This is my type of equipment: I’ve had this pre-amp for years, it makes a great sound, and its control panel is, shall we say, refreshingly simple…
Opera North Ring Cycle on Southbank – thoughts
Last week Opera North’s much-praised Ring Cycle came to the Royal Festival Hall, and I cleared the decks to go to all four performances. This was a “fully staged concert version,” with a triptych of screens at the back of the stage showing video images, surtitles and some essential plot lines. The mimimalist dramatic realisation – with no props – left me wanting more, although nature did intervene to bring us a rainbow at the South Bank during Friday’s first interval. A fast track to Valhalla perhaps?
Inevitably this concept placed more emphasis on the music, with the Orchestra of Opera North on the stage rather than underneath it. The conductor was Opera North’s music director Richard Farnes whose reading of the score was outstanding. He leaves the company after 12 years at the helm, and he will be much missed; no-one has a bad word to say about him. And while the pick and mix cast could be disorientating – there were three different Wotans – maybe this was always going to be the nature of the beast, and we had an outstanding Brünnhilde in Kelly Cae Hogan.
This way of putting on the Ring also made it possible for Opera North to tackle this huge work in the first place; apart from anything else, none of its usual theatres have pits big enough to accommodate an orchestra of this vast size.
So what of Wagner’s score? Last week was a reminder that Wagner’s tetralogy is so much more powerful when heard in one go rather than in separate instalments. In particular I was gripped by the way the harmonic language of the Ring deepens over time – not only because of the unfolding tragedy of the drama, but the fact that the score was written over a twenty-year time span. Take for example what he does with the Rhinemaidens’ Rheingold motif: as the drama heads towards its conclusion in Götterdämmerung, the harmonies have become dark, twisted, and shocking.
This was one of my occasional Classic Discovery projects in which I team up with Olivia Lacey of the Feast of Reason supper club. In the past our joint projects have taken us to the LSO at the Barbican, to the LPO at the Festival Hall, and to hear Márta and György Kurtág in concert. These events aim to be both interesting and sociable; on this occasion I set the scene for the Ring by giving talks before or during each performance, and thanks to Olivia we enjoyed a picnic to die for in a bar on level 4.
As ever there was a really interesting group of people to get to know and exchange ideas with, from Wagner newbies to veterans of many Ring Cycles. And diaries permitting we are planning to do something similar in the summer of 2017. If you’d like to join us, contact Olivia directly via the Feast of Reason webpage and she’ll be delighted to send you more information.
me and Trevor Pinnock
It was a great pleasure to interview Trevor Pinnock recently for Linn Records about conducting, playing the harpsichord, and other matters musical. Enjoy – and there’s another with conductor Robin Ticciati in the pipeline.
Fun day filming for @LinnRecords @RoyalAcadMusic talking to conductors Robin Ticciati & Trevor Pinnock – online soon pic.twitter.com/VlEcx67Dga
— Sandy Burnett (@sandy_burnett) January 27, 2016
Music for Christmas at Leighton House 2015
This is us at Leighton House last week with another memorable festive concert: Clare McCaldin, Richard Edgar-Wilson and yours truly, with Juliet Edwards on piano – photo by Kevin Moran. Compliments of the season from all of us!
Beethoven’s funeral
I’m summing up Beethoven’s career in 75 minutes for ACE Cultural Tours this afternoon. Between ten and thirty thousand people turned up to his funeral on 29th March 1827, and to hear a funeral oration written by the distinguished Franz Grillparzer – this contemporary painting is by Franz Stöber.
thoughts on JS Bach’s St John Passion
This weekend is devoted to JS Bach’s St John Passion – we’re performing it tomorrow evening at St Michael and All Angels, Bath Road, London W4 1TT. So inevitably I’ve been reflecting on the essence of this extraordinary piece, and how best to do justice to the score. The St Matthew, which we performed as part of our long-running Bach project in February 2012, is the more expansive account of the Passion story – and for many Bach lovers it’s the preferred Passion of the two. So what does the St John have going for it? Well, it’s intensely dramatic; there’s acres of Evangelical recitative, punctuated by stunning outbursts from the chorus, variously in the guises of chief priests, Jews and Roman soldiers. So key to getting it right will be the pacing of the narrative, which it seems to me should maintain its momentum right up to the moment of Jesus’s death on the Cross (no.31).
Leading us through the drama are the solo singers, or “concertists”, although they have more than just one role to play. The bass soloist for example has not only the words of Jesus to sing, but also the arias and choruses; that much is clear from Bach’s original intentions in the original manuscript part. Quite a challenge for a solo singer to switch personas in this way, and even more so for the chorus to be an out-of control mob baying for Jesus to be crucified one moment, and grieving contemporary Christians the next (as in the transition from no 21d “Kreuzige!” and no 21f “Wir haben ein Gesetz” to the radiant chorale no 22 “Durch dein Gefängnis, Gottes Sohn.” But that doesn’t mean that we should duck the issue by asking soloists to sit out the chorus sections, or for chorales to be played rather than sung for the sake of dramatic convenience, as was the case in a recent Passion staging at the National Theatre (I really am not a fan of these). On the contrary, this shift in perspectives between third and first person, and between the Passion story and the present, is one of the things that make this Passion narrative so startling.
If I’m emphasising the drama at the expense of the music here, that’s because it’s clear to me what should take priority. Everyone know what a supreme musical craftsman Bach was, but the standout feature of the St John Passion isn’t the music at all; it’s the way he puts his astonishing musical skills entirely at the service of the Passion story. This is a gripping, at times terrifying, narrative - for me the way Bach illuminates the account in John’s Gospel of Jesus’s betrayal, trial, crucifixion and death is more vivid than any other musical work before or since.
Once again we’re raising money for an excellent local charity, the Upper Room. It would be great to see you at the performance.
Chiswick Book Festival – Idler Guide to Classical Music
On Sunday 13th September at 1:30pm, I’m talking to Sam Norman about my Idler Guide to Classical Music at the Chiswick Book Festival, St Michael & All Angels Church, Priory Avenue, London W4 1TX. There will be talking, listening, explaining, and playing – do come along! This blog entry, written for the Idler website a few months back, outlines what the book’s about:
Although I’ve been a professional musician and broadcaster for all of my adult life, most of my friends are Normal People who live in the Real World. It’s after having several conversations with them that I decided that my Introduction to Classical Music had to be written. What the book is seeking to do is to present the history of classical music in a way which would resonate with people who are engaged with the other art forms: reading novels, going to films, discussing architecture, and so on, but for whom classical music remains, well, a closed book. Rather than moving from great composer to great composer, I’m looking at four of the key eras of classical music: Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Early Twentieth Century, talking about the main developments and roles of music in each, before homing in on one work from each era and discussing it in detail.
People quite often say to me: “I listen to classical music to switch off; I don’t need to know anything about it.” That’s fair enough, and in a way I don’t blame them. But great classical music engages the head as much as the heart, and a little knowledge of context or makeup can greatly add to the emotional understanding of a piece of music. The Sanctus from Johann Sebastian Bach’s B minor Mass (1749) is a great example of this. At first hearing it’s a thrilling and majestic experience. But if we dig a little deeper, and find out that the number three permeates so much of the makeup of the music – it’s scored for three trumpets, three oboes, six voices and so on, and the number three dances around endlessly in the figurations of the voice parts – and realising that the threes are intimately connected with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, then our response to the music become so much deeper and richer.
Another Bach example, and one I examine in the book, is the C major Prelude from the Well-Tempered Klavier (1722), also by Johann Sebastian Bach. It shows the opposite site of the composer: someone who loved the simple craft of composition, and had an almost geeky obsession with placing one note against another to create a wonderful piece of music out of limited means. This piece is entirely built on one repeated pattern: a spread-out chord, or arpeggio. There’s no melody, or rhythm, or even notated speed markings or indications of how loud or soft the music should be; all we have is that pattern, which gradually shifts across the tonal spectrum – creating tensions, resolving them, moving away from the home key and eventually returning to it. Two minutes later, Bach has exhausted all of the possibilities of this kernel of an idea. Musically, there’s nothing more to be said – which makes it for me a perfect little piece of music.
Perfection though isn’t always the point of music; sometimes it’s full of rough edges, violence and fragmentation, with disorder instead of order – this is the anti-classical side of classical music. Take Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps – the Rite of Spring (1913). It’s full of disorientating twists and turns, newly-minted chords and cliff-hanger endings. The aesthetic is different , but Stravinsky still puts the music together with incredible care and precision. This is just a different kind of masterpiece.
Bach B minor Mass reading list
On Saturday 18th April at the University of St Andrews I’m leading a study day on the Mass in B minor, focussing mainly on the Symbolum Nicenum. We’re playing and singing our way through all nine Symbolum Nicenum movements, analysing the music and exploring the background of this great work along the way. Here are some suggestions for further reading:
Cambridge Music Handbook Bach: Mass in B minor (John Butt)
Cambridge University Press: Exploring Bach’s B-minor Mass
Music in the Castle of Heaven – A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach (John Eliot Gardiner)
And some useful links:
the autograph score online (click through to “2.1 Full Scores”);
an overview of the one per part debate;
Joshua Rifkin on CPE Bach’s rewrite of the Confiteor;
and the Bach Network UK site – links to lots of interesting articles and the latest scholarship.
Putney Music playlist
Tonight I’ve been invited down to Putney Music to talk about music and my take on it. I can’t wait to play some great recordings and special moments – here are the ten pieces on my playlist:
1.) Dmitri Shostakovitch: Symphony no 5, finale
WDR Symphony Orchestra, Rudolf Barshai
2.) Thomas Tallis: O Nata Lux
BBC Singers, Bo Holten
3.) Jeremy Sams: Train Music, Restaurant Wander, Hotel Escape
(Le week-end, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
4.) Edward Elgar: Symphony no 2, Larghetto OR Rondo: Presto
BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Richard Hickox
5.) Kurt Masur interviewed by Sandy Burnett, BBC Radio 3, 250902
6.) Richard Strauss: Daphne, Mondlichtmusik
Renee Fleming, WDR Symphony Orchestra/Bychkov
7.) Johann Sebastian Bach: Cantata BWV 1 Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, opening movt
English Baroque Soloists, Monteverdi Choir, John Eliot Gardiner
8.) Johann Sebastian Bach: Matthew Passion BWV 244, Sehet, Jesus hat die Hand
Clare Wilkinson (alto), Dunedin Consort and Players, John Butt
9.) Wes Montgomery: Mister Walker
(The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, 1960)
10.) Gene Harris Quartet: The Song is Ended
(Listen Here, 1989)