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