He also fell in love with the cinema and while watching ET take his leave of Elliot in the closing sequence of Steven Spielberg’s classic movie he realised how much of the emotion of that sequence came directly from John Williams’ score. Ben wanted, needed, to do the same and after a seven-year apprenticeship to movie music ace Dario Marianelli he was paid the greatest compliment of all when he orchestrated and conducted what was to be Marianelli’s Oscar-winning score for the movie Atonement.

He now has 43 movie scores under his belt and his latest for Summer in February starring Downton Abbey’s Dan Stephens is sure to haunt the airwaves for some time to come. His concert pieces are mounting up, too, and when he’s not conducting a Shostakovich violin concerto he might be caretaking his own. In this exclusive audio podcast he vigorously refutes the notion that movie music is in some way a poor relation of the music that daily fills our concert halls and indeed is quick to tell Edward Seckerson that speed of composition is as vital for him in his concert pieces as in his movie scores. That way lies the spontaneity he so passionately seeks.

http://www.benjaminwallfisch.com/film/

The tempo of this single, insanely eventful, day in the Almaviva household (their out-of-town retreat designed in stunning Moorish detail by Christopher Oram) is set by Mozart’s Overture and whilst conductor Jérémie Rhorer pressed the excellent London Philharmonic Orchestra to within an inch of possibility at the start, the essential tensions emanating from the pit in terms of pacing and articulation came and went a bit throughout the evening. Part of the problem – and this was something I commented upon when the production was new last year – was the pacing of the recitative. Grandage (and now his revival director) play it as they would a contemporary play – very naturalistically – compromising the reckless dash of the narrative time and time again. Lickety-split is the phrase which best describes the delivery of all these 18th century libretti – and given the urgency of the plotting and sub-plotting increasing desperate characters such as these are bound to speak faster.

So while the pacing was slower, the business was broader with Adam Plachetka’s rangy Figaro piling on the physical swagger he wasn’t quite able to achieve vocally. It’s a dark, grainy voice, this, but in an evening where character generally won out over vocal beauty he was hardly the exception to the rule. There was a lot of lively vibrato going on across the stage, no more so than from the statuesque Countess of Amanda Majeski. I think it is generally agreed that she needs to be the most accomplished singer on the stage – but without uniformly beautiful tone and a seamless legato how can she be? Majeski’s account of the hugely challenging “Dove sono” was patchy and short-winded of phrase. Harsh, I know, but there can be no compromising the long-breathed line of that aria.

It helped, though, that she and Figaro were markedly taller than Joshua Hopkins’ Count. That an element of short-man syndrome could be added to his frustrated Bee Gee demeanour, replete with floral print pants and the obligatory medallion, was a boon to his characterisation. Every time he and Figaro were on stage together it was plain as daylight why each was the envy of the other: status versus a self-confidence. Vocally, too, Hopkins cut the mustard in a house this size. I also much enjoyed Lydia Teuscher’s laddish, ungainly, Cherubino – the silent rapture she brought to the still centre of “Non so più”, the plangent simplicity of her Serenade to the Countess. Laura Tatulescu’s Susanna grew for me as the evening progressed. There’s a little too much vinegar in the sound (especially when she pushes it) but her comic timing is a bit special and the sarcastic curtsey she pointedly gives the Count as she emerges from the Countess’s closet in act two is one of many details that is absolutely spot on.

So psychedelia and platform shoes rule and the wedding party’s synchronised jive talkin’ is guaranteed to get the Glyndebourne audience going after the dinner interval. But whilst this perfect piece will always prevail no matter where and when and how you set it, shortcomings – wherever and whenever they show themselves – are the more conspicuous for its perfection.

There was plenty of the latter in this highly charged reading from Andrew Litton – remarkably his very first of the piece – and perhaps the very tension that will have thus arisen from its technical and emotional demands gave it an extra focus and immediacy. It felt every inch a masterpiece, its willful opposition of the sacred and the secular shamelessly direct, the physical separation of the male soloists and chamber orchestra from the main forces (the former to the extreme right of the sound spectrum) achieving that aural jolt that Britten so plainly intended when Wilfred Owen’s poems repeatedly challenge and contradict the sentiments of the Latin Mass interposing a kind of reality check and even outrage at its repetitious complacency.

Perhaps the most startling of many inspirational passages in the piece comes with the Offertorium and Britten’s nasty twist on the Abraham and Isaac story. The Angel of the Lord may duly appear to Abraham with an eleventh hour alternative to his son’s sacrifice – the ubiquitous Lamb of God – but he kills him anyway… “and half the seed of Europe one by one”. Litton lent the jauntiness of Britten’s setting an unsettling jazziness and when John Mark Ainsley and Florian Boesch gave voice to father and son the underlying cynicism was inescapable. Boesch was marvelously resolute throughout (sharply allied to an excellent chamber orchestra under assistant conductor Halldis Ronning) and come his thunderous “Be slowly lifted up, thy long black arm” the open thrust of the top notes became increasingly defiant underpinned by thudding timpani but ultimately overwhelmed by the terrifying accumulation of brass back into the Dies irae.

John Mark Ainsley, too, displayed genuine empathy, effortless now in the sometimes awkward switches of register and affecting but never cloying in the unforgettable juxtaposing of the Lacrimosa and Owen’s “Move him, move him into the sun”, the former increasingly foreshortened until the Latin words sound hollow and pointless in the light of Owen’s heartbreak.
Litton’s nose for theatricality was much in evidence throughout and his relish for such explicitly pictorial passages as the Sanctus where the chorus multi-divided and ad libitum becomes a gathering, jabbering, multitude might have been still more exciting had the assembled choirs – Collegium Musicum, Bergen Philharmonic, and KorVest – delivered more collective heft at the big nodal points. The Boys’ Choir, from Bergen and Solihull, was throaty and vibrant though their constant parading in and out of the hall from their makeshift position halfway back must have been a major irritation to those members of the audience sat behind them.

No matter, the logistics of this piece are sometimes at the mercy of what is practical in each venue and what really counted here as anywhere was the sonic effect of Britten’s precisely terraced sound frescoes. Is there anything in 20th century music quite as shattering as the moment of fission at the climax of the Libera me? Litton made that count and then some, his fearless soprano Emily Magee leading the reckless dash to the abyss. Litton’s mighty ritardando (unmarked but surely more than justified) into the apocalypse of all chords seemed to carry with it the anguish of all mankind. Call it excessive, call it melodramatic, call it vulgar (pace Stravinsky on this one), no one leaves performances of War Requiem like this one indifferent – but rather stirred and humbled.

Actually the spirit of his comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor resides – in all its chortles and guffaws – in Verdi’s orchestra and how better to pull it all into sharp relief than to deploy the very particular timbres of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to steam clean it under the expert ears of Mark Elder. I can’t remember when I last heard a more articulate account of this great score. In marked contrast to Ultz’ designs Verdi’s orchestral writing is heard in perfect perspective dancing and dreaming from one scene to the next, a motley ensemble of instrumental “characters” vividly complementing those on stage. The rigour and rusticity of the strings with imperative rhythms underlining the hectic narrative; the incessant chuckling of the woodwinds, the often graphic bodily functions depicted in basso registers or the quivering jowls of low-stopped horns. And all this in marked contrast to the ethereal wash of wispy violins, all magic and fairy dust, in the final scene. Elder pretty much conducted from memory (intriguing to observe from a side box on this occasion) and no one can have left the theatre in any doubt of his deep affection for this most embraceable score.

What a fine Falstaff we had in Laurent Naouri, too, full of verbal and physical nuance. Spectacularly convincing prosthetics totally suspended disbelief that there might be a slim man lurking beneath the fat suit and perhaps that is why Naouri was able to convey so well the slender and elegant Sir John of yore in his ungainly twilight years. I should mention, too, the swarthy and resounding Ford of Roman Burdenko and at the opposite end of the vocal spectrum the charmingly Italianate Fenton of Antonio Poli.

Talk about warming our spirits on a perfectly foul English “summer’s” day. Enter shivering, leave beaming.

photo: Falstaff, Glynebourne 2013 by Tristram Kenton

Reid exudes warmth, she’s one of us. And even as the running order got the better of her from time to time I felt like I wanted to jump up and sort it out for her (“Why didn’t you?” I can hear her say). That radiant smile is SO inviting and reassuring. As for the comic timing, well, flustered or not, that never deserts her. The story of the 200-pound German bomb that failed to explode on impact with her home revealed something of the northern stock from whence she came while her mother’s irritation that they should evacuate at three in the morning could leave no one in any doubt as to why we won the war.

Reid’s stories are, of course, priceless: her memorable seven-and-a-half day flight back to India, aged 12, with a couple of joy-riding airmen where, having never flown before, she imagined that their series of victory rolls was something that routinely happened on BOAC. Is it any wonder that Victoria Wood put her on “Dinnerladies” duty?

But the real cleverness of Reid’s set lay with the shrewd choice of songs. Pianist Stuart Hutchinson plainly played a part in that fielding some lesser known Sondheim charmers (perhaps Reid’s idol Barbara Cook offered a few pointers) alongside the likes of Hamlisch, Legrand, Arlen, and even Billy Joel. Jerry Herman’s “Ribbons Down My Back” (from Dolly) was perfect (a one-time Patricia Routledge favourite) and most touching of all was an affecting little gem from Amanda McBroom called “Errol Flynn” which threw a whole new light on the legacy of a broken home. Reid inhabited that like the consummate actress she is. Indeed, her best moments in song were those in which the weight of nostalgia bore down on her… “The Road You Didn’t Take”, “Cock-Eyed Optimist”. You don’t need to be a singer to make songs land – and perhaps Reid is wrong when she says she wishes she’d done this 30 years ago; just think of all that life experience she now has to draw upon.

Thursday 30 May 7.30 2013

It’s unlike me to be so literal, even pedantic, about this free and fanciful world of opera but when a director imposes such a specific layer of subtext onto what is essentially a delicious confection about two theatrical worlds colliding, and how the one informs and enriches the other, then such anomalies can rankle and irritate. But then again Julia Müer’s rather unprepossessing set hardly suggests realism and once the Vaudevillians (the commedia dell’arte element) arrive, led with showbizzy vivacity by Laura Claycomb’s Zerbinetta, all bets are off as to where we might be headed. There is a key moment in this Prologue where Strauss and Hofmannsthal absolutely nail the essence of their conceit – and to her credit Thoma does, too. This is the interlude where Zerbinetta and the Composer (the wiry and intense and thoroughly excellent Kate Lindsey) are alone and he begins to see the real woman behind the hoofer/comedienne facade while she in turn glimpses that elusive Mr. Right. Her unexpected kiss, full on the lips, is a huge moment and one that Thoma intriguingly carries forward into the Opera proper.

So gone – wiped out in the pre-dinner raid – is the makeshift set and drooping palm of Ariadne’s desert island (the palm, acting as a kind of barometer of the Composer’s wilting prowess, is but one instance of Thoma’s decidedly German humour). In the wake of catastrophe in this little corner of England the stately home is now a hospital where Ariadne (Soile Isokoski) pines away for her one true love in the valley of the shadow of death dutifully attended by her trio of nymphs turned nurses (Ana Maria Labin, Adriana Di Paola, and Gabriela Istoc) while the composer, shell-shocked, traumatised, ponders the outcome of his score. The mournful nature of the unfolding opera sits well with the pall of the sick room and once we identify the Vaudevillians as members of ENSA there is point and purpose in their wholehearted attempts to raise everyone’s spirits.

The problem, I think, is that Thoma simply overworks her premise so that when Zerbinetta attempts to relate to Ariadne woman to woman in the ear-popping coloratura of her lecture on the joys of sexual promiscuity, for instance, the rudeness of Laura Claycomb’s teasingly voiced multiple orgasms is so explicitly physical that Thoma seems to think it necessary not just to sedate but to straightjacket her, too. That’s a bit of business too far and for all that it is intricately tailored to the music there is overkill in her point-making – a young director flexing her creative muscle. I miss, too, the mythical element so that Ariadne’s transfiguration in the arms of her one true love is almost mundane in its understatement.

Vladimir Jurowski and his trimmed down London Philharmonic Orchestra work wonders with Strauss‘ luminescent scoring always maintaining that very telling balance between intimacy and grandiosity, the world of musical theatre versus opera, the pit band that would be symphonic. Experience pays, too, in the casting of Thomas Allen as the Music Master and, most notably, his leading lady – the Prima Donna/Ariadne of Soile Isokoski. She may not now epitomise the glamour and vocal bloom we have come to expect of the role but in a house this size her wholeheartedness and musicality shine through.

And who’d have imagined that her Bacchus (the brave but challenged Sergey Skorokhodov) would turn out to be the First of the Few? Not Strauss, not Hofmannsthal. But that’s why we love Opera, isn’t it?

photo: Alistair Muir

“Liza is a whole lot more than giggles, gays, and Garland”, ventures Ashley early in the show – and yet the reality is that those three Gs pretty much define her. Not for nothing does he include the first of Mama Rose’s “turns” from Gypsy – “Some People”. Minnelli has never truly escaped her mother’s shadow and when Ashley substitutes Mama for Elsie in the inevitable rendition of “Cabaret” he fairly spits out the punchline “And when I go I’m NOT going like Mama!” More than a little home truth in that bitterness. Liza the survivor.

From a performance point of view Ashley pretty much has Liza – the insane giggle, the manic hyperactivity, the breathiness, the popping, spluttering, microphone noises – and whilst he actually has a whole lot more voice than Liza has had for years now you could still drive a hearse through that vibrato. There’s a lovely moment when Ashley/Liza coaches her fresh-faced, fresh-voiced “guest” Christopher Mitchell and suggests he try his Peter Allen number without vibrato. Yea, right. Self-delusion is everywhere. And there are the moves, too, the exocet arms and frozen poses all of it disintegrating into a kind of feverish inebriation between numbers. A running gag  has us wondering what’s in the glass and the kicker comes when she’s handed a bottle of water and deals with it like it’s radioactive, almost gagging at the prospect of a sip.

But the cleverness of the show (written by Ashley and Dean Bryant) is the way in which the classic “straight” numbers are juxtaposed with the parodies. There’s a very funny David Guest number masquerading as “Mein Herr” replete, of course, with chair contortions. And there’s a big surprise towards the end of the show, a serious moment of distillation, where Ashley manages to silence a delirious audience (with more than its fair share of trans-gender Lizas) with an ineffably touching tribute to Garland and Liza, mother and daughter both seeking that elusive thing called love but always alone in the spotlight. That moment really took us unawares and connected effortlessly to a poignant mash-up of “Losing My Mind” and “Maybe This Time”, the piano intro for the latter wrong-footing us into the former. George Dyer, Ashley’s MD, did a beautiful job and the band were cracking.

But then the laugh that sticks in your throat – how they’re all gone, Mama, Papa, Lorna… “Well actually she’s still here but who cares…” And the inevitable, obligatory “New York, New York” with its now legendary wind-up, arm revving like a propellor, tempo stretching, voice roaring. But let’s be clear, Trevor Ashley is no generic drag-queen act but something a whole lot more sophisticated. He has what Liza has – star quality – and that’s why the show lands in the way that it does. My only caveat is that he should have attempted what Liza never could or would (because, as she always said, “it’s been sung”) and given us “Over the Rainbow” just as Judy used to give it sitting on the edge of the stage. He can’t do Judy – no one can. She was simply better; she was inimitable. And I guess the sad thing is that Liza has always known that.

This is recession Britain – another twist – and Tom Scutt’s towering tenement-like cross-section of squalid rooms is an ugly reminder of that irrefutable fact. At the bottom of the tower block, the pub; at the top, closest to heaven, the latrines. And as the coffins come home traditionally draped in the Union flag young women like Wozzeck’s mistress, the mother of his son, Marie (Sara Jakubiak) pay their lustful respects to the living, not the quick and the dead. Soldiers are sexy while they’re still breathing. In the back room of the pub, the Doctor uses the coffin of one departed hero to apportion the cocaine that will screw with the heads of those who do make it back. To add terrible irony to injury the drugs are hidden in kids toys – little green dinosaurs like the one Wozzeck’s son plays with.

The veteran Wagnerian, James Morris, plays the Doctor with thunderous vocal and physical authority – and what an inspiration, albeit a logical one, that he should be “the chemist” who dispenses the character-adjusting medications whilst using the real problem cases, like Wozzeck, to experiment with the untried and untested. His buddy, the Captain – another scarily committed and full-on performance from Tom Randle – is a showcase for his drug-induced character-rebuilding, his body a war zone of angry tattoos, his crazed mind characterised in manic vocal-chord-stretching falsettos.

Wozzeck himself is well on the way to the point of no return and his best mate Andres (Adrian Dwyer), an amputee playing video war games in his fortified cell, shares his night terrors 24/7 as we see what only they see – the innocent victims of war, the Afghan and Iraqi children. Even Wozzeck’s own son is given to hide under the table from his own father, frightened of what he might see.

Of course, the real hallucinations in this amazing piece are conjured in Berg’s orchestra and Edward Gardner and the ENO Orchestra on stunning form lay them bare with paradoxical lucidity. Such weird and wonderful and wholly unlikely instrumental combinations convey the strange and skewed logic of damaged minds. And just as Cracknell’s unflinching reality chimes so starkly with things like the ferocious crescendos on unison B which mark the murder of Marie so too the great and cathartic D minor interlude just before the close seems to carry the grief of a nation.

It’s hard watching Leigh Melrose as Wozzeck, a broken man shuffling from one abuse to another, fixated only on providing for Marie and his son in troubled times. That’s the other thing this opera is about – poverty and what it does to people. And the way Melrose conveys the hopelessness of uncontrollable torment through the huge dynamic range of his vocal performance is both thrilling and deeply upsetting. It may be the performance of his life.

And for once we understand Marie for whom adultery is refuge, a pair of earrings, and new red shoes. The Drum Major (Bryan Register) gives those out like sweets. Sara Jakubiak is fearless in the role, searing in her repentance. And with Berg’s reverse conceit that when the emotional stakes are too high singing turns to plain speaking she and everyone else nails Richard Stokes’ excellent translation. For once Wozzeck belongs in English.

So there will be blood – rivers of it – and the slaughter at home will become inseparable in Wozzeck’s mind from the slaughter abroad. Musically this is ENO’s finest hour; dramatically it will break your heart. Is there more?

But Alison Jiear has one of those voices that sits somewhere between a white and a black sensibility and timbre. She’s a natural jazzer, bending and embellishing the line with a naturalness that is second nature – and she doesn’t over-embellish preferring instead an unfussy and more truthful approach where the line itself does the singing. It’s like she just “lifts” phrases where the essence of the songs lie. But don’t ever be fooled by the art concealing art. There’s an awful lot of technique going on here and what she does with that “mix”, playing so skilfully with chest and head voices, is masterful.

Of course, we all love the firepower of the Jiear belt and Aretha Franklin’s “Natural Woman” was always going to exercise the ear drums. Boy, did that sound black and then some. And if you are going to boldly go with “Streisand Got There First” you have to deliver the visceral thrills along with the laughs – including one of those “eternal” Streisand pay-off notes. That got us going. Jiear might make you think that she is coasting some of these songs but she really knows how they go and she sings what really means something to her. David Friedman’s “In Your Eyes” is the title track of her new album and Friedman’s association with the late lamented Nancy LaMott invests it with an overwhelming intensity of association. Jiear really tapped into that.

So we howl at the Tampax song commercial and the unceremonious “Country” take on (or decimation of) “I Dreamed a Dream” replete with pink guitar and more than a few vocal twangs – but Jiear simple and unadulterated is also where it’s at and more often than not simple is what really unlocks the emotion of a song. The highlights of the evening for me were those moments she shared with the ace guitarist of her excellent quartet, Adam Goldsmith. What an artist he is and what an alchemy they achieved together in “I Believe I Can Fly” and Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”. How movingly understated that was. I should mention the other guys, too – Dave Arch, her MD/Pianist, Steve Pearce (Bass), and Mark Fletcher (Drums).

So Jiear sometimes confounds expectations and unlike those who barely give you a power ballad off for good behaviour she knows how to go quietly. Well, relatively quietly.