Philharmonia/Muti
Festival Hall, London SE1 Bonney/Kirchshlager
Barbican, London EC2
La Traviata
Royal Opera House, London WC2
David Whelton, managing director of the Philharmonia, chose its 60th birthday to do a Jonathan Miller and lash out at everything within reach: the Arts Council, big business, dumbed-down Britain, even the South Bank Centre which affords his orchestra a home.
Classical music is fast becoming a 'foreign language' for the young, Whelton argued: 'Because rap music and garage and house have no harmonic references at all.' This prompted an interesting response from a newspaper reader in east London, to the effect that 'rap occupies a complex and hugely advanced sound-world in which two entirely distinct harmonic systems coexist'. The problem, apparently, is that rappers 'relate to the tonality of the surrounding music within a scope of pitch values too subtle to be recognised by the Western classical tradition'.
Whelton has yet, to my knowledge, to respond to this point. His orchestra, meanwhile, chose to let its instruments do the talking in an anniversary concert as distinguished as any it can have given in its 60-year history. Founded after the war by the recording wizard Walter Legge, the Philharmonia made its name under Beecham, Toscanini and Fürtwangler, Klemperer and Karajan. A favourite of Richard Strauss, it gave the first performance of his Four Last Songs with Kirsten Flagstad in 1950. Names such as Giulini and Sinopoli, Ashkenazy and now von Dohnanyi have since maintained its lofty standards.
It was none of the above but former music director Riccardo Muti who was handed the baton on this special occasion. This was the first time La Scala's maestro has dared show his face in London since letting down Covent Garden so unprofessionally last autumn. But the hands of any potential rotten tomato-throwers were stayed by the persuasive force of his consummate musicianship; in Schubert's ninth symphony and the Beethoven violin concerto, with a peerless soloist in Vadim Repin, Muti lifted all departments of the Philharmonia to levels as polished as those of any current London orchestra.
In the slow movement of the Schubert, there was an especially thrilling moment when Muti brought the proceedings to a prolonged halt, eventually urging a lyrical cello theme out of the silence, leading the way back to a suitably stately momentum. In the outer movements of the Beethoven, too, there was rich orchestral detail to savour alongside Repin's nimble finger-work and exquisitely melodious tone. This was a birthday party to remember, enjoyed by a packed Festival Hall belying Whelton's complaint that concert audiences these days are 'mostly tourists'.
The Barbican was also packed for a rare treat: an evening of soprano-mezzo duets. When the soloists are the American soprano Barbara Bonney and the Austrian mezzo Angelika Kirchshlager, the air is promise-crammed, all fulfilled, in the event, with the inconsistent Bonney in especially sweet voice, perhaps because of her newfound friendship with Kirchshlager, evident from their beguiling body-language as much as Kirchshlager's schlocky tribute: 'With us, you can say both the voices and the souls fit together.'
Both pleaded colds and asked for 'understanding', but you'd never have known it if Bonney hadn't told us. Far from clawing each other's eyes out, as is the wont of most rival divas, these two seductive artistes combined to charm the inhibitions out of an enthralled house in all of 30 works by Mendelssohn and Schumann, Saint-Saëns and Chausson, Massenet and Fauré, Rossini and Dvorak.
Given the money he must be making from Mary Poppins, it is high time Richard Eyre was tempted back into the Opera House. Eyre's classy 1994 production of Verdi's La Traviata is back at Covent Garden in better shape than ever, with two parallel casts boasting much young talent deserving so handsome a showcase.
I chose to see the one featuring the rising young Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja, whose Alfredo largely fulfilled the high expectations of another full house. After a slightly nasal, constricted start, with some overtight vibrato, Calleja soon relaxed into moments of mellifluous beauty, more reminiscent of the young Pavarotti than the Domingo with whom he is often compared.
His Violetta was the French soprano Norah Amsellem, who also started nervously but soon showed just how much sound the most diminutive singer can produce. If stretched at the top of the register, occasionally losing control, she does an especially fine line in sotto voce, pianissimo moments of the kind this piece so often requires. In the final scene, moreover, unlike so many more feisty Violettas, she managed to look genuinely consumptive, almost wraith-like.
British baritone Anthony Michaels-Moore brought some assured experience to the proceedings as sturdy as authoritative. He alternates the role with Canadian baritone Gerald Finley, Calleja with American tenor Charles Castronovo and Amsellem with Puerto Rican soprano Ana Maria Martinez. The loudest hurrahs were reserved for conductor Maurizio Benini, fast becoming a Covent Garden favourite after leading November's revival of Faust . His commendably brisk tempi were at times too much for this Violetta, and indeed the chorus, but recoveries were swift and the fault not his.
Far from ageing, Eyre's elegant production still makes Verdi's tearjerker seem remarkably of the moment, for all the supposed problem of its period social mores. As my companion succinctly put it: 'She's an IT girl, isn't she?'
