining the roles means he is singing for hours on end. It's more conducive to stamina than finesse. A beautiful voice isn't necessary in an opera about a tough minded anti-materialist. It's enough that Wood can to carry it off convincingly, especially considering that there are several other British baritones who would have been outstanding. Wood is valiant, but he's young and doesn't make his ROH debut until 2014. He's worth hearing again, though. Some of the finest singing occured in the minor roles.  Several excellent vignettes - Eleanor Dennis (especially as the Voice of the Bird), with Kitty Whateley and Aoife O'Sullivan, Timothy Robinson, Mark Richardson,  and many members of the cast and chorus in Vanity Fair.

RW sings RVW - Roderick Williams, Wigmore Hall

Roderick Williams's programmes are always well chosen. At the Wigmore Hall, Williams picked 24 songs from 12 composers setting 15 poets. Some of these composers wrote hundreds of songs, so any attempt to suggest comparisons between them would be superficial. Anyone who knows the repertoire could come up with dozens of alternative choices.  Williams's programme worked much more perceptively. It evolved in three stages, leading up to Ralph Vaughan Williams Songs of Travel, which occupied the whole second half of the recital.
 
English song carries baggage. The genre evolved as a middle-class attempt to engage with vernacular culture. Vaughan Williams and his friends collected folk song from the "wild" so to speak and turned it into art. In the process, they found their own musical identity.  Songs of Travel (1901-04) is very early RVW, written when he was emerging fom the shadow of Charles Villiers Stanford. Like many late Victorians, Stanford was interested in the common folk, but as quaint curiosities. In theory, Roderick Williams could have paired RVW's songs with Stanford's Songs of the Sea or Parry's Songs of Farewell, but they aren't piano songs. The very fact that RVW eschews grand settings indicates a change of aesthetic. In Songs of Travel, RVW is setting forth on his own creative journey, choosing Robert Louis Stevenson as his guide.

The Vagabond sets the tone: Stevenson imagines a man who sleeps in the bush and dips his bread in a river : a swashbuckling Victorian adventurer, perhaps, inspiring nice middle-class boys with visions of H Rider Haggard  and alternatives to the Victorian/Edwardian consumer mores. Immediately, though, RVW switches back to gentility. When Roderick Williams sings Let Beauty Awake, the quality of wonder he brings to the song shows that it's more than mortal love, but love of daybreak and of the day to come. Even more beautiful  is Youth and Love. It's reminiscent of Silent Noon, with its languid sensuality. Again it's not a love song: the young man sets off "to a nobler fate". Williams sings it perfectly, his voice more agile than some of the baritones who have done this cycle.

Indeed, it's songs like Youth and Love and  Whither must I wander? which make RVW's Songs of Travel sunique. They are exquisite works of art that owe nothing to folk song, Victorian song or anything else. RVW is well on his way to becoming a true original. Hence the confident I have trod the upward and the downward slope, beginning in minor, ascending to heights which can tax some singers. Williams, however makes that last line "And I have lived and loved..... and closed the door" glow with feeling. He breathes into the words, stretching the legato so it seems to reach out beyond the song. RVW is "closing a door" and heading off to his future.

It's this sensitivity that makes Roderick Williams easily the best singer of English song in our time.  The more stolid songs, like The Roadside Fire with its sexist values, are popular, especially delivered in a forthright, authoritarian manner. "As if sung by a vicar", someone once observed. It's easy to understand why because that reinforces the idea of "English" song as worthy and safe. Then along comes Roderick Williams, singing with emotional directness, as if in normal conversation. His voice is burnished gold, yet clear and natural, releasing the beauty of English song as song, equal to almost anything in the European mainstream.

The first part of Williams's recital covered German and English songs of travel in a nicely impreessionistic way. He's not the most idiomatic of singers in German - few British singers are - but we weren't there to hear him sing Lieder.for its own sake. His Ging heut' Morgen über Feld works not because it's part of the full Mahler set, bu is treated as a song on its own terms. He has done the full set rather well, but on this occasion the song was integrated into a wider traverse. The German songs also served to suggest what might be the difference between German and English song (a subject far too complex to deal with in any recital). Williams is renowned for his Finzi and Gurney, and his Ireland and Moeran were very good. But in typical Roddy W fashion, he added something different : Michael Head's Tewksbury Road (1974). It's a lively, expressive song. You can hear why Roderick Williams is one of Michael Head's great champions. Perfect for William's personal, warm-hearted and direct style.  PS : one of the encores was Schubert Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren but Roderick Williams regulars might know why he picked that. He sang Pollux, one of the heavenly twin stars (Dioskuren) in the ENO Rameau Castor and Pollux.

Full review soon in Opera Today.
photo  : Richard Webb, Geograph uk

Is my team ploughing? A E Housman's inner world

Courtesy of EMI, Ralph Vaughan Williams's setting of AE Housman's Is My Team Ploughing. Bernard Haitink conducts the LSO, Ian Bostridge is the soloist. It's 1999, don't they all look young?  Even though Bostridge's diction isn't as precise as it is now, he's expressing the spooky ambiguity in the song on a much eerier level than most. The dialogue is between the dead man and his living male friend. Interestingly, the dead man asks first about his animals, then about football. The girlfriend comes last. Vaughan Williams leaves out the football stanza, while Gurney and Butterworth leave it in. "Aye, the ball is flying, the lads play heart and soul. The goal stands up, the keeper stands up to keep the goal". Vaughan Williams setting is superb, but the stanza does count, since it's a coded reference to what's happening in the dead man's sweetheart's bed.

Throughout Housman's work runs a thread of young men dying while in their prime unable to develop relationships with women. Men glance at one another, meaningfully, without articulating their feelings. A young shepherd is condemned to hang: Housman muses on "a neck God made for other use than strangling on a string". In an era when homosexuality meant death, or at least condemnation, Housman never denied his orientation, quietly supporting dignity. The love of his life was Moses Jackson, who was straight, married and moved abroad, remaining forever young in Housman's memory. Hence, perhaps, the images of athletes and soldiers, doomed  young men, beds, graves, sleep, death and curiously inert women who inhabit Housman's poetry. Even 1887 (set by C W Orr) isn't so much an antiwar protest as a lament for the loss of healthy young bloodstock. See also my post on The Lads in Their Hundreds.

Housman's De Amaticia refers to Moses Jackson. It wasn't published until 30 years after Housman's death.

 Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say
 It irked you, and I promised
To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us
We parted, stiff and dry;
Goodbye, said you, forget me.
I will, no fear, said I

If here, where clover whitens
The dead man's knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word

Fantastic ENO season 2012-2013 TOP PICKS

Fantastic new ENO season for 2012/13! The most adventurous in years, totally justifying the Outstanding Achievement Olivier the ENO received for "breadth and diversity" of its programme. This is such an amazing season. Full schedule on the ENO site here. Not all the goodies are obvious! So, my top picks below, with explanations why.

Walt Disney changed the world.  One of the many highlights of the ENO's fantastic new season 2012-2013 will be Philip Glass's The Perfect American, a surreal exploration of Disney's imagination.  Opera is fantasy, so Disney's a great subject. Since there was a lot more to Disney than cartoons, the story could be good. The production is by Phelim McDermott whose brilliant puppets and set made Satyagraha genius theatre. (Read more about that here and here). Walt Disney the opera won't come round til next June, but book as soon as you can. Tickets will be gold dust.

The new ENO season starts with fantasy, too. Bohuslav Martinů's Julietta, based on the Paris Opéra production which Edward Gardner fell in love with. If it can inspire him like that, it sounds good. It's a gorgeous opera, last heard in London with Magdalena Kožená, conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek. (more about it here) Listen to the recordings, and catch the magic. This production's directed by Richard Jones, who won the Olivier Award for best director.

Even more daring - the ENO takes on Ralph Vaughan Williams The Pilgrim's Progress (from 5/11) staged for the first time since its premiere in 1951. It's not an "easy" opera,  and needs a director who understands stylized allegory. The reason that this will be important is the choice of director, Yoshi Oida. Oida is astoundingly sensitive. His Britten Death in Venice was exceptional. (read more here). It ran within a month of the ENO Deborah Warner Death in Venice. Two drastically opposite approaches.Warner's was high on glossy fashion shoot glamour, Aschenbach relegated to the sidelines in every way. Oida's approach was psychological, with Aschenbach foremost, action happening around him and in his mind. Although Aschenbach thinks he's a disinterested observer, in fact, he's caught up in his own fantasies. Oida shows Venice as a mirror of Aschenbach's mind. Claustrophic walls, dank, dangerous waters, a place where everything's nebulous.  Deep in every sense. Exactly the spirit of the music.
 
Oida was chosen to stage Britten in Aldeburgh because his Britten track record is exemplary. Back in 1989 he stunned Aix-en-Provence with his Britten Curlew River. It's preserved on DVD, watch it if you can. He's an inspired choice for The Pilgrim's Progress, which needs a director who understands stylized allegory. Kill for tickets to this, though it will be nothing like the ENO Riders to the Sea which was so literal the music wasn't able to speak. Oida is spiritually as well as musical astute. If anyone can make The Pilgrim's Progress work as theatre, it's Oida. Martyn Brabbins conducts, another reason why this will be a must.

Calixto Bieito? -- the tabloids might scream. Get past the shock value, for Bieito is a very serious director. In his Carmen (from 21/11) he shows the gypsies as marginalized underclass, utterly relevant to modern Europe. In Barcelona (read what I wrote here), it dealt with migrant workers and the "colonization" of Catalunya by foreigners. In London, the focus will shift to more British concerns. Maybe the tabloids will be right. Incendiary stuff ! But these are issues we can't blank out.  Bizet was right on the mark. What's more, Ruxandra Donose is singing Carmen - she's magnificent.

Even more shocking, Peter Konwitschny comes to London! This will have the tabloid mind set foaming at the mouth, especially as he's directing Verdi La Traviata. "My Traviata", he says in the promo video, "is short". And to the point. Ten years ago he did a Meistersinger that confronted the German audience with the implications of the final act. To this day I remember what Tim Ashley wrote then (find it here). Violetta is a strong personality, as she has to be in her profession, but she also trumps Papa Germont at his own game. There are levels and levels in this opera that are rarely touched. Read what Tim Ashley said of Konwitschny's La Traviata in Graz last year here,

The ENO's always been good with baroque. Christopher Curnyn, who conducted an excellent Rameau Castor and Pollux (review here) last year is conducting Charpentier's Medea ifor the ENO in  February, in a new production by David McVicar. Lots of Charpentier around these days, it seems,  and David et Jonathas (William Christie) features in Edinburgh and in Paris later this year. 

More baroque too - Handel's Julius Caesar (from 1/10) in a "fresh, theatrical" new staging by Michael Keegan-Dolan, who brought us the ENO Rite of Spring. He's a choreographer (hence the ballet) so it will be interesting how he makes a Handel opera move. Strong cast - Lawrence Zazzo, Anna Christy and Christian Cumyns, specialist conductor.

Another adventurous new production, Michel van der Aa's The Sunken Garden, in the Barbican Theatre (not the Coliseum) in April.  It's a joint venture between the Holland Festival , the ENO, the Barbican, Toronto and Lyon. Van der Aa's works have been heard in London several times before, so he's not unknown so much as misunderstood as he mixes music and singing with theatre and film. Pierre Audi respects him highly. Together they did a fascinating concert called Liebestod which creatively re-imagined Alban  Berg's relationship with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin (review here). That was conceptual but not too difficult, definitely worth hearing again. If we ever get the chance! The Sunken Garden is an "occult mystery film opera" with Roderick Williams, who also sang in van der Aa's Before Life at the Barbican (see review here) and will be singing in The Sunken Garden.  Roddy, as he's affectionately known, is grossly undervalued. he's easily the first choice English baritone in modern repertoire (and in other repertoire too - remember his Pollux?

Many revivals like the Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, and a new production of Wozzeck in May, conducted by Edward Gardner (no singer details yet). Lots more interesting things to emerge as time goes by.

photos courtesy Getty Images and ENO
photo of Yoshi Oida copyright  Victor Pascal
A more formal version of this will appear soon in Opera Today

New Life for Hugh the Drover

Is English Opera an oxymoron? (other than Benjamin Britten). "Imagine a tuneful eighteenth-century “ballad opera” of country life, say Stephen Storace’s enduringly popular No Song No Supper, cross it with Cavalleria Rusticana, throw in a bit of Rocky for good measure, and you have some idea of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s first opera, Hugh the Drover, a “Romantic Ballad Opera.” writes David Chandler in Opera Today.

Don't laugh too soon! Please read the full review here because it's a erudite analysis on what makes an opera work. 

Hugh the Drover would be ridiculous as Grand Opera, but on its own terms there's more to it than reputation would have. The secret is in performances like the recent production by Hampstead Garden Opera, Upstairs at the Gatehouse. "They do not send it up, but they “sub-reference” the audience, to use Charles Lamb’s term, just enough to say “look, this is all tremendous fun, and we’re really enjoying ourselves.”  

Context is all. Not long ago, the Royal Opera House considered English operas but dropped plans discreetly. It wasn't cost, but artistic good sense. Even Sir John in Love or A Village Romeo and Juliet wouldn't work in a space more suited to Wagner or Verdi. Why doesn't ENO do more English opera instead of opera in English? The Coliseum has connections with the English Music Hall tradition, and is small enough to suit the domestic nature of the English style. RVW's Riders to the Sea was popular, though it was treated much more as the J M Synge stage play with music than as the opera it is. That's the usual ENO hang-up about theatre rather than music. If the ENO could do musically-literate English opera, that would be a real challenge.