A Slavic Cornucopia?

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

Owain Arwel Hughes

St David's Hall

As this year’s Welsh Proms – the celtic baby sister of the BBC’s mammoth classical music festival – nears its close, St David’s Hall filled to the rafters for an annual fixture, the Russian Prom. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic were joined by decorated Welsh conductor Owain Arwel Hughes, the founder, curator and underwriter of the Welsh Proms.

The Slavic cornucopia opened, aptly, with Glinka’s Overture to the opera ‘Ruslan and Ludmilla’. The piece was ably played and served as a musicologically appropriate overture to the concert, but if it was lacking in style, we had only the composer to blame. It is well known that the piece was hastily hashed together by Glinka during dress rehearsals. Clearly no masterpiece, then, and one is left wondering, ‘why programme it?’

Photo: Welsh Proms Cymru

Indeed, it was programming that let this concert down: Musorgsky’s ‘Night on Bare Mountain’; Rachmaninov’s ‘Vocalise’; Borodin’s ‘Polovtsian Dances; and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. Glinka notwithstanding, these pieces are undoubtedly masterpieces, but all so well-known and, for want of a better word, overplayed, that you could leave before you arrived. Would it have been inexpedient, say, to substitute the Tchaikovsky symphony for a short, lesser-known suite by that composer, relinquishing the symphonic limelight to one of Borodin’s sublime chefs-d'oeuvre? (Better yet would be to forgo Tchaikovsky altogether, to better explore the works of, for instance, Balakirev, Lyadov, Serov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev or Shostakovich, to name but a handful).

But back to the performance. The Glinka was followed by the very welcome genius of Musorgsky’s demonic ‘Night on Bare Mountain’. The orchestra played brilliantly, but their dynamic extremes were exhausted far too soon and, sadly, the piece was lacking a great deal of that marvellous mysticism which surely is the point of a Russian Prom. These stylistic gremlins were the fault of conductor, not orchestra: Mr Hughes’ handling of the piece was far from elegant.

It was downhill to the interval. The Rachmaninov was far too slow and consequently any gestural lyricism in this lovely little piece was torn out. The Borodin recovered much of this, but suffered from the absence of the vocal chorus.

The Tchaikovsky was largely excellent. Strings and wind differed greatly in their rendering of the Allegro theme in the first movement, which abnegated the crucial thematic cohesion, but the entirety was exciting and evocative, and if the fortes were a little belligerent, it was certainly possessed of the crucial "Joie de vive [sic!]" ascribed to it in the programme notes.

So, the concert suffered from poor programming and an interpretive void in the conductor which did this superb orchestra little credit. The Russian Prom is a fine idea, but something has to change for next year.

Peter L. Wagstaff

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Scottish independence – the dilemma

Image: BBC

The referendum on Scottish independence is approaching fast – too fast, perhaps, to answer all the important questions it raises. One of the trickier issues is the one surrounding the BBC, that is, the British Broadcasting Corporation. Is it possible that a Yes vote would deprive Scotland not just of the pound, not just of free trade of its precious North Sea oil and gas with the EU; but might Scotland also have Dr Who (made in Wales) and Strictly (England) wrenched from its desperate grasp? This oft-quoted example may err on the ridiculous, but it does illustrate an important point. The BBC is an enormous UK-wide institution, the strength of which undoubtedly lies in its sheer size and reach, and its leviathan budget.

The current allowance allocated to BBC Scotland is £200m, but is likely to fall in 2016 to £175m. The Scottish share of the license fee, however, is £320m – Scotland is being short-changed. The SNP’s plan is this: break away from the BBC to establish the SBS (Scottish Broadcasting Service), which would run on the Scottish license fees, plus a government subsidy that would amount to a corpulent £345m – effectively double the predicted budget for 2016. Double the budget, twice the results, right? Wrong. BBC Scotland currently supplies only 7.6% of the BBC’s total production output (figure from 2012). The other 92.4% of programming comes from across the UK, mainly England. The doubled SBS budget would therefore provide only 15.2% of the programming that Scots are used to through the UK-wide BBC. The SNP have this covered, they say. They will broker a deal with the BBC, in which Scots provide the BBC with programmes made by SBS, in exchange for free access to the full BBC service available to the rest of the UK. Such a deal seems unlikely, given the recent all-or-nothing stance in England: if they won’t get the pound, is it likely they’ll get the BBC?

Donald Runnicles rehearsing the BBC SSO                      Image: Telegraph

 One of the most crucial (and oft-neglected) BBC departments is its orchestral sector. Most of the music you hear on BBC programming has been recorded by BBC orchestras, which are funded by your license fee. These orchestras are, you’ll be pleased to know, remarkably cost-efficient. BBC orchestras’ budgets vary, but they average out at £6.1m each, per year, compared to the £9.7m independent orchestras cost to run on average. The reasons are these:

• Their time spent giving public concerts is relatively small, against time spent in the recording studio. This means less money spent on venues and advertising.
• Their money comes from the license fee, so no need to hire fundraisers.
• Admin teams are lean, sharing duties between departments and across the UK.
• They pay their chief execs far less than independent orchestras.

Undoubtedly, the close relationship between the various BBC orchestras reduces everyone’s costs.

The SNP’s proposed budget for the SBS has apparently not taken into account the running of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO), one of Britain’s finest. Admin staff would have to increase, bringing the average 17 full time employees in a BBC orchestra closer to the standard 31 in comparable independent orchestras. Player recruitment would certainly become harder: as soon as Scotland is a ‘foreign’ country with a border to navigate, the free movement of orchestral performers around the UK is bound to suffer. The SBS SSO – the catchy acronym it would, presumably, adopt – would likely lose its privileged place at the BBC Proms.

The dilemma is simple: costs will go up, while the budget will go down. The SNP’s plan is therefore unsustainable.

Image: BBC SSO

The BBC SSO declined to comment, siting their impartiality. The BBC’s political impartiality is indeed sacrosanct – a cultural duty – but it seems bizarre that, party-politics aside, it shouldn’t wish to defend the Corporation’s collective integrity. Political impartiality can easily be mistaken for cultural ambivalence, and the BBC must be careful how it treads. The time may come when it will have to decide where it stands: it would be a sad irony if the world’s finest broadcaster were to sacrifice a world-class orchestra on the shrine of cultural integrity. 

Peter L. Wagstaff

Ukraine Philharmonic rides out the riots

Photo: Roman Pilipey/EPA

Rioting, especially in a capital city, is bad for everybody. The economic impact of three months of civil strife in Ukraine is still uncalculated, though the best guesses for property damage around the afflicted areas stand at a conservative $2m – positively pallid against the estimated £1bn ($1.7bn) clear-up cost of the recent flooding in the UK. No doubt alarming figures of cash lost in Kiev by diminished tourism, depleted work forces and startled markets will emerge soon enough; and this in a country only this week downgraded to CCC credit rating – a hop and a skip from default.

The domes of Kiev

The economic woes are all very worrying, but what about the cultural impact? Kiev is one of the oldest and most populous cities in Europe. Famed for its wealth and beauty, Russians and Poles fought over it for centuries. Kiev’s many museums hold some of the most precious examples of Eurasian art and artefacts in the world; disturbing stories abound of recent museum looting by public and police alike. The National Philharmonic of Ukraine was founded in 1863, as a Kievan offshoot of the Imperial Russian Musical Society, and its history is a turbulent tale. In the first decades of the 20^th century, Ukraine saw world war, civil war and frequent internal power struggles, but the music of Debussy, Saint-Saëns and others continued to breathe life into the culture capital of Eastern Europe, through the determined work of the Ukraine Philharmonic. WWII hit Ukraine in 1941: the Philharmonic closed down and precious archives went up in smoke. The beautiful building was converted to a German officers’ club – its salvation; the surrounding buildings were razed. With the Russian liberation, the Philharmonic rose from the ashes and played a crucial role in retaining a little Ukrainian cultural identity, under the shadow of soviet territorialism. In the 80s, the basement flooded, ruining its priceless library. The musicians played on.

National Philharmonic of Ukraine

The recent riots in Kiev have hit the Ukraine Philharmonic hard. A cursory glance their Facebook page (and a quick copy-and-paste into Google translate) reveals a total of nine cancelled concerts from 18/02/14 to 09/03/14, and three concerts postponed. This amounts to most of a season, and will cost the institution tens of thousands of dollars. St David’s Hall in Cardiff, UK, receives an annual subsidy of £1.2m ($2m), the imminent withdrawal of which might, disastrously, be its demise. Certainly it would be difficult for the Duma in Kiev to justify a comparable subsidy when it faces such dire economic and political circumstances.

The best hope for Ukrainian music to continue in its rich vein is a resultant cultural reactionism. For a nation familiar with regular and abrupt social and political upheavals, culture provides a crucial sense of national identity and continuity. The people of Kiev should realise this and fight for their artistic survival. If history is anything to go by, they’ll probably succeed.

Peter L. Wagstaff

“A Percussive Explosion” with Sinfonia Newydd, 20/02/14

There’s nothing terribly cutting-edge about a concert headlining the music of Prokofiev… is there?  What if the great composer himself were to make an appearance? No, not the long-dead soviet virtuoso, but the dashing English grandson, well-known on the London DJ scene. Gabriel Prokofiev’s Concerto for Bass Drum received its Welsh premiere on 20^th February at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, alongside four world premiere commissions from young Welsh composers and Mark David Boden’s remarkable “Urban Loops”, written specially for the evening’s orchestra, Sinfonia Newydd.

A rocky start in which the star percussionist failed to appear on stage was quickly forgotten amidst the consuming, distorted serenity of Boden’s “Urban Loops”. An immaculate performance did the piece credit; the five solo percussionists assimilated marvellously into the texture, successfully skirting any crass juxtaposition.

High expectations rested on the shoulders of recent Royal Academy graduate Ed Scolding. His piece, “Thrown” was very ingenious, with clever use of dominant tonal centres providing stability under tricky, disconcerting rhythms. The orchestra conveyed it well, with a sense of unrelenting accuracy. I was, however, left pining for a brighter string sound (as I was in the Boden), which might have induced a more transparent texture.

Ray Leung’s “Totem” was characterised by a stravinskian feel of rhythmic frenzy – rhythms which could have been carried better. The music was melodically appealing though, and was the only piece which seemed to work well with the dry acoustic of the Dora Stoutzker.

“Go!” was an apt name for Yfat Soul Zisso’s commission, painting a picture of struggle between the dynamic and the static. The bizarre contrasts between implied major and minor tonalities were just as uncomfortable as I’m sure the composer intended, and the monotony and lack of direction (deliberate, I’m lead to believe!) felt curiously original, if a little tiresome (again, intentional). This time, however, it was the woodwind who were too peripheral – it was they who had much of the motivic interest, much of which was lost in over-zealous bowing from the violins.

Nathan James Dearden was also trying to depict struggle, in his commission “Friction”. His, however was built on a sense of unrelenting motivic development, which was extremely compelling. Indeed, the ‘friction’ seemed, cleverly, to occur within the motivic superstructure, rather than between segmented ideas, and sparse use of strings, primarily as a colouristic device rather than harmonic underpinning, added a satisfying clarity to the texture. What’s more, the orchestra handled the devilish rhythms admirably.

The climax of the evening was the young Prokofiev’s Concerto for Bass Drum and Orchestra. No gimmick, the programme note insists – the bass drum is capable of more than you might expect. In quite a coup for this young orchestra, virtuoso percussionist Joby Burgess was secured for the fiendish solo role. The dark sonority of the orchestral opening statements was a pleasant contrast against the bright, sometimes shrill textures of much of the evening’s music. The bass drum itself was cleverly manipulated by composer and player, though the use of a piece of twine attached to the drum skin and bowed like a violin was a little underwhelming. Clever use of all the areas of the drum skin created the convincing illusion of pitched tonality (aided by a parroting double bass). The nasty syncopations in the third movement were not absolutely accurate all of the time, with orchestra and soloist occasionally out of sync, but it was impressively executed nonetheless. The final movement was as much as show of orchestral virtuosity as soloistic, and the ensemble performance was remarkably strong.

Huge credit must be given to the orchestra’s new Music Director, James Southall, whose conducting was dynamic, precise, and did, I believe, do justice to every note of this extremely difficult music.

The stars of the evening were the composers, all of whom were present, all of whom have created pieces of exceptional craftsmanship. My admiration goes out to the Sinfonia Newydd institution for supporting such talent, and for executing it to such a standard.

Find out more about Sinfonia Newydd and its laudable aims here: http://www.sinfonianewydd.co.uk

Peter L. Wagstaff

Carmen (Bizet), production by Opera’r Ddraig, 21/02/2014.

Opera’r Draig, an amateur opera company dominated by students of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, is no longer in its infancy. Five years have passed since its founding, and half a dozen dynamic, entertaining and very thrifty productions are testament to Ddraig’s winning formula. Their latest endeavour – the most challenging yet – was Bizet’s red-hot Carmen, in a production at The Gate theatre running three days. Their return to The Gate was a wise and welcome move: last year’s production of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld struggled against a desperately constricting set design in Cardiff Bay’s Coal Exchange. The Gate may be small, but it seems to suit Ddraig’s bare-bones production style and tongue-in-cheek audience connectivity.

Carmen lives or dies by its title character. Cast a fine voice senza shakiran hips and she loses any allure. Bring in a tenacious actress whose voice isn’t up to the challenge and it’s downright disappointing. The casting of Clare Ghigo, therefore, was a stroke of wisdom bordering on the miraculous. This young Maltese mezzo joined the gang after graduating from Guildhall, and certainly she brought a certain something. Not only did she own the theatre with her formidable and versatile voice, but she conjured up the gypsy girl’s tragic appeal marvellously. Man of the match, without question, to Ms. Ghigo. Sadly, the lethally love-struck Don Jose, played by Ben Thapa, rather paled by comparison. While Mr. Thapa’s vocal portrayal was undeniably skilful, his rendering of Jose as a petulant sociopath was a little annoying, and any sympathy for the ‘fallen man’ was lost.

The chorus always plays a crucial role in Ddraig productions. Its energy and force of presence acts as a dynamic set: a back-drop of colour and emotional context for the leads to play off. Carmen’s singing, dancing chorus outstripped even the can-canning, debauched excitement of Orpheus’s. These hugely dedicated Ddraig performers deserve enormous credit. The orchestra, too, surpassed that of past productions, and excepting a couple of intonationally questionable moments, what I saw was a tight ensemble of which any professional pit would be proud. All told, conductor Jack Lovell succeeded in putting together a musically sophisticated opera.

Can there be a downer in this effusiveness? Perhaps. The strength of opera as a genre is its social contextuality. ENO’s gritty production of Peter Grimes (which ended on 23^rd February) has gained all the more potency in light of a recent wave of child-abuse scandals, and the decision by director David Alden to paint the Borough whistle-blowers in such dark light was as courageous as it was uncomfortable. WNO’s new rendition of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, set in a busy commuter station, is starkly reflective of recent concerns about modern-day sex slavery.

Opera’r Ddraig put on productions of extremely high musical and dramatic quality, and Carmen has set the bar even higher. But that’s not enough anymore. What I want to see now is something a little more explorative.

Find more about Opera'r Ddraig here: http://www.operarddraig.co.uk

Peter L. Wagstaff