Butterworth: Two English idylls

Day 339

Butterworth: Two English idylls

Hallé Orchestra

Mark Elder

I've a busy few days ahead with concerts so only time for a brief piece today.

It is difficult not to see George Butterworth through the eyes of the First World War. He was killed at the battle of the Somme when he was barely out of his teens and is always regarded as one of the lost generation who might have gone on to great things in later life had he been spared.  He only left a small number of pieces, mainly songs based on Houseman and some short orchestral pieces which are very much part of the same ethos. This music is very much part of what Elizabeth Lutyens christened the 'cow pat' school and I have to say that I rather share her views. I've never quite connected with this style of English music. It is perfectly pleasant of course, but I do find it rather cloying and the harmonic language a bit fey. Still, one can't be too hard on the music of somebody who was still a teenager when he wrote the two Idylls. It is probably my fault that I hear them more as background music to a nostalgic TV drama set in the countryside in 1910 rather than music that grabs the attention in its own right.

Ustvolskaya: Symphony no 5

Day 338

Galina Ustvolskaya: Symphony No. 5 Amen

Cantata Profana

I came across Ustvolskaya after watching a fascinating and typically provocative review of a recording of her complete symphonies by Dave Hurwitz on YouTube. Who could not want to listen to some of her music after hearing it described as Allan Petterson meets Webern!  Conveniently, and this is one of the reasons I chose it, is that Ustvolskaya now completes my musical alphabet. I have at least one composer for each letter now.

This symphony is in fact a fairly compact (15 mins) chamber piece scored for trumpet, tuba, violin, oboe, wooden cube(!) and narrator. It is austere and largely consists of short motifs rather than long melodic phrases. I found it surprisingly compelling. I can say that I really understood what was going on all of the time - the reciter is intoning the Lord's Prayer in Russian against the backdrop of the instrumentalist. The wooden cube is a large hollow box beaten with hammers - it is quite an impressive percussive effect. It was not in fact as depressing as 'Allan Petterson meets Webern' suggests that it might be. Certainly it didn't raise the spirits, but in its way is was impressive and haunting. 

Donizetti: Rita

Day 337

Donizetti: Rita (Deux Hommes et une Femme)

Soloists

Hallé Orchestra

Mark Elder

Perhaps surprisingly, given my enthusiasm for Rossini, I don't have a great deal of experience with Donizetti. I've know Don Pasquale since my student days (it might even have been when I was still at school), ever since seeing a scene from it in one of Geraint Evan's wonderful TV opera masterclasses. It is still one of my favourite operas. But other than that I only know a few of the well known bits and pieces.

Rita is a one act opera with 8 music numbers separated by dialogue. It has a curious history. It was written, with a French text, for the Opéra-Comique in 1841 but for some reason was rejected by the management. A projected performance in Italy didn't come off and it was left unperformed at Donizetti's death in 1848. It finally received its first performance, at the Opéra-Comique in 1860.

It is really hard to imagine why it was turned down originally because I think it is an absolute gem. It fizzes with real energy and humour. Donizetti's Italianate lyricism shines though but it is given a characteristically French tinge with more than a touch of Auber. There are some really good comic scenes - such as when the two men play a card game with the loser  having to marry the rather fearsome Rita. Of course it all ends happily. This was a scintillating piece and I am so glad to have made its acquaintance. 

Humperdinck: Königskinder

Day 336

Humperdinck: Königskinder

Soloists

Chorus and Orchestra of West German Radio

Richard Kraus

This opera has a couple of minor footnotes in operatic history. First because the original goose girl (the starring role written especially for her) Geraldine Farrar was said to have trained the flock of geese who appeared with her on stage. Whether that is true or just something dreamt up by the Metropolitan Opera's publicity department I don't know, but she certainly appeared for her curtain call on the first night holding a goose. The other context in which it is mentioned is that is an early (perhaps the earliest) example of sprechstimme, that half-speaking half-singing style noted with cross headed notes which Schoenberg used in Pierrot Lunaire.

In fact the history books have not got this quite right. Originally Humperdinck did write this as incidental music to a stage play and used sprechstimme there, but once he turned it into an opera almost all of it disappeared - only one line of sprechstimme remains.

Humperdinck is of course famous for Hänsel und Gretel. That is a gorgeous piece which is perhaps the only post-Wagnerian opera to remain in the repertory. Wagner was such an enormously influential figure that all of his followers, and there were many, simply couldn't survive comparison. Königskinder is, if anything, more Wagnerian than Hänsel: indeed at moments it seems to seriously close to direct imitation - the yearning string figure with its appoggiatura could have come straight out of Tristan. But the Wagner-like music is well balanced with the more gentle folksong-like material which is such a feature of Hänsel. Overall I think that Humperdinck got the balance right. There are some longueurs in the score but generally it does keep moving on nicely. There are some gorgeous bits of orchestral writing as well as some very stunning effects - the use of the piano in Act two to represent the bells works extremely well. This was another old recording (1952) so not all of the detail came through, but it was a studio recording rather than an off-air live performance so the quality was a lot better than yesterday's Spontini. Interesting to note that a young Fischer-Dieskau was in the cast. As soon as he opened his mouth his voice was instantly recognisable.

I can't see this ever becoming a repertory piece in the same way as Hänsel (English National Opera did a revival some years ago). It is too long for a children's opera and some of the choral and orchestral writing is as difficult as anything in Wagner so it is not something that could put on a short notice to fill a gap. But I was very pleased to have heard it. 

Spontini: Agnes von Hohenstaufen

Day 335

Spontini: Agnes von Hohenstaufen

Soloists

Maggio Musicale Florence

Vittorio Gui

My enthusiasm for 19th Century French opera, which I have alluded to several times in this notes, can be traced back to the performance of Spontini's La Vestale by the Nottingham University Opera Group in 1976. I sang in the chorus. The idiom, halfway between the classical and romantic traditions, was difficult to  fully appreciate at the time, but the work made a strong impression nonetheless and left with me with a real interest to hear more Spontini and indeed 19th century French opera. I've got to know the two other big French Spontini Operas, Olympie and Fernand Cortez, but although I had heard a few extracts from it I had never listened to the whole of Agnes von Hohenstaufen. This was Spontini's last opera and was written in Germany where he settled for the last part of his life. He had become rather embittered at the eclipse of his style in favour of the more overtly Romantic style exemplified in Der Freischutz.

The Opera was set to a German text but this performance is in Italian (the German version has never been recorded). The recording I listened to was an old off-air performance from the 1950s. It was very muddy in places with lots of stage noise and applause in odd places (presumably in response to what was going on on stage) but enough of the music shone through to enable me to appreciate the piece.

There is a famous anecdote (I've never been able to track it down to its original source and it is probably apocrophal) which concerns a man who was going deaf. He went to his doctor who suggested that they go together to a performance of Fernand Cortez as the shock of noise of the opera might unblock his ears. At the end of the performance he turned to his doctor and said 'it worked - I can hear' only to find his doctor looking back blankly at him: the noise had damaged his eardrums and he was no longer able to hear!'

That reputation for loudness certainly comes through in this opera - the big set pieces are on an impressive scale with some extremely exciting orchestral and vocal effects. But the lyrical side of Spontini is also much in evidence, particularly in some of the duets and ensembles. At his best he really was a force to be reckoned with and you can understand why Berlioz, for example, was so strong an advocate for his music.

But there are weaknesses. Sometime the music does fall into triviality and 'rum-ti-tum'. But most frustrating is Spontini's inability to transition from one section to another. Typically we get and ending and then the orchestra simply lays down another chord in a new key and off we go again. I've commented before on this being a common problem in early and mid 19th century French opera. It took French opera composers a long time before they had really mastered the art of transition.

But this fault, irritating as it is, shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of an appreciation of Spontini's achievement as a major contributor to operatic history. On any level this was an impressive piece. I do hope that Bru Zane take it up in its series of opera recordings - they have already done La Vestale and Olympie . It would be really good to hear a studio performance in a modern recording so that you can appreciate all of the subtleties in the score. 

Grime: Clarinet concerto

Day 334

Helen Grime: Clarinet concerto

Lyndsey Marsh

Hallé soloists

Jamie Phillips 

I was lucky enough to play Helen Grime’s Two Eardley Pictures a few years ago and was impressed by the sound world that she created. That was also my impression of this relatively brief clarinet concerto from 2009. The orchestra is only small but she uses it to achieve real clarity and some highly inventive textures. Indeed in many ways it the orchestra which draw the ear’s attention rather than the solo clarinet, which is occupied most of time in quite busy passage work which complements rather than dominates the texture. I imagine the effect is quite different in a live performance when you can see the soloist up front. So this another really good find.

This is the end of November and brings to an end this little group of works by female composers.Tomorrow is the start of the last month of this project and I will try as fill as many gaps as I can before the end of the year. There are still a few fairly important people who I have not round to yet.

Carwithen: Bishop Rock

Day 333

Doreen Carwithen: Bishop Rock

London Symphony Orchestra

Richard Hickox

Doreen Carwithen was reasonably well known as a film composer during her lifetime - she wrote the score for the official coronation of Elizabeth II, reportedly in only three days. She had made some headway as a composer of concert music but largely gave up her work in this field to look after her Husband William Alwyn. She did resume composition after his death. As in the case of so many female composers she rather faded away from view, though since her death there has been a revival of interest in her work.

This short piece dates from 1952 and is a musical portrait of the lighthouse and the surrounding area. It is very much in the spirit of Walton with a touch of Malcolm Arnold. I enjoyed it a lot - it would make a good bright and breezy first piece in a concert.