What no dancing?

I went to the English Touring Opera production of Rameau's Dardanus last week in the delightful opera house at Buxton.  It is a very long time since I went and there has been a lot of restoration work  since then and the theatre was looking splendid.  My enjoyment was only partly spoiled by the fact that in the seat directly in front of me was an extremely tall gentleman: I had to keep moving from side to side to see the stage properly when the action was right in the middle.

This was the first time that I had seen Dardanus on stage, though I knew the music fairly well from the Minkowski recording.  Though I have to qualify that by saying that the Minkowski recording uses  the 1739 version and this was a performance of the 1744 edition, in which the last three acts are largely new.  In fact the Minkowski version does add some material from 1744 and this performance did slip in some 1739 music - I don't think that we are quite at the stage where ultimately purity of sources is the norm in Rameau: performances are still rare enough to make one glad to hear whatever is presented.

I enjoyed much of the performance but I left feeling a little deflated because I think that there was a missed opportunity here.  The staging was in a modern war-time setting, and I didn't have a problem with this - I don't really think that it is possible these days to stage these operas as they would originally have been seen, but there were two  big problems with the production.  The first was the almost total lack of dance.  Rameau was of course one of the very greatest of composers of balletic dance music (he is up there with Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky) and the dancing is an essential part of the operatic experience.  But we got virtually no dancing at all.  Some of the dance music was cut: some was used for fairly unconvincing pantomime effects and some was played as interlude music with the curtain down.  That simply doesn't work.  Audiences see the curtain going down as an opportunity to chat shuffle and cough and this does mean that it is not really possible to hear the music properly.  Dealing with the dance is the biggest single problem in staging Rameau.  It is not like 19th century grand opera where one can omit the ballet fairly easily as it is self contained.  In a modern setting like this is of course difficult to find a way of using the ballet music properly, but I got the sense that the producer hadn't really tried.  I think that the concept of the modern war-time setting came first and that led to the jettisoning of the dance.  Surely it should have been the other way round.  The producer should have started from the premise that the dance was an integral part of the opera and found a way of making it work in an appropriate setting.

The second problem was the lack of a chorus.  We had a few extra performers who did sing the choruses one to a part  but that simply was not enough to differentiate them from the solo singing.  One of the great pleasure of Rameau should be the variety: dance music, choruses, solos and ensembles.  But with no dance and with the choruses one to a part it did all become rather lacking in contrast.  Of course economics play a big part here and it is unreasonable to expect that a small touring company should have a large chorus in tow, but perhaps a few more voices could have been provided.

And finally while I am Beckmesser mode: why did they cut the prologue?  I suspect that it was partly for reasons of length but also because it doesn't really fit the concept.  But again , the prologue is an integral part of Rameau's music and dramatic ethos and a way of including it should have been found., not least because it has some delightful music.

Enough of carping.  I am glad I saw it on stage.  There is some magnificent music throughout the opera and there were some very strong performances. The stand out for me was Anthony Gregory in the title role.  He managed the high tessitura effortlessly and came across as utterly convincing. The audience took a while to get into the aesthetic , which is hardly surprising as the music doesn't break into neat sections of aria and recitative but neither is it through composed.  I am reminded of the stories of the first performance of Das Rhinegold, where the audience wanted to find somewhere to clap and ended up applauding Loge's narration, simply because it was the nearest thing they could find to an aria.  We didn't get any applause between numbers here - though it was a close run thing a couple of times and an audience with more experience of the style might well have clapped a few times.  I think that it would have given a bit of energy to the performance.

Rossini

To us the 1820s are the era of Schubert and Beethoven. Yet had you asked any musician at the time who the leading composer was and you would almost certainly have got the reply "Rossini".

To far too many musicians today he is still regarded as the composer of some attractive but lightweight overtures.  To the man in the street he is the composer of the music for the Lone Ranger.  Hence the quote "my definition of an intellectual  is somebody who can listen to the William Tell overture without thinking of the lone ranger".  (Incidentally there is some doubt about who first came up with that quote - a quick search of the Internet comes up with a variety of names from Dan Rather to David Frost and Billy Connolly !).

Mention of William Tell is a neat introduction to one my musical highlights of last year - attending a live relay of the Royal Opera House production of the opera at the cinema in Nottingham.  You may recall that the production created a storm of controversy, particularly in the way that some of the gentlest and most attractive ballet music was used as the backdrop for a rape scene.   That was gratuitous (even in the toned down version that was restaged as a result of the protests) but the criticism rather drew attention away from what I thought was a very intelligent production which illuminated the drama very well.  But of course the reason to attend a performance is for the music.  William Tell is a simply staggering score.  It has absolutely everything from beautiful evocations of the Swiss country side to moving arias and ensembles of great drama.  The huge concerted finale of Act 2 left me virtually breathless with excitement.  There are a few pages of humdrum music - what I call "painting by numbers" music, which are common to many of the big French operas of the time, where the need to fill up time to fit the stage action takes over - but these are in the minority in a very long opera full of astonishing invention.    In many ways Rossini leaves the best till last. This evocation to liberty as the threat of war is averted is simply one of the most stunning moments in all music. Almost out of nowhere Rossini finds a breath of vision and a sense of time almost standing still which seems to belong to the world of late Verdi and Wagner. Yet, we must remind ourselves, this is music from 1829 by a composer aged 37: even most astonishingly it was his 39th opera (the exact number depends slightly on how you count revised versions of operas rewritten for performances in France) and it was his last. Just as I speculated on what late Schubert might have been like, I can only dream of what Rossini would have been writing in his old age - after all he lived well into the era of Tristan. I've listed to a lot of Rossini recently and never tire of it. If you want to take you listening beyond the overtures why not try the third act of Otello - with a heartbreaking lament for Desdemona, or the simply gorgeous trio near the end of Le Comte Ory which is at the same farcical and achingly beautiful. It would take far too long to describe what is going on here - suffice it to say that there is a woman, a man pretending to be a woman, and a man, played by a woman, who is also pretending to be a woman!. Don't worry - just sit back and enjoy!

In memoriam Pierre Boulez

Sad, but not completely unexpected news yesterday of the death of Pierre Boulez.  He had been too ill to attend any of the 90th birthday celebrations last year and had not conducted for several years.

In the days when I was a student he was a rather terrifying figure because of his absolute disdain for all but a tiny fragment of the western musical tradition and the complexity of his theoretical writings. I am not sure I ever got through all of "Boulez on music today" which was required reading.  Recordings of his music itself were still quite rare and it was obvious that the performers were struggling to keep up with his demands.  Everything seemed hard edged and cold.  You could tell that there was some real creativity there, but it was hard to find anything to enjoy rather than admire.

Now with the benefit of what must be nearly 40 more years of musical experience Boulez's music does seem to be part of the tradition of Debussy and Ravel.  There is a sensuousness about much of it which was I suppose there all of the time, but a generation ago very few people could hear it.    But it is a sobering though that Le marteau sans maître (1953) is closer in time to La Mer (1905) than it is to us today.

I suppose that what is happening here is what has happened throughout musical history.  What seemed impossibly difficult a generation ago gradually becomes accepted and part of the normal musical experience.  You only have to look at reactions to late Beethoven, Wagner or Mahler to see this.  While I don't suppose that Boulez will ever become last night of the Proms material I think that we will see that he does retain a place in the repertory.  Boulez of course never did conduct the last night of the proms while he was musical director of the BBC symphony orchestra.  What a pity he didn't do it once - that would really have been something to savour.  He could be very charming and he might - might! - just have had the audience eating out of his hand.  We will never know.

I suspect that, just as Stravinsky has come to be seen as the dominant musical force of the first half of the 20th century, Boulez will come to be seen as his equivalent for the second half. It is hard to see anybody else who could command that place.

Starting again

Not for the first time I find myself coming back to this blog.  This time I really will make a determined effort to keep posting regularly.



What better place to start that with the late Haydn quartets.  I've just been listening to the two op 77 quartets.  I only intended to listen to the first movement of op 77 no 1 but found myself totally engaged and listened through to both of them plus the fragment published as op 103.

These quartets are to me the epitome of the Viennese classical style.  Everything is so effortless and under control yet full of surprises.  I think that I know these quartets well (I remember studying them at University nearly 40 years ago) but there are still harmonic twists and turns which still catch me out.  If I had to single out one movement it would be the slow movement of op 77 no 2.  This starts utterly simply with a simple melody over a walking bass and develops into the most sublime glorious outpouring of pure musical eloquence.  Of course such simplicity and apparent effortlessness can only be achieved though great artistry and years of experience and that is exactly what Haydn brings. And even here, with music I know and love so well, I still heard a few bars of viola counterpoint towards the end that I had not recalled before.

Much as I love playing the bassoon I do miss the opportunity to have played string quartets.  I've played them as piano duets which is fun, but not quite the same thing.

One track wonders - Berceuse Créole

This is a charming Berceuse - really more of a lullaby by the french composer Henri Sauguet,  He was of the generation just behind Le Six and although he lived a long time and was very prolific he has rather disappeared from view.



I remember hearing this on the radio some years ago (I think in a programme introduced by Jeremy Nicholas , though I might be wrong on that) and was utterly enchanted by its simplicity but also but the piquancy of the harmony.  I can't find a copy of the text on line, but it is a bed time song to a child from its mother , who is looking out over the sea and watching the birds and the boats fly away.  It was written in Madagascar and actually comes from an opera le plumet du colonel








I don't think that I have ever heard another note of Sauguet's music, although there are published recordings and other extracts on YouTube  so I really ought to find out more about him.

One track wonders - Love's dream after the ball

I have mentioned in this blog before how I sometime leave the IPOD on random and see what comes up. This popped out a few days ago and I thought that I would share it. But more than that it got me thinking about composers for whom I have precisely one track on my IPOD.



This is a gorgeous piece of nostalgic delight by Alphons Czibulka (there are various spellings) who was an Hungarian bandmaster and composer of operettas.  He was obviously very prolific as this is opus 356!



Richard Bonynge knows exactly how to bring off a piece like this.  He obviously enjoys the charm and sentimentality but he doesn't milk it for all it is worth.  It takes great musicianship and technique to perform light music as elegantly as this,













I doubt that many readers will have heard of Czibulka, but I would be prepared to put quite a lot of money on a wager that everybody reading this will recognise at least one of his melodies.  The "hearts and flowers" melody so often used as an accompaniment to love scenes in the silent movies is based on a song by Czibulka!  Whether that is how he would like to have achieved immortality in that way is a moot point, but at least he has left a thumb print on musical and cinema history.

Heavenly length?

Had a rehearsal play through of Schubert 9 last week.  It is a piece which excites strong opinions.  But one thing that all orchestral players agree on is that it is one of the most exhausting pieces in the entire repertoire.  It is not long as a Mahler symphony, but in Mahler there are generally places to take a break, whereas the Schubert is inexorable and there is nowhere to relax.  The first three movements are difficult enough in this respect, but the finale - over 1000 bars - is in a class of its own.  Thankfully we did it without all the repeats.  I do remember playing in a performance years ago with all of the repeats - it very nearly finished me off.

As far as is known Schubert never heard the work performed - indeed there seems not to have been a performance in his lifetime, although there may have been a private informal run through.  Schumann admired what he call the symphony's "heavenly length" but I am of the view that had Schubert heard the symphony in performance he would have made some small excisions here and there just to cut out some of the repetition.

But what a symphony it is.  In many ways it is more modern and forward looking than Beethoven's 9th symphony , which is more or less its contemporary.  So much of it looks forward to the world of the next generation. Heard out of context parts of the trio are pure Dvorak, while the slow alternating chords near the end of the slow movement are highly characteristic of Brahms.  Incidentally it was Brahms who was responsible for the confusion over the numbering of the symphony.  He believed that unfinished works should be numbered after finished works, so attached the number 7 to the symphony, on the basis it was the only symphony Schubert finished after no 6.  The "unfinished" was no 8.  So the parts we were playing from were headed symphony no 7.  The absurdity of this symphony being numbered before the earlier unfinished symphony was gradually appreciated and so the symphony became no 9.  The unfinished remained no 8.  And no 7?  Well there is another unfinished symphony which became no 7.  This is much more fragmentary - for most of the piece we only have a first violin line so it is not really performable, although there have been realisations of it.  But it plugs in the gap in the numbering very conveniently.

The other composer whose music seems pre-echoed in the symphony is Bruckner.  Some of the harmonic daring , particularly in the first movement, seems to foreshadow much of what can be found in Bruckner - and of course the sheer scale of Schubert 9 was not really matched until Bruckner's symphonies a generation later.  But there is a direct connection between the two composers.  Right towards the end of his life Schubert felt the need to improve his counterpoint skills and arranged some lessons with Simon Sechter, who was one of the leading teachers of the day.  We don't know exactly what happened in those lessons, indeed if they every really took place, but it is astonishing that Schubert felt he needed lessons.  The link is that Sechter was one of Bruckner's main teachers - we know for certain that Bruckner went through an intensive course of harmony and counterpoint with Sechter.

Schubert 9 is of course the work of a young man, even though it is a "late" work.   I can remember discussing with one of my lecturers at university what Schubert's music might have developed into had he lived longer. After all he would only have been in his mid 60s when Tristan und Isolde was written.   One senses that had he lived Schubert would have got to the harmonic language of Tristan well before Wagner.