25/8/09 and 1/9/09, Royal Albert Hall (Proms)
25/8/09
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Roger Norrington with Joyce DiDonato singing; in the second half they played Mendelssohn's Symphony No 3, the Scottish.
I failed to make proper notes at the time but I did scribble in the programme. We had Purcell's suite from the incidental music to Abdelazer, and then La DiDonato came on in a green, full-skirted strapless dress to sing Ombra mai fu from Xerxes and Ah mio cor from Alcina. The former was funereal, though she sounded gorgeous. The second was much better, faster, and there was something she did at the segue into the middle section unaccompanied when her voice soared and fell and changed key and all sorts, and we all held our breath.
And then we had Handel's Water Music, which is too familiar and I fell asleep.
And that was followed by our Joyce back for Haydn's Scena di Berenice which is a splendidly dramatic concert aria. She was great: lyrical, highly dramatic, thrillingly low at times.
The Mendelssohn contrasts light and dark in the first movement (the Scots weather?), first brassy, then flute and clarinet. There are lovely melodies in the third movement. And a bouncy finish.
G didn't like Norrington: he thinks he's a show-off, turning to the audience at the end and bouncing like a schoolboy.
1/9/09
Royal Concertgebouw with Mariss Janson doing Haydn's Symphony No 100, the Military, and Shostakovich's Symphony No 10.
I failed to make a note at the time and remember nothing of it.
The reviews below help bring some of it back, notably the four percussionists marching on at the end of the Haydn.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/proms/6126100/BBC-Proms-Mariss-Jansons-and-the-Royal-Concertgebouw-Orchestra.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/sep/06/bbc-proms-classical-music-review-maddocks
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8b2f6ada-98aa-11de-aa1b-00144feabdc0.html
1/9/09
Late-night Prom with the Michael Nyman Band.
Initially riveting: loud, repetitive, rhythmic with a spectacular sense of impetus and drive. Think Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds, the theme tune from The Draughtsman's Contract.
The trouble is, they all sound like that: same minimalist techniques, same (amplified) instrumentation.
Alas it became boring in the end
Showing posts with label haydn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label haydn. Show all posts
Friday, 4 September 2009
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
MESSIAH
14/04/09, Westminster Abbey.
2hrs 50mins. The 250th anniversary of Handel's death; live broadcast on Radio 3; the Abbey choir; top-notch soloists (Paul Agnew, tenor; Ailish Tynan, soprano; Sarah Connolly, mezzo; Jonathan Lemalu, bass-baritone); a band, St James's Baroque, we'd never heard of but who did a decent job under the Abbey's choirmaster, James O'Donnell; lots of atmosphere. Yet rather disappointing. "Not the best Messiah I've heard," G said, and he's heard a good few.
One problem was the acoustic, which swallowed the words and much of the detail and decoration. We were sitting about two-thirds of the way back in the Nave, but without a stage or a rake we could see little beyond the heads of the soloists and the back row of the choir, on a dais behind the band and in front of the screen. I could hear well enough, but D, who is much shorter, could neither hear nor see properly. God knows what it must have been like with those acoustics in the days of Handel celebrations in the Abbey with massed bands and choirs: nothing but a wash of sound, one imagines, though I seem to recall Haydn heard one of these extravaganzas and was sufficiently impressed to compose The Creation in imitation. (Half the audience were behind the screen and beyond the choir stalls; after we'd applauded the performers they all went down the other end and you heard them being applauded again. Heaven knows what it sounded like down that end, though.)
There was also a problem with the choir: 21 trebles, plus five each of tenors, basses and male altos. They lacked attack at times: "Their sound has gone out..." actually went out rather feebly, though the Hallelujah went well, if rather dominated by timps and trumpets and some other brass I couldn't see, hidden away behind the pillars. The choir make a lovely sound when soaring in unison, but the combination of forces and cathedral echo did them few favours in some of Handel's more intricate part-writing.
I jotted a few notes in the programme as we went along (having words helps enormously in pinpointing the musicial moments that make an impact). The tenor aria "Comfort ye, my people" was exquisite, the long, quiet "comfort ye" immensely long drawn out but beautiful. "For he is like a refiner's fire" was sung by Connolly, not the bass Lemalu, though he sang the recitative: I think this is quite often done, but it was regrettable because she didn't seem to be in great voice, and his was the only voice that cut through the echo, so I'd have loved to hear him sing it. On "be not afraid" in "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion" the choir were electric.
"The people that walked in darkness" was top notch: authoritative and stirring. G said: "You won't hear it better sung!" though at the end he also said he thought Lemalu had taken time to warm up, so maybe one might hear it better sung. And when he sang "have seen a great light" one of the lights illuminating the screen behind the choir actually went out; it was dodgy throughout the first half, though they got it fixed for the second.
And the screen featured in the chorus "For unto us a child is born", when two trumpeters joined in from the top of the screen.
The soprano aria "Rejoice greatly" was taken too fast: even so, it sent shivers down my spine. But the energy flagged towards the end of the first half, when the soprano and the mezzo share the honours with some melodic but unexciting writing. I saw one of the little choir boys yawn vastly at one point.
Sarah Connolly finally came good in part two, in "He was despised", with some wonderful decoration in the da capo repeat. But unless I mistake they cut the da capo in the bass aria "Why do the nations?", which is one of the highlights.
The soprano had to cope with not one but two wailing sirens outside the Abbey in the final section, alas, in "I know that my redeemer liveth" and "If God be for us", but it didn't seem to put her off her stride. Lemalu gave "The trumpet shall sound" lots of oomph, which was good, but the tenor-mezzo duet, "O death, where is thy sting?" was, it says here, "odd". I think I meant their voices weren't quite as well matched as they should have been.
Two contrasting reviews here: I agree in general with the Guardian, though not with his detailed assessments of the singers. But maybe it sounded different where he was sitting. Certainly, it was one of those occasions when you felt the radio version would have been preferable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/17/messiah-westminster-abbey-review
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/michael_white/blog/2009/04/15/a_splendid_messiah__but_why_does_westminster_abbey_depict_handel_as_a_sitcom_spiv
2hrs 50mins. The 250th anniversary of Handel's death; live broadcast on Radio 3; the Abbey choir; top-notch soloists (Paul Agnew, tenor; Ailish Tynan, soprano; Sarah Connolly, mezzo; Jonathan Lemalu, bass-baritone); a band, St James's Baroque, we'd never heard of but who did a decent job under the Abbey's choirmaster, James O'Donnell; lots of atmosphere. Yet rather disappointing. "Not the best Messiah I've heard," G said, and he's heard a good few.
One problem was the acoustic, which swallowed the words and much of the detail and decoration. We were sitting about two-thirds of the way back in the Nave, but without a stage or a rake we could see little beyond the heads of the soloists and the back row of the choir, on a dais behind the band and in front of the screen. I could hear well enough, but D, who is much shorter, could neither hear nor see properly. God knows what it must have been like with those acoustics in the days of Handel celebrations in the Abbey with massed bands and choirs: nothing but a wash of sound, one imagines, though I seem to recall Haydn heard one of these extravaganzas and was sufficiently impressed to compose The Creation in imitation. (Half the audience were behind the screen and beyond the choir stalls; after we'd applauded the performers they all went down the other end and you heard them being applauded again. Heaven knows what it sounded like down that end, though.)
There was also a problem with the choir: 21 trebles, plus five each of tenors, basses and male altos. They lacked attack at times: "Their sound has gone out..." actually went out rather feebly, though the Hallelujah went well, if rather dominated by timps and trumpets and some other brass I couldn't see, hidden away behind the pillars. The choir make a lovely sound when soaring in unison, but the combination of forces and cathedral echo did them few favours in some of Handel's more intricate part-writing.
I jotted a few notes in the programme as we went along (having words helps enormously in pinpointing the musicial moments that make an impact). The tenor aria "Comfort ye, my people" was exquisite, the long, quiet "comfort ye" immensely long drawn out but beautiful. "For he is like a refiner's fire" was sung by Connolly, not the bass Lemalu, though he sang the recitative: I think this is quite often done, but it was regrettable because she didn't seem to be in great voice, and his was the only voice that cut through the echo, so I'd have loved to hear him sing it. On "be not afraid" in "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion" the choir were electric.
"The people that walked in darkness" was top notch: authoritative and stirring. G said: "You won't hear it better sung!" though at the end he also said he thought Lemalu had taken time to warm up, so maybe one might hear it better sung. And when he sang "have seen a great light" one of the lights illuminating the screen behind the choir actually went out; it was dodgy throughout the first half, though they got it fixed for the second.
And the screen featured in the chorus "For unto us a child is born", when two trumpeters joined in from the top of the screen.
The soprano aria "Rejoice greatly" was taken too fast: even so, it sent shivers down my spine. But the energy flagged towards the end of the first half, when the soprano and the mezzo share the honours with some melodic but unexciting writing. I saw one of the little choir boys yawn vastly at one point.
Sarah Connolly finally came good in part two, in "He was despised", with some wonderful decoration in the da capo repeat. But unless I mistake they cut the da capo in the bass aria "Why do the nations?", which is one of the highlights.
The soprano had to cope with not one but two wailing sirens outside the Abbey in the final section, alas, in "I know that my redeemer liveth" and "If God be for us", but it didn't seem to put her off her stride. Lemalu gave "The trumpet shall sound" lots of oomph, which was good, but the tenor-mezzo duet, "O death, where is thy sting?" was, it says here, "odd". I think I meant their voices weren't quite as well matched as they should have been.
Two contrasting reviews here: I agree in general with the Guardian, though not with his detailed assessments of the singers. But maybe it sounded different where he was sitting. Certainly, it was one of those occasions when you felt the radio version would have been preferable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/17/messiah-westminster-abbey-review
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/michael_white/blog/2009/04/15/a_splendid_messiah__but_why_does_westminster_abbey_depict_handel_as_a_sitcom_spiv
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
HAYDN SYMPHONIES AND ARIAS
12/3/09, King's Place.
Two Haydn symphonies, No 26 Lamentatione and No 45 Farewell, plus half a dozen solo arias for tenor and soprano, played by a period band we hadn't heard of called the Orchestra of the Classical Opera Company founded and conducted by a chap called Ian Page. Around 20 musicians, two-thirds women, dressed in black, augmented by a harpsichord for the songs. The tenor a chap called Joshua Ellicott whose voice G especially liked; the soprano a rather self-satisfied lady called Gillian Ramm with an ill-judged dress and fringe but a cracking voice.
Five days later I can of course remember almost nothing in detail about the music (mark you, I could remember almost nothing in detail five hours later).
So let's review the venue instead. It's a basement concert hall, rectangular, pale wood (as at Glyndebourne, and presumably for the acoustic), with a narrow balcony running round the back and sides and a surprisingly high ceiling. The chairs are uncomfortable (according to G) but have individual heating/air conditioning in the base, again as at Glyndebourne. There are clever but understated lighting tricks: when the performers enter or exit the stage they do so through wooden doors that open to reveal a blue-lit area behind them; there are drapes hanging from the back wall lit by subtly changing lighting.
The public areas are exceptionally spacious: a large entrance hall which seems to occupy half the building's footprint, with box office, sandwich bar, bar-and-restaurant-with-canalside-terrace at the far end, and a great well in the middle through which you travel on an escalator down to the concert hall (Hall One: there's also a Hall Two rehearsal space) past a gallery floor on a semi-basement balcony or mezzanine. Ceiling heights are everywhere generous. Off the ground floor is an entrance to the offices of musical organisations like the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and another to the Guardian offices which occupy the lion's share of the building. The Guardian has another entrance on the corner as you approach from King's Cross: more escalators, this time going up. As you stand in the ground floor atrium you can look up through the glass walls of the newspaper's offices to see signs like "arts and culture" and "interview room two" and "society".
Like a lot of modern buildings it's a pleasant contrast to the penny-pinching, cramped and often surprisingly dark developments of past decades, especially the 60s and 70s. Compare the National Theatre, whose public areas get much more crowded more quickly and which has to deploy plush carpets to fight the oppressive quality of the bare concrete walls. Or the Barbican, which is also in a basement and more spacious than the National but much gloomier than King's Place. Perhaps it's the plain white walls and pale wood; perhaps we're just better at lighting these large spaces. (Whichever it is the environmental implications are probably horrendous.)
As for the music... I'm ashamed to say I hadn't realised Haydn wrote any operas. Perhaps they're rarely done; several are lost with only isolated arias surviving. L'infidelta deluso was his fifth, but the earliest to survive in completed form. The arias we heard were spectacular, tuneful and charming by turns.
Of the symphonies I remember little of the first except its generally plangent tone. The last was introduced by the conductor, who said he hoped there were at least some people in the audience who didn't know how this symphony ended, and explained it was a kind of coded message to Prince Esterhazy that his musicians, who had been away from home in Eisenstadt at the prince's new palace at Esterhaza throughout the summer of 1772, wanted to go home now please. Since I had no idea how it ended this merely reinforced the impression I often have at classical concerts that everyone else there is far more familiar with what we're about to hear than I am, can hum the music backwards and knows exactly when to applaud.
(Look away now if you don't want the ending spoilt.)
In fact the symphony bowls along merrily for three movements. Then, during the fourth, the musicians leave the stage one by one until only the leader and the principal second violin are left. It's very effective.
There seem to be lots of non-musical hooks like this in Haydn's music, or what I know of it: jokes, gimmicks, back stories. He seems to have been a rather engaging as well as remarkably hard-working fellow. His stuff is tuneful, long on musical variety etc etc. So why don't I know it better? Why do I dismiss him as a rather boring composer who wrote too much and whose music all sounds the same? You could say the same about Handel, and I adore Handel. Perhaps the problem is that, unlike the earlier Handel, he was oveshadowed by the romantic composers who came after him and who found a musical language (helped by the development of larger ensembles and more advanced instruments, perhaps?) to express heightened emotion that Haydn couldn't quite manage, trapped as he still was in the polite conventions of 18th century music.
Either way I should find out more. Memo to self: listen to more Haydn. Read a biography.
Two Haydn symphonies, No 26 Lamentatione and No 45 Farewell, plus half a dozen solo arias for tenor and soprano, played by a period band we hadn't heard of called the Orchestra of the Classical Opera Company founded and conducted by a chap called Ian Page. Around 20 musicians, two-thirds women, dressed in black, augmented by a harpsichord for the songs. The tenor a chap called Joshua Ellicott whose voice G especially liked; the soprano a rather self-satisfied lady called Gillian Ramm with an ill-judged dress and fringe but a cracking voice.
Five days later I can of course remember almost nothing in detail about the music (mark you, I could remember almost nothing in detail five hours later).
So let's review the venue instead. It's a basement concert hall, rectangular, pale wood (as at Glyndebourne, and presumably for the acoustic), with a narrow balcony running round the back and sides and a surprisingly high ceiling. The chairs are uncomfortable (according to G) but have individual heating/air conditioning in the base, again as at Glyndebourne. There are clever but understated lighting tricks: when the performers enter or exit the stage they do so through wooden doors that open to reveal a blue-lit area behind them; there are drapes hanging from the back wall lit by subtly changing lighting.
The public areas are exceptionally spacious: a large entrance hall which seems to occupy half the building's footprint, with box office, sandwich bar, bar-and-restaurant-with-canalside-terrace at the far end, and a great well in the middle through which you travel on an escalator down to the concert hall (Hall One: there's also a Hall Two rehearsal space) past a gallery floor on a semi-basement balcony or mezzanine. Ceiling heights are everywhere generous. Off the ground floor is an entrance to the offices of musical organisations like the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and another to the Guardian offices which occupy the lion's share of the building. The Guardian has another entrance on the corner as you approach from King's Cross: more escalators, this time going up. As you stand in the ground floor atrium you can look up through the glass walls of the newspaper's offices to see signs like "arts and culture" and "interview room two" and "society".
Like a lot of modern buildings it's a pleasant contrast to the penny-pinching, cramped and often surprisingly dark developments of past decades, especially the 60s and 70s. Compare the National Theatre, whose public areas get much more crowded more quickly and which has to deploy plush carpets to fight the oppressive quality of the bare concrete walls. Or the Barbican, which is also in a basement and more spacious than the National but much gloomier than King's Place. Perhaps it's the plain white walls and pale wood; perhaps we're just better at lighting these large spaces. (Whichever it is the environmental implications are probably horrendous.)
As for the music... I'm ashamed to say I hadn't realised Haydn wrote any operas. Perhaps they're rarely done; several are lost with only isolated arias surviving. L'infidelta deluso was his fifth, but the earliest to survive in completed form. The arias we heard were spectacular, tuneful and charming by turns.
Of the symphonies I remember little of the first except its generally plangent tone. The last was introduced by the conductor, who said he hoped there were at least some people in the audience who didn't know how this symphony ended, and explained it was a kind of coded message to Prince Esterhazy that his musicians, who had been away from home in Eisenstadt at the prince's new palace at Esterhaza throughout the summer of 1772, wanted to go home now please. Since I had no idea how it ended this merely reinforced the impression I often have at classical concerts that everyone else there is far more familiar with what we're about to hear than I am, can hum the music backwards and knows exactly when to applaud.
(Look away now if you don't want the ending spoilt.)
In fact the symphony bowls along merrily for three movements. Then, during the fourth, the musicians leave the stage one by one until only the leader and the principal second violin are left. It's very effective.
There seem to be lots of non-musical hooks like this in Haydn's music, or what I know of it: jokes, gimmicks, back stories. He seems to have been a rather engaging as well as remarkably hard-working fellow. His stuff is tuneful, long on musical variety etc etc. So why don't I know it better? Why do I dismiss him as a rather boring composer who wrote too much and whose music all sounds the same? You could say the same about Handel, and I adore Handel. Perhaps the problem is that, unlike the earlier Handel, he was oveshadowed by the romantic composers who came after him and who found a musical language (helped by the development of larger ensembles and more advanced instruments, perhaps?) to express heightened emotion that Haydn couldn't quite manage, trapped as he still was in the polite conventions of 18th century music.
Either way I should find out more. Memo to self: listen to more Haydn. Read a biography.
Saturday, 21 February 2009
VIENNA PHILHARMONIC/ZUBIN MEHTA
19/02/09, Royal Festival Hall.
2hrs 10mins. Haydn, Symphony No 104 (the London); Bruckner, Symphony No 9. I was too tired for this. Even the Bruckner couldn't keep me awake.
The Vienna Phil play with awesome precision, which was if anything a drawback in the Haydn which seemed just too polished, too perfect. It's polite music anyway. D said she wanted more "passion". I kept yearning for the sound of a period band, scraping away, living dangerously but with more edge, to bring the music alive.
Mehta conducted with remarkably economic gestures. When he came on at the start and when he acknowledged applause at the end his bow was barely more than a nod of the head. On the other hand, while we were in the rear stalls A was sitting in the choir seats behind the orchestra, as a result of a muddle over tickets, and said his face was animated and lit up as he cued the band. There were 52 (I think) musicians, only one woman (first violins, right at the back). They were all in white tie, which added to the sense of formality.
The upside of the orchestra's discipline was that you could hear every note and some of the effects were breathtaking. There's a series of dramatic pauses in the scherzo (around six, some in the strings, some in the woodwind): an upward swoop, and then... nothing. Executed perfectly.
There's a beautiful passage at the start for the bassoon, playing along with all the strings. And in the slow movement there's a passage in which the first violins carry the melody while the second violins dance a staccato figure around it: again, perfect.
Mehta began the second half with a tribute to Christopher Raeburn. I'd never heard of him, but he was a veteran record producer who started out with Decca way back in 1954 and according to Mehta was a great friend and fan of the Vienna Phil. Mehta said he "and the orchestra" had been saddened to learn of his death "when they arrived in London that morning". So the band had travelled from Vienna, where they'd given a concert the night before, then presumably rehearsed at the RFH and finally performed: a long day, and a knackering one. They were due in Paris the following evening.
"We would just like him to know," Mehta said of Raeburn, "we are with him in spirit and would like to dedicate this heavenly music to him."
And it is heavenly, at least at the start: a lovely slow string build up to a great brass crescendo meant to sweep you away. At which point the man on my left, clearly unmoved, opened his programme!
It has some fine effects. In the second (of three) movements there is some spectacular driving "machine" like music, interspersed with quieter passages featuring a little figure on the timps which is then taken up by the clarinet and (second time) by the flute. But the machine music came back six or eight times, confirming me in my prejudices about Bruckner: namely, that he is noisy and repetitious. In the tuttis you can see the woodwind blowing away fit to bust, but you can't hear them: with a full brass section blaring away their contribution seems pointless. Once more I found myself wondering what it would sound like with just 18th century orchestral forces instead of the 91 (?) players on stage (four women this time: two violins, a cello and, I think, a clarinet).
D was satisfied that she'd finally got her passion. S's friend J and J's friend Sheila were sitting with us and were full of enthusiasm. By the end I'm afraid I'd drifted off. Mehta, much more animated this time, looked totally drained. There was a special round of applause for the tuba. Then I lost sight of what was happening because all the people in front of us had decided to give it a standing ovation.
2hrs 10mins. Haydn, Symphony No 104 (the London); Bruckner, Symphony No 9. I was too tired for this. Even the Bruckner couldn't keep me awake.
The Vienna Phil play with awesome precision, which was if anything a drawback in the Haydn which seemed just too polished, too perfect. It's polite music anyway. D said she wanted more "passion". I kept yearning for the sound of a period band, scraping away, living dangerously but with more edge, to bring the music alive.
Mehta conducted with remarkably economic gestures. When he came on at the start and when he acknowledged applause at the end his bow was barely more than a nod of the head. On the other hand, while we were in the rear stalls A was sitting in the choir seats behind the orchestra, as a result of a muddle over tickets, and said his face was animated and lit up as he cued the band. There were 52 (I think) musicians, only one woman (first violins, right at the back). They were all in white tie, which added to the sense of formality.
The upside of the orchestra's discipline was that you could hear every note and some of the effects were breathtaking. There's a series of dramatic pauses in the scherzo (around six, some in the strings, some in the woodwind): an upward swoop, and then... nothing. Executed perfectly.
There's a beautiful passage at the start for the bassoon, playing along with all the strings. And in the slow movement there's a passage in which the first violins carry the melody while the second violins dance a staccato figure around it: again, perfect.
Mehta began the second half with a tribute to Christopher Raeburn. I'd never heard of him, but he was a veteran record producer who started out with Decca way back in 1954 and according to Mehta was a great friend and fan of the Vienna Phil. Mehta said he "and the orchestra" had been saddened to learn of his death "when they arrived in London that morning". So the band had travelled from Vienna, where they'd given a concert the night before, then presumably rehearsed at the RFH and finally performed: a long day, and a knackering one. They were due in Paris the following evening.
"We would just like him to know," Mehta said of Raeburn, "we are with him in spirit and would like to dedicate this heavenly music to him."
And it is heavenly, at least at the start: a lovely slow string build up to a great brass crescendo meant to sweep you away. At which point the man on my left, clearly unmoved, opened his programme!
It has some fine effects. In the second (of three) movements there is some spectacular driving "machine" like music, interspersed with quieter passages featuring a little figure on the timps which is then taken up by the clarinet and (second time) by the flute. But the machine music came back six or eight times, confirming me in my prejudices about Bruckner: namely, that he is noisy and repetitious. In the tuttis you can see the woodwind blowing away fit to bust, but you can't hear them: with a full brass section blaring away their contribution seems pointless. Once more I found myself wondering what it would sound like with just 18th century orchestral forces instead of the 91 (?) players on stage (four women this time: two violins, a cello and, I think, a clarinet).
D was satisfied that she'd finally got her passion. S's friend J and J's friend Sheila were sitting with us and were full of enthusiasm. By the end I'm afraid I'd drifted off. Mehta, much more animated this time, looked totally drained. There was a special round of applause for the tuba. Then I lost sight of what was happening because all the people in front of us had decided to give it a standing ovation.
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