The programme for this evening had a wonderfully cohesive make up. It brought together contemporary music, late romanticism, fledging modernism and the muscular angularity of early US Stravinsky in one night. It was a great choice that made obvious the strengths of the orchestra and its ability to change their well blended sound to suit the work.

The opening commission and a UK première by Thomas Adès was an appropriately luminous and intriguing piece to get the evening rolling, a great statement on the continuing success of this wonderful British composer. Two sections of brass were on Balcony and Circle adding textural and spatial variety. The contrapuntal motifs of the piece were woven into an irresistible whole. At once mysterious and bright. He was there to receive the warm applause from the audience. Which was well deserved and made a statement of the NY Phil as a supporter and promoter of contemporary music, something they have done for a very long time. Also interestingly Esa-Pekka Salonen was in the audience…no pressure then!

Les nuits d’été is a great vehicle for a warm voice (sang by contraltos, mezzos, sopranos and tenors) and one work that always causes fans to compare between the hundreds of recorded versions. It makes requirements on both range and interpretative facility. Joyce DiDonato lived up to her reputation and to my previous experiences of seeing her live. It was unfortunate that she sounded a bit shrill up to the end of Le spectre de la rose. We can attribute it to jet lag as her performance was exemplary from then on, soaring to the highest of her range in L’ile inconnue  to the absolute masterful use of her chest voice in Sur les lagunes: Lamento which was the highlight of the evening.  Her interpretation was highly involved and sparkling as much as her dress (fresh from the Grammys). Gilbert’s conducting was very sensitive and involved, taking great care at articulating phrases and working with DiDonato to blend the different textures together. Now if anyone could let me know why a few fellow members of the audience started clapping after the pre-last song, I’d be grateful. I’m not a huge advocate for strict concert etiquette but a glimpse at the free programme would have made everyone that Les nuits has 6 parts!

I was expecting the Stravinsky to be ravishing, if any orchestra can grasp Stravinsky’s American idiom it is the NY Phil. They worked with the composer extensively for a period of over 20 years and that is a huge part of the New Yorkers’ modernist sensitivity. The playing was focused, intense and with an extraordinary attention to the overall architecture of the work. His use of the piano in the first movement to propel the piece and the harp in the second can  be too tame when played with caution. No problem for these players, they kept the momentum and the pulsating if jagged texture of the work. It did not sound polite or sane, more of an uncompromising veteran Stravinsky. Who arrived to the US with a huge appetite to provoke and to make his name in his own terms. As a friend put it…’the Stravinsky was topping’

The arrival of the Ravel brought with it a much open and expansive acoustic from the orchestra, a colourful, luxurious sound that was refreshing and suitable. That unfortunately did not prevent a woman in purple occupying the front row sleeping through most of it. Even the incredible crescendo of the Danse générale failed to wake her up! The spectral effects required for Ravel’s mature music can easily disintegrate under an insensitive conductor or an orchestra used to empty gestures, the New Yorkers had a celebratory joy to their playing. Substance backed their fun delivery.

After this fantastic concert we even got two encores, concluding with Lew Pollack’s That’s a plenty…check out the video the Orchestra posted from their Amsterdam concert a few days before their Barbican residency

I am looking forward to their return to the Barbican in the coming seasons, as despite the fact that London is home to so many world class orchestras it is wonderful to have guests of this calibre and programmes of this quality.

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The PDF of the Barbican residency programme

The Tour Blog of the NYPhil

Some Tweets from the Evening

The Brassy Encore

Now how was Thelma? The stand out feature of the first few minutes was all the Nordic sounding brass dominating the soundscape but the characteristic that becomes all too apparent is the drab libretto with truly leaden prose, stuck in a world of forced rhyming. (Have a look below for some selected clangers.) It makes the first act a bit too reminiscent of a farce or at worst a panto. My heart went out particularly to Rhonda Browne (Gudrun) who had some of the worst lines imaginable while lamenting the lost love of Eric.

It is very difficult to take seriously some of the awful text and it did take a whole act for me to circumnavigate the iceberg in the room. The musical idiom is  late Romantic, mellifluous, gliding strings punctuated with harp, percussion and omni-present brass. The orchestration throughout was fluid with enough variation to hold interest but unfortunately the first act was not inventive enough and the action did not quite get things moving swiftly. The standout highlight was the aria for Trolla, which was sang with great conviction and style by Patricia Robertson. Despite that, there were a lot of stiff smiles at first interval…with oh Thelma written on people’s faces.

The second act which was taking place at the seashore before the sea trial for the two men was much more interesting, helped by much faster recitativi. The chorale in the end of act 2 about belief was the highlight alongside Thelma’s own aria. They showed a much more mature musical world and in a more dramatic idiom. The token evil spirit of the story Djaevelen, portrayed charmingly by Oliver Hunt (a member of the excellent Stile Antico) was a fun addition and with his appearance under a red spotlight gave almost a visual reference to a warming catering hotplate. His singing was bright and surely had fun with his entries and exits, sometimes climbing the set or others on all fours going under it! Maybe that was something that Coleridge-Taylor did not foresee, an element of humour to lift the story. The libretto and the music are both too self-consciously serious to allow for much lightness to creep.

The third act was much more dynamic as the first scene was taking place in the undersea kingdom, while the second one was the wedding of Thelma and Carl. The undersea world was evoked by suspending what seemed like a tree prop in the first two acts into an upside down position making feel like the roots of a plant growing in water. The back projected screen with images of flowing water and remaining a bright azure was a good negotiation of the difficulty of staging this scene. The music as well took a more crystalline clarity which aided the atmosphere and once more Trolla’s and the choir’s singing kept momentum going. Unfortunately Alberto Sousa’s portrayal of Eric was for me the low point of the evening, delivering any high-lying parts of his role with bulging eyes, showed a level of strain one would not expect. That sheer pushed nature of his delivery made most of his acting out of sorts with the rest of the cast. The scene depicting Thelma’s marriage was beautifully done and with some very thoughtful directorial touches. As the scene progresses from happiness for the smooth outcome of love, to a tragedy after the accidental stabbing of Gudrun. The nuptial bouquets held by the chorus ended up becoming the adornments for her dead body. This last scene brought together the final act and almost made us forget some of the longueurs of the piece as a whole. And judging from the enthusiastic applause and the panto boos for Djaevelen the audience had a good time overall.

Surrey Opera did a great job at bringing to the stage the work in its most complete form. But can’t imagine it will have a reason to become a repertoire work without any major reworking. Coleridge-Taylor’s capability to write memorable melodies and a huge capacity to mass voices for dramatic effect is undeniable. But the sheer length of Thelma and owing to the thin ,edging on infuriating, libretto make it an unsatisfying overall night at the theatre. It is an interesting historical curio from the career of a wonderful young composer whose life was cut too short. I am glad to have seen it and hope to encounter again some of the choral parts of it and a couple of the arias in the future.

The greatest advice to come out of this staging would be ‘kids do not put your priceless amulet around your sword‘

Some selected rhyme clangers from the libretto

bright/delight – ear/near - depart/heart – used/refused – dust/gust – fire/desire – fear/dear – pain/again – balm/calm – disdain/rain – tomb/doom

Read more

Notes on Thelma on Surrey Opera’s website

Tom Service’s blog entry on The Guardian’s website

An article by Catherine Carr on the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation website on the opera

Some tweets from the evening:

Singing Kurt Weill song cycles in a large auditorium like the Barbican ,with a fairly dry acoustic, is unforgiving. Those songs were meant for smaller venues where the amplification would be unnecessary or at least more subtle. At the Barbican the amplification of ASvO’s voice was hidden under a blanket of mushy, unfocused sound and her holding of the mic made it more so. It distorted every phrase and took away any possibility of jagged phrasing and honed gravel precision in the spirit of Lotte Lenya.

Her voice was as usual a mine of beauty, unfortunately that was only allowed to be shown when she would snarl phrases across to the audience without the microphone, in those brief moments she relayed, shame, confidence, strength and sex appeal. The main issue throughout was the non idiomatic approach of Tilson Thomas.

This band of wonderful musicians should be able to convey Weill’s intentions but sadly fell very short. Especially for the first three songs, the playing was lacking in authority and brightness. It sounded more like a dull ABBA sing-along (a favourite past time for ASvO) than a Berlin cabaret. It was hugely disappointing and led me to not stay for La Mer, a piece that can so easily slip into being a semi comatose  conductor auto pilot vehicle, with no sense of direction and structure.

At least she gave us a wonderful encore that was a glorious glimpse of what it could have been…alluring, warm, dangerous…listen to it and see what you think:

A few tweets from the evening

When I raised the issue on Twitter yesterday morning having had the hunch, that a lot of the comments came from other ladies and that maybe they were envious of an attractive fellow colleague getting this ‘wrong type of media attention‘. The piece was roundly dismissed as fluff and shallow self-promotion. Just a consumerist, fashion label loving rant with no merit. I just found the reaction to be surprisingly humourless and not in accordance to the usual etiquette amongst colleagues. If the article annoyed you just let it go by, it will be forgotten in a couple of weeks.

To her credit de Niese responded with fairly good humour and pointing the obvious that I mentioned from the start. But this storm in a very small teacup made me think about ideas of promotion for a niche scene like opera.

Of course the two big questions are how to get a classical/operatic singers in a mass media medium like the NYT / a major TV channel and if glamour has a place within the operatic circuit.

The first question seems to be the source of most consternation by performers as it point to two obvious trends at getting mass media attention. It is either to diss you colleagues (a certain pop tenor comes to mind) or to talk about your pets, clothing, ways to spend your dosh …you get the idea. I would love to be able to open any paper worldwide and not to be amazed that there is an insightful article about a composer or musician that focuses on their works and career only…but I would be terribly naive to expect that.

The Classical and Opera category has been relegated to the back pages of listings magazines e.g. London edition of Time Out has the listings and feature after the main (not aptly named) Music section. It’s obvious the pop/rock scene pays Time Out a lot of money for all the gig adverts, while the Classical section has only one advert from the ROH and one from the Barbican over just four pages. Mass market publications like Time Out and all the major broadsheets are commercial enterprises that thrive on advertising, most classical and operatic venues have minuscule advertising capabilities that furtherly puts them in the margin. For a wide swathe of readers the whole classical scene is invisible, with major documentaries on opera and performances frequently being relegated to minor channels, no wonder the profile is low. On that front Miss de Niese at least showed the average Joe that reads the NYT that there are beautiful, vibrant opera singers out there, totally against the expectation for monstrous sopranos with horned helmets. And that is serious publicity, which benefits everyone with an interest in the scene or anyone that makes their living as a performer.

The question about glamour and performers is another thorny one. As I get as annoyed by seeing hyper airbrushed images of artists that are trying to sell classical to an audience used to pop iconography. But we have to concede that it is part of the whole package and we cannot pretend it doesn’t matter and discount it as record company fluff. Believe it or not good looking performers create a different set of expectations for a wider audience, they are an almost reassuring sign that maybe classical music and opera is not an arcane world inhabited by strange looking people who live only for their craft and nothing else. Any solo artist in any capacity (and increasingly orchestras) have realised that what they wear and how they look on covers helps them sell more.

Being popular and selling a lot of CDs and downloads is not an anathema, it should be the target of any artist that gives their all and want to be heard by as many people possible. Almost 35 years since the death of Maria Callas her recordings for EMI still sell like hot cakes. You can attribute that enduring success to her archetypal look of the glamorous diva, all bonnets and beautiful silk dresses. And of course her captivating presence in those recordings.

Sorry ladies (that had issues with Danielle’s fashion blog), she is continuing on a long line of glamorous singers that can do the day job with distinction and yet manage to captivate interest from outside the rather myopic world of opera. And even if you don’t want to recognise it, any mention of opera or classical performance by the non specialist media is an antidote for obscurity and irrelevance. And for goodness sake LIGHTEN UP!

*with apologies to RuPaul

Her appearance on stage with eyes as moist as the poet Wilhelm Muller describes, was a perfect match for Elena Gerhardt’s famous quote on the work ’You have to be haunted by this cycle to be able to sing it’. The first bleak introduction into Gute Nacht/Good night to the departure of the man from the house of his beloved was played with butch conviction by Drake and a thin thread of voice by Coote that snarled the last Schnee/snow of the first verse in a piercing cry, pre-figuring what was to come next.

Her visceral turn of phrase chasing the piano throughout the circle created a sense of tension which paired with her unwavering, sustained emotional engagement was a perfect amalgamation of text, music and subject matter. She sang Wenn meine Schmerzen schweigen, Wer sagt mir damn von ihr? / Who, when my grief is silent, will speak to me of her?  in Erstarrung/Numbness with a devastated search for life amongst the snow on a background of rapidly played triplets was a marvel.

Her rendition of Der Lindenbaum/The linden tree was one of such simplicity and softness that was winning and intensifying the emotional core of the work. Ich träumt in seinem Schatten. So manchen süßen Traum/I used to dream in its shade, so many a sweet dream ,was lustful with her production of glorious round tone. Her deep breaths before the last verse brought us further in this world of romantic suffering. The repetition of the last line was as hushed as a lullaby contrasting with the high dramatic delivery of the next song Wasserflut/Flood which was much more imposing in character and darker in delivery.

For Auf dem Flusse/On the river we were treated to a description of the scene painted with beautiful colours Coote’s voice finishing with a fierce Ob’s unter seiner Rinde.Wohl auch so reißend schwillt?/Is there such a raging torrent beneath its surface too? The fast-moving Rückblick/A backward glance added urgency and spring to the step.

She concluded Irrlicht/Will-o’-the-wisp with a simple and serious repeat of Wind’ ich ruhig mich hinab,Jeder Strom wird’s Meer gewinnen,Jedes Leiden auch sein Grab./I calmly make my way down – every river will reach the sea, every sorrow find its grave. She then gave a relieved and at the same time restless delivery of Rast/Rest.

Frühlingstraum/Dream of spring was a captivating interplay of steely vocal delivery for all the morbid thoughts at the start that turned in to a feeling of wistful remembrance and helplessness. She followed in the same mood with Einsamkeit/Loneliness culminating in her projection of the word licht/light straight upwards to the ceiling of the Hall almost physically going against that natural tormentor of the hero. A subtle but telling way of all the small details that she brought to the evening and made this song cycle a lived experience that was narrated back with those world-weary limps and eyes welling up.

Die Post/The mail-coach was a wonderful merge of piano and voice, Drake created the intricate, playful  backdrop for Coote’s heart-broken delivery. That led to Der greise Kopf/The hoary head where she used her warm chest voice to describe the wish to find succour in death. The plucked motifs of Die Krähe/The crow ended with a fierce, bitter wish to come closer to death. That gave way to the contained, quiet reverie of Letzte Hoffnung/Last hope with her voice describing the trembling leaf with a fluctuating middle register.

Her steely gliding tone in Im Dorfe/In the village gave an interesting textural richness that prepared us for the quick-moving, almost breathless Der stürmische Morgen/The stormy morning which she navigated with urgency.

Täuschung/Delusion took us back to the heart of the character, a desperate description of unattainable happiness. The dynamic shaping of the phrases was soft and effortless.

Der Wegweiser/The signpost was a combination of silky delivery in the first half and crushing grief and a sense of inevitability in the last few lines. Das Wirtshaus/The inn opened with lustful, lush piano and Coote moving from weariness to an accusing frenzy. Almost a condensed mad scene in four minutes, a stunning moment where she took a risk and added visceral engagement and dramatic vigour that thankfully did not make the scene seem ridiculously soppy. Her Nun weiter denn, nur weiter, mein treuer Wanderstab!/On,then.ever onwards, my trusty staff! was an impassioned conclusion.

The last three songs allowed her to conclude in the most fierce manner possible. Mut!/Courage! was a last rallying cry of the inner voice of the hero with the proclamation Will kein Gott auf Erden sein, Sind wir selber Götter!/If there’s no god on earth, then we ourselves are gods. Her intoxicating delivery of Die Nebensonnen/Phantom suns was the personification of disillusionment in a dream-like scenario. The concluding Der Leiermann/The organ-grinder was dramatic and still subtle. She looked out in search for that other wretched soul that would accompany the hero into the underworld. After the final  Willst zu meinen Liedern deine Leier drehn?/Will you grind your hurdy-gurdy to my songs? ,almost a minute of silence followed as she stood immobile in suspended animation. Alike a figurehead in the bow of this Schubertian ship.

It was this rare beast of a recital when venue, work and performers created a unified whole that was stunning. The performance tugged at the heart-strings like nothing else I’ve seen in months. A master-class in marriage of stage magnetism, great singing and truth. Alice Coote and Julius Drake should be truly proud on delving deep and offering us an insight into this song cycle that very few artists can do. We were all very lucky tonight and the memory of it will be with me for a very long time.

The performance was recorded for future release on cd…so look out for it!

Some tweets from the evening

Compare that with the top price for many Barbican concerts by the LSO  of £35 and decent seats at Circle for £19.50 .  At the same venue the New York Phil is playing with a top price of £45!

The Wigmore Hall is charging an average top price of £30-35 with some very decent seats for £15-20.

Clearly the subsidy from the Corporation of London is helping to keep Barbican prices on the low-end, but am very surprised by the prices at the South Bank Centre. Paying £85-70 in order to listen to music at the very hollow acoustic of the Royal Festival Hall is not exactly the most tempting proposition. This season except for a rare London appearance by Jessye Norman I will stay away from the RFH due to their prices, regrettably as I do love the Philharmonia.

The SBC is pricing themselves out of my concert going budget and make themselves look terrible value even in comparison to the Royal Opera House and English National Opera.

Has anyone else noticed the climb in prices?

Usually when I attend a recital I tend to be immensely amused and charmed when singers add to their programmes songs in their native language. This recital will be the exception, both the accompanist and Ruciński seemed too ill at ease with the four sonnets. I would guess lack of enough rehearsal time was to blame. Sight reading the lines in Polish from the score throughout was a pointer to that. Thank heavens they tweaked the running order and the interval came after the aria from Faust, otherwise I am not sure I would be too willing to return after the interval.

His two arias from I Puritani and Don Pasquale were great vehicles to display his limpid tone and fearless delivery. His passion and sadness as Sir Riccardo was palpable and his first fortissimo passage did make a few members of the audience shudder, he can be very loud if the piece allows, which was very effective with the too neutral and dry acoustic of the space. His Dr Malatesta was good fun but somehow I felt a gap between an attempt at interpretation and his clear intention to please the all (too approving) audience. He was surely a buffo baritone but somehow the character as envisaged by Donizetti was missing.

His Valentin was not a good fit for his voice type, his French delivery was not as unforced as his flowing Italian and maybe the voice is a tad too strident and steely for this repertoire.  The interval came and I was thinking of the strength of his voice and the powerful delivery and the lightness of touch in bel canto.

His Count Almaviva was surely acted and he wasn’t just playing to the audience. Clearly a result of his stage experience in the role. It may sound harsh, but despite the limitations of the concert platform, interpretation is possible if not more needed than when in a fully staged performance. His Count a thinking, living character, the last ringing Il colpo e fatto was  a great signifier his arrogance and moved on to a climatic signature Mozartian expression of rage. Up to that point that was the most natural bit of singing of the night.

The two Tchaikovsky arias were a very good fit for his voice, the tautness of the sound was fresh and the Russian sounded involved and a proper romantic opera interpretation. At times his Onegin sounded on the sharp side but the overall atmosphere and confidence were winning. Unfortunately the accompaniment maybe was not up to his standard, with a tentative touch Vaughan did not sound fluent enough.

The final programmed aria was for me the best piece of the evening, for the first time his projection was full bloodied and from the mask, the voice lost any steely edge it had up to that point and delivered a wonderful rendition of Rodrigo’s death aria with passion and more empathy than displayed earlier in this recital. A total joy to listen to, the phrasing was elegant and attuned to what a grand opera by Verdi requires. The loud cheers were truly deserved.

His encores were Di Provenza il mar from La Traviata and Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre from Carmen were a good way to close the recital. Despite my misgivings at asking the audience to clap for the toreador aria and throwing the rose he was given straight to a woman on my row! But it was a bit of fun on a Wednesday evening and hope he returns to London for maybe some fully staged Verdi in the very near future.

On the whole this was a great introduction of the singer to a London audience, as always with this recital series you never know where the singers will be in the next five years. Judging on the stars they gave the stage to, early on in their careers, it’s a great place to see the stars of tomorrow.

Some tweets from the evening

Any classical/opera world followers on Twitter are too well versed in Mr Lebrecht’s attention seeking, ambulance chasing ways. I am truly grateful that someone of Pountney’s stature took a stand and publicly denounced his lazy assumptions about funding. He makes a number of great points about the nature of the opera business and of art in general. I totally agree with all his points. Additionally, pure commercial enterprises have very rarely produced good quality opera programming. Utter the name Raymond Gubbay (a favourite of the Royal Albert Hall, old Norman, isn’t he?) to any opera lover and you will see

Bravo to DP and hope all the readers of my blog will read his post.

David Pountney’s Adventures of the Spirit blog post

Norman Lebrecht’s Just say no to State Funding article (watch out for the tulip metaphor!)

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The new season announcement by the WNO

Follow the hilarious Fake Norman Lebrecht, much better than the real thing!