A flawed but stirring Dream of Gerontius at the Three Choirs Festival, plus... July's best classical concerts 

Enough of the gripes. Despite the occasional problems, this was in fact a moving and subtle performance, not least because  conductor Martyn Brabbins took such a spacious view of it. Some would prefer a more rapid pace and sense of tremulous unease in the Prelude, to set the scene for the travails of Gerontius as he passes from this world to the hereafter. Brabbins made it lofty and pensive rather than anxious, and throughout he took care not to overstate things. The grand chorus “Praise to the Holiest” was radiant but not over-grand, so the gentle solace of the final chorus didn’t seem anti-climactic.

This reticence gave space for the soloists to shine, which they certainly did. The tenor David Butt Philip sung Gerontius with winning sincerity and nobility. His ringing tone in the great solo “Take me away” made the Soul seem triumphantly ecstatic at the prospect of Purgatory, rather than agonised. Roderick Williams was humane and kindly as the Priest, and even managed to make the stern Angel of the Agony seem compassionate. In all it was a humane performance of Gerontius, rather than an overtly heart-wringing one, but was no less moving for that. IH

The Three Choirs Festival continues until 29 July 01452 768928

PROMS 2017 BBCSO/Davis Royal Albert Hall ★★

The classical music world may sometimes seem resistant to change, but if nothing else this programme was a reminder of how much has changed in concert-giving and -going. This re-creation of Malcolm Sargent’s 500th Prom took us back only to 1966, yet when the time capsule was opened its contents were revealed to be the national anthem and a jumbled assortment of pieces that ran much later into the evening than a well-designed programme would today.

Was it a necessary exhumation? Not really, but it was one way of marking the 50th anniversary of Sargent’s death and remembering his legacy as a pivotal figure in the history of the Proms. Maybe not admired by musicians, he was popular with the public and the BBC needed him, much as it seems to need so-called celebrities now. Over his long reign at the Albert Hall, Sargent steered the Proms into the television age and invented the format of the Last Night.

So it made sense to have Andrew Davis, a major figure in modern Proms history and the conductor who has been master of ceremonies at more Last Nights than anyone except Sargent, on the podium. Davis’s deeper talents may have been wasted on the bitty programme, but at least in Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture he drew playing of rapture from the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

In 1966, the soloist in Schumann’s Piano Concerto was the experienced Moura Lympany; in 2017, it was the Proms newcomer Beatrice Rana. This young Italian pianist will be one to take note of if she develops more personality, but here she seemed too willing to mark time and blend into the background. In a soft-focus performance, Rana brought a sometimes mannered individuality to Schumann’s dreamier passages, yet she wore her virtuosity lightly in the finale.

As if previewing the Last Night early in the season, the second half of the concert was a tedious sequence of British lollipops. If there is more to Elgar’s London tone poem, Cockaigne, than Davis and the BBCSO found here, at least there were no depths in the suite from Walton’s Façade for them to miss. Holst’s ballet music from The Perfect Fool was more welcome, and Delius’s On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring supplied dreamy respite before the whiffy humour of Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. In truth, Sargent’s 1966 programme was probably backwards-looking even then. JA

Hear this Prom again on the BBC iPlayer. All Proms are broadcast live on BBC Radio 3

PROMS 2017 BBC SO Royal Albert Hall ★★

The BBC Symphony Orchestra is still the mainstay of the Proms, as it has been since it was founded in 1930. Fulfilling the role entails a punishing schedule, involving the performance of several brand-new pieces, of variable quality but usually of great technical complexity. It’s a role they fulfil with energy and care and every appearance of good humour.

That good humour must have been sorely tested in Wednesday night’s Prom. The centre-piece was the cello concerto Outscape by Pascal Dusapin, a sixtysomething French composer of Oscar Wilde-ish flowing locks, caught in the Proms programme booklet in a fetchingly moody half-lit photograph. “Outscape is a rather unusual English word,” Dusapin declared in the programme note, which seems an understatement. He talked of the cello and the orchestra going on a sort of journey towards each other. “Every musical force wants to go towards the ‘other’, to merge with the otherness,” he continued.

This idea could yield something interesting, but only if the “merging” were expressed through ideas of real substance. The problem was there weren’t any – apart from the opening, when a meditative deep note on the cello was echoed on the bass clarinet. This moment of luminous simplicity was soon blurred as each instrument introduced new notes, very slowly, one at a time. Gradually other instruments entered, in a process of mirroring and burgeoning, enacted with self-indulgent slowness and pedantic literalism. The music was drowned in the same melancholy harmonic colour throughout, so there was no real sense of contrast or development. Soloist Alisa Weilerstein gave it her all, but one couldn’t believe in her strenuous meanderings. There was a moment of rhythmic agitation towards the end, but it seemed half-hearted, a ripple on a very stagnant sea.

The evening did have one thrilling moment of musical radicalism, but not in Dusapin’s concerto. It came at the very beginning of Chaos, a movement from a suite entitled The Elements composed in 1737 by the aged French composer Jean-Féry Rebel. The whole movement was a joy.

No less radical was Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, which came after the interval. Young conductor Joshua Weilerstein, brother of the cellist, conducted a performance  which was punctiliously precise and energised. Every accented note was given its exact due, but other things which ought to loom large, like the shuddering accompaniment in the slow movement, seemed muted.  It was Berlioz-lite, without the music’s yearning, romantic heart. IH

Hear this Prom on the BBC iPlayer. All the Proms are broadcast live on BBC Radio 3

Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra, Barbican ★★★★

Sir Simon Rattle is already putting his stamp on the London Symphony Orchestra, before his arrival as Music Director in September. His programmes always have an element of surprise in them, as if music is something he’s still exploring with naïve delight.

Here the surprises came from Joseph Haydn, a composer who hid a fondness for witty musical games and jokes under a courtly surface. The core of this concert was ‘an imaginary orchestral voyage’ conceived by Rattle, which led us through some of Haydn’s more eccentric movements culled from his symphonies, oratorios and operas. Some of them, like the grandly mysterious ‘Representation of Chaos’ that introduces The Creation were familiar, but most were obscure – as is most of Haydn. As Rattle said in his introduction Haydn is ‘the one great composer who’s still unknown’.

Some of the pieces were truly outlandish, like the finale of Symphony no. 60, where the players launch off, skitter to a halt when the violins realise they have to retune, and then try again. This is Absurdism, two centuries ahead of time. More telling were those quietly mysterious moments when Haydn subverted musical grammar, as in the slow movement of Symphony no 64. Here the last note of one phrase in the melody vanished, and reappeared as the first note of the next.

Rattle didn’t play up these moments. He knows that Haydn’s warm humanity runs deeper than his mischievous delight in messing with our heads, and conducted the music accordingly. Everything unfolded with easy grace, which meant that the numerous solo passages in the Minuet from Symphony no 6 had space to breathe.

A similar warm, unforced glow pervaded the rest of the concert. The Prelude and Liebestod to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde had a surprisingly impetuous rhythmic quality. It felt like a portrayal of a purely human passion rather than a yearning for oblivion.

Then came Bartok’s 2nd Piano Concerto. It’s a piece touched by the machine-age aesthetic of the 1920s, and its rhythms can sound hard-driven. Rattle relaxed the tempos a touch, and mollified the onward rush with moments of flexibility. As well as being musically telling it was tactful to pianist Denis Kozhukhin, who was standing in for Lang Lang at short notice. He overcame nerves to give a terrific performance that revelled in the neo-classical wit of the piece, as well as its moon-struck mystery.

Hear this concert on the BBC iPlayer for 30 days. The concert was televised for broadcast by Sky Arts.

Iestyn Davies &  Julius Drake, Middle Temple Hall, London ★★★★

Iestyn Davies is the counter-tenor of the moment, with good reason. Thanks to the riveting emotional truth of his singing, he’s brought the high falsetto male voice down to earth, tearing it away from its usual connotations of lofty Baroque operatic heroes and Shakespearean sprites of androgynous sexuality.

But Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin might seem to be a bridge too far. It’s the archetypal romantic song-cycle, recorded by so many great singers of the past century: Fritz Wunderlich, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Hermann Prey. The sad tale of the itinerant farmhand who falls for the miller’s daughter and pines away when she rejects him is rooted in the earthy reality of brooks, meadows and hearty dinners around a big farm table. That tinge of the other-worldly that the counter-tenor voice brings would surely be out of place.

Davies put any misgivings to rest – almost. He and pianist Julius Drake made it clear from the beginning that this wasn’t going to be a Schöne Müllerin-lite, adapted to the lighter timbre of the counter-tenor voice. The more intense songs were burningly hot. Impatience practically tripped over itself in its hurry, and singer and pianist tore into Jealousy and Pride with reckless fury. In The Beloved Colour, Davies gave the singer’s realisation that the girl really prefers the bold hunter a despairing bitterness that was startling.

That was a moment when Davies had to push the counter-tenor voice towards an unfamiliar, rasping tone. At other times he went back to the pure plangency of the “normal” counter‑tenor voice, finding a new use for it – as in the tormented moment in When Work is Over, when the singer realises the girl hasn’t singled him out for special attention. Pureness of sound isn’t what we expect at that moment, but Davies made it seem full of romantic pathos.

The dramatic songs in Schubert’s song-cycle are taxing for a counter‑tenor, but the lyrical ones are even more so: like all composers of that era, Schubert was aiming for a folk-like simplicity, but no voice‑type sounds quite so artificial and “cultivated” as the counter tenor. 

In Morning Greeting, Davies attempted that simplicity. To say he achieved only a beautiful simulacrum of it is no slur on him; he is truly a great artist. Perhaps it will take another generation before a great counter-tenor can seem as artless and “folky” in Schubert as a great baritone.

Kokoschka's Doll, Cheltenham Music Festival ★★★

Pity the famous or talented man who crossed the path of Alma Mahler, the notorious beauty who bewitched pre First-World-War Viennese society. She notched up many major trophies during her career as femme fatale, including Gustav Mahler. They all suffered mightily when Alma moved on, as she always did, but none more so than the artist Oscar Kokoschka. Their tormented relationship was the basis of Kokoschka’s Doll, a dramatic monologue by the 60- something composer John Casken, which on Sunday was given its world premiere.

To prepare the ground, we were offered an hour-long portrait of Alma Mahler and the milieu of extraordinarily talented and infatuated men she moved in. Playing Alma herself was soprano Rozanna Madylus, who strode about the stage in a fetching black gown, and told us with brazen candour that she thought her husband Gustav Mahler’s songs were embarrassingly naïve, and that she didn’t just marry him for his money – though in a tone of hard calculation that suggested quite the opposite. 

In between these revelations, culled from letters and diaries, she sang songs by her first famous musical lover, Alexander von Zemlinsky, alongside songs by Mahler and herself in new arrangements by David Matthews. They were made for an unusual ensemble of piano, violin clarinet and muted trumpet, which gave the songs a piquant but puzzling flavour of a cabaret. Madylus was an engaging stage presence, but the constant flitting back and forth between the role of actress and singer felt uncomfortable. 

By contrast the second half of the evening was superbly focused. Facing us at a desk, dressed in an artist’s smock, was John Tomlinson as Kokoschka; to one side was the same quartet we’d heard previously. The piece began with ‘Kokoschka’ pleading to the unseen Alma ‘why don’t you write to me? I am in despair!’ After that it was downhill all the way, until eventually the abject Kokoschka, now abandoned by Alma, commissions a life-size doll of her, which he takes out with him on social occasions. 

John Casken’s new score underpinned this tale of emotional degradation with sounds of surging, yearning, intensity, tinged with memories of the pre First-World-War Viennese music we’d heard in the first half. Occasionally, as in the moment when Kokoschka recalls his army career in lice-ridden trenches, it took on a harsh, military insistence. It was moving and apt, but it was Tomlinson’s titanic, heart-rending performance which stole the show.

The Cheltenham Festival continues until 16 July (01242 850270)

Pinocchio, Aix-en-Provence Festival ★★★

The leading opera festivals of France and Britain, Aix-en-Provence and Glyndebourne, could hardly be more different from each other, but by coincidence this summer both are offering programmes that span from the 17th-century Cavalli via Mozart to brand new commissions. Aix’s opening night premiere, an opera on Pinocchio by the veteran Belgian composer Philippe Boesmans, makes quite a statement: a work aimed at audiences of all ages, it is one part of the festival’s ongoing drive to widen its demographic.

In the event, it was a little hard to see how this impressively performed new opera fitted the “family” billing. The lengthy work itself is probably not quite entertaining enough for most children, nor quite probing enough for many adults. Still, those approaching this latest version of Carlo Collodi’s immortal story, one of the most frequently and variedly adapted in our culture, need to forget those mushy films and even some previous operas. In the best French-language tradition (the co-production moves on to Brussels to launch La Monnaie’s new season), it tries hard to point up the tale’s philosophical moral.

Yet Joël Pommerat’s libretto, sticking more closely than some to Collodi’s outline, is often rather witty; it’s a nice conceit that one of Pinocchio’s nose-lengthening lies is that he has been brought up on classical music. Pommerat is also the stage director, and he gives the narrating role to a somewhat sinister manager of a theatre troupe, sung by the incisive baritone Stéphane Degout. The 25 scenes flow seamlessly in an ingenious production designed by Éric Soyer and Isabelle Deffin, but the black-and-white tone is unrelenting. Renaud Rubiano’s video is integral and imaginative, if more black than white.

Boesmans’s bittersweet score, a mix of styles that never sounds like pure pastiche, is unfailingly lively and held together with brilliant assurance by the conductor Emilio Pomarico. The references range back as far as Ravel and his L’Enfant et les sortilèges, notably in scenes between Chloè Briot’s lively Pinocchio and Marie-Eve Munger coloratura-spinning Fairy. Vincent Le Texier supplies pathos as the Father. The playing of Klangforum Wien is vivid, and the onstage trio (saxophone, accordion and gypsy violin) is effective. But at a festival dedicated to building bridges with Arab culture, their switch to Arab-inflected music for the prison scene is inexplicable. JA

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence runs until July 22. www.festival-aix.com
 Pinocchio opens in Brussels on September 5. www.lamonnaie.be

New Music Biennial, Hull 2017 ★★★★

In a sunny square near the Hull Marina, lined with grimy Victorian warehouses, strange sights and sounds greet the assembled crowds. Half a dozen metal towers like miniature oil derricks gleam in the sun, each bearing what looks like giant pendulum tipped with a loudspeaker trumpet. At a signal they’re set swinging, one by one. Each emits a bell-like sound, surging and fading in its own rhythm. The combination is ear-tickling, and always changing.

 This is Ray Lee’s Ring Out, one of 25 free events in the PRS Foundation’s new music Biennial. It’s taking place in Hull as part of the city’s City of Culture celebrations, before moving on to London’s Southbank Centre next weekend. The idea is to show the world that new music is a house of many mansions, ranging way beyond the forbidding, dryly abstract "modern music" of yesteryear. As well as installations, there’s  "alt-folk" from Sam Lee and Eliza Carthy, jazz from Gogo Penguin and Peter Edwards, multi-media pieces, and a host of other events that seem to fit no category.

Where for example would you place Everlast, a newly created piece by Mica Levi, known to millions through her band Micachu and the Shapes and her scores for the films Jackie and Under the Skin? It was played by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, which seemed to put it in the "modern classical music" category, but the sounds had a strange halting innocence, amplified by the sound of swanee whistles. It sounded like an electronic sound-track for a fantasy film, transposed onto an orchestra.

Closer to the familiar picture of  "classical music" was Anna Meredith’s Concerto for Beatboxer and Orchestra performed by beatboxer MaJiKe and the Southbank Sinfonia. True, MaJiKe’s rhythmic vocal clicks and grunts were embedded in a score of hectic pop-flavoured grooves. But the piece had a clever form, building tension and releasing it unexpectedly, in a way that’s supposed to be the special virtue of classical music. It even had an improvised cadenza, just like a Mozart piano concerto. ‘That gave me a chance to be lazy,’ said the composer, with disarming candour, in the interview before the second performance (all the pieces were played twice,  with a composer interview in between).

Simon Holt, in the interview before the second performance of his new concerto for basset clarinet (a clarinet with some extra bass notes) told us how his music always wants to ‘break out of itself – in fact this piece even wants to out break out of the performing space’, he said, gesturing towards the piccolo player, trumpeter and bassoonist who’d been plucked from the BBC Philharmonic and dotted round the hall. To hear their four-way conversation with superb main soloist Mark Simpson, with the seething lava of the orchestral sound behind it, was the most thrilling moment of all the pieces I heard. And the shape of the four-movement piece, each one breaking into new territory was even more compelling the second time round.

At the opposite pole of luminous simplicity was Daniel Elms’s Bethia, a meditation on Hull’s past in video and music, performed in Hull Minster. As the grainy images of trawlermen, heaving grey seas, marching sea cadets and tram-filled streets flickered and danced in rhythmic collage, a gently atmospheric score enveloped us. The first time round the off-stage chorus and sad trumpet (played from the pulpit) seemed nostalgic in a way that prompted a memory of something. Victorian hymns? Mendelssohn? In the interview with Elms we learned what the hidden source of these musical memories really was – sea shanties, cut up and rearranged.

So, an intriguing, sometimes moving and sometimes thrilling start to the weekend, with one moment of delicious satirical humour (in Laurence Crane’s Pieces About Art), and only the occasional boring or baffling quarter-hour. Which in an event that ranges across the whole of new music is as much as anyone could reasonably expect. IH

The PRS Foundation for Music’s New Music Biennial is at the Southbank Centre London 7-9 July SE1 020 3879 9555. Listen to the Biennial on Hear and Now on BBC Radio 3 on July 15 and via the BBC iPlayer for 30 days