2013 - looking back

Not so much the highs and lows of 2013 but a guess at what the year might have meant. Anniversary years bring composers mass publicity but that's not necessarily a good thing. Mahler's anniversary turned him into Mahlerkugeln. Wagner, Verdi and Britten fared rather better, though. 

This year's BBC Proms will be remembered for Daniel Barenboim's concert performances of the Ring. This summer I did a Wagner Marathon - London, Salzburg, Bayreuth. Read more here for links to individual reviews, including Herheim's wonderful Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. True, there's been plenty of commercialized Wagner but he's a composer who resists too much dumbing down. Contrary to those who thought Verdi was ignored,the BBC has been doing Verdi all year. There's a lot of Verdi around (and some of it sounds the same - ha!). In any case The Royal Opera House and Salzburg did exceptional Les vêpres siciliennes and Don Carlo. And it was good to hear non-opera Verdi at the Proms and elsewhere. 

And then there's Britten. Russian and American audiences may think they've discovered him but there's a long, long way to go. Even in Britain, where Britten is performed and studied more than anywhere else, the composer is still an unorthodox, contradictory figure who defies simplistic stereotype. This year we've heard every single thing Britten wrote, including the juvenilia and discarded works. It's been an extraordinarily rewarding year. There is more on Britten on this site than anywhere else that's not Britten-only, so please explore. I reviewed four of the six or more War Requiems this year, and the wonderful Aldeburgh centenary performance, which was oddly ignored in the media. Knussen knows Britten musically better than most.

Opera-wise things have been stimulating, revealing a lot more about audiences than the productions themselves. Audiences scream because they want "historic" but when they get genuinely historically informed productions like Les vêpres sicilennes, Robert Le Diable and  La donna del lago, they can't recognize it. Some were outraged because the ROH  Nabucco favoured the ascetic, invisble God of Israel instead of graven images. Evidently, history got it wrong.

Excellent baroque this year, too, also demolishing myths against period-informed performance.  The baroque era was flamboyant, adventuresome and daring - should its music be the opposite Thankfully in Britain we're close enough to France and Germany where baroque practice is robust.  "If it's good enough for Bill Christie", said a friend of Glyndebourne's audacious Rameau Hippolyte et Aricie "It's good enough for me". 

Many good concerts this year but one I'll remember was Wolfgang Holzmair with Imogen Cooper, at the Oxford Lieder festival, doing Schubert's Mayrhofer songs (repeated at the Wigmore Hall). I was mesmerized by every note and every word, far too overwhelmed to write it up. Do not miss Oxford Lieder's Schubert Festival in 2014. Two extremely good recordings this year : Matthias Goerne's Eisler Lieder with Thomas Larcher, almost better than his game changing version with Eric Schneider, and Goerne's Erlkönig with Andreas Haefliger, seventh volume inn the DG Schubert series.  Read about their Wolf and Liszt concert at the Wigmore Hall to see why they are so exceptional.  I only review about half or a third of what I listen to, leaving out the very best, the very worst and stuff about which there's nothing specially worth saying. The joys of being independent !