Wagner’s Ring Symphony
Usher Hall 16/5/25
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Thomas Søndergård, conductor
Dunedin Consort, Jane Gordon, leader and director, Anna Dennis, soprano, Catherine Backhouse, mezzo-soprano, Magnus Walker, Malcolm Bennett, tenors and Jon Stainsby, bass
Another odd programme
After last week’s disappointing audience, there was some concern that another unusual programme would result in another poor house. The hall was reasonably filled however, although the full houses of earlier in the season seem a distant memory. It’s hard to pack out the Usher Hall on a pleasant summer’s evening with a programme of Handel, a world premiere by Neil Tòmas Smith, and a symphonic patchwork of the best orchestral bits of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Even the bringing together of the RSNO and the Dunedin Consort, two very successful Scottish artistic enterprises, was not guaranteed to bring in the crowds, as the supporters of these two come from very different musical worlds, jealously guarding their own individual identities. As a fan of both, and having sung and recorded with the Dunedins several times in the past, I must confess to scepticism about such a collaboration, but it’s still an interesting concept.
I was surprised however that the Dunedin Consort chose to highlight the least well-known suite from the Water Music by George Frideric Handel, as their solo contribution to this evening’s concert. The story of the entertainment on barges in the Thames to please the new King George 1st, who had succeeded Queen Anne to the British throne in 1714, is long and convoluted, and the truth is still shrouded in the mists of time. What is certain is that, at some time between 1715 and 1720, music composed by Handel was played for the entertainment of the King on boats in the Thames, and that music has come down to us in three suites, called the Water Music.
The first two suites are rather grand and rightly famous, while the third suite, which we heard tonight, is more reflective and demure. It’s still fine music, but I would have thought that the Dunedins would want to entertain a new audience with the more flamboyant first or second suites. The playing was splendid, and, following the modern tradition, most of the players were standing rather than sitting. The music, just strings and woodwind, takes us through pairs of dances, rigaudon, minuet and gigue, and illustrates Handel’s skill in creating great art from simple folk-like beginnings. As with many contemporary early music ensembles, the players work together, with subtle leadership supplied by lead violin, Jane Gordon.
We moved on to the most interesting item in the programme, the world premiere of ‘Hidden Polyphony’ by the Edinburgh composer, Neil Tòmas Smith. This was a commission to write a piece of music, using the two orchestras playing simultaneously, with the added excitement of two different sets of tuning. The Dunedins tuned to baroque pitch (415 Hz), a semitone lower than the RSNO, who tuned to 440 Hz (modern pitch). Most of the time, they played the same notes, but for the more frenzied sections, the pitches were in competition. This sounds crazier than it actually was, and I was most impressed by the sound world that Mr Smith conjured up through the 20 minutes or so of ‘Hidden Polyphony’. The title refers cleverly to the fact that many Scottish polyphonic pieces were lost to the ravages of the reformers in the 16th century, as well as the actual hidden fragments in the score we were listening to. The mediaeval concepts of heaven and hell were explored through the mixture of modern dissonance and actual renaissance polyphony which weaved in and out of the score. Combining the two orchestras on stage, the spectacular vocal mastery of the solo soprano, Anna Dennis, and the offstage vocal ensemble of Catherine Backhouse, Magnus Walker, Malcolm Bennett and Jon Stainsby, Neil Tòmas Smith has produced a contemporary work of substance and quality which I would love to hear again. The awesome numbers involved in the commission do mean that future performances will be expensive to put on, but I would like to see, for example, the Edinburgh International Festival using its financial clout and stature to play further renditions of this excellent new work.
Anna Dennis is a singer who has been making quite a name for herself, and I can see why. She has a poise and quality of delivery, even of a vocal line reaching as high as E flat, that was very impressive, and she had no problem easily filling the huge space of the Usher Hall. Singing early texts by William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas, I could have done with clearer diction, but one can’t have everything!
Neil Tòmas Smith made good use of some amazing chords which occur in Robert Carver’s extraordinary 16th century motet, O Bone Jesu, for 19 voices, played by full orchestra in a harrowing vision of Hell, but the work was brought to a heavenly conclusion by the a cappella singing of the words of William Dunbar’s poem, Life, in a transcription by Dr James Cook of some works from the Carver Choirbook. The members of the audience went for their interval drink with much to ponder and reflect, but with a spring in their step from a very satisfactory premiere!
What came next was a symphonic tapestry put together from Richard Wagner’s great masterpiece, ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’, by the Dutch percussionist, Henk de Vlieger, in 1991: ‘The Ring, an Orchestral Adventure’. Whether this piece is a mistake or a useful tool to promote the music of Wagner to the masses is a question to which I don’t know the answer.
Ever since I saw the first Scottish Opera Ring Cycle in Glasgow in 1971, as a 16 year old schoolboy, with the RSNO in the pit and Sir Alexander Gibson conducting, I have adored this extraordinary work of genius, three full length operas (lasting 5 hours each) and an uninterrupted prologue opera of 2 and a half hours. In my previous career as an operatic bass singer, I was fortunate enough to sing Fafner, Hagen and Wotan in various stagings of the Ring in venues as diverse as Symphony Hall Birmingham, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, Limerick University, Seattle Opera and Longborough Festival Opera, so my knowledge of the cycle is pretty extensive.
I am really struggling to understand what value is to be gained by playing a through composed symphonic work featuring all the orchestral sections, in chronological order and without any singing. Wagner’s music is utterly fabulous, and to hear the great orchestral interludes live with a tremendous symphony orchestra under a charismatic conductor like Thomas Søndergård is not to be sniffed at, but sniff I must!
The broad sweep of the story is lost, and without the voices (and the visceral thrill of Wagner voices is part of the whole experience which you cannot do without), the magnificent music loses an essential component. It’s like listening to a great concerto without the solo instrument. Since the orchestral interludes come at dramatic moments within the operas, but are not spaced out evenly, we jumped, for example, from the end of Das Rheingold, with the Rainbow Bridge glittering in the evening light, to the Ride of the Valkyries in Die Walküre, missing out entirely the first and second acts of the opera, and some of the most romantic and dramatic music ever written. This frenetic ignoring of the plot continued to the end, and although I was reduced to tears by the sheer beauty and magnificence of the orchestral writing, I really couldn’t see the point of the enterprise. It seemed as if a Classic FM disc jockey had compiled a mixtape of the Ring, so we could hear some of the music without the hassle or effort of listening to all that singing.
In addition, since the composition was not by Wagner but by a reasonably talented percussionist, the music didn’t really hang together. You could hear the joins as episodes were woven into one supposedly seamless piece, and this could also explain the several infelicities in the normally perfect ensemble, some of the horns definitely having a bad night. The RSNO is now such a superb orchestra that one doesn’t expect to hear the split notes and ragged ensemble we encountered on Friday.
What was clear was that Thomas Søndergård is a very decent Wagner conductor, with good judgement of tempi, although the balance within the orchestra was sometimes awry. The horns were far too loud in the opening prelude to Das Rheingold, totally swamping the strings, but generally he caught the splendour and magnificence of Wagner’s life enhancing music.
Rather to my surprise, it was Neil Tòmas Smith’s work that was the success story of the concert, although clearly, the Wagner went down well in the hall.
I’m going to end with a moment of pedantry (what? Again, you cry!). The RSNO programmes are usually a model of excellent research and clarity, but the notes on the Wagner Symphony contained two major howlers: one of my roles, Hagen, was described as an evil dwarf – his father Alberich was a dwarf, but union with a mortal woman resulted in the birth of Hagen, who was undoubtedly evil but was a large warrior figure able to be compared to Siegfried and Gunther. After the death of Siegfried, murdered by the aforementioned Hagen, his funeral music is indeed “fittingly grand and grief-stricken.” However, Brünnhilde is absolutely not “in despair, as she mounts Siegfried’s funeral pyre to join her lover in death!” She now understands the whole story, and realises that by sacrificing herself, she can redeem the Gods and set in motion the new era of the domination of Men, for better or for worse. She brings closure to the story and the suffering of her father, Wotan, is ended, as the glorious Redemption through Love theme plays ethereally at the end of the opera. Despair doesn’t get a look in!
