Thursday, March 14, 2013

As easy as A, B, C?

I've written a post for the Culturekicks.co.uk site about why we need urgently to address the issue of language for talking about music. The term "dumbing down" is essentially a misnomer: a more correct term is "de-skilling". With a whole generation forcibly removed from musical literacy and terrified of learning the necessary bits and pieces - however easy they really are - how are we to keep talking about music at all? Read it all here: http://www.culturekicks.co.uk/2013/03/14/as-easy-as-a-b-c/

Culturekicks, btw, is created by the same team that used to run the late lamented and daftly dumped Spectator Arts Blog, and it has kept the latter's archive of brilliant posts by brilliant writers...including yrs truly. More power to their elbows.

A solution to vocal problems? Oh yes! Oh yes!

Argy-bargy at the Royal Opera House press conference yesterday: in the course of a highly operatic morning, Tony Pappano had a go at everyone about the misinformation and conspiracy theories that circulated around the Robert le Diable cast changes a few months back.

Leaving aside the possibility that the work itself is jinxed and should just be quietly buried...what happened, Pappano said, was this: first Florez decided against moving into heavier repertoire, following an unhappy experience with the Duke of Mantua; next, Diana Damrau got pregnant; and though Maria Poplavskaya was ill, she then recovered and went back into the show because her doctor said she was was well enough to do so. The saga with Jennifer Rowley is another issue altogether...

Apart from that, there's plenty good stuff next season including a recital on the main stage by Jonas Kaufmann, who'll also be singing in Puccini's Manon Lescaut; three Strauss operas for the composer's anniversary year, including Karita Mattila in Ariadne auf Naxos; Faust with Calleja and Terfel; Les Dialogues des Carmelites with Magdalena Kozena on stage and Simon Rattle in the pit; a new production of Parsifal; and a lavish, expensive staging together with the Royal Ballet of The Sicilian Vespers. In ballet, there'll be a full-length creation by Christopher Wheeldon based on Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale, with a new score by Joby Talbot, and Carlos Acosta will be in charge of a new staging of Don Quixote. Sales are up, with ballet reaching 98% of box office and opera hot on its heels (so to speak). More opera 13-14 news here. More ballet 13-14 news here.

Still, it was clear that TP is fairly fed up with singers who cancel, and that it does happen more than it used to.

What to do? Maybe the ROH needs to invest in some vibrators.

This is not a joke. (At least, I don't think it is.) Just look at this news from the University of Alberta:
Vibrators are being used by researchers at the University of Alberta to help give actors a little bit more vocal power. The team of researchers found that pressing the sex toys against the throats of actors helps to give them improved projection and range – vocally, of course.
“You can actually watch on a spectrograph how vocal energy grows,” said David Ley, who worked on the project. “Even when you take the vibrator off, the frequencies are greater than when first applied.
He said he has used this method with singers, schoolteachers and actors, and so far the vibrator technique has always worked...
Ley headed over to a local love shop in search of some hand-held vibrators in order to test out whether they could help release various forms of muscular tension. He was looking for a vibrator with a frequency somewhere between 100 and 120 hertz, which is close to the range of the human voice. Once he applied the vibrator to an actress’ neck over the vocal cords, she was able to produce striking results.
(As reported on RedOrbit - Your Universe Online - read the whole thing here.)

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Oh, my ears and whiskers!



Christopher Wheeldon's madcap, rainbow ballet of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is coming back to Covent Garden on Friday and it will hit the big screens live on 28 March. I went down the rabbit hole to have a chat with two of its stars, Lauren Cuthbertson and Edward Watson. The piece is out in The Independent today - and Lauren also talks about what it was like when her Knave, Sergei Polunin, walked out with no notice last year.

Sod's Law, though, along with the ROH website, reveals this morning that poor old Lauren is not able to go on for her three performances after all. Seems to be the lingering effects of the ankle surgery. We wish her the speediest possible recovery. Sarah Lamb replaces her, and Yuhui Choe takes over the performances that Sarah was previously scheduled to do. Meanwhile, watch the ROH news page for more of my interview with the wonderful Ed, in which we talk about Mayerling.

On Saturday afternoon, incidentally, I went to the (mostly) excellent triple bill of Apollo, 24 Preludes (the new Ratmansky to orchestrated Chopin) and Aeternum (new Wheeldon) and three quarters of the cast - six out of eight dancers - had to be replaced in the Ratmansky. The last-minute line-up did provide a chance to enjoy the radiant dancing of someone who seems to be a real "one to watch" - Melisssa Hamilton, who hails from Northern Ireland and won a Critics' Circle Award in 2009. More about the programme when I've got a mo.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Andras Schiff and a different kind of holy grail

If there's a holy grail for pianists, it is probably Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' Sonata, Op.106. Those performing the Final Three Sonatas are plentiful these days, but ask any pianist about their Beethovenian inclinations and mostly it'll be the mighty H that they will treat with the most  respect/kid gloves/freakin'terror. It is a Missa Solemnis of the keyboard, a Grosse Fugue for ten fingers and one brain. If you hear a good performance - one that shows the intricate mastery of the counterpoint, the searching existential embrace of the adagio and the strength of the core spirit that must win through, to say nothing of the seeds of nearly a century of music that followed it - it can feel a little like seeing a unicorn, so startling, unbelievable and inspiring is the result.

There was indeed a unicorn at the Wigmore Hall last night.

Continuing his series of the complete Beethoven Sonatas, Andras Schiff, tackling them in chronological order, has reached the late works and put together Opp.90, 101 and 106 in one programme, performed without a break. After bowing a couple of times he sat down to play an encore. What could follow the 'Hammerklavier'?

He stayed silent, smiling to himself and Wilhelm Backhaus's Bechstein for a moment longer than was comfortable, just long enough to think "Andras, nooooo..." - but happily it was a yes, for what comes after 106? Why, of course...109. Whole of it. Light relief, perhaps, after the unicorn? We still remember the time Schiff played the whole Wanderer Fantasy as an encore while giving the complete Schubert Sonatas 15 or 20 years ago. Those attending his Final Three Beethovens on Friday are in for a treat.

It can take a Bach expert to bring out certain truths in late Beethoven. This music isn't primarily emotional, but spiritual, philosophical, wise and human on the grandest scale. All of this Schiff is ready for in a way that few others can match. Sensibly, he waited until his fifties to tackle the complete Beethovens and his tone has deepened, strengthened and broadened to encompass the sonatas' demands. There's seriousness of purpose yet no portentousness in this playing; a powerful spirituality matches a deep affection, and respect is gently tempered with character-enhancing flexibility.

In Op.90 Schiff brought out the tense, unresolvable dialogue of the terse first movement and the Schubertian expansiveness of the songful second (cue a sense that this is where Schubert's D959 finale came from); for Op.101 the contrasts of counterpoint and recitative bounced and sparked off one another. This exquisite work was one of Wagner's favourites, incidentally. Though it seemed out of vogue for a while, I've heard at least two other pianists perform it just in the past few months, and good it is to see it returning in force.

Even a pianist who can memorise and whirl through the complete Bach 48 will admit that the 'Hammerklavier' is a tough call, but in Schiff's hands it is, first and last, all about counterpoint; and it's also a sonata that exists, metaphorically speaking, not in three but eleven dimensions, allowing us to time-travel through the parallel universes of musical creation in a matter of moments. The first movement and scherzo had a fiery, elemental energy that never scorched or scarred the grass beneath the feet; the adagio was a monumental exploration, with many questions and the tragedy invoked of few answers; and the vast final fugue...well, any hats in the hall were duly doffed. 

And for the whole sonata you listen in awe as the history of music flashes in front of your ears, feeding in and out: Bach's immeasurable treasure in The Art of Fugue, Brahms's Piano Sonata No.1 and Symphony No.4, Liszt's spiritual questing, Schumann's close-knitted multilayers and wondrous battiness, Wagner's Parsifal (yes), entire structures of Mahler, and the thorniest moments of Schoenberg, everything seems to spring from this mighty well that is the deep, nourishing and insatiable fount of Beethoven's genius.

Odd to think that the word 'Beethoven' apparently means 'beetroot field'. There's an example for the wonders of human potential.

The clarity of Schiff's touch was enhanced by the olde-worlde tone of his ex-Backhaus Bechstein (coming home to what used, of course, to be the Bechstein Hall before British Deutschophobia around the First World War forced a name change to Wigmore). It's a strong, beautiful old piano, with that woody, characterful Bechstein sound (I wrote about it rather fulsomely after the Lucerne concert in November) that offers a distinctive personality in virtually every octave; over the course of the cycle in many cities Schiff has fused his vision with the instrument's tone and brings out the best in it.

Oh yes, and Op.109. A chance to relax in its intimacy, ineffability and transparency after the rigours of the 'Hammerklavier'; yet the wonder remains undiminished as the variations - close indeed in spirit to Schiff's beloved Goldberg Variations - gradually unfold from simple sarabande to floods of dazzling stardust, before enwrapping them again in an almost matter-of-fact recapitulation. As if to say, "Now you know what's hidden inside this modest exterior, you'll never look at anything in quite the same way again."

Here is Andras himself, talking about the 'Hammerklavier' at the Wigmore Hall in his lecture series there (2004-6).




Saturday, March 09, 2013

A feminist opera by two men

Written on Skin is that, and much more too. I found it intriguing to get its director Katie Mitchell's perspective on the challenges of staging it, and I've also been talking to its composer, George Benjamin. Part of the result is in the Independent today, there's my longer chat with George on the ROH website, and the full version of the Indy piece with Katie's comments is below. First, here's the ROH's video... I'm a little miffed about missing the first night, but will be going on 18 March.




According to the director Katie Mitchell, it was not so much a standing ovation as “an eruption” that greeted the world premiere of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin. A rapturous response for contemporary opera is a tad rare, to say the least, but at last summer’s Aix-en-Provence Festival critics and public alike were swift to declare this one a masterpiece. Now it is coming to the Royal Opera House (it is a co-production between five international theatres and festivals) and a new CD, recorded at Aix, is also testimony to the extraordinary quality of its music, text and performers. 

Based on a 13th-century Provençal story entitled Guillem de Cabestanh – le coeur mangé (“The Eaten Heart”), the opera brings together this leading British composer’s precisely wrought music and an original text by Martin Crimp. A group of present-day angels, world-weary and vengeful, awaken from the medieval dead three people: the Protector, his wife Agnès and a character named simply the Boy – in fact one of the angels – to re-enact the worst moments of their lives. 

The Protector commissions the Boy to create a book of illuminated manuscripts, which are “written on skin”, to portray his glory. Agnès – illiterate, oppressed, bright and furious ­– begins a passionate affair with the Boy and demands that he enters this fact into his book. Questioned by the Protector, he lies, saying that his lover is Agnès’s sister; but Agnès berates him for his untruth. The facts revealed in writing – which Agnès cannot read – the Protector murders him, then forces Agnès to eat a meal which he later declares was the Boy’s heart. Agnès defies him: nothing he can do will erase the taste. Before he can kill her, she leaps from a window to her death. 

As Crimp’s libretto presents it, this dark history is anything but realistic. Each character narrates his or her own actions while living them; medieval depictions rub shoulders with contemporary evocations of multi-storey car parks, motorways and red shoes; the two worlds bleed imagery into one another. The sectional set design by Vicki Mortimer reflects this by placing the love triangle’s action alongside a contemporary studio for the controlling and observing angels – one of whose wings are literally written on his skin. But within this artifice, Benjamin’s music is virtually a form of hyper-realism, highlighting the nuances of the emotions as if placing them under a microscope, with a delicacy of orchestral texture that allows each word to be effortlessly audible. 

Benjamin is a notorious perfectionist, relinquishing his music so slowly that it can seem positively reluctant. Despite his early start – he was only 20 when a work of his was first performed at the Proms – at 52 he still has fewer than 40 works to his catalogue. Following a triumph with a 35-minute drama, Into the Little Hill, also to a libretto by Crimp, Written on Skin is his first full-length opera. And there is a chance that this work may open his floodgates at last. 

“While I was writing it I became a complete recluse,” Benjamin says. “I stopped conducting, I stopped travelling, I almost stopped teaching and I devoted myself, all day, every day, every week throughout the whole period, to a degree of concentration and submersion in work that I’ve never experienced before. But it came out, for me, very quickly – the whole process, once I got down to composing, took under two and a half years. It seems that when I have a text by Martin Crimp, wonderful people to write it for and a context which seems harmonious and welcoming, then my speed of composing is roughly eight to ten times faster than is normal for me.” 

Perhaps that means that he is, at heart, an opera composer? “I think there’s something in that,” he acknowledges – and confirms that he and Crimp are now discussing their next project.

“The wonderful thing about Martin’s librettos is that they tell simple stories very directly,” says Benjamin, “but from an unpredictable angle. The words are of extraordinary clarity, but the theatrical form and the approach to narrative are highly individual. This beckons my music. If it was a completely normal, everyday setting, I wouldn’t feel any need for music. And this unusual construction, while rigorously clear, is the magic spell that allows me to write music to his words. I depend on that a hundred per cent and my objective is to serve his text and bring it to life.”

That, he adds, is what opera is for. “To me, opera is many things; but one thing is that you come to an evening, it does something to you and you come out a little bit changed. It should confront serious and profound things within us – because that, in a way, is why people sing.”

Katie Mitchell’s task has been to match the action – often visceral and violent – both to this special structure and to some extraordinary musical coups-de-théâtre. And there are two female orgasms on stage, for the story is at core about erotic rights and freedom, which Agnès asserts against the odds. “Agnès is made free sexually and that’s rather amazing,” Mitchell says. “It’s a tremendously feminist piece, which is thrilling in ‘planet opera’.” Feminist slants in opera – traditional or contemporary – indeed remain all too rare. 

Throughout the piece, Mitchell adds, “we had to construct a world where modern-day angels could talk as they do, yet where simultaneously the medieval story could run as it does. And we had to try again and again to find a means of staging the end that was as good as the music.” Without betraying the entire secret of the opera’s most startling moment, let’s just say that Benjamin does something utterly breathtaking with a glass harmonica.

At the Royal Opera House, Benjamin conducts his opera himself. The Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan – who is also a trained dancer – stars in the extremely physical role of Agnès, the British baritone Christopher Purves is the Protector and Bejun Mehta, the celebrated American counter-tenor, is the Boy/Angel. 

 Mitchell has no doubt that Written on Skin will be a modern classic. “It’s a remarkable work in every way,” she says. “That was palpable on the opening night in Aix. The brilliance of the composition and the libretto has an immediate and concrete effect on people. I think it will outlive us all.”

Written on Skin, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, is on now. Box office: 020 7304 4000