Peter Grimes, in concert, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, August 2012

For those who saw English National Opera’s new production of Peter Grimes in 2009, here was a chance to savour the full glory of Britten’s score. With the ENO orchestra and chorus in the vast expanse of the Albert Hall under brilliant direction by Edward Gardner, this was a musical treat.

As Grimes himself, Stuart Skelton gave a hugely powerful performance, with Amanda Roocroft warmly sympathetic as Ellen Orford, the same pair as in the 2009 production. Once again Rebecca de Pont Davies gave a fine performance of Auntie, and Gillian Ramm and Mairéad Buicke sang beautifully as her ‘nieces’. Felicity Palmer gave a witty portrayal of the spiteful Mrs Sedley, Leigh Melrose a strong performance as the apothecary Ned Keene, and Iain Paterson was terrific as Captain Balstrode. If the ENO restage this in coming years, one can only hope they will be able to call on his services for the role.

Despite the fact that this was a concert performance, broadcast on Radio 3, those of us in the audience had the advantage of some clever staging. Grimes’s new apprentice was present, cowering under his fierce domination, and at the beginning of Act II while Ellen is singing alone, the chorus (in church) turned round towards the chorus master, who conducted them standing in front of the bust of Henry Wood. As they sang, the Albert Hall organ played — a lovely touch. Then as the act progressed, Skelton hit his forehead in frustration, before calming down and trying to encourage the boy, sending him off-stage and letting him down by a rope. As the men from the town approached he forgot the rope, and we witnessed the fatal moment. At the end of the act, Balstrode stood alone on stage, the viola produced another solo, beautifully played by Amélie Roussel, and he slowly picked up one of the boots the boy had left behind.

Act III started with an off-stage band for the tavern scene, but as the chorus and principal singers start to express their disapproval of Grimes, using strong arm gestures, the stage was set for Amanda Roocroft to give a lovely rendering of “Peter, we’ve come to take you home”. To her horror, Balstrode tells him to take the boat out and sink it, and Grimes slowly exited winding his way through the audience in the pit. The singers returned to stage, the chorus intoned words about the majestic sweep of the sea, and this superb performance came to an end.

Edward Gardner with the ENO orchestra and chorus, along with Stuart Skelton as Grimes raised this to the very highest level, and I cannot wait to hear them do it again at the London Coliseum.

Cinderella, Gergiev and the LSO, BBC Prom 52, Royal Albert Hall, 22 August 2012

Combining Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra to play ballet music is a winner. At the Proms in 2008 they gave an electrifying performance of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, and this year they produced a superb rendering of Prokofiev’s Cinderella.

Cinderella tends to be less well-known than Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, and partly for that reason less favoured on radio broadcasts, but it is a fascinating score, and the LSO gave it their best. In the first act when the fairy godmother appears in her new guise, Gergiev produced a lovely musical sweep into the world of magic where she conjures up visions of the year with its four seasons. And then as Cinderella finally sets off for the ball he rounded the music off to perfection. After a short pause we moved into Act II where they placed brass up in the top gallery for the entrance of the prince and his companions, and as their sound filled the hall and was answered by the orchestra on stage the result was quite unlike anything you will hear in the theatre — it was wonderfully effective! Towards the end of that act the music swelled out strongly for the Prince and Cinderella, before dying away and moving into the waltz-coda, and then the ominous ticking of the clock as midnight approaches.

After the interval came Act III where the Prince searches for Cinderella, and as he finds her the music developed gloriously. After the slow waltz came a ravishing amoroso, ending with a beautiful diminuendo. What a change this was from the Proms in 2011 when Gergiev conducted Swan Lake with the Maryinsky theatre orchestra, who produced the usual boilerplate rendering they had been serving up in the theatre. As I wrote at the time, I longed to hear Gergiev back again with the LSO at the Proms in 2012, and this was it, a world-class conductor with a world-class orchestra — it was a huge pleasure.

A Celebration of Ivor Novello, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, August 2012

“A gentle, more elegant age” was how the BBC’s Katie Derham referred to the world of Ivor Novello in her brief introduction, quoting We’ll Gather Lilacs in connection with his funeral in 1951. After that we were placed in the very capable hands of Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra for a glorious late night concert.

They played superbly, and Simon Callow was a wonderful master of ceremonies reciting a quiver full of delightful anecdotes prepared by Paul Ibell. Apparently Novello went to jail during the war for misuse of petrol coupons by his chauffeur, and the judge decided that the usual £50 fine would not be enough. Anti-theatre, and anti-gay he sentenced the great artist to prison, who when he came out and appeared on stage again, received a three-minute standing ovation. This was while his hugely successful show The Dancing Years was playing, which as Callow told us was initially of some embarrassment to the appeasement policy of the British Government. Dancing Years, set in Austria, did not portray the Nazis favourably, but with Novello himself in the main role it was extraordinarily popular and we were treated to three of its songs.

The singers were Sophie Bevan, and Toby Spence bravely returning to the stage after an operation for thyroid cancer. It was a huge pleasure to see him perform again, and this was perhaps a cautious try-out. Lovely singing as usual, though he avoided some top notes, and was miked up for the encore. Ms Bevan’s voice is so beautifully pure and she was particularly sweet in I Can Give You The Starlight, yet apart from Why Isn’t It You she barely interacted with him.

After Toby Spence had opened with that old First World War favourite Keep The Home Fires Burning, we were taken on a lovely late evening tour of Novello’s music, ending with We’ll Gather Lilacs as an encore. Novello died suddenly a few hours after a performance and his ashes at the Golders Green Crematorium were laid beneath a lilac bush.

The performance will be broadcast on BBC2 at 8 p.m. on Saturday, 11 August 2012.

Netrebko, Schrott, Vargas, at the Royal Albert Hall, RAH, 7 June 2012

This concert was a fine mixture of solos, duets, and trios, plus two choral sections, and purely orchestral pieces played here by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Claudio Vandelli.

It began with that delightful Rossini overture to L’italiana in Algeri, which starts almost silently before moving into higher gear. This gave just the right bounce to open an evening that ended with four encores, one for each of the singers, and one — specially commissioned — for all three.

The highlight for me was Erwin Schrott and Anna Netrebko singing that glorious duet from just before the end of The Merry Widow. In the operetta, the merry widow, Hanna Glawari demands Danilo start talking sense, and he interrupts her in the middle of the syllable lieb…, with Lippen Schweigen. Starting with those words, their voices melded beautifully together. Ms. Netrebko, in her lovely second-half dress, was the most perfect Hanna Glawari one could ever wish to see and hear, and Schrott’s singing … hab’ mich lieb came over with huge feeling. As they slowed the tempo down the conductor followed with the orchestra, and dancing round the front of the stage they exuded the magic of being in love.

This was the antepenultimate item, followed by an instrumental excerpt from Carmen before all three singers returned to perform the trio at the end of Gounod’s Faust. In the meantime the Philharmonia Chorus had given us the humming chorus from Butterfly and the Hebrew chorus Va Pensiero from Nabucco. The main singers gave us just the right amount of action, as when Ramon Vargas and Anna Netrebko performed that lovely duet O soave fanciulla from the end of Act I in La Boheme, waving as they left, as if to meet their friends at the café in Act II. Vargas himself gave a superb rendering of Una furtive lagrima from L’elisir d’amore, and Anna Netrebko gave a rip-roaring account of the cabaret aria that Sylva Varescu sings at the beginning of Kálmán’s Csárdásfürstin. Here was the vibrant young cabaret singer who deserves the man she finally marries.

One of the intriguing things about this concert was Schrott’s accompaniment by two additional instrumentalists, František Jánoška on the piano, and Mario Stefano Pietrodarchi on the bandoneon, a concertina-like instrument often used in tango ensembles. This lightened the tone for Schrott’s excellent bass, taking us from Banquo’s aria to the infectious sound of zarzuela, including a superbly performed excerpt from one by Sorozábal.

At the end of the show, all got bouquets: Vargas bestowed his on a young lady in the front row, and Schrott then leapt from the stage to give his to a young girl further along. Finally they returned for four encores: O mio babbino caro, from Anna Netrebko, Granada from Ramon Vargas, Rojotango by Pablo Ziegler from Erwin Schrott, and finally finally a new commission called Home by Kempe, sung by all three.

A fabulous evening, only spoiled by odd audience members whose cameras lit up during the performance.

Swan Lake, in concert, Prom 42, Royal Albert Hall, August 2011

With Valery Gergiev conducting, this was a sell-out. I remember his magnificent Sleeping Beauty at the Proms three years ago, and was looking forward immensely to Swan Lake, but in the end I was disappointed.

It was a promising idea. The orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre have been in London to play for the Mariinsky Ballet at the Royal Opera House, so why not get a Proms concert out of them, with Gergiev, the music director of the Mariinsky, conducting. And yes, there were good moments. A powerful start to the prologue, continuing into Act I, and a lovely harp solo in Act II, joined by a solo violin that reappeared later in Act III and was superbly played by the leader of the orchestra. The basses rocked to the beat at slower moments during the cygnets dance in Act II, swaying the stems of their instruments from side to side — they were obviously having fun — and the percussionist with the castanets in Act III was right on the beat. It must be super for these soloists to play in the great open space of the Albert Hall, rather than hidden away in the orchestra pit, and they rose to the occasion. As for the full orchestra, Act III started with a woompf, and Act IV began with symphonic passion, lovely strings and woodwind. Gergiev has a dramatic technique for starts and conclusions, but the brass hit plenty of wrong notes in the middle, and overall this failed to ignite.

The Mariinsky orchestra played four Bayaderes on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and this concert was on Monday. Gergiev had little time to get them in shape. It was only one week ago that they performed Swan Lake at Covent Garden, and although this may well have been a cut above, it wasn’t a patch on Gergiev’s Sleeping Beauty with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2008. Please can we have Gergiev and the LSO next year? A theatre orchestra cannot rise above their usual level without adequate rehearsal time, and we should not expect it.

William Tell, in concert, Prom 2, Royal Albert Hall, July 2011

This opera is Rossini’s last, fulfilling a commission for a grand opera made five years earlier when he took up residence in Paris. The press had been buzzing with information on its progress, and in his book on Rossini, Francis Toye tells us that “On August 3^rd, 1829, it was finally produced before an audience bursting with curiosity. …  boxes were said to have changed hands for as much as five hundred francs … [and] though [it] was hailed with a salvo of applause by every musician and critic of note, the public remained comparatively indifferent, judging the opera as a whole to be long, cold and boring”. It is long — nearly four hours of music — and usually sustains various cuts. This performance was no exception, but it was gloriously played and sung by the Orchestra and Chorus of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Rome, conducted by their music director Antonio Pappano, who also directs our own Royal Opera at Covent Garden.

William Tell is a legendary archer, forced to shoot an apple placed on his son’s head, and the opera is based on Schiller’s 1804 play, in which Tell’s actions help inspire a successful insurrection against Austrian rule. Whether he and his nemesis, the tyrannical Austrian reeve, Gessler, really existed is an open question, and the story of an archer who was compelled to shoot an apple from his son’s head goes back to a Danish tale in the Gestae Danorum (Deeds of the Danes) written by Saxo Grammaticus in the late twelfth century, in which the archer was named Toke, and the oppressor was King Harald Bluetooth. As in the Tell story the archer takes two arrows from his quiver and after succeeding with the first one is asked the meaning of the second one. He responds that if the first one killed his son, the second was for the oppressor himself, and he’s then condemned to death.

Historically it’s a fact that in 1273, Rudolf I of Habsburg revoked the Reichsfreiheit enjoyed by the Cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, and there was a tradition that William Tell’s insurrection took place in the early 14^th century. He’s a local hero, and in 1895 a bronze statue to him was erected in Altdorf, the capital of Uri.

The Schiller drama includes an important love interest. The young Arnold, a friend of Tell, is in love with Princess Mathilde of Habsburg, and sympathetic to Austria as a consequence. But learning that Gessler has killed his father he joins the rebels, and after Tell and his son are condemned to death, Mathilde places the boy under her royal protection. The role of Arnold with its multitude of high notes is a difficult one, and was brilliantly sung by John Osborn, with a glorious heroic tinge to his voice. His opening Act IV aria Ne m’abandonne pas elicited justifiably huge applause. Tell’s son Jemmy was sung with great purity and clarity by Elena Xanthoudakis, and Mark Stone stood out in the baritone role of Leuthold, as did Nicolas Courjal in the bass role of Gessler. The other principals and soloists were all strong, and the chorus was magnificent. When they played the role of Swiss Confederates at the end of scene 2 in Act IV the audience gave them tremendous applause.

I find it ironic, not to say amusing, that this opera on freedom from oppression — whose last line is Liberté, redescends des cieux — was produced in Paris in 1829, the year before the second French revolution when the last Bourbon King of France was exiled. However, it went past the censor unscathed, though the Papal States were not as lenient, and as for northern Italy there was predictable trouble with the Austrian authorities — in Milan the hero became William Wallace, the oppressors were the English, and the scene with the apple was taken out.

Rossini’s music for William Tell is fascinating, and one can even see ways in which it foreshadows Wagner — certainly Wagner himself congratulated Rossini on this! It was much admired by other composers, and I’m delighted that Antonio Pappano has brought it to the Proms, and given us such a wonderful performance. The start of the overture with those five solo cellos, and the wonderful horn calls around the upper reaches of the auditorium in the first scene, were gripping. The audience loved it, and time seemed to fly, but what a pity there were so many empty seats.

Firebird, in concert at the BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, August 2010

This concert by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Valery Gergiev, had a substantial hors d’oeuvre in Scriabin’s Symphony No. 1. That six-movement work, which ends with massive choral forces, was beautifully performed. The soloists, mezzo Nadezhda Serdiuk and tenor Sergei Skorokhodov, both members of the Mariinsky Theatre, sang strongly, and the LSO chorus gave immense power to the finale.

Stravinsky’s Firebird followed after the interval. It’s a work I have seen danced many times on stage, but here it had an unusually dreamy quality in the earlier part, quite different from the overtly dramatic effect one normally gets with ballet performances. It’s interesting to compare it to Vladimir Jurowski’s excellent Firebird with the London Philharmonic at the Proms two years ago, which was more in the style of a stage performance. After the dreamily dreary first half, Gergiev built momentum and there was a wonderfully swinging quality to the later part when the prince gets hold of Kashchey’s heart in the egg, before breaking it and releasing the princess from Kashchey’s magic. Gergiev also produced a very remarkable dynamic range from the orchestra at the end, becoming scarcely audible before building to a huge climax, helped by the dramatic appearance of three extra trumpets on stage left. This was a superb ending that elicited immense applause.

Die Meistersinger, in concert at the Proms, 17 July 2010

Wagner’s Meistersinger scales the heights of comedy, passion, youthful energy and mature wisdom. It’s a magnificent opera and should produce some wonderful productions, though I saw a real horror last summer at Bayreuth! In such a case one is better off with a concert performance, which of course this was, and it was terrific. The music was played with clarity and unflagging energy from the orchestra of the Welsh National Opera under the direction of Lothar Koenigs, and the cast was the same as their recently acclaimed production. Unfortunately the men were all in plain black, with no nod to the costumes, except for an apron for Hans Sachs in Act II, befitting his role as a cobbler, inundated with worried neighbours wanting to talk, and claiming uncomfortable shoes to justify their visits. This is where Amanda Roocroft as Eva interacted so well with Bryn Terfel as Sachs, their body language as eloquent as their words. Both of them sang magnificently, and Terfel gave a wonderfully nuanced performance. He built up gradually through Acts I and II, and in Act III his Wahn monologue was beautifully done, and he ended very strongly with his Verachtet mir die Meister nicht . . .

Christopher Purves was a superbly arrogant and insecure Beckmesser. He sang wonderfully, and his chewing up of the prize song was a lovely comic turn, but what a pity the translation in the libretto missed a trick in line two, translating ‘Blut’ as ‘blossom’ when it means ‘blood’ — Beckmesser has mistakenly sung Blut instead of Blüt. The last time I saw Purves he sang an excellent Tonio in I Pagliacci at the ENO, another role for a foolish and rejected lover, but I imagine his abilities go beyond these comic roles, and he’s surely a rising star. Andrew Tortise also sang beautifully as David, temporarily abandoning his beautiful tone as he made a gloriously deliberate mess of his first attempt at Am Jordan Sankt Johannes stand early in Act III. Anna Burford did well as Magdalena, and only Raymond Very as Walther was disappointing. His voice lacked youthful energy and did not come over well in the huge Albert Hall, though on the BBC recording the microphone seems to have picked up his voice far better. In close-up on the television he looked fine, if a little old for the part, but in the Hall his little white beard and poor posture made him look like a middle-aged version of Beckmesser.

The orchestra of less than seventy players, apart from some extra brass in the second part of Act III, produced big sounds when necessary yet managed to feel almost like a chamber orchestra at times. The chorus was magnificent, and witnessing Meistersinger in the Albert Hall with these performers was an uplifting experience. For such a feast of music one really wants the dynamic range afforded by a large auditorium, and I applaud The Proms for their first performance of this opera.