Already a subscriber? Log in
Orchestral players are not the same subspecies as full-time chamber musicians, and even members of an ensemble as virtuosic as the Budapest Festival Orchestra can sound distinctly rough in conditions like these. Still, anything from these players is worth a listen. At time of writing, there’ve been eight Quarantine Soirées, each offering an insight into the sort of music that orchestral musicians keep simmering away on the back burner. Rehearsal pianists finally get to play Chopin; bassoonists dust off that Danzi concerto. On Thursday they also played Schubert’s unfinished string trio, and a work that I’d never heard: Ball Music, by the Transylvanian composer Gyorgy Orban — a witty, stylishly written dance suite that you could tell they enjoyed playing. I felt better for hearing it, and I’m not sure what more we can ask from musicians right now.
God alone knows how long live music can continue under self-isolation, but with promoters and streaming sites throwing open their archives of recorded concerts and operas, it was time for a morale-boosting treat. I’d been toying with the idea of a trip to the Komische Oper Berlin, where the director Barrie Kosky has been drawing full houses with revivals of interwar operettas. It turns out that the free-to-view streaming site OperaVision has got Kosky’s latest rediscovery — Jaromir Weinberger’s musical spy comedy Spring Storms — all cued up and ready to go.
Kosky has dubbed Spring Storms ‘the last operetta of the Weimar Republic’, and it’s actually true: Weinberger was Jewish, and the show was halfway through its opening run in early 1933 when Hitler put the jackboot in. It’s set in Manchuria during the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese war, and originally starred the heartthrob tenor Richard Tauber, whose character — the Japanese secret agent Major Ito — is clearly modelled on Tauber’s signature role, Prince Sou-Chong in Lehar’s The Land of Smiles. (The inability of westerners to distinguish between Chinese and Japanese characters is a major plot point.)
The tenor here, Tansel Akzeybek, doesn’t have quite that sort of vocal mega-wattage, though he makes a thoroughly alluring partner for the soprano Vera-Lotte Boecker in Weinberger’s luscious, silken slow waltzes and love duets. It all comes second to Kosky’s masterly ability to let shadows lengthen, to hint at a world on the edge. To maintain this level of subtlety in a staging that also sees a Russian general sing Lensky’s aria from Eugene Onegin in a reedy falsetto while taking a quick slash off the edge of the stage is no mean feat. But the situation is hopeless, not serious, and Kosky understands operetta well enough to know that sometimes you really do need to fill the stage with fireworks and foxtrotting chorus girls. Few qualities in the arts are more undervalued than escapism. I suspect that’s about to change.
Because you read about barrie kosky
Also by Richard Bratby
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in