Word on the wet streets of Edinburgh was that the first week of the 75th international festival – founded after the second world war to heal and unite through culture – was slow, with numbers down at main venues. By last weekend, for whatever fickle reasons, it had burst into life. The Usher Hall was full, the foyers buzzing before the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome, with its British chief conductor Edward Gardner.
Their account of Britten’s Peter Grimes five years ago was unforgettable. Now, with a star cast led by two Swedish sopranos – Malin Byström in the title role of the biblical dancing girl and Katarina Dalayman as her manipulative and screechy mother, Herodias – hopes were high. (These two, both excellent, will reprise their roles at the Royal Opera House in London next month. More on their interpretations then.) In the German tenor Gerhard Siegel, the cast had the finest of Herods, the most slithery and reptilian and repulsive and feckless, sung with conniving subtlety (sorry Gerhard, nothing personal). Johan Reuter’s Jokanaan, Bror Magnus Tødenes’s Narraboth and Hanna Hipp’s Page each added lustre.
In any version of Salome, the tale offers cold comfort. Post #MeToo, post Jeffrey Epstein, where do we stand? A teenager, abused by her stepfather, abuses in return by demanding the murder of a prophet, whose head – in Strauss’s opera – she kisses on its silver platter. Some feast. Beyond a few hand gestures and facial expressions, easy and natural from singers so experienced in their roles, there was no attempt at a semi-staging. Byström entered, dressed in white and virginal as the moon to which she is compared (the opera is closely based on Oscar Wilde’s play), later adding a billowing scarlet silk overskirt to convey blood, corruption, obsession. For the dance of the seven veils, she departed, leaving the orchestra to strip off all its lingering inhibitions and let rip.
This was the right decision. To hear Strauss’s meticulous orchestration, so controlled and precise while achieving so voluptuous and often grotesque an impression, was more revelatory, call me odd, than a striptease squeezed on to the Usher Hall stage. He writes with absolute punctiliousness, so that the percussionist can softly rattle a tambourine, or click the castanets, in a way that resounds, sinister and unholy, above a huge orchestra playing full tilt. The contrabassoon, which has one of the opera’s limelight solos, curdles and creeps like the serpent itself. It was a chance to witness the mix of tone colour and dynamics, the use of vibrato or not – all part of the player’s tool kit that, in the distractions of a full staging, too often goes unnoticed.
The Bergen Philharmonic and Gardner gave a second concert on Monday, further proof of this orchestra’s quality. They were joined by Víkingur Ólafsson for Schumann’s Piano Concerto. The Icelandic pianist, a regular collaborator with these players, prefers rigour to flamboyance, and brought out the dialogue between the contrasting inner voices, always keeping a clear route through the work’s hybrid structure. This concerto has its own knots and puzzles, which the performers embraced rather than smoothed out. Two orchestral showpieces, Ravel’s La Valse and Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, completed the programme. The final chord sounded, with the tam-tam still vibrating, but the crowd was already whooping and cheering.
At the Queen’s Hall on Monday (all its morning concerts are broadcast live on Radio 3), the Takács Quartet played Haydn’s String Quartet, Op 77 No 2, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s student work, the 5 Fantasiestücke, Op 5, and Ravel’s Quartet in F major. The Haydn is home territory for this long-established, Colorado-based ensemble, now with two new(ish) players in its lineup. Harumi Rhodes joined as second violin as long ago as 2018, Richard O’Neill as viola in 2020, but the absence of performances during the pandemic means, for UK audiences, the change of personnel is still a novelty. The group’s compelling potential was above all realised in the Ravel, at once fluid and simmering, enigmatic and sensuous. O’Neill’s viola playing is a ballet in itself.
On Tuesday, also at the Queen’s Hall, the Dunedin Consort, directed by John Butt, with tenor Nicholas Mulroy, presented a mix of solo songs and instrumental works from the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. If the concert had stopped after the opening piece, the Toccata No 1 in D minor by Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger, whispered and intimate, played on the theorbo by Elizabeth Kenny, we would have been sustained. That was only the start of music ranging from Frescobaldi, Buxtehude and Schütz to Monteverdi and Strozzi. Mulroy, pure-voiced and expressive, showed how, in these composers, religious devotion and carnal desire became daringly and nearly interchangeable.
The Edinburgh fringe, which keeps its musical wares rather well hidden, or maybe I’ve been unlucky in finding them, is back to full strength for the first time in three years. Madame Chandelier’s Opera House Party had my name on it (kind of). The Ride of the Valkyries blared out of the speakers. We sang along: bom-diddy-bom-bom. Next: Nessun Dorma (da da da da da daaaa de daaaaaah). Our host, in horns and fat blond plaits with cardboard sword, sung her thesis: divas don’t die, they party.
Swapping massive wigs at the speed of sound, specifically the key changes on her accordion, she galloped through the Queen of the Night, Carmen, Traviata, Butterfly, with expert timing. Madame Chandelier – Canadian opera singer-comedian Delea Shand – is smart, has empathy, and can sing. Making music funny is a fool’s game, but she managed. A hesitant audience was won over, including the volunteer who agreed to toss gummy bears into the singer’s open mouth on high notes. Health and safety go hang: only one went in.
As a final coup we hurled old socks, not our own but ones prepared earlier, to represent the Alpine avalanche at the end of that rarely seen, with good reason, opera La Wally. You don’t get to do that at Covent Garden. The next day, Madame Chandelier was out on the mean streets in horns and plaits, handing out flyers. For divas, the party never stops.
Star ratings (out of five)
Salome ★★★★
Bergen Philharmonic/Gardner ★★★★
Takács Quartet ★★★★
Dunedin Consort ★★★★
Madame Chandelier’s Opera House Party ★★★★
The Edinburgh international festival continues until 28 August.
All the Queen’s Hall morning concerts are on BBC Sounds.
Madame Chandelier’s Opera House Party is at Greenside @ Nicolson Square, Edinburgh, until 27 August.
