Eight from the Gedda collection

I had an amazing, impression-packed three days in Stockholm: three stupendous concerts in the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic's HK Gruber festival (including the great man's definitive, legendary performance - conducting, singing, shouting, kazoo- and recorder-playing - of his ever-startling Frankenstein!!), a brilliantly staged production of the new, hit-and-miss Dracula opera by Victoria Borisova-Ollas and a vulgar, fun one of Turandot at the still-cultish Folkoperan, costumes from Bergman films brilliantly curated in the oppressive but fascinating Hallwylska (House-)Museum. But the biggest surprise was on a freezing Sunday morning when the square between the Scandic Haymarket Hotel where I was staying, formerly the Art Deco department store where Greta Garbo was discovered while working as a shop assistant,

and the Konserthuset, proudly proclaiming its star composer,

was transfigured from a fruit, flower and vegetable market - chanterelles very much the prominent items -

into a fleamarket.

Better than any I've encountered in the UK, its antiques were interesting, a print-stall led me to buy two illustrations from Lindman's 1920 Nordens Flora for less than £6 each - and then I discovered the records. First - on my way to a cash machine to pay for the prints - mixed boxes of LPs at about £1 each, where I snapped up Decca Phase 4 Ketelbey, Drottningholm Court music, an old Melodiya choral disc featuring Rimsky-Korsakov's Tatar Captivity, and this,

the great Gedda singing Swedish patriotic music including gems by Stenhammar and Alfven. Would that I'd discovered the real treasure house earlier. The boxes in question started with what must be the complete discography of the Serge Jaroff Don Cossacks Choir, progressed to a variety of tenors from Russian vintage via Caruso through to more recent contenders, hit a strand of HMV's old Viennese operetta recordings and ended with classic Swedish artists like Elisabeth Söderström. I asked the guy on the stall how much? He replied '30 kronor each'. I pointed out that what I'd already bought were only 10, he reduced it to 20. When, having made a selection, I asked again, he explained why these were more, launching his thunderbolt. This was the private collection of Nicolai Gedda, from his Stockholm apartment on Valhallavägen (his main home was in Switzerland, where he died on 8 January aged 91. A clip from the tribute programme to which I contributed on Radio 3 can still be heard here).

What, break up a treasury, fail to establish an archive? That seemed sad to me. But better that someone should make a selection who really loved the tenor and his wide-ranging artistry. And it turned out that the choice I'd made was actually quite representative. The DG Serge Jaroff LP I chose signalled the involvement of Gedda's adoptive father, Michail Ustinov (distantly related to Peter), who sang bass in the choir.

To be honest, listening was quite a shock - such comically terrible intonation, especially from basses trying for the low notes. But also such esprit and some fine solos. The back of the sleeve was annotated - Gretchaninoff's Credo has 'fakral' (farewell?) beside it, and 'God save thy people' 'Tchaiokvsky OBS'. This is the hymn arranged at the beginning of the 1812 Overture (and sung, in Karajan's recording, by the Serge Jaroff Choir).

There were so many volumes of tenors from Melodiya's 'The World's Leading Interpreters of Music' series, including Yershov and Sobinov. I chose the one dedicated to Nikolay Figner, since his history went back furthest: he created the role of Hermann in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades, opposite his wife Medea as Lisa. The recordings date from 1901-2 and 1909, yet sound amazingly present - enough to tell that this was not a beautiful voice, at least when the tenor was in his early forties, but certainly one full of character, and one hears the heroics not in the Hermann aria but in Davidov's 'Away, away'.

Had to take a token of Gedda's great Swedish predecessor, Jussi Björling, especially as two weeks ago, searching 'Che gelida manina's for the Opera in Depth classes on La bohème, I found the ideal - not his later recording for Beecham (which overall is still THE classic), but one made with Nils Grevellius conducting in 1938. That's not on this LP, but other Grevellius-era recordings are, weirdly remastered with echo-chamber around them in 1961, the year after the troubled tenor's death at the age of 42 (a tear shed here, incidentally, for the news today of Dmitri Hvorostovsky's death from a brain tumour at 55).

I didn't realise Gedda's own debut recital came out as early as 1952. When I went into the BBC studios to record a Radio 3 tribute in January, the aria they played was Lensky's from this LP, with Alceo Galliera conducting the Philharmonia. So delicate, so feminine. The gutsiness came later, but Gedda never pushed like Björling, which is why we heard him singing so well at the age of 72 in the Golders Green Hippodrome (I reproduce the signed ticket on the blog here). The French arias are ravishing, too. This was my most treasurable find: on the inner sleeve is inscribed 'Dorogoi Mamochke, na (can't read the word), ot Koli, Chicago 26/4/1952'). Presumably dedicated to his adoptive mother Olga, his aunt. His real parents were Swedish and half-Russian. To know more about Gedda's humble and clearly not easy beginnings - after which he was swept from being a Stockholm bank clerk to overnight stardom in Adam's Le postillon de Longjumeau at the Royal Stockholm Opera - I've ordered up a second-hand copy of his autobiography, mercifully translated into English.

I could have chosen from the two LPS each of The Gypsy Baron, A Night in Venice and Wiener Blut as the operetta representative, but since it's closer to my heart I went for the excerpts - all that were recorded - from Richard Strauss's Arabella. Gedda features only very briefly in a scene from Act 2, and Schwarzkopf even in her younger days was predictably mannered and faux-girly as the heroine, soubrettish-sounding too. But the prizes here are the Philharmonia horns, presumably led by Dennis Brain, the Mandryka of Josef Metternich, a baritone I'd never paid much attention to before, and the pacy conducting of Lovro von Matačić - would that he had left us complete R Strauss rather than Lehár.

Had to have a specimen of Gedda singing Russian folk music with balalaikas. This is all good, but the two bell numbers at the end with a cappella support are especially magical. As for this,

which I selected before I know whose records these were, it's the original of a CD which has long been such a favourite at home. The CD only has four overlapping songs, including the consummate original version of Soloviev-Sedoy's 'Midnight in Moscow' seductively sung by Vladimir Troshin, and the extras on here include more surprises as to how jazz-oriented Soviet Russia could be in the late 1950s, not least with three guitarists playing the St Louis Blues. When I stayed in St Petersburg with the Romashovs, the grandmother, Elizavata, was fond of a radio station which played nothing but songs by Soloviev-Sedoy and his colleagues. I bet that no longer exists. Anyway, what superb arrangements and fine vocalists on this LP.

Well, you're spared further chronicles of further purchases because first, I had no Swedish notes left before I had to dash in to the afternoon concert, and second, I had reached the limit of what I could pack into my hand luggage. I had to look in two batches - about an hour into my first market browsing, I was heading towards hypothermia and was splendidly revived by fish soup with celery in the wonderfully old-fashioned (and extremely popular) Café Avenyn just down the hill. Which I returned to after the concert to take a breather before catching the Arlanda Express back to the airport, and indulged myself with the rich chocolate of a 'Sarah Bernhardt' (you can get these in the wonderful Bagariet in Covent Garden's Rose Street, too). It had been packed at lunchtime, by the way, a very lively scene, but this was 5pm on the same Sunday, so much quieter.

To scoop up more Geddaiana was so tempting - I now realise from reading how Gedda collected books on art, Russian art especially, that beautiful old volumes on another stall would have been his, too. Someone else was going through a box of letters, but didn't move on in time so I didn't get to see whether those were his as well. I repeat, how sad when the collection of a great person gets broken up and no archive is established. Heck, there ought to be a Gedda Museum in Stockholm. I hope a Swedish musician reads this and heads to the marketplace next Sunday - these mementos need an appreciative home. Anyway, I've done my bit. Watch this space for more on the Bergman exhibition, and The Arts Desk for both an overall Stockholm/Gruber piece as well as a transcription of a very emotional 65-minute interview generously granted by HKG.

Beethoven in excelsis, Mozart down the toilet

Our Stockholm trip was not quite as planned. Originally centred around an interview with Sakari Oramo, on sensational form in recent Beethoven and Shostakovich as the BBC Symphony Orchestra's Principal Conductor, the schedule changed with his indisposition. J and I were still free to go, but the concert had gained another brilliant Finn, Jukka-Pekka Saraste (pictured below, like Radu Lupu lower down, at the very concert by photographer Jan-Olav Wedin - dead impressed that the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra has one on hand for each event).

Thanks to Saraste, the change from new Swedish work and Berwald symphony to an all-Beethoven programme was not the disappointment it might otherwise have been. And we still had a new production of Don Giovanni at the Stockholm Operan to look forward to. But what a painful experience that mostly was, in contrast to the electrifying concert.

I'd seen Stockholm's Konserthuset, home to aforementioned RSPO, on a dark November visit to a contemporary music festival some years back, but not really clocked its idiosyncrasies. Which begin outside with Ivar Tengbom's blue 1926 neoclassical facade, singular by day albeit hemmed in by the unattractive developments around Sergels Torg

and by night,

and continue in its deco interior, full of variable statuary and peculiar detail (what, I wondered, was with the faun orgy in one bas-relief?). Guess this is Papageno guarding one side of a staircase.

And at the back of the balcony, a gallery of distinguished busts lines the doorways. The first, as was right, turned out to be Franz Berwald, whose Sinfonie sérieuse I was sorry to be missing as I've never heard it or any of the other three symphonies live (but I do like my Gothenburg/Järvi set).

While the grand master at the other end was honorary Swede (and, up until the age of 11, I think I'm right in saying, exclusively Swedish-speaking Finn) Sibelius with Stenhammar behind him.

The hall's rather a beauty, I think, with discreet state-of-the-art modernisation. Certainly it sounded to be of rare acoustic freshness (tends to be Gothenburg's all-wood Konserthuset which gets all the praise). That might have been partly down to the RSP's airy sound, or the light Saraste brought into it, but this was another of those extra-London occasions where you hear the music with the roof off, as it were. Another photographer, Mats Lundqvist, also captured our evening.

I'd never really watched Saraste's technique. It's as lovely and lucid as Vladimir Jurowski's; everything you see you hear (absolutely not the case the other week with the albatross-like Michael Tilson Thomas). Saraste had one peculiarly remarkable physical gesture of seeming to pull the first violins in to him at the ends of phrases when he needed to. And he starts with no false flamboyance, only a Finn's let's-get-on-with-it alertness. That was especially true of the opening chords of both the Leonora No. 2 Overture, complete eventually with trumpet from the top back of the auditorium, and the Seventh Symphony. Its dynamism was totally focused, details from ppp to fff clearly delineated, shorter crescendos especially amazing. I'll write no more about it here other than to say that it was one of the three freshest Beethoven symphony performance I've heard - Oramo's Eroica the other month and Ilan Volkov's fluid but not hurried Pastoral at the Proms being the others (I'd probably choose Ticciati's Fifth, too, if I liked the symphony better).

Radu Lupu had star billing, looking rather different above from the posters showing him some considerable years younger than he is now. I haven't heard his mastery live for even longer than that - not sure he comes to London any more, if he has I've missed him - and his Beethoven Third Piano Concerto showed why other pianists respect him so. It was all perfectly placed, nuanced, projected; and yet with the kind of mastery that says, "this is absolutely how I do it now". No encore, either, despite the automatic standing ovation from the elderly but very enthusiastic audience. Quite a few stood for the Beethoven Seven too, myself included.

What happened between the concert and the opera needs at least one more post to the delights of a long walk out along the royal park island to the Thielska Galleriet (all will be revealed soon, though I promised the same about Edinburgh and Bordeaux, and still those city walk descriptions hang fire). The stupendous interior of the Storkyrkan beside the Royal Palace - Stockholm's cathedral in all but name - deserves more future time, too, not least for its overwhelming Renaissance statue of St George and the Dragon and its gilt royal pews.

Here I had the serendipity of turning up shortly before an organ recital at 1pm. Michael Waldenby was playing mostly Bach, with interludes from son Carl Phillip Emanuel and Jon Ludwig Krebs, to follow the composer's birthday.

To my shame I didn't know the Prelude/Preludes and Fugues in question: no great organ man I. But J S can be refused in no sphere, and what a gift he offers to the organist's pulling out all the stops in the big D major Prelude, turning over the stomach with its sudden turn to the bad and then infinitely postponing the triumphant cadence in an extended surprise coda. Absolutely magnificent.

So around the old town and over the bridge to the Opera House, neither fish nor fowl as a statement of rather drab 19th century pretension. But it has a prime setting, and canoeists were riding the rapids beneath.

Posters were inviting, for who would deny that Ola Eliasson looks like a handsome Don Giovanni? Public reception had been wildly enthusiastic, too; the day after the performance our hosts delighted in our incredulity that Norwegian Ole Anders Tandberg's production was the No.1 'must see' on the Stockholm arts scene according to one Sunday paper.

Well, all I can say is that I'd even welcome back Kasper Holten's hit and miss Royal Opera production after the dizzying ineptitude of this one. It starts with a row of toilets: maybe the Swedes have never heard about Bieito's ENO Ballo in maschera with courtiers on the bog - not a bad start to a show of diminishing shock-returns. This one immediately alienated my support: any production is going to lose me which leaves not a hint of ambiguity about whether Donna Anna was right to cry rape - that indeed, she's having fun, as she was in the Holten production and here, with Leporello filming entwined legs from the gap under the toilet door. And, what a surprise, the only director who's ever got it right for me has been a woman, Deborah Warner at Glyndebourne, who conveyed in no uncertain terms that when a lady says 'no' after a certain point, for whatever reason, she means it.

But this was only the start of the inconsistencies Tandberg posed the audience. The women get a poor deal, as usual: Donna Anna is an hysterical self-harmer, Donna Elvira - who arrives with her suitcase in the public lavatory - a repressed nymphomaniac and Zerlina a psychopath who straddles Don Giovanni at gunpoint in 'Là ci darem' (he ends up shot, of course: no hell, only a corpse for the ladies to keen over). No idea why. Was Eliasson's libertine more sinned against than sinning? Didn't really care, because his character never began to add up.

Much worse was the overall level of the singing and playing. OK, so Malena Ernman was a last-minute replacement for Elin Rombo, whose Elvira may have been high quality for all I know. Ernman's was not, nor were Yana Kleyn's pneumatic-drill Anna nor Sara Widén's colourless Zerlina. Eliasson mistook near-inaudible recit for suave sotto voce, though to do him credit he's the only Giovanni I've ever seen to play the mandolin for the serenade, which meant his breath control went to pot. His Leporello, Luthando Qave, sang coarsely and offered no leavening wit. It all looked unappealing, too, so all credit to Markus Gårder's photography (three specimens reproduced here) for making it seem stylish.

Which leaves two saving graces - Linus Börjesson's Masetto (pictured above with Widén), much the best of the Swedes coping with the Italian in the recitatives, more virile and charismatic than Eliasson if not as obviously cute, and the star, Michele Angelini (pictured below) as Don Ottavio: a true Italian (Italo-American) tenore di grazia, full throttle when needed but superbly elegant in ornamentation. His variations in the da capos of the arias - thank God we got them both - were a model of style which any tenors incapable of making their own should note. Honour bound to return for Act Two, unlike J, I consoled myself with the hope of 'Il mio tesoro' - not guaranteed if the pure Vienna version is being given - and was not disappointed.

 
One other plus: the onstage wind band for the supper, infinitely better than their fluffing counterparts in the pit. Lawrence Renes conducted without style or elegance - disastrous for Zerlina's two numbers - though at least there were no extreme tempi. Only the opposite pole of bad tradition, as opposed to bad supposed 'innovation', from the Novaya Opera's Prince Igor aka Carry on Up the Dnieper visiting the Coli this week was worse; but at least the musical values were higher. And that, I hope, is the last snark you'll find from me on here for a while.