A supple rendition of Messiah from a modern orchestra and its chorus

This reviews Messiah, performed by Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

14 December (link to additonal review added, 22 December)

This is a review of Messiah, performed in Cambridge by Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices at West Road Concert Hall, conducted by Eamonn Dougan and led by Thomas Gould, on Tuesday 14 December at 7.30 p.m.

Conducted by @ejdougan with leader @ThomasGouldVLN, @BrittenSinfonia and the Sinfonia Voices gave a supple rendition of The Messiah to-night

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 14, 2015

Part I

Adeptly keeping the movements ‘ticking over’ was one of the many strengths of this performance by Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) and Britten Sinfonia Voices, under the leadership of Thomas Gould (@ThomasGouldVLN) and the baton of Eamonn Dougan (@ejdougan).


With, for example, the recitative for accompanied bass ‘For behold, darkness shall cover the earth’, which runs into an air for bass voice (Robert Davies), the transition was smooth, and both from one movement to the next, and within them, the orchestra evoked a feeling of chiaroscuro that matched a text that told of the people that walked in darkness having seen a great light. Many believe that Charles Jennens, the librettist of Messiah (HWV 56), was also that of Israel in Egypt (HWV 54), which was premiered three years earlier, to the month (almost to the day), and one cannot easily forget the like moment when Israel is still in captivity*, and Pharaoh and the Egyptian people being visited by plagues…


In the following Chorus, ‘For unto us a Child is born’, one both experienced something like that halo effect, from a core group of instrumentalists, that one associates with Bach’s St Matthew Passion (BWV 244), and noticed how neatly the bowing and the turns, according to Thomas Gould’s example, were executed : in his writing, Handel has musically prepared us for the change of focus and for the pastoral mood that ushers in the nativity. Here, then, he gives us nothing more elaborate than a cadence, and no word-painting, at the end of the accompanied soprano recitative, when the shepherds were sore afraid.

Nicely pacing the further sections of recitative, with these familiar Christmas passages from Luke’s gospel, Carolyn Sampson made us ready to be greeted by trumpets – and, nice though it can be to hear the expertise of playing a natural horn, we had the warm assurance that we were not going to get split-notes or wavering pitch from Paul Archibald and Jo Harris :

Fitting, of course, that the trumpets in 'Glory to God in the highest' in Part I of The @BrittenSinfonia Messiah came from the East Balcony.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 14, 2015

When, following this moment, Carolyn Sampson finally came to an air, ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion’, the string ensemble that we heard with her was nimble, and her voice was honeyed, with only a little vibrato in the higher register. Straight after, alto Iestyn Davies had a recitative, and then an air, and there seemed to be a tranquillity not just to such words as He shall feed His flock like a shepherd ; and He shall gather the lambs with His Arm, but to his voice itself. In another air, Sampson employed a little coloratura, and then there was a Chorus that closed Part I.



Part II

In the alto air ‘He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows’, following a short initial Chorus, Iestyn Davies was superbly judged as to pacing, and depth of tone – in a movement that is best with a careful and controlled overview, it was a delight to hear an approach gained from an experience of operatic roles put to good use.

As noted below (in the second paragraph, below, concerning Part III), and with Gould’s skilled leading, Dougan had chosen to emphasize the concerto feel in Handel’s score, probably in conjunction with how portamento was employed in the alto part. Thus, there were longer bow-strokes, but also Spring-like flourishes, and, with the string-colour, they made an excellent match with the celebrated purity of Davies’ timbre.


Particularly in the Chorus ‘Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows’, Emma Feilding and Jessica Mogridge beautifully interpreted the writing for oboe, which one was excellently placed to hear**. The size of the orchestra (and of the venue) means that one can appreciate it as a pervasive aspect (rather than Handel’s occasionally using brass), which makes for a very significant part of the sound of the work. (It has not been noticed before, but, in the Kyrie of the Requiem Mass in D Minor (K. 626), is Mozart making a reference to Messiah here, with his choice of fugal-subject ?)


In an important sequence linked by tenor voice, two passages of accompanied recitative (the first was heard with vibrant, angular strings) led up to a very modern-sounding air. Before it, in the second section of recitative, Allan Clayton movingly gave us the hollow feeling of the Messiah in the situation described by the text, and in the deepening of the hurt, with the repeated words in the second half of the sentence :

Thy rebuke hath broken His heart ; He is full of heaviness


The second air, after even more desolate words from Isaiah (He was cut off out of the land of the living ; for the transgressions of Thy people was He stricken), reapplies them prophetically, and the gospel perspective accordingly changes the viewpoint completely to the divine one (with But Thou didst not leave His soul in hell, nor didst Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption).

Although there is brief refreshment in the lovely soprano air ‘How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace’, in which we felt solace through Sampson’s voice, Part II continues, and concludes, in a less personal vein of theology in global terms : the refusal of God’s authority, rebellion against his rule, and the vanquishment of the rebels (when the libretto has ‘the Lord shall have them in derision’, Dougan had that laughter in the strings). Victory and a celebratory frame of mind are part of the pattern here.

From the perspective of the Hanoverians, the way in which, just four years later, The Jacobite Rebellion was to be bloodily put down would be seen just in these terms, beginning by how it ended disastrously for the Jacobite cause at The Battle of Culloden (on 16 April 1746, again almost to the day).

In this performance of Part II, the Chorus 'Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth', with which it concludes, was attended with great dignity, but avoiding the not unusual sense of pomp (or, as far as one was aware, people standing in some sort of patriotic erectness), which can draw too much notice to the form, rather than the intention, of the libretto. A modest pause then preceded Part III.



Part III

Maybe it was no more than having stayed three times near Fishamble Street in Dublin, and been taken, during a literary guided walk, to the site of the Great Music Hall there where Messiah had first been performed (on 13 April 1742), but there seemed to be an Irishness, in the lilt of the voice, and tone of the instrumentalists, to the famous soprano air that starts Part III, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’. Sampson was radiant, as she had been throughout the evening, and clearly relished embodying conviction in this number.

In the opening alto air from Part II, one had been struck by the impression of early concerto-writing, with Dougan and Gould bringing out variations in attack and feeling between adjoining passages (please see the second paragraph, above, concerning Part II) : here, the delivery was much more legato, and with delicate flourishes. Continuing with the Chorus ‘Since by man came death’, we had contrasts in mood from soft to declamatory, as between ‘death’ and ‘resurrection’ – within each half of the two scriptural sentences, and between them.


When it came, soon after, to the equally famous ‘The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible’, trumpeter Paul Archibald perfectly accommodated the bass voice of Robert Davies, and in an ensemble whose sound had been integrated and equitably balanced all evening. A peculiarity of the setting (which was one aspect that the pre-concert discussion had addressed, though not this specific point) is the dual rendering of the word ‘raised’ here (and of other words earlier***), a question to which one was made alert from having read Claire Tomalin’s biography of one-time Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, Jonathan Swift.

When we first hear ‘raised’ in this bass air, it is as a one-syllable word : Tomalin tells us that, in Swift and Handel’s time, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a literary battle had raged, whether to make it the convention that such a word as ‘raised’, when the –ed ending is not separately sounded, should always be written ‘rais’d’. (With ‘sounded’ itself of course, used in the last sentence, there can be no doubt, because it inevitably has two syllables : in this sentence, then, if those arguing for the convention had not failed, we would now write ‘us’d’****.)

To recap, when we first (and also in the repeat) hear the words ‘the dead shall be raised’, the word is one syllable, but, when Handel jumps straight back to focus on a shorter part of the phrase, he makes it two syllables. (Indeed, and as we may be used to in choral singing, look through the libretto of Messiah, and, in most words with an –ed ending, it is sounded.) No doubt musicologists have theorized why that is so in the case of this pairing, but the effect appears to be this : that we notice the word less the first time, but, when it immediately reappears in this two-syllable form, it allows Handel to dwell on it with the voice, and draw attention to it as an action.


The soprano air ‘If God be for us, who can be against us’ is the last item with a soloist in Messiah, and this was a very special moment. Not uniquely, the Sinfonia reduced here to a small group of instruments (which was probably Caroline Dearnley on cello, Benjamin Russell (bass), Stephen Farr (organ), with leader Thomas Gould), since one can hear other examples of this sort of treatment (or even, for example, see soprano Lynne Dawson here, with an ensemble [the clip has no acknowledgements] where, in much younger days, Stephen Cleobury is the conductor (but here just brings the players in)).

However, in playing obbligato for this air, Gould brought so much more expressiveness than in that example, and such sensitivity to playing to accord with Carolyn Sampson and her voice, that the experience was a thing of beauty : with one’s unquestioned mainstay for the piece in the group of Sinfonia players, the sense of adventurousness, even riskiness, in his playing, and how it fitted to her artistry, was compelling. As one says, the moment was very special, and (as, in contrast to those, say, in the St Matthew) it then almost made Handel’s task harder in achieving the effect of the concluding Choruses :

Given post-mediaeval precedents such as Palestrina, Handel is not the first person to set the single word Amen as a movement, but he is scarcely writing in that musical tradition (unless we remember that we are in Dublin ?). Yet does he do so here at such length that it might feel like pastiche (if not, maybe, an extended musical-joke ?) – certainly to begin with, and partly in relation to what preceded, one did wonder.

And here's a pic from the end of the concert last night @WestRoadCH pic.twitter.com/rtanpkbtZB

— Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) December 15, 2015

Possibly one is always wise to wonder, a little, at Handel and his exact motives, but in time the Chorus did build beyond feeling as though it were an exercise, and made an impressive and agreeable end to this evening with Carolyn Sampson, Iestyn Davies, Allan Clayton, Robert Davies, Eamonn Dougan, Thomas Gould, and the whole of Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices.

I think the best #Messiah we've heard, & we've heard a few... @BrittenSinfonia Crisp, clear but rich sound, wonderful soloists.

— Penny Ewles-Bergeron (@ABroadBrush) December 15, 2015

My review of Messiah from the @BrittenSinfonia at the @BarbicanCentre - https://t.co/XhCWkjsH4L Soloists to die for.

— Mark Valencia (@MarkValencia) December 16, 2015

👓 My 1st 'Messiah' - in fittingly glorious fashion from @BrittenSinfonia @SampsonCarolyn @iestyn_davies & team. https://t.co/9qXrod8avt

— Adrian (@Adrian_Specs) December 20, 2015

End-notes

* Moses is, of course, looked to as a precursor to the figure of Christ, and likewise the deliverance from bondage and across The Red Sea.

** It is always nice to listen out for Sarah Burnett’s contribution, as the Sinfonia’s principal bassoonist, but doing so is made easier when there is a visual link, and podium and other players intervened this time.

*** For example, in the first Chorus in Part I (just after the air for tenor ‘Every valley shall be exalted’), when we first hear the words And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, that final word ‘revealed’ is two syllables, but it is then sounded as just one.

**** On account of how the dispute became resolved for ordinary writing (if not for scores), we now write raiséd, when we wish to indicate that it is two sounds, but our norm is not to put ‘rais’d’ for one (although one will find that form appearing in texts that have not been modernized when edited).


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Swinging it at Saffron Hall

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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22 November

This is a review of an evening at Saffron Hall (Saffron Walden, Essex) with Britten Sinfonia, Eddie Gomez, Sebastiaan de Krom, and conductor Kristjan Järvi, on Saturday 21 November 2015 at 7.30 p.m.

Part I :

1. Igor Stravinsky ~ Tango
2. Improvisation by Steven Osborne (on material from Keith Jarrett)
3. Frank Zappa ~ Igor’s Boogie
4. Stravinsky ~ Ragtime for 11 instruments
5. Zappa ~ The Perfect Stranger


Before playing (1) Tango, and then an improvisation, pianist Steven Osborne told us that the latter was not going to be a reflection on the Stravinsky (as the programme said), but a reaction to having heard Keith Jarrett in a solo concert the night before, at the EFG London Jazz Festival (@LondonJazzFest) at The Royal Festival Hall (@southbankcentre) – something so beautiful from Jarrett that it had been with him ever since, and which he wished to share with us.

To Stravinsky’s Tango (1940), in its original form for solo piano, Osborne brought a slight holding-back on the off-beat in the second, companion bar of those with which it opens. Initially, he was quite measured, and, when it came the first time, let the chromatic writing speak for itself. However, this was as preparation for it to repeat, where he now let rip for a few bars, and then brought a charmingly smiling humour to the succeeding passages, of greater restraint : on its third appearance, even a feel of the strident, and then just enjoying the riffy rumble in the bass. The work does not end with bravado, and Osborne brought it to us unforced and placid.


Whether or not the first section of his (2) improvisation also derived from Jarrett (to begin with, one was a little reminded of Staircase, with its bassy, deliberative ascents), Osborne brought in elements of contrary motion. As, with time, he rose up the keyboard, his playing increased in note-richness, and spikiness of attack, to very high and piercing notes, which then unleashed a wild torrent of discords : with movement up and down the keys, they subsided.

A sustained note linked to what clearly possessed the serenity and beauty of Jarrett’s recent solo recordings, and with his simplicity and understatement : the theme rippled for a while, before a moto perpetuo developed under notes of longer value, and there was a very strong feeling that there was something quite incredible about how vibrant the chordal progressions were. With a subtle diminuendo, the piece died away, to end very quietly.


The (3) first Zappa piece was very short, foregrounded woodwind, brass and marimba, and, after coming to resemble a march, had a fanfare-like close. (Starting at this point, Kristjan Järvi was conducting Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) (and those who joined in with it later).)


Stravinsky’s (4) Ragtime (1918) has none of the concision or – for want of a better word – ‘moderation’ of his Tango, more than two decades later. Right at the start, beats on the bass-drum are part of the fabric, although they are used, as off-beats and in combination with harmonies that sound off (almost in a ‘sick’ sort of way), to create an unsettling effect. Alongside all of which, we soon hear the crazily energetic sound of the cimbalom, which creates a sort of unease (if not disquiet) of its own, as does the later use of the snare-drum.

The connotations of the title ‘Ragtime’ may have led us to expect something of a more easy-going nature, but the piece itself, in its origins in the ambiguous world of The Soldier’s Tale (1917), is loaded with questions, epitomized by the use of trombone, which, played with a mute, sounded sneering and sour, or by the ironic sound of the cymbals, or even a prominent slide-effect by Jacqueline Shave (on violin). The mood appears to require the instrumentalists to play a little sharp, but, in structural terms, the work is relatively straightforward to follow (unlike much of what followed¹), and so we hear a phrase passed from Joy Farrall (clarinet) to Jacqueline Shave, sounding as an echo. In this first longer piece, one could appreciate the precision of the ensemble, but also the way in which the named individuals, amongst others, were bringing a swing and a sway to their part.


Frank Zappa’s (5) The Perfect Stranger (1984) is written for a great diversity of forces, including two grand pianos (the pianists double on celestes), and three percussionists on either side of the stage and at the rear, each with an array that incorporates snare-drums, marimbas, and tubular-bells. String-players were ranged across the front (with principal cellist Caroline Dearnley on one end, stage left (and next to Clare Finnimore, principal violist), and her fellow cellist on the other, with Shave (as leader) in the middle (flanked by two other violinists). Behind them, and centrally in the ensemble, a harp.

A motif on tubular-bells opened the work (and later we could keep seeing the two or three percussionists, primed by their sets² to give us a chord or a pair of chords). When we heard twin marimbas with what sounded like a xylophone, the effect was, for a moment, almost Boulezian³, but his is not the sound-world that Zappa inhabits, because (early on) he had Shave playing Zigeuner style, and had written passages with an extreme, highly slurred form of legato, as well as a jerky type of staccato.

Some moments in the work jumped out, such as a lovely short passage for Sarah Burnett on bassoon, and when the harp (Sally Pryce) came in and out of prominence. Likewise, we suddenly heard from the three blocks of percussion on snare-drum, or doubled marimbas with tubular-bells. All in all, though, the work had a quirky moodiness of its own, revolving its material ruminatively, but with occasional bright – and seemingly uncynical – overlays of brass (or of overshadowing with it), and we seemed a long way from where the evening had begun.

* * * * *

Part II :

6. Claus Ogerman ~ Excerpts from the Second Movement of Symbiosis (1974)
7. Darius Milhaud ~ La création du monde
8. Simon Bainbridge ~ Counterpoints


At this point in the evening, Eddie Gomez first came on stage, looking assured and relaxed along with Sebastiaan de Krom : with Steven Osborne, they were to form a neat trio, stage right, on piano, bass, and Pearl drum-kit, respectively. (Gomez’ bass had a pick-up so that he could monitor himself.)

The piece by (6) Ogerman began with a piano statement, passed to the woodwind and strings, and which, as it continued to be played, started to sound to have oriental overtones. Eddie Gomez waited, holding his bass, and with one leg casually resting on the calf of the other at one point. Steven Osborne then made a shorter utterance, with which the Britten Sinfonia players joined in, and which reminded of Aaron Copland. On Osborne’s third utterance, Sebastiaan de Krom joined in, using brushes, and Gomez started quietly strumming, although, since this was a work that might have had an improvised element, he seemed to be closely reading his score.

As the movement proceeded, Gomez was playing very far down the finger-board, in a way that sounded somewhat agitated at times, and plucking very close to the bridge. After a repeated note, with quiet strings, the sound of Gomez on bass became more agitated, but with piano-textures underneath it. Towards the end, he employed a lot of tremolo, and the impression made by the Sinfonia strings was quite luscious : it concluded with piano, bass, and strings.


Having first looked at the evening’s programme, and somehow confused reading the title of Milhaud’s La création du monde (his Opus 81a) with expecting to hear his Le bœuf sur le toit, Op. 58, one was more than prepared, in one’s head, for the insistence of its rondo-like form (from more than three years earlier****, and before he had heard jazz for himself in the States).


In the introduction of (7) La création du monde, he uses saxophone, and a Spanish style to his trumpets, to create a stately air, but it was not to be long before a jazzy bass, snare-drum and trombone launched first Paul Archibald (trumpet), and then Joy Farrall, with a ‘kick’ and a swing on clarinet. All of which, with Milhaud, very soon gets out of hand, with a riot of woodwind and brass – or seems to, because he suddenly drops down, eventually to the more subtle forces of string-quartet and flute. At this point, Bradley Grant gave thoughtful emphasis to some idiomatic writing for alto-sax, with some smooth slides and sinuous passages, before horn and other instruments joined in, and became more prominent.

There is gusto in the quartet of string-players, to whom Milhaud resorts again (and it seems that he heard performances in New York City where a string-quartet adopted such a percussive role), adding in timpani, and building up to a swirling, Gershwinesque tutti. Again, he brings us down from there, to oboe (Emma Feilding), before developing into further lively writing for Farrall, and a pulsing sort of shuffle.

However, these are passages into which he has built what might be punctuations, but which sometimes feel like interruptions : with a tin-pan-alley section, what begin as clearly signalled developments grow into a sort of primaeval, if short-lived, cacophony, in which alto-sax (Bradley Grant) and bassoon (Sarah Burnett) have key roles. They continue to do so, as, initially with a slow rallentando, Milhaud closes the work : he evokes material from the beginning, but patterns it differently, for a brief last riff, before a quiet close.


For reasons that were not entirely clear, unless indicating that he had very much enjoyed conducting Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia), Järvi half-turned to the audience with a cheeky grin at the end of the Milhaud (which was not to be the last that we saw of such playful expressions).


At times, Simon Bainbridge’s (8) Counterpoints (2015) was musically quite bewildering, but it often came to resemble a one-movement Chamber Symphony (or Kammerkonzert). As has already been remarked**, in commenting on Zappa’s The Perfect Stranger, there was much going on to see happening, or about to happen, but here it would probably have been better heard, and not watched – as, for example, when a small gong was raised out of and lowered back into water ? One wanted to be able to be aware of such sounds in the whole (and maybe then peep out, to see what they were), not have one’s attention drawn visually to the mechanics of the sound-production : sometimes, less is more, because one may see eight double-basses on stage, but not hear the sound of eight instruments.

The work had a very quiet start, with strings and a ‘squeaky’ bass-effect from Gomez. More so than before in the concert, Kristjan Järvi was bringing piano or cymbals, say, in and out with very definite cues or strokes. As well as familiar pairings, such as of marimba and vibraphone, composer Simon Bainbridge used a variety of instruments, and so we had Gomez with the rarely heard bass-flute (Sarah O'Flynn), and we could sense, at times, that there was an underpinning beat to the whole concerto.

In one moment with Järvi, there was a strange face-off with Gomez as to whether he would play when directed. Then, as there were further games, and an encouraging gesture and grin from Järvi, it all seemed to have been in good spirits. A special feature of this part of the work was an extended section for oboe and soft bass. The concerto ended with downwards cascades of notes, finishing with Gomez.



End-notes

¹ Where one feels forced to give more of ‘an impression’, in more general terms, rather than describe the work and how it unfolded : completely unlike a fractal, where any part might give one the whole.

² It became especially true of the second half of the concert that being able to see so clearly what was happening was a distraction from listening (and so the opposite effect from hearing Colin Currie and The Colin Currie Group at this venue in an all-Reich concert)). The composition by Simon Bainbridge, which closed the evening, would actually have benefited from having closed eyes, had it not been realized too late.

³ This observation seems less unlikely, given that Jo Kirkbride’s programme-notes informed us that Pierre Boulez had commissioned the work, as one of three by Zappa that he recorded with The Ensemble Intercontemporain.

⁴ Apparently, according to Wikipedia® (@Wikipedia), Le bœuf sur le toit was originally to have been the score of one of Charlie Chaplin’s silent films (Cinéma-fantaisie for violin and piano).


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Soprano and conductor : Barbara Hannigan at Saffron Hall (Part I)

This is a review of Britten Sinfonia with conductor / soloist Barbara Hannigan

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 May (updated / completed in draft 12 May)

This is a review (in progress) of a concert given at Saffron Hall (@SaffronHallSW) by Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia), conducted by – and with soprano solos from – Barbara Hannigan, on Saturday 9 May at 7.30 p.m.

In this concert, the two halves had a strange symmetry : an overture (by Mozart), timed at five minutes, an aria lasting nine minutes, and two works for full orchestra of twenty-four minutes, which yield prime factors of 2, 3 and 5…


Part I :

* Mozart ~ Overture to Idomeneo

* Stravinsky ~ Excerpt from The Rake’s Progress (Act 1, Scene 3 : Anne’s scene)

* Haydn ~ Symphony No. 49 in F Minor (nicknamed La Passione)


We began excitingly with Mozart, in the overture to Idomeneo, where – right from the opening – conductor Barbara Hannigan gave us a sense of delayed gratification by using suspension, holding back on the grandeur that we were to come to, complete with a Mozartian trill. Those who know Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia), and its principal bassoonist Sarah Burnett, will not have been surprised at how effortlessly she contributed to the texture, and when her playing came effortlessly forward for a little solo passage, which caught the mood nicely.

All in all, Hannigan brought out an explosive quality in Mozart, but also a brittleness, not least in the restatement of the opening material, when we had shrill tones from the twin flutes (and we were to hear quite a bit more, and fully as skilfully, from Claire Wickes and Sarah O’Flynn). In the closing cadences, and for full effect, Hannigan held back, but also, with arm aloft, allowed the Sinfonia, polished as ever, to step straight into the operatic excerpt that followed, and make it all of a piece* :

This provided, amidst the woodwind sonorities and Sarah Burnett’s beautiful presence and tone-quality, a pleasant sudden welcome into Stravinsky’s asiatically influenced sound-world – and a moment of contrast before Hannigan entered as soloist in this libretto (co-written by Auden with Chester Kallman). Charged words, which, as Hannigan utters them, seek a status both for her as Anne, and – inter-relatedly – for her relations with Tom (absent, but whom she feels obliged to contemplate and address).

Momentarily (and most like his ‘appropriations’), Stravinsky seems to echo Copland’s incidental music for Quiet City (typically known as reduced in a discrete composition for trumpet, cor anglais and string orchestra). This, just before, and to devastating effect, we were brought to the point of Hannigan’s voice alone, and with the pivotal words thou art a colder moon, where Anne’s mood, and convictions, change : which (we surely know, even without knowing the piece as a whole) are likely to threaten her future.

The strings become active again, with an evocation of the night, and – as Hannigan gave us I go, I go to him, whose repeated words both stressed determination, and making resolute a hesitant spirit – a gentle parp from the brass. By the time of the closing sentiments, we had the full effect of the massed desks of woodwind and brass at the rear (twelve players in an orchestra of around two score), and, as Hannigan meditated on the words that self-reinforcingly locked Anne into her course of action, there was an invocation of earlier settings about the unconditionality of love, such as John Hilton’s of ‘If it be love’. Even as we had these words, the scene concluded with a vigorous up-beat :

Love cannot falter, cannot desert.
It will not alter a loving heart
It cannot alter an ever loving heart



Haydn’s Symphony No. 49 in F Minor is not only, if not much performed, at least recently much broadcast on Radio 3 (@BBCRadio3), and one, of all works in a minor key, to wear it relatively easily, albeit starting with a slow movement :

1. Adagio
2. Allegro di molto
3. Menuet e Trio
4. Finale : Presto


That said, and even including a live transmission by this line-up earlier in the week, it is a work that can easily sound safely repeatable, almost homogeneously generic**. Not so at Saffron Hall on Saturday night !


The first movement, described by Jo Kirkbride in her programme-notes as in the style of sonata di chiesa, was characterized in Hannigan’s interpretation as quiet and inward, with a refreshingly sparing use of accents. When the horns came in, gloriously, the watchword was still restraint, and, by breathing with the music (as if with the flow of an aria) and being true to the calling of the heart, she had us wanting more, with a yearning for how the music next unfolded.

As yet, the central performer – literally, in the form of Maggie Cole (at the harpsichord keyboard), facing forward from within the ensemble – had not figured, but, when she made her entry, its unforced naturalness, and the way in which Hannigan was responsive to the tone and style of Cole’s cadences, brought us to the point where – though still deliberately kept a little separate from the full underlying feeling – we were feelingly aware of its closeness, and ready when the lovely sonorities of woodwind and brass came through.

This is one of those pieces where, ideally subtly altered (as with a da capo aria – working with whose form is not, of course, an inessential part of Hannigan’s métier), the material comes back, again and again : did we feel elegance, which maybe subsumed desire (needing to stay hidden), and, next, that feelings have come to a point of being tempted to believe in themselves ? Perhaps, for such words are, at best, indications of what the best of music will sometimes only hint at. What one can state, though, is that Cole’s playing evoked the beauty of the ensemble-writing, through her contributions to the texture.


Right from the opening gesture of the Allegro di molto, Hannigan made a feature of the cross-accents that came prior to the rich, full sound of the orchestra at large, and – making a link to the preceding Mozart – the lightness and brightness of the writing : all of this, necessarily, had been set up by the careful handling of the Adagio. For, many versions of this symphony turn it into terrace dynamics, but Hannigan showed us a more complex angularity in the score, and it worked so well just to see, and catch, string-entries, made very slightly ahead of each other, by divided first and second violins.

This is another movement that goes around and around, but one that allowed Cole, once again, to enter in a way that was essential to the whole, letting us sense ‘the opening up’ of the Allegro, more and more. Thus, Cole first brought to the harpsichord part subtle variations in her attack, and, at other times, an impression that it was aswirl (but mixed in with a woodwind and brass that were more measured), and then fed that latter sensation into the sharpness with which we revisited earlier matter.


With a superbly rendered bassoon-line from Burnett, Barbara Hanningan set the Menuet’s sustained notes in the realm of stateliness, but with Cole then emphasizing the tender detail in the continuo writing. In this movement, what was particularly noticeable was that, in passing from woodwind to strings, there was no loss in transmission : not just that we heard a smooth transfer of the material, but that the line within the music was part of the communication, or itself, in some way, was the communication.

And, if we truly heard, there was the care with which the performance was heightened by maintaining us, through the well-executed precision of the Sinfonia players, slightly apart from what might have been (and all too often is) simply overt and immediate in the sound and emotion of this work. Almost inevitably, Maggie Cole’s voiced keyboard-playing continued to be integral to the experience, with a sense that one note was speaking to, and informed by, the next – just as with communication of musical lines within the orchestra, but at a level beyond even phrasing, or shaping, to why each note was there, had to be there***.

When we came into the Trio section, Cole approached her part with a quality as of recitative, with the whole movement very balanced : elements of ebb and flow in the continuo were carefully juxtaposed with the rest of the ensemble, and we had an overall sense of both a pulse within the music, and of its gracefulness.


Although the Finale had been described rather differently by Tom Redmond, hosting the Radio 3 live broadcast, Hannigan imbued the Presto with what sounded like impatience, but tempered by tutti that were determined to present themselves as much more matter of fact (again, that sort of face saving from earlier ?). Amidst all of which, we had snatches of the real feeling, beneath the nerve-laden energy : this playing and conducting of Haydn came across, unlike what had been heard broadcast, as having understood the work anew.

Indeed, one had little desire to watch what Hannigan was doing – as, with some conducting, one can be drawn into thinking important – so much as to be aware of what was brought forth from the instrumentalists, and also of the gradations, inflexions and tone-colours given (not least by Maggie Cole) to this familiar score. Whether it was using the power in the sustained oboe and bassoon notes, or having clearly worked with Cole to make the continuo role a living and emergent one, this was the insightful conclusion of three works that had spoken to each other (as is by no means unusual to find in Britten Sinfonia’s concerts) :

In fact, such was the engagement with the meaning of the work (rather than its mere form) that being at the end actually came almost as a surprise, as well as a welcome time to be able to show one’s appreciation.


A concluding part of the review, in a separate posting, to come…



End-notes

* Respected by the audience at this point, by not starting to applaud, whereas it sadly was not after the second Mozart overture, which obliged Hannigan to take a bow, and go off stage, when one sensed that, in this same way, she had wanted to show us something by linking it, mood for mood, with one of his concert arias (from later in that decade) :

-> Fair enough that there is a role for setting off the applause, but it must also be in sustaining it until - not much beyond - that bow.

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 9, 2015

** Of course, being in the auditorium would have made some difference, but that performance just did not have a spark of the especial kind that would have one picture oneself there to hear it : actually, it gave one trepidation about what one might hear four days later…

*** Somewhere, there is a link (to come) to the masterclass, with The Doric Quartet, that Murray Perahia gave for CRASSH in Cambridge (@CRASSHlive, the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities), where he talked about how one chord relates to the next in Beethoven's writing for string quartet : for the moment, this blog posting must suffice.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Echoes of the future in Beethoven's Septet in E Flat Major, Op. 20 ?

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18 March

A concert given by Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) at West Road Concert Hall (@WestRoadCH), Cambridge, on Tuesday 18 March

This lunch-time’s concert saw a pairing of Versa est in luctum, a new commission by William Cole for the same forces as and with Beethoven’s Septet in E Flat Major from 1800 (Op. 20), a string trio plus double bass, bassoon, clarinet, and horn – the Sinfonia and the Wigmore Hall asked Cole to write the piece after he won the Cambridge University Composers’ Workshop in 2013.

Cole’s piece preceded its illustrious forebear (as Jo Kirkbride’s informative programme note bears testament – in fact, too illustrious for Beethoven’s liking, as he came to rue it as a cultural straitjacket by means of which others sought to confine his artistic development), and ran to around one-quarter of its length, in one movement.

It opened with what seemed to be a canon*, Clare Finnimore (viola) following Marianne Thorsen on violin, which, as it recurred, had increasing levels of interjections from the other instruments. Not necessarily being anthropomorphic about the composition, but the original theme then started becoming fragmentary (and maybe with hints of an inversion ?) before an extrapolation that reduced any resemblance further.


By now, the sound had become an exciting hubbub, but this appearance subsided, leaving the violin over a repeated interval, and with a beat being kept by the bass (Stephen Williams). When this, too, had become intense, there was a long pause, as if the piece might be at an end, but a short pizzicato moment gave way to a section for clarinet (Joy Farrall), cello (Caroline Dearnley) and bassoon (Sarah Burnett). What then sounded like open notes from the horn (Susan Dent) led to a sonority with the reed players, before the work closed with a gesture from bass and cello.

As an experience, Versa est in luctum did not seem as though it were just ten minutes long, as there seemed to be worlds within it : fitting, indeed, as the text comes from the central chapter of what is known as Job’s closing monologue, and, given all that has happened to him over time, is of a reflective nature. It received its World Premiere on Friday in Norwich, and, of course, played with conviction and verve by members of the Sinfonia, was well met in Cambridge.


As to the Beethoven, its six-movement structure began with two marked Adagio, although the first turned to an Allegro con brio. Words that do not always fit in one’s mouth at the same time as thinking about Beethoven, from the opening unison chord it exuded charm and grace in the Sinfonia’s hands. After some writing that felt its way around the dynamics, and a theme that sounded as though it had a statement and a response built into it, the material proper began with a melody that the composer might have been disgruntled to have described as Mozartian, with that sort of ambience for clarinet that he so liked. The succeeding interplay of voices led us back to the beginning, ending soon after with a feeling of suspension.

The cantabile movement that came next gave the melody to the clarinet, with strings underneath, and then passed it to the violin, before a prominent passage for bassoon. An air of expectancy had been built, into which a series of horn notes fed, the strings then providing support as it went on, but leaving still a sense of restraint until the violin emerged and gave the movement its main expressive force. A short piece in Tempo di menuetto followed, with, as in the opening movement, a theme, of an accented nature, and a paired theme, the whole impression being somewhat grand, perhaps military.

A mildly staccato statement of the theme, as used earlier in the work, in the Tema con variazioni : Andante led to a set of six variations, a form that Beethoven was to turn to throughout his career and where his own voice became more apparent. The first variation began with violin and viola, and then introduced the cello, whereas the second had the other players responding to the violin giving the theme, with the cello in its upper register. Next, clarinet and bassoon with the strings beneath them, and then, in a variation reminiscent of a movement twenty-four years later in the Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, horn and violin together (then playing quickly underneath, with a pizzicato from cello and bass.

In another variation that evoked later writing, the fifth had some of the character of Beethoven’s masterly writing for string quartet, before the brass and reed players joined in, and with a real quality of sweetness of playing from Thorsen, as the theme passed back and forth. Finally, the bass and the cello in its lower voice were to the fore, and brought the set to a close. In the Scherzo : Allegro molto e vivace, a movement of equivalent length to that of the Minuet, the ‘parped’ horn theme reminded of somewhere in the first two symphonies (No. 1 being the next Opus number, and, as Jo Kirbride usefully tells us, performed at the same concert where this work was premiered). The cello then advanced, supported by the bassoon, with a softer version, and the movement proceeded in sonata form, ending quite quickly, but not before a short ‘pa pa’ from the horn to recall the opening.

Again, as Beethoven was to go on to do (and Mozart (and Haydn) had done before), the Andante con moto alla Marcia; Presto began in a funereal vein, before the full-blown finale broke through, with a great feeling of lightness. Nevertheless, he gave an insistence to the theme, and there were glimmerings of his writing to come in the Symphony No. 7 in A Major, just over a decade later, and wrote captivatingly, which Thorsen brought out, for her instrument. When the theme returned, the balance of the ensemble, as had been apparent all along, was just right, and, after a momentary suggestion that we were veering into the minor, this accurate and emotionally careful drew to a close.

There was immense appreciation for the quality and deftness of the musicianship that we had heard, and the concert will be a treat for Radio 3 listeners in the summer, not least for those who find similar evidence in this work of what was to come. At the same time, one can well understand, as he expressed himself to pupil Carl Czerny, Beethoven’s not wanting to be tied to this piece, and to look forward, not to be asked for something in the more agreeable style of the Septet ! How many times are we grateful to true artists for being true to what they felt that they should compose, or paint, or write…


End-notes

* Which Cole tells us, in his note, is from a fifteenth-century motet by Alonso Lobo, setting a verse featuring instruments from the Book of Job (Job 30 : 31).



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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)