Fairies, prophecy and fratricide from Gardner, Terfel and the London Philharmonic

Of all the curtain-raisers in the core repertory, Beethoven to Bernstein, Coriolan to Candide, none betters Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Perhaps only a precocious teenager could have written with such freedom and fantasy, in which the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner revelled. From the opening magic chords we were in Fairyland. The fizzing string articulation was precise yet balletic, as aerial spirits danced around us, unseen by this audience of mortals. On through the braying of the “translated” Bottom to the music for the lovers, it was all vividly realised by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. So the house was blessed, and by a work first performed in London.

Sir Bryn Terfel is at the Royal Opera House for the new Peter Grimes, so Captain Balstrode could cross the Thames to sing some Lieder. A quintessential Terfel role is Old Testament prophet, as in Salome, Elijah, or Belshazzar’s Feast. Sir Bryn is now suitably grey-bearded, but what songs would serve? Three of Brahms’s Four Serious Songs are from Ecclesiastes, whose near-comfortless warnings suited the ailing composer’s temperament. Yet even in the most baleful moments, Terfel offered the comfort of fine singing, whatever the text.

Twice though the orchestral garb defeated him. Terfel has the skill of the true Lieder singer to reduce his tone to a mere thread, but the orchestration by Karl Komma was at times a mush, its mezzo-forte covering the singer’s mezza voce. An orchestra cannot adjust instantaneously like a piano accompanist, and the effect of the seer confiding in us was lost. Komma’s scoring worked well elsewhere, his use of sepulchral trombone chords underlining these minatory utterances. And, those two short balance issues aside, Terfel gave noble expression to these profound pieces, especially so in the sublime third song, O Tod, wie bitter bist du (“O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee”). In the redeeming final song his phrasing of “Nun aber bleibet Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe, diese drei” (“Now abideth faith and hope and charity, these three”) was benediction enough.

Schoenberg’s Pelléas und Mélisande is a huge and complex score. If it is possible for a piece to be over-composed, this is it. The orchestra is huge, including 17 woodwind and 18 brass – when did you last see a conductor summon nine horns to their feet? Gardner even added two more harps to Schoenberg’s designated pair, so we could hear Mélisande’s hair cascade from the tower. They all have plenty to do, so dense is the polyphony, so kaleidoscopic the changes of texture. It keeps a fingerhold on the repertory, and performances like this could see it played more often. Certainly Gardner, having mastered such a score for his recent fine Bergen recording, rehearsed and conducted his British band to the same high level.

Schoenberg follows Maeterlinck’s play closely, and surtitles followed the narrative, sometimes adding textual quotes. But that would have meant nothing if the LPO had not illustrated them musically so well, from the opening fate theme, and Golaud’s “I know neither who she is, nor where she comes from.” The LPO’s skill carried us along, through love music (soaring strings), fratricide (deafening catastrophe), childbirth and the mother’s death, when Golaud is no wiser and in despair.

Gardner’s concern for impact and impetus meant this near-forty minute work seemed over far sooner. The conductor wrote in the programme of its “surging fateful narrative”, calling it “wondrous”. Like Golaud, one ends unsure what it means, except something close to Ecclesiastes perhaps (“behold the tears of those oppressed”). It is a piece that might always need champions, and currently has few better than Edward Gardner.