SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD BBC PROMENADE CONCERT REVIEW

 

Prom 1: Mahler Symphony No.8 ‘Symphony of a Thousand’: Soloists, various choruses cathedral choristers, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jiři Bělohlávek (conductor). Royal Albert Hall, London 16.7.2010 (JPr)

Prom 3: Verdi, Simon Boccanegra (Semi-staged performance): Soloists, Royal Opera House Chorus and Orchestra, Antonio Pappano (conductor). Royal Albert Hall, London 18.7.2010 (JPr)


With the huge orchestral and choral forces required, as well as eight vocal soloists, Mahler’s mighty Eighth Symphony (here, as often elsewhere, ‘The Symphony of about 500’) is performed only rarely and on extra-special occasions. There was no better reason to perform it on the opening night of the 2010 BBC Proms season because the classical music world is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. However if the work is to be used as a grand opening statement, then it should be done well … which sadly this wasn’t. In Edinburgh in September Donald Runnicles and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra will perform this same symphony with a line-up of vastly experienced singers capable – at least on paper - of performing the work with much more ease and insight that those presented with the task at the Royal Albert Hall. The 2010 Proms planners probably insisted a long time ago that Mahler 8 must open the series of concerts for this special Mahler year, despite the most suitable singers available probably being booked for opera festivals throughout the world. Hindsight is a wonderful thing of course, but Mahler would probably have been served much better by bringing Runnicles and his team down to London later in this Proms season.

If ever there was a Mahler score to suggest the sort of opera he might have written, Mahler 8 is certainly it. Yet what is it all about – supposing, of course, that this is a relevant question for any piece of classical music? It seems to start with the mass-like first movement as a religious statement, yet understanding Mahler’s philosophy as we do, he could not have been unaware of the Romantic conception of Goethe's Faust, from which Part II derives, as something more human and less spiritual. Mahler considered his young wife Alma to be his ‘Eternal-Feminine’ (Ewig-Weibliche) and the symphony goes on to marry the sacred and the secular into a personal declaration of love for Alma. It is no surprise at all that he ends up dedicating the work to her and Alma herself said that Mahler had ‘discovered a new term in music: an ethical-mystical humanity. He enriched the symbolism of music - which already included love, war, religion, nature and mankind - with Man as a lonely creature, unredeemed on earth and circling through the universe, a lost child waiting in silent meditation in the greenwood twilight for its father to come.’ Actually though, this statement probably helps us no further with our own understanding of the work’s unconventional architecture than Stravinsky’s comment about it - ‘was so much machinery really needed just to prove that two and two equals four?’ Perhaps the answer lies in the repeated chords heard as Pater Profundus in Part II calls for God’s mercy on his thoughts and we hear clearly references to Wagner’s Parsifal which appears to be Mahler’s inspiration for his work.

The jury seems to be out on how good a Mahlerian conductor Jiři Bělohlávek may be. At best this symphony’s music resonates with artistic anguish and spiritual yearning and its power can be truly moving. However Part I seemed to fail to hit any great heights of choral ecstasy and in the Faust section the best moments were the purely orchestral ones - the opening orchestral scene-painting and the other brief interludes. The various choruses and choristers sang radiantly enough but it was clear that tempi drifted a little during their contributions. Not even the BBC Symphony Orchestra was at its best with the brass section being the worst culprits. Bělohlávek kept a tighter rein on the thematic echoes and anticipated ascension of the second movement but overall it lacked, for me at least, any great spirituality or real sense of inner glow.

In the cavernous Royal Albert Hall and its tricky acoustic it was impossible to decipher from were I sat directly opposite the performers, what language the Latin hymn ‘Veni, creator spiritus!’ was being sung in. I have debated whether to name the soloists – and mostly have decided not since it was not their fault that they were given the job. I do have to ask why there were no British singers performing however. I can absolve the late tenor replacement Stefan Vinke of any blame as he might not have had time to truly sing the part into his voice and the best singers were Stephanie Blythe as Mulier Samaritana and Malin Christensson who projected her two lines as Mater Gloriosa very well from high up near the organ loft. As for the other singers, though I am sure they have well-schooled voices, but they were generally too small for this Mahler and the higher lines of their contributions taxed them all. I left this first night disappointed with the feeling that it had been much ado about nothing!

I caught some moments of this year’s second Prom on TV on Saturday and what a dispiriting occasion that looked too. A concert performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ... thankfully without music stands for the soloists but no costumes either. The orchestra looked and sounded rather thin in numbers and most of the leading singers – apart from Bryn Terfel – sounded occasionally quite tired. This production has been performed recently in Cardiff and Birmingham and would only have been made bearable with a costumed semi-staging. Wagner’s ‘comic’ ruminations on ‘German art’ and the effect of an outsider on a closed community, needs more than superior rehearsal clothes and physical interactions limited (or so it seemed) to pursed lips and raised eyebrows. I had seen the production in Cardiff – and I like many I suspect – soon turned over to watch something else. Surely only the most fervent Wagnerian (eg the TV programme’s presenter Stephen Fry?) could have hung on through five hours of this on TV or six-and-a quarter hours in the Royal Albert Hall.

So what a joy it was to be there the following night when the Proms programmers got it exactly right. Plácido Domingo gave only his second ever Proms performance, following his Siegmund in 2005, in the title role of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. I have had a rollercoaster ride with a burgeoning Verdi epiphany lately from the highs of the Elijah Moshinsky staging at Covent Garden (see review) on which this true semi-staging in Peter J Hall’s costumes was based, to the low of the recent La traviata revival (review). And it is true that so little happened in Moshinsky’s traditional production that it was tailor-made for re-staging at the Royal Albert Hall, where the depth of the Covent Garden stage could be replicated by using of the width of the platform and the stairs on either side. All the choral and orchestral positives from my night at the opera were repeated here and indeed under Antonio Pappano’s assured conducting I doubt if I have ever heard a better chorus or orchestra at the Proms.

When Domingo bounded on in the Prologue complete with darkened hair and beard he seemed even more vigorous than on the opening night of the Covent Garden run of performances. I had thought that thge only time warp happening during this Proms season would be at the forthcoming Dr Who event but Domingo looked younger and sounded fresher than of late even though he has never sounded less like a baritone! His voice and those of his colleagues filled the Royal Albert Hall. Joseph Calleja as Gabriele Adorno was outstanding with just the right hint of honey in his tenor voice to remind me of Pavarotti: there can be no higher praise. Equally good was Ferruccio Furlanetto’s sepulchral bass as a majestic Fiesco and Lukas Jakobski made a suitably conspiratorial Pietro. But what a surprise to find Marina Poplavskaya singing more securely than I have ever heard her before and sounding like a true Verdi soprano, even though I thought her Italian pronunciation ]a little suspect at times. Also how great it was to hear Jonathan Summers sounding much fresher as Paolo, the main villain of the piece. Is it me or does he seem these days to be auditioning for the lead in the yet unwritten Bela Lugosi-the Musical? The resemblance now is almost uncanny?

But Domingo’s progression from corsair to the Mandela-like sagacity of the ageing Doge trying to unite the warring factions in Verdi’s 1881 revision of the opera, was the primary focus of attention : and he can have rarely sung with such ease or commanded the stage so well in recent years. He deserved the standing ovation he receive as did everyone else involved . More like this please.

I know that Domingo was trying to a play trick on his fellow performers but he was probably not aware of the tradition in Britain of some of our best loved entertainers breathing their last on stage with the sound of the audience’s applause still being heard. The death of Tommy Cooper at the end of his stage act live on TV still comes readily to mind, so it was perhaps not the best idea for Domingo to ‘play dead’ for what seemed an interminable time after crashing to the floor at the end of Act III. He left it just long enough to cause stirrings amongst the Prommers and anxious looks from Pappano, Poplavskaya and Calleja, as well as, Peter Manning, leader of the orchestra. I doubt that anyone was in on the ‘joke’ as everyone – including myself – was mightily relieved when Domingo stood up, smiling broadly, and very pleased with his ‘prank’. Don’t do that again Plácido – my heart couldn’t survive it twice!

As a postscript to this performance and the opening night’s Mahler, I have to comment that – technology being what it is these days – surely it must be possible to project translations on screens around the Royal Albert Hall at performances such as these rather than chopping down forests – sustainable though they may be – to provide booklets with the English words in them. I wasn’t there for Die Meistersinger but the booklet issued for that must have been a foot thick.

Jim Pritchard

 
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