Debussy, Ravel and Co. on Zoom 2: 1912 to 1937

Our first term with the two French maîtres and their contemporaries brought revelations, to me, at any rate: those which stand out especially, because I didn't really know either, are Chausson's exquisite incidental music for a puppet-theatre production of The Tempest - first ever use of the celesta - and the incredible subtleties of Debussy's piano Images, enriched especially by film of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.

There will be less Debussy in this term's 10 Thursday afternoon classes, starting in two days' time, more Ravel, for the simple reason that Ravel lived longer, into the post-war era of Les Six and even that of early Messiaen. We start with Jeux, a score that still baffles me: is it as great and exploratory as so many people suggest? Then there will be the 'late' Debussy sonatas; at the 2024 Sheffield Chamber Music Festival I was amazed at several of the late specimens for wind by Saint-Saëns, which will also feature. Ravel then enters the jazz era, and the ferment of 1920s Paris, an amazing scene. 

Here's the flyer - click to enlarge and contact me if you'd like to sign up. You can get the videos if you can't attend any or all of the classes. Don't forget it's not too late to sign for the Monday course on Wagner's Die Walküre, as I only started last week and yesterday was a Bank Holiday.

More Berlioz on Zoom, and what happened next

Ten sessions in the most exhilarating company of Hector Berlioz weren't enough last term, but another ten this autumn would be stretching it a bit. So I decided to frame proceedings with two religious works on very different scales: Berlioz's Grande Messe des morts and Fauré's Requiem. After the first class we can then take the brighter Berlioz, pick up where we left off from the earlier Faust, his amazing Op. 1, to look at the new music in the Damnation, and then see what mark he left on Saint-Saëns. The one area where the master of the orchestra didn't spend much time (because there wasn't yet the French audience for it) was chamber music, so we can look at that side of things at last with Saint-Saëns, Franck and Fauré .

I've made a few further observations in the flyer, reproduced below, but this is to note that the course starts on Thursday week, and if you can't attend in person, I send out recordings. Next week will be rather packed, as I finish the summer Wagner course on Tuesday with the last of the Dutchman, which is absorbing us far more than I'd imagined. It is the true revolutionary opera for music drama as Tristan later was for harmonic language and an unbelievable leap forward from Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi, which just about sustained the single classes we spent on them. Click below to enlarge on the French details, and don't forget that Opera in Depth, which I've already flagged up, starts on Monday. Just heard that Oliver Mears and Wallis Giunta will join us for one of the Trouble in Tahiti/A Quiet Place afternoons, in the thick of rehearsing the Royal Opera's new Linbury Theatre production, so it's all shaping up nicely.

Samson & Delilah & Eugene & Tatyana on Zoom

It was Richard Jones, unlikely choice to direct the forthcoming Royal Opera production of  Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila, who finally persuaded me that I ought to go for it as the first of the summer term's Operas in Depth. I know I can circle around it entertainingly; but will the Biblical drama itself offer much meat? We'll find out later this month.

At least there's an interesting contrast with Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, the much more familiar second choice. The operas were written around the same time in the 1870s by two gay composers who enjoyed each other’s company. Even so, Saint-Saëns’s grand spectacle, with its big choruses and exotic ballets, was exactly the sort of operatic hokum Tchaikovsky wanted to escape from in his ‘lyrical scenes’ based on Pushkin’s verse-novel about very real people. The most famous set-pieces in both opera tend to belong to the women: Dalila’s two great arias, and the scene in which Tchaikovsky depicts the infatuated teenage Tatyana writing an ill-fated love-letter to dandy Onegin.

I'm delighted that in addition to Richard, who's promised to come along after offering his usual off-piste observations on Britten's Peter Grimes last term, we'll also be joined by the Tatyana of Opera Holland Park's impending Onegin, charismatic Armernian soprano Anush Hovhannisyan. The tradition of special guests, which has been so fruitful online since the start of lockdown, has featured appearances from, among many others, Ermonela Jaho and Antonio Pappano for Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, and Felicities Palmer and Lott for Britten’s Albert Herring.

After an introductory session for context, we'll be following the course of each drama with excerpts from a wide range of recorded performances on CD, DVD and YouTube.Admission fee is a snip - £100 for the whole term of 10 two-hour classes, Mondays 2.30-4.30pm from 25 April. If you can't attend live, I'll send the video the next morning. Anyone interested should contact me: david.nice@usa.net. On Thursdays I'll be running a course on Sibelius's symphonies and tone-poems,  but I'll post separately about that.

Czech ossuary interlude

Much as I deplore the imported Hallowe'en overkill and the infantilised craze for zombification, I can't help using the occasion as a pretext for catching up with coverage of an extraordinary place I never got round to writing about last summer. The subterranean kostnice or ossuary beneath the Church of All Saints in Sedlec, virtually a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech republic, outstrips the equivalents I've seen in Italy, even if there is no dressing-up of skeletons.

Instead the estimated 40 to 70 thousand complete sets accumulated since the scattering of holy earth from the presumed Golgotha in 1278, an occasion which had the Bohemian aristocracy wanting to be laid to rest in the cemetery, were fashioned into bizarre sculptures.

This happened in 1870, when woodcarver (!) František Rint did his damnedest with the remains, signing his name in bones. His pièce de resistance, a chandelier rendered from every bone in the human body, had been taken away for restoration when we visited, but there was no shortage of kitschy-ghoulish spectacle, and as - rather unusually, I gather, we had the place more or less to ourselves, the atmosphere was strong. First, a view towards the altar

and back towards the west end. The pyramids remind me of similar decoration in the very different context of the 18th century Vogelsaal in Bamberg's Natural History Museum.

Here Rint has even applied his skill to the Schwarzenberg coat of arms

and even the vases on the steps down to the crypt are bone-wrought.

Since we're in Kutná Hora - for which we were so grateful to Zdeněk Porybný's driver for giving us the chance to see on the way back from lovely Litomyšl and Martinů's home town of Polička - I ought to revert to colour to hymn the greater artistic treasure, and one of the most beautiful buildings in Czechia, the Cathedral of Sv Barbora.

Kutna Hora's one-time prosperity as the second finest city in Bohemia next to Prague came about from its copper and silver deposits. They were mined by Germans and circa 1300 Vaclav II set up the Royal Mint here, importing Florentines for the purpose. The minters' chapel is frescoed with their work.

Benedikt Ried's ribbed vaulting, decorated with coats of arms belonging to Vaclav and the local miners' guilds, complements a glorious Gothic east end

and the riot of pinnacles, finials and buttresses makes the outside ensemble - despite additions of later periods - one of the most harmonious of any religious edifice.

Though we actually entered through the gardens at the east end,

the Cathedral is perhaps best approached by a walkway with statues rivalling those on Prague's Charles Bridge to your left and the 17th century former Jesuit college to the right.

Even better are the views from sundry lower paths,

and the woods are always close to hand, full of birdsong in May.

Back to bones to conclude - I only recently found out that Saint-Saëns expanded his Danse Macabre into the celebrated tone-poem from a song set to part of a poem by Henri Cazalis. Who better to sing it than the great José van Dam, with Jean-Philippe Collard?