The May Guide

Two Contemporary Music Concerts
Following last month's celebration of Unsuk Chin, the BBC are holding another Total Immersion Day, on Saturday 14 May, this time devoted to the music of the outstanding Transylvanian composer and conductor Peter Eötvös. I will be very excited to get to grips with his complex but riveting and individual sound-world that goes from performance of Psalm 151 ('In memoriam Frank Zappa') to a film showing of his opera, Three Sisters, based on Chekov's play, and a piece in the evening's symphony concert that includes an important role for one of my favourite instruments, the Hungarian cimbalom, that consists of a box with piano-like wires stretched across it, that are beaten to create a very special sound.

The other contemporary music concert of the month takes place at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank, given by the London Sinfonietta, London's leading contemporary ensemble, with an international reputation for performing world premieres. This concert includes the first performance ever of a work by the distinguished British composer Colin Matthews, whose violin concerto I recently heard in Miami of all places, as well as works by composers whom I barely know, if at all – Laurence Crane, Bryn Harrison, Martin Suckling, Phillip Cashian and Christopher Fox. But the pleasure will hopefully will be the discovery of at least one or two artists whose work I will wish to follow in the future.

Opera Recommendations
As regards to opera performances likely to be outstanding, there is above all, a new production at English National Opera by Terry Gilliam, (he of Monty Python fame) of Hector Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust. I cannot guarantee the quality of the production until I see it, which could be fantastic, or equally disastrous. What I can say is that Berlioz's score is astounding and likely to be well performed under their very good chief conductor, Edward Gardner. Berlioz writes and imagines the world of Faust as though he was living in the age of film even though he wrote it in 1845/6. The melodies are in turn erotic or exciting, and often both, with astonishing instrumental and vocal colour. I can never hear it often enough.

Also at ENO is another new production, this time of Benjamin Britten's beautiful translation into music of Shakespeare's most musical of plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Britten composed this piece in 1960, but its musical language is both accessible and totally at one with Shakespeare's hallucinatory comedy. The production by Christopher Alden, who unlike Terry Gilliam, is a highly experienced contemporary director of opera, is likely to be at the very least, riveting – maybe more.

There is one concert performance of an opera that I love deeply, this is Smetana, the great Czech romantic composer's masterpiece, The Bartered Bride. Starting with one of the most wonderful operatic overtures ever, the piece is a cornucopia of melody based on Czech folk traditions and is guaranteed in this performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and all Czech singers under Jiří Belohlávek, their chief conductor and the best possible interpreter of this music to leave every listener totally happy at the end of the evening. This is at the Barbican on the 20th May.

Classical Diary Dates & Venues
Wigmore Hall: At one of my favourite London venues for classical music, which this year is celebrating its hundred and tenth (why not?) anniversary, there is a superabundance of performances likely to give pleasure. The Wigmore has a particularly good and easy to use website, even for a cloud-dinosaur like myself. But amongst the performances I most want to be present at myself are on the 2nd with Jordi Savall, arguably the greatest performer today of ancient music, he has a programme transporting us through a range of medieval music. Amongst the many great singers who all love performing at the Wigmore, on the 14th there is the Christian Gerhaher – my favourite baritone today – singing an all Mahler programme. And on the 29th, another great german baritone of a darker timbre, Thomas Quasthoff, singing yet more Mahler and also songs by Richard Strauss. Two days earlier on the 27th, Quasthoff's accompanist, András Schiff performs Beethoven's 33 variations on a theme by Diabelli – one of the greatest of all masterpieces for the piano, based on a quite silly tune by an eponymous Viennese publisher. And then on the 31st, maybe you should go and queue for returns for a marvellous concert by the Takács Quartet and Stephen Hough – outstanding artists in a wonderful programme which you can easily check for yourself.

Royal Festival Hall: Here, there is one concert on the 28th that I seriously fancy going to, but alas, I will already be in Venice preparing a retrospective exhibition of Julian Schnabel in connection with this year's Biennale. This is a beautiful concert programme of works by Haydn, Mahler and Brahms, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and including once again, Christian Gerhaher, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, who as chief conductor of Glyndebourne, must now be in the middle of preparations for Wagner's Mastersingers – the longest great opera of all, and Wagner's only comedy, to open on the 21st May, perhaps the most eagerly anticipated opera event of this year. For me, this sublime masterpiece is the best way of making six hours of music feel like five minutes.

Purcell Room: But then that very evening, just next door to the Festival Hall, in the Purcell Room, there is a performance of John Cage's Indeterminacy, originally recorded with his long-time collaborator David Tudor on the piano in 1959 and John Cage with his inimitable voice which I remember so well, reading 90 stories out loud, each lasting one minute. Two brave young pianists take on the role of Tudor, joining Stuart Lee as Cage – he the co-director of Jerry Springer The Opera. I would love to be there too, alas. Please go for me!

Kings Place: One more thing. There is another interesting relatively new venue, Kings Place, just behind Kings Cross Station, that amongst a lot of other potentially good concerts, features a number including works by the young American composer, Nico Muhly (pictured). Check out his website, which is a lot of fun! A protégée of Philip Glass, he has an opera called Two Boys being premiered in London at ENO in June/July before being performed next season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The concerts at King's Place are a chance to explore some of his other music.

 

Norman Rosenthal spent more than thirty years as director of exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts.  Since he was nine-years-old, which was 1953, has been haunting London's many concert and opera venues, large and small, absorbing classical, opera and contemporary music, all of which he enjoys in equal measure.