Archive for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The Magic Flute at the Sydney Opera House

Posted in Opera with tags , , , , on February 29, 2024 by telescoper

I’m just back from my second night at the Sydney Opera House, at which I saw Opera Australia’s production  of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. What has been a very warm day turned into a very sultry evening, and it was nice to take my drink outside during the interval to admire the view:

I’ve lost track of how many different productions I have seen of this strange and wonderful masterpiece, and this was a distinctly Australian version. Technically it’s not an opera, but a singspiel: the recitative – the bit in between the arias – is spoken rather than sung. It’s really more like a musical comedy in that sense, and was originally intended to be performed in a kind of burlesque style.

The Magic Flute also has many points of contact with the pantomime tradition, including the character of the villainous Monostatos who, in this performance, was reminiscent of Rolf Harris. Papageno was a working class Australian, sporting a mullet, and carrying an Esky in place of the usual array of nets and birdcages. On her first entrance, the Queen of the Night put me in mind of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Sarastro, with long hair and flowing robes, looked like the leader of some sort of New Age cult; his acolytes were dressed in everyday casual clothes. The three boys – referred to as “spirits” in this production – were actually two boys and a girl, but “spirit” is a gender-neutral term so that’s fine.

I won’t even attempt to explain the plot, if you can call it that, because it’s completely daft. It’s daft, though, in a way that much of life is daft, and I think that’s the secret of its enduring popularity. Mozart’s music carries you along and constantly seems to be telling you not to take it all too seriously. It seems to me that it must be hard to get the balance right between the comedy (which frequently border on the slapstick) and the serious. The worst thing to do is to make it too pompous. This production doesn’t fall into that trap, but in playing it virtually entirely for laughs I think it misses the depths that make a truly successful version. The ending – in which the rays of the Sun are supposed to dispel the darkness – involved a big reveal to a picnic with the chorus in beach wear and sunglasses. There’s a lot to be said for sunshine, and I found the idea mildly amusing, but there should be more to the end of this Opera than that. On the other hand, Pamina’s aria in Act II, when she is heartbroken because she thinks Tamino has abandoned her, was intensely moving, so it wasn’t all shallow.

The sets are simple but use clever devices to suggest the extraordinary scene changes required by the libretto, including pyramids, forests, waterfalls and flames. The ordeals by fire and water, for example, are depicted using reflective strip curtains, red for fire and blue for water. The dragon in Act I is conjured up by shadow puppets against a translucent curtain.

Papageno, played by an understudy whose name I didn’t catch, was the pick of the performers but overall the cast was not particularly strong vocally. David Parkin’s basso wasn’t nearly profundo enough for Sarastro and he struggled with the lowest notes. I’m not sure either why he also played The Speaker, who is a distinct role. Giuseppina Grech as the Queen of the Night looked fabulous and hit her high notes, but the elaborate coloratura passages were not well articulated.

This probably seems very negative than I intended. There is much to enjoy in this production. It’s very entertaining, and at times riotously funny. It was just a bit too superficial for my taste.

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Sisters, Lovers & Traitors: INO in Maynooth

Posted in Maynooth, Opera with tags , , , , , , , on May 4, 2023 by telescoper

I don’t often get the chance to attend a concert in Maynooth, but I did this evening when I went to the Aula Maxima on Maynooth University South Campus for a performance of arias and duets from Mozart operas by singers from Irish National Opera.

The artists involved were Anna Devin (Soprano), Sharon Carty (Mezzo), and Gianluca Margheri (Baritone) . All were excellent, but I particularly loved Italian Gianluca Margheri’s richly sonorous voice. Fine accompaniment was provided on the piano by Finghin Collins (who, incidentally, last featured on this blog in an item about a very different type of music).

INO are currently rehearsing their forthcoming production of Cosi fan tutte which provided the first four pieces; it features two sisters of course, Fiordiligi and Dorabella. These were followed by a selection from Le nozzle di Figaro, including the lovely duet Sull’aria. The final two pieces were from La clemenza di Tito, a much less familiar work, which was composed at roughly the same time as The Magic Flute and is arguably Mozart’s final opera.

The encore was a trio performance of Là ci darem la mano from Don Giovanni, usually a duet but in this case with the part of Zerlina shared between Anna Devin and Sharon Carty.

It was a very enjoyable programme, very well received by the audience, and an ideal break from a busy end-of-term schedule, especially on a rainy night like tonight. Now, I must remember to get tickets for Cosi fan tutte to give me a break from examination marking!

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Mozart, Ravel and Danielle de Niese

Posted in Biographical, Music with tags , , , , , , , , on February 4, 2023 by telescoper

After last week’s magnificent concert I couldn’t miss another chance to see and hear Danielle de Niese in at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, again with the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Jaime Martin. It was another fascinating (and very full) programme.

For last week’s concert, the National Concert Hall was only about two-thirds full but this time it was packed. I think the glowing reviews of La Voix Humaine contributed to that, as did the round of media interviews Danielle de Niese has done since then contributed to the full house.

Danielle de Niese seems to like singing 20th century French music and the concert opened with Shéhérazade by Maurice Ravel. This is a cycle of three songs which are settings of poems inspired by The Arabian Nights written by the pseudonymous poet Tristan Klingsor: Asie, La flûte enchantée, and L’Indifférent. Ravel was a real master of orchestration, and he creates a succession of exotic textures to complement the vocal lines. It’s not a long piece -altogether the three songs last about 15 minutes – but it covers a vast territory. There’s more than a nod to Debussy in this work too.

After that Danielle de Niese went off stage to change her frock, which was lime green for the Ravel, while the orchestra played the overture to the singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I’ve actually reviwed the whole Opera (was that really 12 years ago?) and wrote then (about the plot):

It’s admittedly a bit thin, even by the standards of comic opera but, right from the fabulous overture, the music is lovely and there’s a great deal of good-humoured fun, 

The overture is great fun to listen to, and obviously also to play. Jaime Martin was beaming and bouncing up and down on the podium during the performance.

And then Danielle de Niese returned (this time in a lurid red dress) to sing another piece by Mozart. Exsultate, Jubilate is a piece for solo voice and orchestra usually described as a motet but technically really a cantata. There are three movements, marked Allegro, Andante and Allegro. It’s obviously a work,with a religious theme, and the central Andante movement does sound like it is sacred music, but the outer Allegro movements are very operatic, with demanding coloratura passages, especially in the final Hallelujah. I don’t usually associate such vocal acrobatics with religious music, but it’s certainly a very exuberant and joyful piece. Astonishingly, Mozart was just 17 years old when he wrote it.

That piece by Mozart presented very different challenges to the soloist, Danielle de Niese but she showed herself to be a very accomplished performer in this too. With that her two-week residence in Dublin came to an end. She was presented with a huge bouquet of flowers and a standing ovation before we headed off to the bar for the interval.

After the wine break the National Symphony Orchestra was joined by the National Symphony Chorus for complete performance of the music to the ballet Daphnis et Chloé by Maurice Ravel. As is the case with Stravinsky’s Firebird, music from this ballet is often played in the form of a suite or, in the case of this ballet, two suites, but I have to say the whole is much greater than the sum of the suites and this work has become one of my favourite pieces to hear live. It’s a gloriously sensual and dramatic work, again brilliantly orchestrated, full of vibrant colours and lush textures, and even more wonderful when accompanied by the wordless singing of the massed ranks of the National Symphony Chorus. The score lasts a good hour, but that time seemed to flash by in this performance which was extremely well received by a very appreciative audience.

This was a very full programme and I had to leave during the applause to make sure I got back to Pearse station in time to catch the train back to Maynooth. I’m not as quick on my pins as I used to be. I arrived at Pearse with about five minutes to spare only to find that the train was five minutes late so I didn’t have rushed.

I have to congratulate whoever is doing the programming for these NSO concerts at the NCH. The last few have been excellent, and next week’s recipe of Ives, Beethoven and Sibelius looks great too!

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Il Mio Tesoro – John McCormack

Posted in History, Opera with tags , , , on December 19, 2021 by telescoper

The aria Il Mio Tesoro Intanto from Act II of Mozart’s great Opera Don Giovanni is widely regarded as a test piece for Operatic tenors because of its demanding mix of long flowing lines, big leaps and florid coloratura ornamentation. The other day I heard a performance by the great Irish tenor John McCormack which, despite being recorded over a hundred years ago (in 1916) completely blew me away. I thought I’d share it here.

John McCormack made over 800 records in his lifetime, the vast majority of them Irish songs and ballads that found a huge audience not only in Ireland but also in the Irish diaspora in the United States of America; this part of his career was extremely lucrative making him a millionaire. His first love was the Opera: a lyric tenor of the highest quality, his career overlapped with that of the great Enrico Caruso and the two became great friends after McCormack moved to the United States and became a regular at the Metropolitan Opera. It was Caruso who made the first ever million-selling record (Vesti La Giubba from I Pagliacci in 1902) and perhaps that’s what persuaded McCormack to embark on a recording career.

Before the 1920s gramophone recordings were entirely acoustic, made by a process exactly the reverse of a gramophone player. Musicians and singers would play into a horn at the sharp end of which was a needle that could leave an impression on the recording medium. In the early days the recording would be made on a wax cylinder, but this was soon replaced by plastic or acetate discs. It wasn’t possible to make recordings longer than a few minutes using this method.

Here’s an example of an early recording session showing what it was like. The chap with the moustache is Sir Edward Elgar:

Given this sort of arrangement it is no surprise that the sound of the Orchestra of the Met is muffled and distorted on the following recording. Almost certainly McCormack would have been standing right in front of the horn so his sizeable form would have acted as a kind of baffle. When I think of these old records it always seems a wonder that you can hear anything at all.

Despite the limitations of the recording technology the crystal clarity of McCormack’s voice and his superb control shine through. I listen to quite a lot of old jazz records made in a similar way so my ears are perhaps unusually forgiving but I think this is one of the greatest versions of this aria that I’ve ever heard – and I’ve heard quite a few. I hope you enjoy it too.

P.S. John McCormack was born in Athlone, which is about 100km due west of Maynooth.

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How Mozart Became a Bad Composer, by Glenn Gould

Posted in Music with tags , , on October 26, 2020 by telescoper

I’m not sure how many readers will agree with Glenn Gould’s analysis of Mozart’s piano compositions, especially his later ones, but I think it’s well worth watching and listening to, not least because the presenter is obviously relishing the opportunity to say what he really thinks in the full knowledge that in the process he is winding up a great many of his audience! It’s also interesting how he delivers his pieces to camera: it doesn’t look like he’s using an autocue but he’s a very precise and coherent speaker.

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“Like a rusty squeezebox… ” – Mozart’s Serenade No 10 for Winds III. Adagio

Posted in Music with tags , , , , on June 27, 2020 by telescoper

Although it has introduced many people to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which is a very good thing, I have to admit that I didn’t really enjoy the film Amadeus. This is partly because not much of it is actually true and partly because, even treated as a piece of fiction, the two main protagonists are depicted far too crudely.

It is probably true that Mozart was quite a strange man as an adult but I attribute that largely to the fact that he was an infant prodigy which, together with having a very pushy and ambitious father, denied him a proper childhood. You see the same phenomenon in the modern era with child stars in Hollywood and the music industry.

The film is also very hard on Antonio Salieri who is made out to be a musical incompetent, which he certainly wasn’t. Salieri actually wrote a lot of very lovely music, though he obviously wasn’t Mozart.

One thing that the play/film does get right however is in Salieri’s description of the Adagio movement from Mozart’s Serenade No. 10 (K361) for wind instruments (and string bass):

On the page it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse, bassoons and basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. Then suddenly; high above it, an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, till a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I’d never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the very voice of God.

I stick to my opinion that Mozart wrote a lot of music that wasn’t really all that good, but I also think you should judge artists by their best work rather than their worst and Mozart wrote enough masterpieces any one of which would confirm him as a creative genius of the highest order. This piece is one of those masterpieces. The whole Serenade – seven movements, lasting almost an hour – is beautiful but this movement stands out.

The hallmark of a genius is often simplicity, isn’t it? That goes for science as well as the arts. I don’t really know what beauty really is but the essence of it often lies in simplicity too.

Now I have to make a confession and ask for help from readers. The confession is twofold: (a) I have never heard this piece in a live performance; and (b) I don’t possess a recording of it. I’d therefore like to ask my readers for recommendations as to the best version to buy on CD or download.

In the meantime here is a taster in the form of a performance by the wind musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra. Enjoy!

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Debussy, Mozart and Messiaen at St David’s Hall

Posted in Music with tags , , , , , , on March 25, 2018 by telescoper

The view from Tier 2 before the concert

After work (and a pint or two) on Friday evening I headed to St David’s Hall for a concert by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Jac van Steen. The concert was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 so you can listen to it on the iPlayer for a month.

Two of the four pieces on the programme were by Claude Debussy (abovel, to mark the centenary of his death which was 100 years ago today (on 25th March 1918).

The concert opened with Debussy’s Nocturnes and ended with La Mer , both works consisting of three movements for a large orchestra and showing the vivid chromaticism and lush orchestration that typifies so many of his compositions. The last movement of Nocturnes includes some wordless singing, which was performed beautifully by female singers from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

The second piece was Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat Major K. 595, with soloist Steven Osborne. This, Mozart’s last piano concerto, is a nice piece, well played by both pianist and (pared-down) orchestra but I felt it was a rather incongruous choice for this programme. It was probably chosen because it is in some sense a valedictory piece, but all it did for me in this concert was emphasize how much the harmonic vocabulary of music expanded between Mozart and Debussy, and left me feeling that the Mozart piece was rather trite in comparison.

After the wine break we heard a piece that was completely new to me, Les Offrandes Oubliées by Olivier Messiaen, a wonderfully expressive piece with wildly contrasting moods, clearly influenced by Debussy but with a distinctive voice all its own. Messiaen is one composer I definitely wish I knew more about.

After the superb La Mer which ended the published programme, something very unusual happened for a classical concert in the UK: there was an encore by the orchestra in the form of a dance by Debussy orchestrated by Maurice Ravel.

All in all, a very enjoyable evening and a fitting tribute to Claude Debussy, a composer who was both modernist and impressionist and whose influence on the development of music is incalculable.

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Rondo alla Trad

Posted in Film, Jazz with tags , , , , on July 17, 2017 by telescoper

I think this will probably alienate serious jazz fans and serious classical music fans in equal measure, but I stumbled across this while searching for something else and couldn’t resit posting it here. It’s from the 1963 film Live it Up and it features Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen playing their arrangement of the famous Rondo alla Turca from the third movement Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11 (K331). It’s not as far fetched as you might think to perform this with a band led by a trumpet player because Mozart’s composition deliberately imitated the music of the Janissary marching bands which were much in vogue in Austria in the latter part of the 18th Century.

Anyway, when I clicked on this I thought I was going to hate it, but you know what? I rather like it!

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Daphnis et Chloé at St David’s Hall

Posted in Music with tags , , , , , , , on November 11, 2016 by telescoper

Taking a short break from today’s duties – which are substantial – I’ve just got time to mention that last night I went once again to a concert at St David’s Hall in Cardiff. This time it was the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under the direction of conductor laureate Tadaaki Otaka, who were joined for the second half of the performance by the BBC National Chorus of Wales. The concert was broadcast live last night on BBC Radio 3, although I didn’t listen to it on the radio myself because I was there in person. In fact I only just got there in time because last night they switched on the Christmas lights in Cardiff city centre and I had to make my way through the crowds to get to St David’s Hall.

The programme began with an appetizer in the form Mozart’s, brief but dramatic overture to the opera Idomeneo which Mozart wrote when he was just 25. It’s interesting how much more attention one tends to pay to an overture when it’s detached from the main event it is supposed to precede. In fact you sometimes even find people talking during the overture at the Opera, which as far as I’m concerned is a crime of the most serious order. Anyway, the Idomeneo overture  is in a compact sonata form, which is something I’d never appreciated before despite having seen the Opera a number of times.

After that there was a memorable performance of  Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto with soloist Thomas Zehetmair. I’d never heard this piece before, and was captivated from the very opening in which the soloist enters alone without any orchestral preface or accompaniment. The piece consists of two sprightly and intense allegro movements either side of a more lyrical adagio. It’s a very virtuosic solo piece but also full of interesting melodies and innovative orchestration. I was sitting in the stalls directly in front of the cellos and basses who had to work phenomenally hard, sometimes doubling the melodic line of the much nimbler solo violin. Great stuff.

The interval was followed by a complete performance of the music to the ballet Daphnis et Chloé by Maurice Ravel. As is the case with Stravinsky’s Firebird (which I heard in St David’s Hall a few weeks ago) music from this ballet is often played in the form of a suite or, in the case of this ballet, two suites, but I have to say the whole is much greater than the sum of the suites. It’s a glorious (and very sensual) work, brilliantly orchestrated, full of vibrant colours and lush textures, and even more wonderful when accompanied by the wordless singing of the massed ranks of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. The score lasts a full hour, but that time seemed to flash by in this performance which was extremely well received by a very appreciative audience.

Anyway, for the next month you can listen to the whole concert on the BBC iPlayer so feel free to add your comments below if you get the chance to hear it.

The only downside of the evening was that on the way out I bumped into disgraced former Conservative MP and current UKIP AM, Neil Hamilton, along with equally ghastly wife. So traumatised was I by that experience that I was forced to visit the Urban Tap House for a beer before walking home.

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Mozart and Strauss, and the End of Term

Posted in Music with tags , , , , on June 16, 2012 by telescoper

Yesterday (Friday 15th June) was officially the last day of teaching term at Cardiff University. I think most of our students toddled off  some time ago when their last exams were finished,  so for us on the staff side the teaching term has fizzled out gradually rather than go out with a bang. Yesterday I met with a couple of next year’s project students to give them some background reading to do over the summer and that was that for another year of undergraduate teaching.

There was something of an “end-of-term” feeling too to last night’s concert at St David’s Hall, which was also broadcast live on BBC Radio 3; you can listen to it yourself by clicking on that second link. This was not only the last concert of the 2011/12 season by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, but also  last concert at St David’s Hall to be conducted by Thierry Fischer, who has been principal conductor for the BBC NOW for the past six years. Next year Thomas Søndergård will take over.The concert turned out to be a fitting finale to the season and a fine farewell to Thierry Fischer.

The first item on the agenda was Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 played by none other than the wonderful Angela Hewitt.  I wasn’t all that familiar with this piece beforehand, and was surprised to see such a large orchestra on stage before the start. Apparently  this work was the first time Mozart had used clarinets in a piano concerto, and the larger force than I’d normally have associated with a Mozart piece of this type gave the performance a much more opulent sound than I’d expected. It’s an interesting work, with a particularly fine Andante second movement which is both sombre and expansive sandwiched between two quicksilver Allegro movements, the last being a kind of rondo. Angela Hewitt played it with crisp elegance and perfect articulation. Some people find her playing a bit fussy and punctilious, and indeed there were times when I thought the performance could have had a bit more fire in it, but for my part it was a treat to get the chance to see a great artist in the flesh; she has an engaging presence on stage too, clearly enjoying the performance, and smiling from time to time in appreciation at the orchestral playing. We even got a nice little solo encore, which is quite unusual for a live broadcast from St David’s.

Then there was an interval so we could all check the football score, and guzzle a quick glass of overpriced wine before returning to hear the Alpine Symphony, Op. 64 by Richard Strauss. If the orchestra for Part 1 had been large by Mozartian standards, then this one was immense! Well over a hundred musicians, with a huge brass section (supplemented by many more standing off-stage and just visible to me through an open door), harps, percussion (including cow bells and a wind machine), and some unusual instruments including a Heckelphone (what the heck?…). Oh, and the fine organ in St David’s Hall got a full workout too.

Strictly speaking, this is not actually a symphony; it’s more of a tone poem. But Strauss was rather good at them and this one is a wonderful evocation of a day’s journey in the Bavarian Alps, from a resplendent dawn to a tranquil sunset, with summits to be scaled, thunderstorms to be endured, glaciers to be traversed, and so on. It’s certainly a very vivid piece of programmatic music.

As you might have inferred from huge band gathered on stage, this is a work that gets very loud, especially when the organist literally pulls out all the stops. What was especially fine about the performance was that, although the musicians of BBC NOW weren’t afraid to give it some welly whenever it was called for, their playing never became wild or ragged. I don’t know what it sounded like on the radio, but it was a thrilling experience to be in the hall.  I lost count of the number of towering crescendo passages, and just let the waves of wonderful noise wash over me. At times I could feel it through my feet too.

There were cheers at the end, and a standing ovation for Thierry Fischer not only for this performance but for his service to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.  And that brought the term and the season to a close; both start again in late September 2012. There are some cracking concerts in store in the next season in St David’s Hall.

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