Honegger, Bridge, Berg, Castiglioni and Debussy: Claire Booth (soprano), BBC Symphony Orchestra, Oliver Knussen (conductor), Royal Albert Hall, 29.7.2011 (CG)

Honegger:  Pacific 231 (1923), Pastorale d’été (1920)
Bridge: There is a willow grows aslant a brook (1927)
Berg: Der Wein (1929)
Castiglioni: Inverno in-ver (1973, revised 1978) 
Debussy: La Mer (1903-5)

This is just the sort of programming one can thank the Proms and Oliver Knussen for; only one real warhorse, and the rest of the programme made up of diverse but complimentary works seldom given an airing nowadays. Four items were composed during the twenties, and it is interesting to observe the different paths their composers were treading.

Arthur Honegger was of Swiss parentage, but had also studied in Paris and became a prominent member of the group of composers known as “Les Six.” He developed a lifelong love of counterpoint, a rugged seriousness permeating a good deal of his music. However, he also possessed a strongly pictorial imagination, and this enabled him to become a celebrated film composer when the bank balance needed extra input. Pacific 231 made him a popular figure, and it’s not hard to see why; it is a clever evocation of a railway locomotive, but considerably more than just that. To Honegger (and any railway enthusiast!) the mighty engine represented all that was exciting about industrial development in general and human achievement in particular. It is a wildly effective piece, and Knussen’s control of tempi as the locomotive gathers speed was spot-on. One might have wished for a little more raw energy, perhaps, but that would be a minor quibble, and this made a great concert opener.

The enormous range of Honegger’s output was illustrated by the next piece, Pastorale d’été, in that here we have a quietly intimate work for a small chamber orchestra with single woodwind and a lone French Horn, as opposed to the large scale of the preceding work. You can’t imagine a greater contrast with Pacific 231, or, indeed, some of Honegger’s earlier music. Gone is any suggestion of the atonality which had permeated his ballet of 1918, Le dit des jeux du monde, and gone, too, is the muscular drama of Pacific 231. This lovely piece, with its rustling strings developing into a dance-like section with perky woodwind figures, and then subsiding into a reflective combination of both, was given a beautifully shaped performance.

And so to Frank Bridge’s There is a willow grows aslant a brook which is scored for a similarly small orchestra. Bridge, always keenly interested in musical developments both at home and abroad, employs a chromatic idiom showing his interest in bitonality and even the music of the second Viennese school. Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Gertrude’s speech in act 4) provides the title, the theme being Ophelia’s death, and the music is imbued with watery features and a darkness expressive of ominously gathering gloom. It is a perfect miniature. Once again, the performance was rapturously quiet and sensitive under Knussen’s careful baton, with some outstanding woodwind playing.

To end part one, Alban Berg’s Der Wein demonstrated the composer’s development of Schoenberg’s 12-note system, with plenty of tonal references. It was composed during his work on the unfinished opera Lulu, and shares a similar musical idiom. The poetry is by Baudelaire, and is taken from “Le Vin,” a cycle expressing wine’s properties in helping us to escape from the material world. Berg – a real romantic in life as well as music – had an ultimately painful affair with the wife of an industrialist, and heartache and an autumnal melancholy permeates the music as the vocal line soars above the richly orchestrated tapestry beneath. Some may have preferred a rather more weighty performance than Claire Booth’s, but I for one found it nevertheless both beautiful and moving. The balance between voice and orchestra was also generally very well handled in the cavernous Albert Hall, with neither dominating the other overly.

Moving away from the twenties, part two opened with Inverno in-ver by the Italian composer, Castiglioni. This is winter music, and winter music par excellence. The orchestration is absolutely fascinating; nearly always in an extremely high register, it consists of eleven separate pieces exploring various kinds of iciness. Tinkly notes and trills from the piano, celesta, glockenspiel, vibraphone, harp, tubular bells, with string harmonics and chattering woodwinds occupy much of the soundscape, and it’s all tremendously imaginative. Castiglioni employs his vivid and original aural imagination to the full. There are references to Bach, popular songs, and dances, but all are brief and in some way distorted or mixed up with contemporary devices. At times the music almost stands still – at others it is very active. And it is both extraordinary and extraordinarily beautiful. It appeared to be an excellent performance.

Finally, “warhorse” time; but “La Mer” proved to be no inappropriate bedfellow with the curiosities so far played. Following the roar of the railway engines at the start, the whole programme had largely centred around music exquisitely conceived and orchestrated, and I daresay all the composers so far presented would have doffed their caps to M. Debussy. So we revelled in the dawn at sea, the lapping waves, the howling winds and magisterial beauty of the briny, and we went home with ears and minds refreshed by vivid performances of some wonderful music.

Christopher Gunning

Debussy, Dutilleux and Ravel: Lynn Harrell (cello), Edinburgh Festival Chorus, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Donald Runnicles (conductor), Royal Albert Hall, 3.7.2011 (CG)

Debussy: Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune (1891-4)
Henri Dutilleux: 'Tout un monde lointain...' (1967-70)
Ravel: Boléro (1928), Daphnis and Chloë – complete ballet (1909-12)

The Proms audience is the best in the whole world, so we are led to believe. Er – actually, no it isn’t. Yes it is great to see the Albert Hall almost full for a programme of French music, some of it very well known indeed (Ravel’s Bolero, and Debussy’s Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune) and some of it hardly known at all to general concert goers (the Dutilleux) but does the audience know how to behave? On the basis of tonight’s experience, I have to say, resoundingly, “no!”

Donald Runnicles came on, and waited for silence. It never quite came, so the languid flute solo of L’après-midi was accompanied by somebody behind me dropping a particularly large object, clatter, clatter, clatter, and the rest of the opening was virtually ruined by various outbreaks of the unstifled coughing which has become a real bugbear of this season’s Proms. It was an awful pity, because from what I could hear the piece was played with real attention to dynamics and tone colour, and the woodwind solos were beautifully done. Runnicles paced the music well – neither too fast or slow, and it could have been so enjoyable if only the audience would have allowed us to hear it without indiscreet interruptions every couple of bars.

Even more coughing was to accompany the great American cellist, Lynn Harrell, in his completely authoritative performance of the Dutilleux. It is heart-warming to see Dutilleux, now in his 95th year, being programmed more frequently, for there can be little doubt that he is now properly recognised as France’s leading composer, and the true successor to both Ravel and Debussy. He shares with them a sensuousness and a love of orchestral colour, although of course the nuts and bolts of his language are very different. Above all, Dutilleux has the most phenomenal ear; even when the music becomes fearsomely complex there are reference points harmonically, so that the listener need never lose his or her way. It is enthralling stuff.

There are five movements; Enigme, Regard, Houles, Miroirs, and Hymne. The second and fourth are slow, while the first and fifth are more dynamic. The central movement takes material from the first and develops it, and further developments take place in the last. What emerges is akin to an overall mirror-like shape, and Dutilleux’s fascination with mirrors is also evident in the internal developments of his material; frequently, in Dutilleux, one finds a series of notes repeated, only in reverse. But nothing in his music is ever “pat,” and nothing is ever quite what it seems; in other words, there is always something more for Dutilleux to do with his material; it’s ever-changing. But lest I’m making this sound like a continual series of intellectual processes, let’s put any such ideas to rest immediately; Dutilleux’s music, in this piece as well as his work generally, possesses enormous beauty, excitement, and immediacy. You can listen to it, knowing nothing of his methods, and thoroughly enjoy it.

And the audience, despite their coughs and wheezes, certainly warmed to Lynn Harrell’s performance tonight. Dutilleux makes fierce demands of the soloist (it was originally commissioned by Rostropovich) but is relatively kind in terms of balance; the problems of setting one solo cello against a symphony orchestra are dealt with effectively, and Runnicles and his Scottish crew partnered the soloist admirably. Harrell responded to his warm reception with a short encore of unaccompanied Bach, beautifully played, and with marginally less coughing.

An interval would have been welcome after this, but instead we had to sit through what can only be described as an appalling failure. The snare drum at the beginning of Ravel’s Bolero was completely inaudible! No, it was not because of the coughers, although they were busily continuing with their own concerto, it was because the snare drummer had presumably been directed to play as quietly as possible. The result? Silence - apart from cough, cough, cough. Then, when the first flute arrived with the famous tune, it quickly emerged that the tempo was too fast! And still there was no evidence of the drum, and the cello pizzicati were also inaudible! What a mess! Admittedly, there have been wide variations of tempo in various performances and recordings; durations have varied between 13 minutes (Toscanini) and 18 minutes (Ravel’s friend, Pedro de Freitas Branco) but Ravel himself preferred 60-66BPM, with a duration of about 15 minutes, and that’s surely what it should be; Runicles was nearer 76BPM. By the time we eventually heard the snare drum, things were unfortunately beyond redemption and with no real sense of the insistent hypnotic rhythm which is the very backbone of the piece, the best thing to do was to get outside and hope that things after the interval would fare better. I’ve since listened to the broadcast, and with the benefit of microphones you CAN just hear the snare drum and the celli pizzicato, but they’re still too quiet. The sound quality of the recorded concert is, incidentally, otherwise rather unflattering, though the coughs are well reproduced...

This reviewer was now decidedly nervous. Daphnis and Chloë is one of my favourite works. I have spent hours and hours pouring over the intricate orchestration in wonder at how every single effect works so brilliantly. And it isn’t just a feat of orchestration – the music itself is so consistently inspired and so darned gorgeous! I have also come to realise that it is one of the most difficult scores to get right in performance, with any number of awkward corners for the conductor, and a sense of where each phrase is heading constantly needed.

The audience coughed and shuffled its way through the first hushed bars, then the choir entered pianissimo, and – magic! From then on we were transported on the most enchanting journey through Ravel’s miraculous score and I could hardly fault a single thing. The choir continued to bewitch, the woodwind sang their solos captivatingly, the brass were spot-on, and the strings were resplendent or quietly beguiling as occasion demanded. The famous daybreak scene had me choking back tears, and the Danse General at the end had me wanting to get up and shout. The unaccompanied choral section in the middle was perfectly in tune and perfectly eerie too – incidentally, how could anyone ever think of performing this music without the wordless choir???

I would not quarrel with any of Runnicles’s tempi, apart from some of the more affecting moments perhaps being decidedly on the brisk side. The piece, long at 55 minutes, certainly works for me, although I am aware that others prefer the two orchestral suites which Ravel prepared. For my part, I vastly prefer to hear the whole thing because the first suite misses out far too much of the great music which follows, and the second suite feels somewhat unbalanced. And that daybreak scene, with which the second suite commences, is so wondrously effective coming after the desolate music which precedes it in the full version. Curiously, the only staged performance I’ve ever seen, at Covent Garden, did not work so well; for once I think it was a question of the choreography not living up to the standard of the music. Maybe it’s so complete in itself that anything visual is rendered superfluous?

As an aside to all this, if you haven’t already done so, may I suggest a visit to the Ravel museum at Montfort l’Amaury? It is in a lovely little house, purchased by Ravel in 1921, and this is the place where he wrote the two piano concertos and L'Enfant et les sortilèges  among other works. It is full of Ravellian idiosyncrasies – musical boxes, a hidden music library, a downstairs bedroom with upside-down pillars, and a charming little garden. I was shown over the house by a lady who knew Ravel when she was a child, and I even attempted to play Ravel on Ravel’s piano. For anyone who loves his music as I do, it is a deeply affecting experience to be there. http://website.lineone.net/~jdspiers/belved.htm

Christopher Gunning

Elgar, Grainger, and Richard Strauss: Tasmin  Little (violin), BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra,  Sir  Andrew  Davis (conductor), Royal Albert Hall, 2.7.2011 (CG)

Elgar: There is sweet music op. 53 no. 1 (1907)
Elgar: Violin Concerto in B Minor op. 61 (1909-10)
Grainger: Irish Tune from County Derry (1902, arr. 1912)
Grainger: Suite 'In a Nutshell'  (1916) - first performance at the Proms.
Richard  Strauss: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche op. 28 (1894-5)

When thinking about Elgar’s Violin Concerto, my mind goes back to the BBC’s Maida Vale studios where, back in the 60’s, I used to attend the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Sunday afternoon concerts. The violinist on one particular occasion was Alan Loveday, who had emigrated from New Zealand as a child prodigy and later became a leading member of Neville Marriner’s St Martins in the Fields. His performance of the Elgar concerto, seemingly not available on record, moved me profoundly and I believe he had mastered the work’s central emotional character – grandness coupled with an all-important heart-rending sweetness. Later, I got to know Yehudi Menuhin’s famous recording of 1932, with the composer conducting, and several other interpretations. A glance at a record catalogue now reveals that this concerto is one of the most recorded; American, Russian, European, Japanese, and Korean violinists tackle it, including some extremely famous names; Heifitz, Kyung Wha Chung, Nigel Kennedy, and Zukerman to name but four. And the first performance was given by the work’s dedicatee, no less a figure than the legendary Fritz Kreisler, who had asked Elgar to write him a concerto in 1907. Even when Elgar’s work has been out of fashion, the concerto has continued to be played. It has been partially eclipsed, periodically, by the much later Cello Concerto of 1919, but it is probable that it remained Elgar’s own favourite, and not only because the first performance of the Cello Concerto was apparently under rehearsed and shambolic.

The concerto is a challenge on many, many levels; a gigantic piece, a real concerto of Brahmsian proportions. It demands complete virtuosity in the fiery passages, but also extreme musical sensitivity, and the various interpretations available tend to emphasise the brilliant at the partial expense of the quietly emotional, or vice-versa.  Fortunately for us, there were no disappointments tonight; Tasmin Little has already recorded the concerto, clearly knows it backwards, and this was completely confident playing, and not just technically so – she handled the gorgeously romantic passages with a marvellously warm tone, always expressive but never sentimental, and her tempi seemed, to this listener, just right. If anything, she majored on the introspective, but this is not to suggest that her command of the difficult, dramatic passages was ever less than brilliant. In all this she was partnered quite excellently by Andrew Davis who drew from the BBC Symphony Orchestra strength in the more robust orchestral passages, as well as a touching tenderness in the quieter moments. The slow movement was a pure delight – not too slow but simply hushed and softly expressive – and it rose to its impassioned climax perfectly naturally. For me, the heart of the work lies in the extraordinary cadenza towards the very end of the work, as the violin remembers themes from earlier and the strings of the orchestra throb with pizzicato tremolando. It is one of Elgar’s most touching, original, and effective passages, and tonight it was utterly spellbinding. What superb music making.

The concert had opened with small scale Elgar; There is sweet music, is one of his ‘choral songs,’ composed for choral societies and festivals, and is remarkable in that the male singers are notated in G major, but the female in A flat major; Elgar was thus paving the way for other composers to take up the cudgels of polytonality. It is a sleepy piece with, apparently, 5/4 and 10/4 time signatures helping to produce a somewhat odd ‘blurred’ effect. It was well done by the BBC Singers, and a million miles in style and content from the grandeur of the concerto to follow. Rather interesting programme planning, too, to open with Elgar’s private world before embarking on the bigger, more public statement.

Further oddities were provided by the two pieces by Percy Grainger, the first of these being a short setting sung by the BBC Singers of the famous “Londonderry Air.” This was a Proms favourite for several years following its first performance by Grainger himself in 1913, and it has recently been revived. Personally I find it rather unremarkable, but the same could not be said of the second item, “In a Nutshell,” which proved to be something of a revelation. Grainger almost always used folksong as the basis of his work, but here there is almost none. Moreover, the music and especially the orchestration of it, is highly unusual and original. The four movements are sharply contrasted, but achieve some measure of unity by the use of some extraordinary percussion instruments, and a common theme of diversity, central to Grainger’s thinking. The first, Arrival Platform Humlet, is supposed to represent the sort of thing one might hum on a station platform waiting for one’s sweetheart to arrive from foreign parts; it’s very lively and is essentially a monody orchestrated for various instrumental groups. (Grainger even prepared an alternative version for solo viola alone!) The second, Gay but wistful, is an evocation of the music hall – and yes, it’s gay but wistful. The third, Pastorale, is the longest and most interesting; after a folk-like melody played on the oboe, things become progressively disturbed, with cross-rhythms and bitonality much in evidence, as well as some strange specially manufactured tuned percussion instruments. It is terrifically exciting before it settles into a rather Scriabin’esque quiet ending. The last movement, which bears the title The ‘Gum Sucker’s’ March, refers to the practice of some natives of the state of Victoria, Australia, of sucking the gum from eucalyptus leaves to provide refreshment from the great heat. It is short and sweet and jolly, and sounded quite American to me. In fact it struck me that the whole work has some American tinges, and I was frequently reminded of Aaron Copland, or perhaps the jazzy pieces by Constant Lambert. Davis and the BBCSO performed this music, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the unjustly neglected composer’s death, with huge panache.

Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Strauss’s fifth large tone poem, has always been a concert favourite. Davis’s was a terrific performance, with the BBCSO once again excelling in all departments. Fun, quirky, and a showpiece for almost everyone taking part, it was great to hear all of Strauss’s kaleidoscopic colours presented so vividly, and the intricate counterpoint so clearly defined. Michael Bryant’s solo violin, Andrew Webster’s E flat clarinet, and Nicholas Korth’s principal horn deserve special mention, but everyone taking part helped to confirm that the BBCSO is a terrific orchestra currently at the very top of its game.

A brilliant concert, then, marred for me by two niggles:

Niggle one: the coughing at this year’s Proms is out of control. At times you begin to wonder if the entire audience needs to visit the A & E department of the nearest hospital, but when you observe the coughers more closely, you realise that mostly they’re idle coughs with no attempt whatever at stifling. It is time for an announcement before each concert asking people not to cough unless absolutely necessary, and then please to cough into a handkerchief, a coat sleeve or ANYTHING!

Niggle two: There was clapping between each movement of the Elgar concerto, and “In a Nutshell.”  It is unnecessary, interrupts any continuity of thought, and is not what the composer wanted. So I also think it’s time for an announcement suggesting that applause be saved until the very end of each work.

Christopher Gunning