Flexatone or musical saw?

Preparing my pre-performance talk for the London Philharmonic Orchestra's concert last night, which included Khachaturian's lumpy behemoth of a Piano Concerto, I was expecting this in the middle movement:

whereas what we got was this:

Which was a pity, because the Khachaturian concerto has only two redeeming features: its opening melody, done to death, and the novelty value of what ought to be a solo for flexatone, not musical saw. The former instrument also has notable roles in Shostakovich - The Nose, The Golden Age, Hypothetically Murdered and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (for the Schoolteacher with his Gogolian question as to whether frogs have immortal souls) - Schoenberg (unlikely - the awful Variations for Orchestra) and Křenek's Jonny spielt auf; I had the lively 'Leb'wohl, mein Schatz' foxtrot lined up for the talk but didn't use it when I realised that one tantalising soundbite of the flexatone was enough if the audience wasn't going to hear it live in the concerto. Here's Khachaturian and piano, though I believe the concerto was too difficult for him to play.

For a clear definition of the flexatone, I resorted as so often to Norman Del Mar's A Companion to the Orchestra: 'the curious penetrating whine it produces is created by rapid oscillation of two little wooden knobs at the end of thin flexible strips against the broad curving metal plate, whose curvature - and hence pitch - is controlled by the thumb.'

The distinctive rattling timbre is nothing like that of the musical saw, but at least we got something in the form of consummate saw-ist, chanteuse and actress Katharina Micada, who I'm sure is the glammy lady pictured in the unattributed Wiki image above; I checked my Russian Disc recording with Nikolai Petrov as the pianist and Khachaturian conducting, and there's nothing, only violins taking the melody. David Fanning writes in his excellent programme notes: 'The instrument [flexatone] was only patented in 1922 [the concerto was written in 1936], and there is some evidence to suggest that in the 1920s and 30s 'flexatone' may also have been used to designate the musical saw, an 'instrument' known in traditional Russian and Armenian music'.

Well, I'm not convinced, since the tone-qualities are so dissimilar. Anyway, Micada has quite a career; she was off, a player told me, to Amsterdam today. And many contemporary scores do engage the musical saw; I can see why, even if it was a bit 'pitchy' last night.

But fundamentally I didn't care, since not even the virtuosity and shading of Marc-André Hamelin (pictured above by Sim Canetty-Clarke) could redeem the boggy meanders. He does Khachaturian no favours by reviving it; at his best, the Armenian can induce hilarity and exhilaration with wildly OTT scores like Spartacus, as I found at a delirious Bolshoi Ballet performance a couple of years ago, but this is (almost) his turgid worst. Anyway, here's the second movement, actually sounding more artistic in the hands of that profound musician Boris Berezovsky. The orchestra from the Urals furnishes a proper flexatonist, answering my question as to whether any still exist, though the sound is faint: he enters 2m18s in.

Hamelin disappointed, too, in his encore by bringing out yet again his unfunny-once-heard-once distortion of Chopin's 'Minute' Waltz. I'd have loved it if he'd played even only the last third of Balakirev's original Islamey.

For this, the only first-class work on the programme, we had Casella's overblown but entertaining orchestration to begin, allowing me to cue Lezginka links in the talk. Call me callow, but I didn't stay for Osmo Vänskä's interpretation of Kalinnikov's quite interesting First Symphony because a) I didn't have to - I wasn't reviewing, b) I thought I had to get up at 6am to travel to Bordeaux, though it turned out early this morning before I set out to catch the Eurostar that I'd got the day wrong and I leave tomorrow and c) I'd heard my hero among conductors Neeme Järvi conduct a really wonderful performance with this very orchestra and I don't much care for Vänskä's slightly bullying style. If you want to hear the complete concert, it's on the BBC Radio 3 iplayer for the next six days, and the Khachaturian concerto, of all things, seems to have been selected for 'clip' status which means it may never go away.

But all this Russian/Soviet stuff is small beer compared to what's happening as Kiev goes up in flames. Shame on Putin for labelling a people tired of a dictator terrorists - though there are extremists as in any situation which has gone too far - and on Medvedev for raising the spectre of a divided Ukraine, which according to many who live there - admittedly those with western contacts - is such a distortion of the situation (and latest reports suggest help for the protesters and obstruction of the military from all parts of the country, including the east).

Maybe the time for laughing at those two is over, but it's been a good way of dealing with Sochi. Peter Tatchell, whom I'm invoking for the second time in two days, produced a neat Valentine's Day card last Friday.

Seriously, my thoughts are with the poor people of the Ukraine. I watch developments with a terrible anxiety.

Berg and Chabrier: scum and froth

In Berg's case, I'm referring to the way downtrodden soldier Wozzeck is perceived by his crazy 'superiors' in what remains, perhaps, the 20th century's most shattering opera. And Chabrier's orchestral works, which I revisited as the most joyous corrective to trauma, may be frothy, but isn't that ability to lift rather than lower the spirits through melody and orchestration just as profund in its way?

As for the portraits above by Schoenberg and Manet, I couldn't resist a bit of quality artistry applied to musicians after what struck me as a rather bad Bryn portrait leading a blog entry elsewhere. I left a rudely jolly, or jolly rude, comment yesterday, wondering why musical portraiture is so poor these days (Adam Birtwistle's Glyndebourne stint being much the worst - at least this one's recognisable) but publication was not forthcoming, nor do I think it will be. Don't take it personally, Jessica, it's only my opinion, and apologies if I was treading on any personal sensitivities.

Praise-laden warnings were rife about Carrie 'A Doll's House' Cracknell's production of Wozzeck for English National Opera: this will bruise and amaze you, they said. And they were mostly right. Dominating all was Edward Gardner's finest run at the Coli since Peter Grimes and Der Rosenkavalier (if only because all three operas demand the ultimate in their different ways). A perfect guide through Berg's spider-web of unforgettable themes, Gardner also gave the most achingly late romantic expression to the tragedy: you were never allowed to forget how much came out of Strauss and Wagner. So many folk had related how the two unison crescendos after the murder shook them to the core, which they did, and the, yes, D minor summary pressed the tearduct button from the off.

Not everything about Cracknell's update worked for me, but all of it was thought through (photos by Tristram Kenton for ENO). There's nothing in Büchner's stunningly modern 1837 Woyzeck or in the opera which follows it so faithfully about the barracks boys seeing active service, but post-traumatic, post-Afghanistan stress disorder is a way of making Wozzeck's delusions instantly understandable. The child was too old for the final scene to have its full effect. Nor had there been  any outdoors for Wozzeck and friend Franz picking up sticks or for the climactic scenes by the lake with a rising moon. But these last had their own fearful impact.

Wozzeck no longer wades into a lake - or an immersion tank (Warner) or a vat of baked beans (Jones) - to retrieve the knife with which he's killed Marie; he cuts his throat at the kitchen table. I couldn't look. But certainly the sense of claustrophobia reached its peak here. And the aftermath, with the Doctor (ex-Wotan James Morris) and the Captain (Thomas Randle, still in good all-round shape) looking outwards from downstairs, played its part in chilling the blood (the two pictured with Leigh Melrose's Wozzeck in the centre below).

All the performances were strong, although I found Sara Jakubiak's Marie a tad undercharacterised, and Melrose could have made some of his longer lines more beautiful; the delivery was mostly very loud, the acting beyond reproach.

At the end, it wasn't my legs but my arms which had turned to jelly. I physically couldn't clap. And apologies to Guy, if he's reading this, for stonewalling him at the end, because I couldn't, didn't want to, speak for a good fifteen minutes afterwards.

It's too late to catch it now - the last performance was on Saturday - but, avoiding The Perfect American like the plague as I am (shutters down on Glass, and only Glass), if you want a rather more unexpected roller-coaster ride in an interval-less hour and forty minutes, go see Richard Jones's slyly skewed production of Ibsen's Public Enemy - aka An Enemy of the People - at the Young Vic. Having reviewed it for The Arts Desk, I should go again before it ends on 8 June. Below, the Stockmann brothers, played by Darrell D'Silva and Nick Fletcher, at loggerheads; photo for the Young Vic by Keith Pattison.

Nothing like a good dose of Chabrier to warm the blood, though. I was given the disc of orchestral plums at the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande's Festival Hall concert with the great Neeme Järvi the evening after I went to see Wozzeck. Järvi's not-of-this-world partnership with Boris Berezovsky, a pianist I've long wanted to hear live, in an unorthodox Grieg Piano Concerto turned out to be the highlight (the two pictured below at the concert by Jas Sansi), though there were masterly things as always about his Tchaikovsky Pathétique, including the best 5/4 waltz I've ever heard.

It was time for nostalgia: as in 1980, when a then unknown-in-the-west Järvi brought the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra to London, an encore was Arvo Pärt's Cantus to the Memory of Benjamin Britten (in 1980, I'd never heard any of Pärt's music). That had the same slot last night. If only the audience, full of Swiss watchmakers, had applauded more vociferously, we might have had Chabrier as a second encore on this occasion (back in 1980 it had been the Alla Marcia from Sibelius's Karelia Suite).

How else would these pieces get an airing beyond the world of CD? In my ideal concert, I think I'd have the Joyeuse Marche, with its lopsided rhythms and raucous glitter, at the start. Or would it be España, with its obsessive harping on the home key offset by orchestration as fabulous as Ravel's (a great admirer)? And could I have the lurching of the Fête polonaise from Le Roi malgré lui as my encore?

The recording which won me over was Ansermet's second (1964) Chabrier selection with the same Swiss orchestra; although that remains a key spirit-lifter, and its Fête polonaise swaggers in different places, Järvi has his own brisk glitter, a few characteristic charges at the ends - España especially - and he introduced me to a couple of works I'd never heard, including the early (1874) Lamento, making a persuasive, atmospheric case as always. Ansermet's 1964 Joyeuse Marche is here; never mind the Paris picture show.

So for me it's the Poulenc thing all over again. And here, too, I want to read the letters, from what Roger Nichols in his typically piquant note quotes or intimates. How about this from Chabrier's observation of local women by the Spanish seaside:

On the beach, those señoras possessed of a well-developed bosom often have trouble remembering to do up their costumes securely. From now on I shall  carry buttons and thread with me. To be of service is my greatest desire.

As for the intimations, thus Nichols on the Fête polonaise: 'in a letter still barely printable well over a century later, Chabrier whimsically envisaged turning the stage into an orgy, and then hiring a hypnotist to come and calm everyone down'.

Well, it wasn't all sunshine and roses; the later years before Chabrier's death from syphilis, Nichols tells us, were unhappy ones. But never understimate the power of the greatest light music to spread joy. We need it for our good health as much as we need Wozzeck for an understanding of the human condition. Oh, and happy 100th birthday, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Done my bit on that already, though happy to hear it again this year.