proms mini-reviews #7

Prom 19: Sondheim at 80
Lots of Stars and the BBC Concert Orchestra
Stephen Sondheim

The older I get, the more I think that if there is such a thing as 'The Great American....' whatever, it's Stephen Sondheim, at least in my parents' lifetime. There's nobody in any other artistic line of work that has either his long-term consistency or his all-reaching poetic gift. How many creators of any genre are so gifted that they can show you the whole world? A creator who can make you laugh and cry, be terrified and become wiser, show us awe and create characters in which we see ourselves, and make it all seem as though it's second nature. Dylan and Springsteen can't do all that, neither can Steve Reich and John Adams, or Roth and Pynchon, or Woody Allen and Scorsese. But not only can Stephen Sondheim make listeners feel all that, but he can make us feel all those emotions at the same time. The only other American I know who can do all that is Steven Spielberg, but for whatever reason Spielberg has far more difficulty relating to adult problems. How many artists in history can do what Sondheim does? Shakespeare?...Mozart?...Goya?...It's probably time people started talking about Sondheim in that class (a fact that Judi Dench seemed to agree with when she spoke about Sondheim during the broadcast). But this is precisely why this approach seemed so pathetically inadequate to Sondheim's requirements. Some opera composers whom the bleeding chunk approach flatters (desperately avoiding a sardonic Wagner reference here, I gotta stop railing on him every day on this blog, it's almost like I like him too much to change the subject), nothing is more harmful than stripping these impeccable songs of their context and cumulative impact. Without knowing what these songs describe, there's nothing that separates a venture like this from a dinner-theater revue. You can class it up with the presence of the composer and Bryn Terfel, with Judi Dench and Simon Russel Beale, but it's still just a presentation out of music theatre 101. Those who gravitated to the classical world and unfairly malign composers like Stephen Sondheim do so more than anything because of presentations like this - that are completely meaningless except as a parade for the egos of stars. Classical music is no less susceptible to ego than any other musical genre, but with that comes a long and incredible history of integrity and searching for truth. And one day soon, Sondheim will be considered as important to the fabric of that culture as anything by Schubert or Brahms.
D- (would have been an F if it weren't for the informative interview with Sondheim at the break)

Prom 20: Wayne Marshall plays Wagner on the Organ

It's impossible not to like Wayne Marshall - a great organist, pianist and conductor, still one of the only black stars in a genre that desperately needs more diversity, and a fearless champion of both new music and new interpretations of old music. Marshall is a rare artist in the classical music world not content to play it safe. He takes enormous risks, and when those risks succeed they succeed brilliantly. But sometimes his risks fail to reap rewards for what he invested, and that's a shame as it was in this concert. There are few good reasons to play Wagner on the organ. It might seem like a good fit with the massive Wagnerian sound, but Wagner requires far too much of a particular kind of delicacy for the organ to provide. Whatever one's opinion of Wagner, it can't be denied that he was one of the greatest orchestrators of all time, and his particular techniques for part-writing would not work in virtually any other instrumental combination than the one he provided. Royal Albert Hall is a massive behemoth whose echo can swallow any number of orchestral details, but the RAH organ is a behemoth within a behemoth, and the organ itself is perhaps too massive to be delicate. To Marshall's credit, he didn't try to compensate for the loss. This was Wagner made into pure organ music, and if the all-important contrapuntal lines of Die Meistersinger were made into a wash of sound, at least there was some gusto to compensate. After playing the overtures to Meistersinger and Tannhauser in organ transcriptions, Marshall played improvisations on themes by Wagner - both from Tristan and from The Ring. But I'm sad to report these improvisations were barely any more interesting than what preceded them. Musically, it was impressive, but I'm still not sure as to why Marshall felt the need to do this. There's amazing music for the organ that the Prom audiences rarely ever get to hear: why not a recital of Bach, or Buxtehude, or Louis Vierne, or Charles-Marie Widor? Or for that matter, why not improvise something a bit jazzier? If you're going to improvise on Tristan, why not juxtapose it against Duke Ellington or Thelonius Monk? It wasn't terrible, but it could have been so much better. We need more musicians with adventurous spirit like Wayne Marshall's, but this recital would never explain why that is.
C-

Prom 21: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Sir Simon Rattle Conducting
Berlioz and Wagner

Is it just me, or is it no longer easy being Simon Rattle? Even ten years ago Rattle had established himself as the pre-eminent, and perhaps the best, conductor of his generation. He his pick of any orchestra, any repertoire, any soloists, anything he wanted. But Rattle wasted no time using his leverage to tie himself down with the world's most pretigious position, Chief Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. It probably was a decision he made with noble aims, but nobody should envy Rattle the time he's had in Berlin. For the past eight years now, Rattle has now been locked in a desperate struggle to preserve his maverick identity in a city that wants him to be more like Daniel Barenboim. But more on that when the Berliners come to London. In the meantime, let's focus on Rattle's one remaining permanent connection with his home, as a principal artist with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The OAE is a much easier fit for Rattle - a period instrument ensemble that exists to reinvent tradition rather than preserve it - and the quality of their performance bespeaks their mutual aims. The concert began with a performance of the Love Scene from Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet which would have made Charles Munch proud. It was a manic performance with enormous contrasts in dynamics, pulse, and color. Not for Rattle is the severe structuring of Colin Davis. After the love scene, it was time for intermission (couldn't they have given us a little more?), and after they returned came Act II of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. For reasons probably having to do with expense, the period instrument crowd has virtually ignored 19th century opera and especially Wagner. The benefits of period instruments were immediately felt when we heard natural horns that actually sounded like hunting horns - this is exactly what Wagner wrote for! What followed did not disappoint save in one area. Living up to his reputation as my favorite living conductor, Sir Simon gave a reading of Tristan that was neither the violent thrill-ride of Bohm and Kleiber or the slow German philosophizing of Furtwangler and Knappertsbusch. Rattle said that he viewed Tristan as Schubert on steroids, and for once we got to hear Wagner with a human face. There was drama aplenty, but this was not a vision of Wagner that tried to overwhelm us, it was moving in a way I had never thought Tristan und Isolde could ever be. Rattle had mostly able singers, with a visceral Isolde that lacked a little introspection from Violetta Urmana, and a solid King Marke from Franz-Josef Selig who did what he could to make the most of his boring twenty-minute monologue. But it was truly sad to hear the once-impeccable instrument of Ben Heppner's Tristan reduced as it is to such a state. Heppner has finally found a conductor with a conception to match his own, if only they had found each other ten years earlier the results would have been truly something at which to marvel. Heppner's voice is now in such disrepair that it seemed to crack midway through every phrase. It was a very sad thing to hear from this once incredible singer. Will there ever be a well-sung Wagner opera again?
B (Rattle gets an A+, Urmana gets a B+, Heppner, sadly, gets an F)