Leonard Bernstein is 100 already. Actually, he’s not – his centenary falls in 2018, but the LSO, an orchestra he conducted many times, is building up to the anniversary with a series of concerts featuring his three symphonies.
Is there a key to “infinite variety”? The challenge of Cleopatra is to convey the sheer fullness of the role, the sense that it defines, and is defined by only itself: there’s no saying that the glorious tragedy of the closing plays itself out, of course, but its impact surely soars only when the ludic engagements of the first half have drawn us in equally.
After Sakari Oramo's dazzling Sibelius rattlebag with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on the centenary day of Finnish independence, things weren't looking so good for Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia at half time last Thursday (★★★). Then along came the Four Lemminkäinen Legends, an early Sibelius masterpiece teeming with invention and strangeness, long a Salonen speciality.
As the Parliament of the Autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire declared independence on 6 December 1917, Sibelius had his head down working on the third version of his Fifth Symphony, the one so hugely popular today. He tried to ignore the dark clouds of Russian revolutionary interference in an event he'd anticipated for so long, composing no music of public celebration.
Even given the peerless standards already set by Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in their Sibelius cycle, this instalment was always going to be the toughest, featuring the most elusive of the symphonies, the Sixth, and the sparest, the Fourth. As it turned out, all challenges were met with Oramo's characteristic mix of energy and sophistication, and the interloper, Swedish composer Anders Hillborg's Second Violin Concerto in its UK premiere, saw to it that Lisa Batiashvili carried the flame.
Was it going to be generic contemporary? The skeetering strings at the beginning suggested as much. But their headlong collision with a chorus of sustained chords proved arresting: what sounded like a pre-recorded ambience turned out to be those same strings turned to calm seas. In effect much of the one-movement concerto was searing cadenza from the compellingly intense Batiashvili (pictured below with Hillborg, Oramo and members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra by Mark Allen), mostly accompanied until close to the end and punctuated by two wild eastern dances – part Turkish sanat, part Bollywood, with Hillborg making and needing no apologies for the populism.
The intensity held; the ear was led through ever-unexpected harmonic shifts, and where the work might have sagged, the two oboes and cor anglais introduced a mesmerising new hook. Filmic in effect, but never merely film music. Given the echo of Bach's D minor Sarabande near the start, the ethereal encore was entirely appropriate – Hillborg's arrangement for violin and strings of the organ prelude on the chorale "Ich ruf zu Dir".
Well might any contemporary composer quake about sharing a programme with Sibelius, whose originality in the best performances always makes his music sound as if were composed yesterday. And these interpretations were indeed the best. Oramo knew he could draw maximum, dynamically nuanced soulfulness from the BBCSO strings in the profoundly beautiful hymns which frame the work – the last, dying out on a single note, is as convincing an ending as Sibelius ever wrote, making this more than ever a candidate for the end rather than the beginning of the programme (as usual, alas, it appeared in the first half). So did the muscular energy of the outer movement's strange adventures and the Beethoven-like primal charge of the scherzo, bursting straight out of the Allegretto moderato's twilight zone. The sudden flautato semiquavers which quicken its pulse with quiet intensity, backing quirky snatches of birdsong, are a test for any conductor; all credit to Oramo and the BBCSO that those forest murmurs have never sounded more compelling.
Though the Fourth could hardly be further away in its slow-evolving dark power, the hallmarks of these interpretations remained: the powerfully-vocalised wind solos (flautist Michael Cox especially impressive), the simultaneous projection of upper, middle and bass layers, all doing their own distinctive thing, and the way Oramo sustains a line or an argument even when it's punctuated by long silences. The high watershed both of Sibelius's unique tragedy among his symphonies and of the playing came in the great slow movement, heroically trying to piece itself together out of numb, depressive fragments. It's the cellos who finally, gradually manage to give full voice to a cathartic lament. That climb of theirs out of the darkness last night will stay with me for ever.
Next page: watch Lisa Batiashvili with Sakari Oramo conducting the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in the 2016 premiere of Hillborg's Second Violin Concerto
STIMMUNG is always an event. Stockhausen’s score calls for a ritual as much as a performance, with six singers sitting around a spherical light on a low table, the audience voyeurs at some intimate but unexplained rite. Singcircle has been performing the work for over 40 years, and its director, Gregory Rose, clearly has an innate sense of its pace, structure and aura.
As moments of transcendence go, Laura Mvula’s guest spot at Robert Glasper’s EFG London Jazz Festival show provided one of the year’s most transporting musical moments.
Powered by the huge harmonic slabs carved out by keyboardist Travis Sayles and the vast backbeat of bassist Derrick Hodge and drummer George “Spanky” McCurdy, Mvula’s delicately outerspacious “Bread” was recast as a 10-minute meditation. The mantra-like repetitions of the refrain "Lay the breadcrumb down so we can find our way", together with the uniquely affecting timbre of Mvula’s voice, succeeded in uniting and lifting up 2,000 souls in a warm, hymn-like embrace. It was a moment of emotional fellowship that no one who witnessed it is likely to forget.
Glasper’s generosity towards his band mates was evidenced right from the off
With so many different elements coming into play throughout the generously proportioned set – acoustic, electric, guest vocalists, a DJ supplying ghostly electronic washes and speech samples, plus a paean to the music of Stevie Wonder right at its centre – this felt more like a classic revue than a standard gig.
Glasper’s generosity towards his band mates was evidenced right from the off, with Glasper in the company of his Covered trio band mates, bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Damion Reid.
The trio first explored the circular, minimalist funk of Prince’s "Sign o' the Times", beginning with a pulsating, scene-setting drum solo from Reid. When the track proper kicked in, Archer dug deep into the familiar, gnomic bass riff, while Reid’s left hand performed small miracles of dexterity on hi-hat and ride cymbal. In the final musical clearing, Glasper’s brief duet with a sample of vocalist Erykah Badu (Mongo Santamaria's classic “Afro Blue” from Glasper’s 2012 album, Black Radio) was a nice turntablist touch.
The loops and layerings of Radiohead’s “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” saw the trio further exploring the creative interconnections between hip hop and jazz, Glasper’s towering solo on Fender Rhodes hinting at the euphoric quality that’s never far from the surface of his music.
A quick stage reset, and we were back with Vula Malinga, LaDonna Harley Peters (two-thirds of LaSharVu) and Brendan Reilly, raising their voices in a euphonious take on Wonder’s “Overjoyed”. Vula then took centre stage for a powerhouse interpretation of “Superwoman”, bathed in a cavernous reverb and with the vocal line panning left and right across the Barbican, McCurdy supplying the monstrous backbeat.
Bilal then let his liquid phrasing loose on “Too High”, with a captivating solo from harmonica player Grégoire Maret and funky comping from guitarist Mike Severson, before detonating the incredible power of his falsetto on his self-penned “Levels”, which concluded with an impressively vast, pulsing wall of sound. (Pictured above: Robert Glasper and guests including Bilal. Photo by Emile Holba for the EFG London Jazz Festival.)
Prefaced by a breathtaking solo from Hodge, the first of Mvula’s two contributions was a relatively straight reading of “Visions”. Here, Glasper’s tintinnabulating work in the upper register of the grand piano in the outro suggested that the music was attempting to break away from the terrestrial sphere. But this was merely a taste of the engulfing beauty that was to follow.
Overleaf: watch Robert Glasper play “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box”
Coriolanus is post-tragic. It never horrifies like Macbeth or appals like King Lear, though its self-damaging protagonist is disconcerting enough. Shakespeare had written the signature dark dramas by 1606, including the most magnificent of the four (truly) Roman plays, Antony and Cleopatra. Along with Julius Caesar and Titus Andronicus, all are transferring from springtime premières in Stratford to the Barbican.
Pat Metheny recently described quite how much he enjoys just being on stage: “As Phil Woods used to say, the concert, that's for free. What the promoter is paying for is getting on the plane, getting off the plane, to pack your suitcase. The actual gig – you can have that for nothing.”
Amen. The end – of a prayer, a service, even the Bible itself. But what, asks Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No 3, Kaddish, if “Amen” is the beginning and not the end, the start of a conversation that hears the divine word and doesn’t say “So be it” and accept, but instead answers back?