Royal Stockholm Philharmonic
The Royal Stockholm Phil doesn’t often tour to the UK, which makes the cancellation of a trio of concerts later this month in Birmingham, Gateshead and Manchester all the more disappointing. The Konserthuset Play platform offers a digital showcase of the orchestra’s recent outings at home, under both its chief conductor, Sakari Oramo, and others, from Karina Canellakis to Herbert Blomstedt. For an invigorating reminder of what a truly world-class band this is, try Brahms’s Second Symphony conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado. It’s a comparatively clean-shaven reading of the piece – stylish rather than high-Romantic – in which the lower strings are velvety, woodwind solos beguile and the brass provide irresistibly high-shine climaxes. Or for an adventure beyond standard repertory, watch (on Facebook) the “digital soup concert” of piano quartets by two late 19th-century female Swedish composers, recorded by three of the orchestra’s principal string players and pianist Martin Sturfält in early April (and all observing social distancing). Elfrida Andrée’s work is a real discovery – new to me, at least. Its three movements demonstrate a composer absolutely in control of her medium, the musical gestures bold, the textures subtle. The performance is a joy, too: intensely hot-blooded throughout. Flora Willson
Stockhausen’s Samstag aus Licht (Paris Philharmonie)
In 2018, the French ensemble Le Balcon embarked on a plan to present all seven works in Stockhausen’s week-long opera cycle, Licht. They began with Donnerstag (Thursday), a staging that came to London last year, just before they embarked on this second instalment in Paris at the Philharmonie, again conducted by Maxime Pascal and directed with stylish economy by Damien Bigourdan. In Stockhausen’s personal mythology, Samstag (Saturday) is Lucifer’s Day, and he is the work’s only solo voice, a bass (sung here by Damien Pass). The other protagonists are instrumental – piano, flute, trombone, percussion – though there is also a chorus of monks in the final scene, Lucifer’s Farewell (which, in this production, is performed not in the concert hall, but in a nearby church). As ever in Licht, the dramaturgy is creaky, the narrative hard to take seriously; but as ever in Stockhausen, too, the music is often extraordinary, from the opening Saturday Greeting, in which groups of baleful brass surround the audience, through the solo-piano Lucifer’s Dream, the singing flautist of Lucifer’s Requiem and the orchestral tour de force of Lucifer’s Dance, to the farewell, in which the monks chant a Franciscan text, before smashing coconuts on the steps of the church. Andrew Clements
Beethoven string trios: Sepec/Zimmermann/Queyras (Wigmore Hall Live)
If nothing else, the Covid-19 lockdown provides an opportunity to remedy gaps in one’s musical knowledge. This live-streamed Wigmore concert plugged a hole for me. The young Beethoven wrote five string trios between 1794 and 1798 before abandoning the genre in favour of quartets. The string trios are not often played, let alone all in one evening as they were here by the classy Franco-German trio of violinist Daniel Sepec, violist Tabea Zimmermann and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras. There’s a distinct development in Beethoven’s treatment of the trio format between the multi-movement Op 3 trio and the Op 8 serenade on the one hand, and the more assertive aesthetic of the three trios Op 9 on the other. Best of all is Op 9 no 1 in G, which generates a beguiling back-and-forth response between the players. Yet the trios all constantly prefigure the muscularity of the later Beethoven chamber style at times, and the playing is alert and vigorous throughout. The concert is a bit of a marathon, lasting more than three and a half hours with intervals. But online you can hit the pause button from time to time and give each of these works the attention they deserve. Martin Kettle
Eugene Onegin (Netherlands Opera – now Dutch National Opera)
Recommendable versions of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece are surprisingly hard to find online, but at first sight this production from the 2011 Holland festival, with Mariss Jansons in charge of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bo Skovhus as Onegin and Krassimira Stoyanova as Tatyana, promises to fit the bill. It was staged by Stefan Herheim at a time when he was very much European opera’s flavour of the month, and it’s well populated with the directorial tropes that have since become rather predictable in his shows. This production flits between present-day Russia and the era of Pushkin’s original poem, stopping off at a number of historic moments in between; a Russian bear is among the guests at the Larins’s ball, Lensky turns into Lenin during the second act, while among the dancers in the third-act polonaise are Rasputin, Nicholas II, Soviet cosmonauts and muscle-bound medal-winning Olympians. None of it provides much enlightenment on the opera or its characters, though the score is conducted with wonderful assurance by Jansons and there are some fine vocal performances, even if Skovhus and Stoyanova make a rather too mature central pairing. Andrew Clements
Strauss from the Royal Concertgebouw
Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra has always had an enviable track record when it comes to Richard Strauss, who first conducted them himself in 1897, and was so impressed he eventually dedicated Ein Heldenleben to them. The orchestra’s video archive contains a number of outstanding performances of his work, of which pride of place probably goes to a magisterial account of Also Sprach Zarathustra from 2012, conducted by Mariss Jansons. He brings tremendous fixity of purpose to it, so that a work that can often turn episodic progresses as a single arc of sound that proves overwhelming from the famous sunrise with which it begins to the tonally ambivalent nocturne that brings it to its close. There’s also an excellent Till Eulenspiegel from 2016, conducted by Andris Nelsons, who gets its bittersweet humour spot on, in an interpretation that avoids the usual trap of sprinting through it and maintains absolute textural clarity throughout. Tim Ashley
