Simon Rattle, 70 tomorrow and still unafraid of risk, ushered in the new season with a throw of the dice: two big world premieres and music that features elements of chance – that is, to a greater extent than usual in any live performance. Now conductor emeritus of the London Symphony Orchestra, he opened the first of a pair of concerts with Éclat (1965) by Pierre Boulez (1925-2016). The conductor conjures fixed elements, in any order, from two groups of solo instruments: one tapping, chiming, plucking, the other sustaining, through blowing or bowing. This glistening short piece, never sounding the same and about which far more could be said, acted as a crisp salvo to celebrations for the French composer-conductor’s centenary year.
New compositions by George Benjamin and Mark-Anthony Turnage, written for Rattle’s birthday, take priority here. Both composers were born in 1960. Each has had a supportive association with Rattle since early in their diverse careers. Benjamin’s new Interludes and Aria is an arresting montage (the composer’s word) based on his opera with librettist Martin Crimp, Lessons in Love and Violence, an exploration of the painful emotional life of Edward II. That opera’s rich orchestral interludes, vital to the drama, have been woven together, absorbing all anew into a many-layered instrumental texture, full of momentous brass outbursts, tolling gongs and clangorous cimbalom. In three main parts, the central section features an aria: the queen, Isabel, is confronted with details of her husband’s transgressions.
The Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan, who created the role, emerged from the orchestra to deliver an eruption of beautifully controlled, cool anger. Ask not what a pearl can buy, she demands of her money-seeking slanderers: look, instead, at its beauty. The Royal Opera put its energy behind the premiere of this work in 2018. It may not have had the immediate appeal of the same creators’ Written on Skin, yet it has embedded itself more insistently in my memory. Time for the Royal Opera to revisit it?
A guitar concerto by Turnage – whose own new work for Covent Garden, Festen, opens next month – was the centrepiece of Rattle’s second LSO concert. Sco was written for Turnage’s longstanding collaborator, the American jazz improviser John Scofield. In five movements, its mood is generous, spacious, allowing Scofield, as amplified soloist, to improvise in an almost conversational way. Virtuosity, clearly there in every aspect of the playing, is not the concerto’s first aim. The five movements, dedicated to Scofield and members of his family, move stylistically from lyrical to airy to angular to punchy. A standout fourth movement, called Aria – occluded, melancholy and poetic – is dedicated to Scofield’s late son and his partner. The orchestra transformed itself into an accomplished big band, entering the work’s flexible inner spirit.
Having ended the first concert with a rigorous, lithe performance of Brahms’s Symphony No 4, this second programme, all British and including Tippett’s ever-bewitching Ritual Dances from The Midsummer Marriage, closed with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No 5 (1943). The versatile musicians excelled in every detail, from the shrouded horn calls at start and finish, to the distinctive pairings of violas and basses, to the cor anglais solo in the Romanza third movement. Written in wartime, Vaughan Williams’s symphony is so profound, so visionary in mood that you feel, to express it without fuss, changed by the very act of listening.
In Birmingham, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ilan Volkov, jumped in early with another anniversary, that of French maverick Erik Satie (1866-1925). His apparent simplicity of approach was remote from the complexity of Boulez, though the two musical originals moved in overlapping avant-garde circles in Paris. The CBSO played Satie’s final work, the score to René Clair’s dadaist silent movie Entr’acte (1924), which was live screened at Symphony Hall. Nothing is normal here. A camel pulls a hearse that becomes detached and rolls on for miles, mourners following in a series of silly walks, chase music getting ever faster. A funeral march has a mawkish oboe tune rising out of the gloom. Repetition is central: one short phrase is repeated 24 times, if my counting is right. Man Ray is glimpsed playing chess with Marcel Duchamp. If you weren’t sure how to define dadaism, this audio-visual romp, a classic of the era, does the job.
The concert, buttressed by two grand maritime works, Frank Bridge’s The Sea (1911) and Claude Debussy’s La Mer (1905), was held in conjunction with Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery and its current exhibition, Friends in Love and War, (running until 23 February). The remaining work was a world premiere by the French-born singer-composer Héloïse Werner. No stranger to aural adventure – as well as singing, she uses every possible muscle in her face to produce unusual sounds – Werner takes surrealism to new heights. Her deftly original Siren Suite, for soprano and orchestra, imagines five contrasting figures who control and manipulate the sea, characterised by a lightly scored, fluid orchestra. The CBSO has sparked criticism for some of its recent initiatives (especially concerning the use, or not, of phones in concerts). This sort of thoughtful programming is far more deserving of our attention.
With the dry, mechanical rattle of a solo xylophone at the start of Jenůfa, we plunge into an aural landscape like no other: that of the Czech composer Leoš Janáček, whose music grows from tiny cells, shaped into zigzagging palindromes, or odd, brilliant mosaics. There is plenty to resist in Claus Guth’s highly stylised 2021 production for the Royal Opera, now revived (by Oliver Platt). Disturbed by its rigid symbolism first time, I was more prepared to appreciate, if not entirely respond to, the stark, serious beauty of Michael Levine’s designs.
The cast, mostly returning – notably Nicky Spence, affecting as the troubled but gentle Laca, with Karita Mattila reminding us of her old glory in the tough third act – has two newcomers: American soprano Corinne Winters, touching and dignified in the title role, and the New Zealand tenor Thomas Atkins, who soars thrillingly as the boastful Števa. The big attraction, perhaps above all, is the orchestral playing – and chorus too – and the conducting of Jakub Hrůša in his first appearance since being named the Royal Opera’s music director designate. Czech-born, he brought the score to life with devoted conviction. The audience, whooping enthusiastically, gave him their own-style golden hello. He takes over in September. An exciting prospect.
Star ratings (out of five)
LSO/Rattle ★★★★
CBSO/Volkov ★★★★
Jenůfa ★★★★
Simon Rattle and the LSO’s Tippett, Turnage and Vaughan Williams concert will be broadcast on Radio 3 on 20 January/BBC Sounds
