Musical gatherings and glories

This is really just checklisting; otherwise I fear the events which didn't need a review may pass unillustrated, and their originators officially unthanked. Gatherings and receptions are fine in very small doses as far as I'm concerned, but it did feel special to be back in the social swing of matters musical. 

Much fanfare, first, for the Proms launch at the massive Printworks, Canada Water, on 26 April (all event photos courtesy of BBC Proms publicity). Weirdly, everyone knew the programme in advance, and the annual prospectus wasn't ready for handing out at the end (my copy arrived only last week). But I've rarely enjoyed a melee as much as this, partly because 30 'young creatives' from the new BBC Open Music Scheme added vivacity and glamour. They'll be spotlit in the Open Music Prom on 1 September. 

I so admired the confidence and minimum gush from the two young presenters Mahaliah Edwards and Elizabeth Ajao (pictured above)  - you sensed they were genuinely excited about the world of music that had opened up, not just about their own fledgling stardom. I offered Elizabeth Ajao the chance to write for The Arts Desk, gave her my email and am...waiting to hear from her. Ahem. But one or two of the trainees will put something together nearer to Proms time.

In terms of musical entertainment, there was a tad too much brass from the Tredegar Band (all of it well played), and sheer delight from the glorious Nardus Williams and David Bates in Purcell's 'O! Fair Cedaria'. 

Also got to talk to Nardus afterwards, as a very genuine admirer of her Anne Trulove in the Glyndebourne Tour revival of what we should call the Stravinsky/Hockney Rake's Progress. She radiated natural charisma and charm. Nardus will be singing Mozart's Countess in selected performances at Glyndebourne and on the whole of the tour.

The rest was chit-chat, but not to be sniffed at with the likes of friendly faces Dobrinka Tabakova, Mary Bevan and Nicky Spence. Likewise - with Nicky very much centre stage alongside husband Dylan Perez, singing for his supper as 'Personality of the Year' (I'd say personality enough for 10) - two nights later at the BBC Music Magazine Awards. That's him, bekilted and very much standing on the two legs he broke falling down an airport staircase at the beginning of the year, with Tom Service and BBCMM's new editor Charlotte Smith (who both kept things admirably short and snappy).

I'll mostly pass on the awards themselves - all worthy winners, though I fancy it's how many followers you have on social media which gets you the prize out of three finalists in each category - other than to say that I'm very happy with the top award, to the great Igor Levit. Haven't heard his Stevenson yet but the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues live at the Barbican were just sensational (and the cover design of the two-CD set fitted well with Kings Place's very different verticals).

 Otherwise,, the performances here were especially remarkable. Nicky and Dylan gave us Strauss's 'Zueignung' followed by Jeremy Nicholas's 'I love ME' (would that perhaps be 'Valentine Card' in the published volume of his numbers written for 'Stop the Week'?), which could have gone OTT without perfect comic timing and discipline. 

Another super couple, Elena Urioste and Tom Poster, played the pianist's transcription of Sondheim's 'Send in the Clowns'. As I said to them afterwards, who'd have thought this could work so well without the words? It brought tears to my eyes. I was hoping the performance had been filmed; it wasn't, but here's a different capturing of the same piece.

I'd planned to keep all events here within a three-week bracket, but realised I hadn't mentioned the very happy occasion at the glorious Fidelio Orchestra Cafe, bringing together a favourite venue and two favourite people, viola-player Kathy Kang and her husband Andrew Litton (their adorable young 'un was being looked after by Korean Granny - I had expected Anastasia to be turning pages already). 

I already mentioned in an Arts Desk review, actually about another superb Fidelio Cafe event, how the minute Kang put bow to string, the warmth and resonance of the sound in that well-wooded venue carried us - even through less than great music (Kornauth's Viola Sonata). The selection from Robert Fuchs' Phantasiestücke struck a note of richer originality, and fascinatingly I got to hear the Brahms E flat Sonata, Op. 120 No. 2, for the second time chez Fidelio in the viola-piano version: so very different from Power and Kolesnikov, equally valid. As an invitee, I felt in distinguished company, as you can see here: next to Kathy and Andrew are Dennis Chang, Stephen Hough, Alastair Macaulay and Jennifer Eldredge.

Famous faces were abundant at an occasion which might have been sad but was anything else: as the 'order of service' had it at the Wigmore Hall, this was a celebration of the full life of the greatest among conductors, Bernard Haitink. 

I was very touched to be asked by his widow Patricia to the event (she remembered a happy meeting we had at his last masterclasses for young conductors in Lucerne, where I briefly talked Mahler 3 with him; he just lit up about it).  She spoke so beautifully in the welcome address, as did Thomas Allen before the final work, segueing masterfully into Prospero's farewell. Clearly a review wasn't in order, but I have to say that both the works and the performances were as perfect as so many of the master conductor's interpretations. Here's the full programme - click to enlarge. Due to Covid, there were a couple of player swaps; I did wonder about Enno Senft, who'd been playing in the Europe Day Concert and had been mingling in the crypt bash afterwards on the Monday...

Photography likewise seemed inappropriate, but I'm grateful to Neil Gillespie, photographer and tenor with the London Symphony Chorus (well represented) for sharing his official shots. Emanuel Ax and Paul Lewis sounded absolutely as one in the Schubert Fantaisie, so fascinatingly different from the Kolesnikov/Tsoy combination I've been hearing a few times of late.

For me, the revelation was Beethoven's 'Spring' Sonata, probably because I know it less well than all the other works on the programme - the flow, the idiosyncrasy, the humour were so ineffably there with Ax partnering Frank Peter Zimmerman,

A friend tells me he was sitting behind the Haitinks at a Gerhaher Wigmore recital two weeks before the great man's death. I've never heard a bigger range in Lieder from Gerhaher before. Here he is with his regular duo partner, Gerold Huber.

 Finally, Prospero and the Siegfried Idyllists, an army of generals.

More recently, my good friend Sophia Rahman and her partner Andres Kaljuste had assembled another superb ensemble by scratch for a Ukrainian charity concer in St Peter's Belsize Park, quickly named the Whittington Festival Players after the splendid sequence of events she's just masterminded in that Shropshire village. Sophia also plays for Steven Isserlis at Prussia Cove. He'd been booked for a recital in Odesa on that evening, of course happened to be free, and so...

This is a photo Sophia took at a rehearsal when SI turned in to play to his fellow strings. His performance of the Haydn C major Cello Concerto was so resonant but also so moving - I've not shed tears at the pure classicism of the slow movement before, but this introspection completely got to me, He lives every bar. But so did Andres and the strings; their Mozart 29 was alive and deliciously nuanced, and the concert started with the subtlest and most charming playing by Irène Duval, another Prussia Cove visitor, in Mozart's A major Violin Concerto K219. Here are the two soloists together after the concert.

A final quick sketch of two indelible impressions left by performances which I didn't get to review, but caught later in both runs. So glad I didn't miss the revival of Lohengrin at the Royal Opera, and not just for Jakub Hrůša's art-concealing-art conducting, fairly perfect, Jennifer Davis was already a star when she stepped in at the first run, but now everything's at the highest level, and I'd completely forgotten the announcement that she was having neck and back trouble. It didn't show. Besides, her swan knight, Brandon Jovanovich, was another revelation: so tender, so believably good; more tears for his performance. Just one shot, them, of Jovanovich and Davis, by Clive Barda for the Royal Opera.

One of my students, Andrea Gawn, advised us all not to miss the performance of Jetter Parker Young Artist Alexandra Lowe in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire at the Linbury Theatre. She was right: Lowe, until this just another very promising lyric soprano, absolutely astonished in acting, singing and speaking. I was just as impressed with the production by Anthony Almeida, which pushed at several boundaries. Bold attempts to link with Stravinsky's Mavra, by no means forced, but I still don't quite see the point of that Pushkin bagatelle. Anyway, here's Lowe on Rosanna Vize's striking set as photographed by Helen Murray.

12 talks in two grand houses

Over a fortnight ago, I was honoured to be part of the Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival, giving two talks in this splendid remnant of the Tudor palace where the future Elizabeth I grew up

and two in the glorious Marble Hall of Robert Cecil's house - still in the hands of his descendants the Salisburys. This exterior shot by the always friendly Jo Johnson, who was up there helping with the admin. She'll get a 'JJ' from now on when I'm using her photos.

The previous weekend I was up in the Trossachs at Gartmore House, 18 miles from Stirling: eight talks of an hour and a half apiece, from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, to the Wagner Society of Scotland.

Both engagements meant stepping in to the shoes of distinguished but indisposed speakers at relatively short notice. I can't say how sorry I am that Derek Watson, who had been due to carry on his exploration of Wagner's life up in Gartmore, died on the Monday, having gone in to hospital for one thing but kept in for another which proved to be fatal. I never met him, but my 'students' told me a lot about him. There's a brief appreciation on the Society's website.

The only reason I was able to fill the gap, with less than a week to prepare, was because I could adapt and  add to the classes on Das Rheingold I'd given as part of my Opera in Depth one-a-year survey of the Ring. Some members weren't sure they wanted to go into any one work in detail, but only one pulled out - and the rest told me they were happy to have found a new way of listening and of making connections with other music. Here we are at the end of it all.

Gartmore accommodation was simple, comfortable and quiet, with fine views of nothing but green through the windows. It did tend to be through, because the rain was frequent. I had two hours between lunch and my afternoon session to walk, and was glad I'd brought my waterproofs. I must write up a mycological trail in a subsequent blog. As far as the students went - what a delightful and original group of people. Singers, academics, a professional, a forensic psychiatrist, a retired sinologist: all so interesting and friendly to talk to. Here's my perspective from above the teaching zone. Apart from a few classes at my friend Chris's, with my goddog Teddy making a fuss of everyone and then slinking under the sofa, his favourite habitat, to sleep, it's the first time I've given lectures with a dog present, but Natasha's Zippy was attentiveness itself - head cocked when music was played, but no barking or even growling.

As for the music, I found myself drawn in afresh to key performances - above all the dramatic perceptions and brilliance of the Chéreau Bayreuth Rheingold, noticeably more involving after we'd watched a scene from the Lepage staging at the Met - good for the bigger picture, weak on the personenregie, which between Stephanie Blythe's Fricka and Bryn Terfel's bad-hair-day Wotan was more or less non-existent. And then, Zednik's Loge at Bayreuth: comic genius, but not without a serious edge.

At a later stage I had an excuse to play my most recent favourite among Wotan's Farewell (in a look ahead to Die Walküre justified by a class on the elements - here, of course, Loge as pure fire): Norman Bailey, perhaps the most god-like Wotan I've ever heard, with Klemperer and the New Philharmonia. I left the students to watch the Kupfer Rheingold in its entirety on Sunday evening while I got a late flight back from Edinburgh in order to get back to The Rake's Progress in my Opera in Depth class the following day.

Then three without talking much, and off to Hatfield - so much closer but by no means simple to reach owing to train chaos - for Thursday evening's opener (the talks courtesy of my dear friend Stephen Johnson, who asked to hand them over to me). There I met our charming host, Festival planner and participant Guy Johnston, a really nice chap with no side to him, pictured on the left here with his very talented violinist brother Magnus (JJ),

and gave my first 20-minute lecture - short, but all the harder to say much in that time (also JJ).

I needed to connect both with the overall them of 'Brahms and Friends' and the immediate concert - a chamber-orchestra-sized programme of Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, Brahms's Double Concerto with the Johnstons and the First Symphony, all marvellously well handled by Mark Austin conducting the young professionals of the locally-based Faust Chamber Orchestra. Thought it was a nice idea to make sure everyone had a postcard with Mendelssohn's watercolour of Lucerne, its lake and the Rigi on one side

and Brahms's Rigi greeting to Clara Schumann on the other

I thought our short spot should be dedicated to 'Brahms the melodist' with the following excerpts (I'll give them for all four, since some folk didn't get the handout at the final talk and may like to see them here).

Attempted singing of the main theme in the central movement of the Double Concerto, Op. 102 (1888) and the words Brahms set, in a postcard to Clara Schumann, to the alphorn call he heard on Mount Rigi – transformed as the horn call in the finale of the First Symphony, Op. 68 (1876)

‘Sapphische Ode’ and ‘Kein Haus, Keine Heimat’ from Five Songs, Op. 94 (1884)   Thomas Quashtoff, Justus Zeyen (Deutsche Grammophon)

‘Alpenlied auf Rigi’   Angelo Lottaz, Male Voice Choir of Thun

The performance of the Double Concerto was the perfect chamber-musical conversation, a far cry from the usual heavy weather you get in the concert hall, the Johnstons never trying to dominate. And if Austin's interpretation of the symphony didn't break out into unbridled exhilaration, as Jonathan Bloxham's had with the Northern Chords Festival Orchestra at our Europe Day Concert, his instincts were all right, his discipline perfect. Soloistic star for me was the superb principal oboist, Katie Bennington.

Only after the concert was I able to find the key to my lodgings, serendipitously only two minutes down the hill from one of the house's gates. The owners, John Mark Ainsley and William Whitehead, had tried to get us to come to the festival the previous year; now here I was, awaiting their return, and J due on Saturday lunchtime. I woke up to this - a garden not overlooked by anybody -

and had a blissful time exploring locally, including the church. I think I ought to blog about the sightseeing elsewhere, but I must of course introduce a figure very much part of all proceedings in the main house's Marble Hall, Gloriana in the famous and slightly enigmatic 'rainbow portrait'.

It's one of two in the house, the other upstairs in the Picture Gallery and attributed to Hilliard.

But the rainbow queen has the more supernatural impact. You know that old cliche about portraits, 'the eyes follow you round the room'? Well, these seemed to, and you could kid yourself that the Queen was mighty pleased with what she was hearing.

The lunchtime recital - for which the above, pictured Vermeerishly by JJ, was the rehearsal - featured Guy with the very individual Melvyn Tan - whose work up to this point tends to have been mostly on period instruments rather than the sonorous Fazioli, a point of contact with the Suoni dal Golfo Festival in Lerici, and less with chamber music - and clarinettist Julian Bliss, who's very good but a tad too reserved for my taste. How could I feel any differently having been under the spell of maybe the greatest of them all, Matt Hunt, at the Pärnu Festival? Still, it was good to hear all the works on the programme, especially so as to get to know the late Brahms Trio the better.

My (slightly longer - half-an-hour) talk, of which there is the above record by audience member Sue Forbes, for which I'm grateful since I wanted to be photographed with Queenie, needed to set up the evening programme. That took us beyond Brahms, so the excerpts I played were:

Double Concerto (1888) – slow movement   Jitka Čechová. Jan Páleníček, Hradec Králové Philharmonic Orchestra/Ondřej Kukal (Triart) as echoed in

Julius Röntgen: String Trio No. 6 (1919) – opening  Lendvai Trio (Champs Hill – our wonderful group have recorded all 16 trios, unearthed in a Dutch archive and due to be published thanks to their championship)

Elgar: Piano Quintet (1918) – Brahmsian theme in first movement and its transformation   Bernard Roberts, Chilingirian String Quartet (EMI) 

Brahms (1863) arr Schoenberg (1939): Piano Quartet in G minor – Rondo all’Ungarese (excerpt) London Symphony Orchestra/Neeme Järvi (Chandos)

The splendid Lendvais - Dutch violinist Nadja Wijzenbeek, Swedish viola-player Yivali Ziliacus and British cellist Marie Macleod - chose the fourth Röntgen Piano Trio, a waltz suite, for the concert. I imagine a little goes a long way, but the 16 trios are quite a discovery, a perfect enrichment of the repertoire for string trio.

We heard, of course, the original G minor Piano Quartet, fine and rewarding to watch, though one sensed that Tan, who made so many beautiful and original sounds on the Fazioli, wasn't quite expansive enough to let the strings breathe.

That was clearly not going to be a problem for the phenomenal Tom Poster, who plays in the Aronowitz Ensemble of which the Johnstons are also sometime members. The Saturday afternoon concert in which he teamed up with Ziliacus, the outstanding violinist Elena Urioste and Guy was, for me, sheer perfection of a kind you don't often get even in the rarefied world of chamber music.

If, taken as a whole, Fanny Mendelssohn's works show greater originality than Clara Schumann's, the central of the latter's Three Romances is an airborne masterpiece, one I wanted to hear again the minute Urioste and Poster had finished playing it. And while Schumann's Piano Quartet sounds modest between the two Brahms giants, he hit the right note even when not aiming as high as he does in the Piano Quintet. Lovable, every moment of it, in these hands.

John Mark and William were now back, complete with adorable vizsla Radish, most vocal and engaging company. Family portrait essential, I think, with their permission.

They both came to the evening concert, and I was delighted that William came away as bowled over by the Brahms A major Piano Quartet as I was. This was the real pay-off in preparing the talks. How surprising to find that a work which begins in serene introspection, the opposite of the G minor's cloudy start, rises to even more challenging heights. Every theme, every transformation, could only be by Brahms, laying to rest the ghost of Beethoven and taking on the mantle of Schubert (my personal preferred choice every time). With Poster at the piano and the admirable string group from the Aronowitz Ensemble of Wijzenbeek, Tom Hankey and Macleod, the payoff of the performance was simply colossal. Here they are rehearsing as shot from above by JJ.

I'm going to pass on saying anything about the first half, Lieder by Clara, Brahms and Schumann performed with his customary audience engagement by James Gilchrist in a familiar partnership with Anna Tilbrook. There was something in all this that didn't quite ring true to me, but any attempts to reach out communication-wise should always be applauded.

The preceding talk was an attempt to cover several bases: Clara and her youngest son Felix; Wagner and Brahms; and the A major Quartet's relationship to its immediate predecessor. So make what you will of the sequence here.

Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1864) – Fliedermonolog, Act 2, excerpt   Norman Bailey, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Georg Solti (Decca)

Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor (1854) – end of slow movement   Maurizio Pollini (DG)

Brahms arr. Schoenberg: Piano Quartet in G minor – finale (except)   LSO/Järvi (Chandos)

Piano Quartet in A major (1863) – opening    Gautier Capuçon, Gérard Caussé, Nicholas Angelich, Renaud Capuçon (Virgin)

Symphony No. 2 in D major (1877) – violins close to opening   Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Wilhelm Furtwängler (EMI)

Symphony No. 1 in C minor – opening    Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Furtwängler (EMI)

Sunday morning continued the wind and rain of soggy Saturday, but at 3pm, just after J had left, the sky cleared and I did a healthy circuit around the park. I'd given the midday concert a miss partly because of social lunching, but also had to stay true to the vow I'd made after Hunt and Co in Pärnu not to hear the Brahms Clarinet Quintet played by anyone else for at least five years.

I did, however, want to hear the legendary Brett Dean as viola-player as well as composer, pictured above second from the left with Tan, Brett's daughter Lotte Betts-Dean, Poster and Johnston. Dean's Hommage à Brahms left little impact, I fear, as [played by Tan; it may seem reactionary of me but I'd much rather have heard the whole of Op. 119, which the homages were designed to weave between, rather than just Nos. 1 and 4 (how could anyone miss out the vintage masterpiece that is No. 2?)

Brett and Lotte were performing together for the very first time. She's a promising mezzo: super engagement, an undeniably individual and rich instrument, but much work is still to be done and a more secure technique should free things up. Let's leave it at that; I wish her every success.

So to the last hurdle, back in the Old Palace Hall. My sincere thanks to all those lovely people who came up to talk in between and enriched my knowledge from their various perspectives. It's rare to have such an interactive audience, but then again I guess as there wasn't time for questions more casual meetings were the only option. Ein Deutsches Requiem was on the cards, so I was able to talk about the curious Bremen premiere of all but the soprano-solo movement. Hence these excerpts, framed by the mighty Ferrier, which also allowed me to touch on Brahms's neo-Baroque aspect.

Bach: St Matthew Passion (1727) – ‘Es ist vollbracht’ (sung in English)    Kathleen Ferrier, London Philharmonic Orchestra/Adrian Boult (Decca)

Handel: Messiah (1741) ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’   Lynne Dawson, Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble/Marc Minkowski (Archiv)

Ein Deutsches Requiem (1869) – ‘Ihr hab nun Traurigkeit’    Dorothea Roschmann, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Simon Rattle (EMI)

Brahms (1862) arr. Rubbra (1938): Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel – conclusion of fugue-finale   LSO/Järvi (Chandos)

Four Serious Songs (1896) – ‘O Tod, wie bitter bist du’   Ferrier, John Newmark (Decca)

Austin once again did the work to hand proud, with the necessary sense of forward movement that keeps the German Requiem from getting stodgy. There was again a marvellous power from the three double basses which helped out the many smokier sounds. Good soloists, a fine amateur choir - though I'd still have liked more words, even if there was more operatic drama than we got from the professional choir in Bremen. But I must say I was tired by the halfway mark. And I went and blotted my copybook, not having done anything wrong during my stay, by waltzing off with John Mark's wallet and leaving mine in my raincoat hanging up in the porch. Anyway, a Tuesday lunchtime meeting with William at Kew - he'd been playing for a funeral nearby - meant I finally took a holiday and spent a brilliantly sunny afternoon in the Gardens.