16 Feb 2015
Henri Dutilleux: Correspondances
Henri Dutilleux’s music has its devotees. I am yet to join their ranks, but had no reason to think this was not an admirable performance of his song-cycle Correspondances.
English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing.
This tenth of ten Live from London concerts was in fact a recorded live performance from California. It was no less enjoyable for that, and it was also uplifting to learn that this wasn’t in fact the ‘last’ LfL event that we will be able to enjoy, courtesy of VOCES8 and their fellow vocal ensembles (more below ).
Ever since Wigmore Hall announced their superb series of autumn concerts, all streamed live and available free of charge, I’d been looking forward to this song recital by Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper.
Although Stile Antico’s programme article for their Live from London recital introduced their selection from the many treasures of the English Renaissance in the context of the theological debates and upheavals of the Tudor and Elizabethan years, their performance was more evocative of private chamber music than of public liturgy.
Evidently, face masks don’t stifle appreciative “Bravo!”s. And, reducing audience numbers doesn’t lower the volume of such acclamations. For, the audience at Wigmore Hall gave soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and pianist Simon Lepper a greatly deserved warm reception and hearty response following this lunchtime recital of late-Romantic song.
For this week’s Live from London vocal recital we moved from the home of VOCES8, St Anne and St Agnes in the City of London, to Kings Place, where The Sixteen - who have been associate artists at the venue for some time - presented a programme of music and words bound together by the theme of ‘reflection’.
'Such is your divine Disposation that both you excellently understand, and royally entertaine the Exercise of Musicke.’
‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven that old serpent Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’
There was never any doubt that the fifth of the twelve Met Stars Live in Concert broadcasts was going to be a palpably intense and vivid event, as well as a musically stunning and theatrically enervating experience.
‘Love’ was the theme for this Live from London performance by Apollo5. Given the complexity and diversity of that human emotion, and Apollo5’s reputation for versatility and diverse repertoire, ranging from Renaissance choral music to jazz, from contemporary classical works to popular song, it was no surprise that their programme spanned 500 years and several musical styles.
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields have titled their autumn series of eight concerts - which are taking place at 5pm and 7.30pm on two Saturdays each month at their home venue in Trafalgar Square, and being filmed for streaming the following Thursday - ‘re:connect’.
The London Symphony Orchestra opened their Autumn 2020 season with a homage to Oliver Knussen, who died at the age of 66 in July 2018. The programme traced a national musical lineage through the twentieth century, from Britten to Knussen, on to Mark-Anthony Turnage, and entwining the LSO and Rattle too.
With the Live from London digital vocal festival entering the second half of the series, the festival’s host, VOCES8, returned to their home at St Annes and St Agnes in the City of London to present a sequence of ‘Choral Dances’ - vocal music inspired by dance, embracing diverse genres from the Renaissance madrigal to swing jazz.
Just a few unison string wriggles from the opening of Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro are enough to make any opera-lover perch on the edge of their seat, in excited anticipation of the drama in music to come, so there could be no other curtain-raiser for this Gala Concert at the Royal Opera House, the latest instalment from ‘their House’ to ‘our houses’.
"Before the ending of the day, creator of all things, we pray that, with your accustomed mercy, you may watch over us."
The doors at The Metropolitan Opera will not open to live audiences until 2021 at the earliest, and the likelihood of normal operatic life resuming in cities around the world looks but a distant dream at present. But, while we may not be invited from our homes into the opera house for some time yet, with its free daily screenings of past productions and its pay-per-view Met Stars Live in Concert series, the Met continues to bring opera into our homes.
Music-making at this year’s Grange Festival Opera may have fallen silent in June and July, but the country house and extensive grounds of The Grange provided an ideal setting for a weekend of twelve specially conceived ‘promenade’ performances encompassing music and dance.
There’s a “slide of harmony” and “all the bones leave your body at that moment and you collapse to the floor, it’s so extraordinary.”
“Music for a while, shall all your cares beguile.”
The hum of bees rising from myriad scented blooms; gentle strains of birdsong; the cheerful chatter of picnickers beside a still lake; decorous thwacks of leather on willow; song and music floating through the warm evening air.
Henri Dutilleux’s music has its devotees. I am yet to join their ranks, but had no reason to think this was not an admirable performance of his song-cycle Correspondances.
Following its brief, opening Rilke (in translation) setting, ‘Gong’, ‘Danse cosmique’ offered Barbara Hannigan greater dramatic possibilities, well taken. The Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen provided vivid, often pictorial playing. Singer and orchestra proved tender indeed during the treatment of ‘solitude’ in the oddly-chosen extract from a letter from Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn to Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya. Hannigan’s closing repetitions of ‘toujours’ faded away nicely, as did the orchestra. ‘Gong II’ provided something a little more labyrinthine, even perhaps Bergian, although Pli selon pli this certainly is not. The closing ‘De Vincent á Théo’ brought beguiling sonorities and, in Hannigan’s performance, a stunning vocal climax.
Mitsuko Uchida joined the orchestra for Ravel’s G major Concerto. There were a few occasions when I wondered whether the Philharmonia had had enough rehearsal here, lapses in ensemble uncharacteristic for both orchestra and conductor. Otherwise, Salonen proved general cool but not cold, even though a little more freedom at times might not have gone amiss. Uchida’s playing was a model of clarity, energy, an of course grace. It is all too easy to make Mozartian comparisons here, but they did not seem especially relevant; this was Ravel, and sounded like it. Uchida’s second-movement cantilena was beautifully judged, a product of harmonic understanding as much as her melodic voicing itself. Woodwind solos were exquisitely voiced, with just the right degree of general orchestral languor. The scampering energy of the finale was occasionally hampered by a couple more lapses in ensemble, but the ‘sense’ of the music was there, especially in Salonen’s building of tension. Uchida’s choice of encore was inspired: the second of Schoenberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces, op.19, that repeated major third, G-B, making its point of continuity.
L’Enfant et les sortilèges followed the interval. Salonen’s tendency, especially at the start, was towards fleetness of tempo; there was certainly no hint of sentimentality. Indeed, a keen sense of forward motion was maintained throughout the performance. The action took place on a ‘stage’ surrounding the stage proper, a resourceful semi-staging giving all that we really needed, not least thanks to imaginative animation (for instance, the confusion of the clock) and atmospheric lighting. There was great character and chemistry to be experienced between the singers, François Piolino often stealing the show, whether by himself or in his interactions with others. Chloé Briot presented a convincingly boyish Child, never forgetting - nor did the performers as a whole - that this is not really a children’s opera at all, but an opera about that most adult of preoccupations, childhood. Hannigan, when she reappeared, now as the Princess, was very much a woman in a man’s creation of a supposed child’s world. Scenes were very sharply defined as almost self-contained units; Salonen seemed, at least to my ears, to perceive Ravel’s opera almost as a cinematic dream-sequence. Certain figures reminded us of the sound-world of the piano concerto, but there was no mistaking the heady atmosphere of the night.
Mark Berry
Programme and performers:
Henri Dutilleux and Maurice Ravel: Correspondances; Piano Concerto in G major; L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. Barbara Hannigan (soprano, Princess);Dame Mitsuko Uchida (piano);Chloé Briot (Child); Elodie Méchain: Mother, Chinese Cup, Dragonfly;Andrea Hill: Louis XV Armchair, Shepherd, White Cat, Squirrel; Omo Bello: Shepherdess, Bat, Owl;Sabine Devieilhe: Fire, Nightingale;Jean-Sébastien Bou: Grandfather Clock;François Piolino: Teapot, Arithmetic, Frog; Nicola Courjal: Armchair, Tree.Director: Irina Brown; Movement: Quinny Sacks; Designs: Ruth Sutcliffe; Lighting: Kevin Treacy; Video: Louis Price. Philharmonia Voices (director: Aidan Oliver)/Philharmonia Orchestra /Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, London, Thursday 12 February 2015.