Friday, July 08, 2011

Stars, Night, Music and Light...

That's the title of the new piece by Judith Weir that will open the Proms next Friday. Today's Arts & Books cover feature in the Independent is my take on this year's Proms, rounding up some highlights and asking Roger Wright about a few of the hows and whys.

It's also vital to point out that as there's a real risk the Proms will be heavily slashed, along with the rest of the BBC, a few years down the line, this year is the time to get down to South Kensington and show our love and support. Happy to say that at time of blogging we're on the website's front page. Enjoy.

Today the paper also carries a comment piece I wrote the other day about the Opera North and Beached controversy. Yesterday morning, of course, we got the news that it's all been sorted and the opera is going ahead, if a tad tweaked, but this arrived too late for the print deadline. It's jolly nice to know that the story has a happy ending. (Just so you know I know, and I know you know I know.) Opera North has asked me to point out additionally that the mentioned £100,000 does not relate solely to Beached, but to the company's entire two-year residency in Bridlington.





Thursday, July 07, 2011

Josef Suk dies at 81

Very sad to hear of the death of Josef Suk, the great Czech violinist who was the grandson of Josef Suk the composer and the great-grandson of Antonin Dvorak. He returned to the recording studio after his supposed retirement to record music by certain family members - discs which are among the most treasured in my not-insubstantial collection. His sound was filled with personality and his feel for his native Czech music not only flowed in the blood but could almost convince you, listening, that you knew the steps to the folkdances when you didn't. He was the violinist of the Suk Trio in the 1950s and from 1992 to 2000 was manager and conductor of the Suk Chamber Orchestra. His recordings won numerous awards. More here from Ceske Noviny (Czech News).

It was one of my little dreams to go to Prague and bring him here to play Dvorak at the Royal Festival Hall, but that must now remain a dream.

UPDATE: Suk's obituary from The Telegraph.

Here he is playing extracts from the Four Pieces Op.17 by his grandfather, with pianist Jan Panenka, recorded for Supraphon in 1954

The truth in cement, plus ice

A couple of weeks ago the Indy sent me along to Garsington Opera's new home at Wormsley to sample the doughty festival's latest unearthed rarity: Vivaldi's La verita in cimento. The experience as a whole reminded me of a Wigmore Hall for summer opera: the size is similar, the musical standard astronomic and the audience consists of absolute cognoscenti: those we chatted to all turned out to be confirmed opera addicts, immensely knowledgeable and devoted. The new pavilion is glassy and airy; you can watch the sunset through the trees while the opera plays out.

Admittedly, the night we went was so cold and wet that it could have almost have been February; the pavilion is a little too open for comfort in such conditions. We all sat in our coats shivering through the Vivaldi and wondering how the Red Priest himself would have depicted such a season in music.

Having so said, I found myself in the extraordinary position of adoring every minute of the performance. This sphere of repertoire has never been my thang, especially not since 24 compulsory lectures on Italian baroque opera were rammed down our throats at Cambridge, leaving me with a Clockwork Orange response to most of it, other than my arch-beloved Monteverdi (whom I adored before even setting foot in the City of Perspiring Dreams). And so I wrote a five-star review while many of my fellow critics, who are normally much more enthusiastic about all this, were a bit more 'meh' about it. All credit to Laurence Cummings, whose conducting was as light and airy as the pavilion itself.

In case you missed it, here's my review.


Five stars
La verita in cimento
Garsington Opera, Wormsley, 20 June 2011
Review by Jessica Duchen

Not much is black and white in Vivaldi’s opera La verita in cimento - “Truth put to the test”. But the colour-coded designs (by Duncan Hayler) do help, so muddled is the situation in which the unfortunate Sultan Mamud finds himself. It’s all his own fault. Twenty-five years before curtain-up he switched round the babies of his wife and his mistress – who conveniently gave birth on the same day – so that the son of the woman he loved would be his heir. Now he’s decided to own up, throwing both his families into meltdown. It would be easy to show this story as an 18th-century morality tale: the ‘official’ son, Zelim (colour-code white), unravels the mess through personal renunciation. But David Freeman stages it as family drama à la Dynasty and it mostly works a treat.

Garsington Opera, famous for championing little-known repertoire, has struck musical gold with Vivaldi’s 1720 smash hit, here enjoying its UK premiere. The compact cast in this sensibly condensed version – six very busy singers – is perfect for the company’s new home, a glassy, light-filled pavilion theatre which achieves an intimacy rarely possible at any other performance of such world-class calibre.

Vivaldi’s genius presented all the warmth that was missing out in the soggy gardens. There’s always a surprise up his sleeve: a love-triangle ensemble sung by soprano and two counter-tenors garnished with sensual trills; some stunning musical bling for Melindo, the unofficial son (colour-code black), duetting hair-raisingly with the trumpets; or the lamenting wife, Rustena, propped up not only by Pimms but also by an ironically twittering recorder obbligato.

This cast could scarcely be bettered. Paul Nilon, a tenor and the lowest voice on stage, portrays Mamud as a weak, despotic ruler caught between two strong and marvellous women, respectively Jean Rigby as the tippling Rustena and Diana Montague as the self-possessed, flame-haired mistress Damira. The too-pragmatic princess Rosane is an icy, crystalline Ida Falk Winland, betrothed to crown rather than prince and hedging her bets (colour-code one black boot and one white). Both lads are counter-tenors: James Laing a magically poetic Zelim and Yaniv d’Or a Melindo who grew better the more bitter and furious the character became. The Garsington Opera Orchestra, under the inspired conducting of Laurence Cummings, shone as much as the singers: perfect tempi, radiant textures and wall-to-wall virtuosity, the mingling of harpsichord, theorbo and harp cladding the sounds in Vivaldian sunbeams. Glorious stuff.

Site stats...

As you know, I'm a confirmed technotwit and my understanding of how various blog rankings are worked out amounts to 000. Still, I'm pleased to see that on the Invesp.com list of the top 25 classical music blogs, JDCMB has pulled in at no.8 on the "ultimate rank". Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise is no.1. JDCMB is missing, though, from Invesp's ranking according to 'monthly visitors', despite last month having clocked up more than 3000 above the total of that particular no.1. Could be as simple as my site being implanted with a counting device that doesn't match theirs.

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

If Tosca survived, what about Brunnhilde?

Alex Ross has been to Rome and checked out the Castel Sant'Angelo, from the ramparts of which Tosca leaps to her death at the end of Puccini's opera. His reasonable conclusion is that the diva could well have survived, as there's a ledge just a few feet beneath. 

Could we face unexpected sequels to a range of operas in which the lead character's death mightn't be all it's cracked up to be? Just imagine...

Don Giovanni: the Commendatore drags the Don away ostensibly to hell - but once they're at a safe distance from the house he unmasks and turns out to be Giovanni's brother Giorgio in disguise, come to rescue baby bro from all those harpies. The boys run off and set themselves up with false papers on a yacht in Marbella.

Götterdämmerung: Brunnhilde utters her Immolation Scene, rides into the flames...and out the other side. She and her trusty Grane escape the apocalypse on the Rhine and cross the sea to a green and pleasant land, where they live quietly in the countryside before winning both the Derby and the Grand National. Brunnhilde becomes a famous equestrian champion and marries an aristocrat; Grane, on his retirement, sires a new generation of British racehorses with apparently magical powers.

Got any more?

(PS - have been writing my official response to the Opera North/Lee Hall situation, so watch that space...)