by A complete staging of Wagner’s Ring cycle in a restored barn in the Gloucestershire countryside once seemed eccentric. You can say that it still is. Now in its 33rd season, Longborough’s musical festival, which began modestly in 1991, has become a center of musical earnestness. Artistic leadership has been given to its founders, Lizzie and Martin Graham, who happen to be Wagner fans but openly – or thoughtfully – to the presence of other composers, by their opera director daughter, Polly Graham. With a 500-seat theater, a dedication to environmental sustainability and a growing education and engagement program, the festival is a cornerstone of the summer opera season. Its success is the result of ambition and artistic achievement, which helped Wagner specialist Anthony Negus to become its music director.
Last week, the festival began its second ending A ring cycle (the first was in 2013), taken up to five years and almost stopped by the pandemic. Negus’s gift, as well as singers trained to play Wagner, is to judge the pace of this music, to move it forward but not drive it too hard. Directed by Amy Lane, the stages make clever use of limited technical resources and thrift, with imaginative but simple stage designs by Rhiannon Newman Brown and lighting by Charlie Morgan Jones. Video background by Tim Baxter features lunar landscapes, forests, rocky landscapes and Nibelheim’s fiery furnace.
The first two operas of the tetralogy, Das Rheingoldfrom 2019 and the death of Walküre, new this year, showed how the production progressed. Storytelling is at the fore. Two Rheingoldwith a cast brilliantly led by Paul Carey Jones (Wotan) and Mark Stone (Alberich), from time to time they felt cramped on the small stage, Walking deadüre Clarity was urgent. The exchange of Act II between the Valkyrie, Brünnhilde (the powerful and unimaginable Lee Bisset) and the Wälsung twins, Siegmund (Mark Le Brocq, ardent and tender) and Sieglinde (Emma Bell, fearless in vocal strength) felt rare. so tough. The festival orchestra, which was certainly large, was particularly effective here, especially the violas, whose quiet tones color the mood of this act.
There is no understanding of how Wee achieved one of the most difficult tasks in the repertoire while pursuing a legal career.
Wotan’s massive monologue and “farewell” (to his daughter Brünnhilde, who was forced to sleep on a surrounded flaming rock until rescued by a hero) were remarkable for endurance and expression. The eight Valkyries, along with Fricka (Madeleine Shaw) and Hunding (Julian Close), completed an excellent cast. Special praise for young bassist Connor Baiano, a recent graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, who stepped in to sing Fafner in Das Rheingold.
Wagner may have more books written about him, running into the thousands, than any other composer. His exact contemporaries, the reclusive Frenchman Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888), are hardly a handful. He is said to have been killed when a bookcase fell on his head (most likely a heavy coat stand), he was a virtuoso pianist and wrote most of his music for that instrument. His was Concerto for Solo Piano Op 39 it was one of two uniformly long piano works – the other being Keith Jarrett Cologne concert – that was the show in the concert hall last week.
He was the soloist in the Australian Alkanes Paul Wee, who leads a double life as a pianist and a lawyer. This was his first time at Wigmore Hall. How he could master one of the most difficult works in the repertoire while pursuing a legal career is not well understood. It drew a large crowd to Wigmore Hall. Who were all these people? I asked for an expert witness. Members of the Alkane Society? Wee friends from the legal profession? Grateful plaintiffs? The answer: “piano nuts”. The work is rarely performed, not surprisingly.
In three movements, the concerto lasts about 50 minutes and includes every possible piano technique. Wee has played it before, and in 2019 he recorded it for BIS. He tackles the flurry of notes, the cat-like leaps and harmonic deviations with ease. The high drama of the work leaves little room for quiet reflection, but Wee played the lyrical passages with fluid beauty. At the end, the work becomes mad, which is getting madder, and ends with a flourishing glissando down the keyboard. As Wee played the last note, every piano nut, and the rest of us, jumped up and cheered.
Keith Jarrett on Cologne concertRecorded , an improvisation in four movements, on a defective piano in the Cologne opera house on 24 January 1975. The ECM recording was the best-selling piano solo album of all time, the catchy category that draws widely – is it jazz or not? – excessive. It runs slightly longer than the Alkan concerto and, unlike the Alkan, focuses on the middle of the keyboard, left-hand vamping, right-hand building melodies from meditative motifs. After many requests from pianists, Jarrett allowed his performance to be transcribed in 1990.
Now 79, Jarrett has retired from playing (he is also a well-known classical pianist). He keeps tabs on performances of his music but has worked closely with Japanese pianist Maki Namekawa. With a blessing she did the whole thing Cologne concert as part of this year’s Bold Tendencies season at Peckham car park, South London. Her smiling grace and exceptional musical authority were enchanting. And her little giggles and tiny gestures, as she played, recreated Jarrett’s own freewheeling spirit.
Star ratings (out of five)
Das Rheingold/Die Walküre ★★★★
Paul Wee ★★★★
Cologne concert ★★★★★
• Longborough’s opera festival will be on stage two next A ring cycles on 25-30 June and 4-9 July, with additional performances the death of Walküre on 12 and 14 July
