From the eighteenth century
I: Christian Tetzlaff’s Bach
Dance and the soul! The French writer-philosopher Paul Valéry gave the title “L’Âme et la danse” to a Socratic dialogue he published in 1927. The same title - “Dance and the Soul” - might have been given to Christian Tetzlaff’s solo violin recital, all Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin, on Sunday 7 June.
At times, Bach’s solo violin writing has exceptional poignance, melancholy, inwardness; at other times, it contains complexity, multitudes, brilliance. Those violin partitas of Bach’s often dramatise the different dance impulses of the baroque dance forms of Bach’s day: allemande, bourrée, chaconne, courante, gavotte, gigue, loure, minuet, sarabande. It’s no surprise to remember that the French ballerinas of his day would perform similar suites of comparative dance genres, each individually dramatised, under the titles “Les Caractères de la danse”. His violin sonatas are more concerned with less secular musical form, but they too are deeply concerned with variety, each movement surprising us by taking us where we had not been before.
Much of this could be said of Bach’s six cello suites too - all of which are grounded in Baroque dance forms, and all of which are among Bach’s masterworks. Still, the violin and cello have very different voices; Tetzlaff at times touched qualities of melancholy and poignance - of sheer loneliness - in some of the violin solos, reaching zones that the cello, even in Bach’s at least equally great cello suites, does not. The sheer expressive and formal diversity within each of these Bach compositions is staggering. Tetzlaff played with selfless virtuosity - the artist as servant - for a full evening.
II: The Covent Garden “Figaro”, twenty years on
David McVicar’s production of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” is entering its twenty-first year. As designed by Tanya McCallin, it remains among the handsomest productions of this classic any of us can have seen. Updated in period to 1830, it finely observes the class distinctions on which this infinitely subtle comedy hangs.
Still, this June’s revival, conducted by Bertrand de Billy and rehearsed by Leah Hausman, is not its finest. The silent-comedy business for other servants is tiresome, especially at the end of the overture and the whole opera. Other characters keep coming on during other people’s solo arias, as if straining against the whole point of Mozart’s soliloquies. (A whole group’s silent subplot develops, unnecessarily - and then disperses - during the Count’s aria.) “Figaro” is about a large group of strikingly different personalities; though Hausman certainly gave them all opportunities, the balance often felt wrong.
Last summer, Louise Alder sang the Countess at Glyndebourne; here she is Susanna, a role that suits her liveliness well. She is becoming one of Britain’s best-loved singers; although I don’t adore her - I wish her vocal lines had yet more poise, and at times her acting is intrusive, too busy - she’s always likeably open-hearted. The Countess, the South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, has a better sense of the line I mean: she’s also an artist of real spirit and feeling - though it was possible to feel she was giving us only an admirable first sketch of the Countess she will surely develop. Alex Esposito, the Figaro, began with gravelly tones; he settled during the first act. At every point he showed Figaro’s energy and force; in moments of pain, he didn’t open up the character’s beating heart. The Moldavan baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky, here playing the Count, has been on the British scene for four years: he’s stylish, musical, involved, animated, but not quite the dynamo that’s needed here. The most unresolved performance of all was that of the Bulgarian Svetlina Stoyanova as the pageboy Cherubino, who sometimes produced the evening’s loveliest singing but the most superficially externalised acting: in Act Four, she/he needed Dutch courage to take the physical liberties with women that had caused him/her no problems in Act Two. There have been many classic characterisations in various Covent Garden “Figaros” over the last fifty years: although de Billy often develops the opera’s ensembles with the momentum that makes this opera so wonderful, it is not unreasonable to feel this revival has been composed of too many disparate elements.
III: Lucy Crowe and Hugh Cutting in Handel
Soprano Lucy Crowe and countertenor Hugh Cutting have become among Britain’s foremost singers of Handel. Although I have often heard them apart, their concert with the English Concert on Thursday 11 at the Wigmore Hall, of music from Handel’s Italian years, was the first time I have seen and heard them together.
Cutting, whose personal charm and mellow tones make an immediately pleasing impression, opened with the love-sick cantata “Mi palpita il cor” (HWV132c). He’s a tenderly sensuous singer: his vocalisation added the element of warmth that the words do not disclose: this lover loves love’s very pain. Nadja Zwiener played the solo in Handel’s violin sonata in D (HWV371); this is an attractive piece, and reaching particular eloquence in the third and fourth movements. I’m sorry I found it impossible not to miss the sublimities that Bach’s violin solos had revealed four days before. (In the second half, the instrumental Trio Sonata in G minor HWV390a proved the blandest item of the programme.)
Lucy Crowe’s voice is brighter than Cutting’s, though less touching; and she’s a yet more sophisticated singer, whose gleaming upper notes - talk about the ability to sustain long lines with poise! - are often magical. She opened the second half with the cantata “Alpestre monte” (HWV81), which was the concert’s most fascinating item in terms of expressive complexity, especially in the aria “Io so ben che il vostro orrore”. (“I know well that the horror you inspire is a reflection of my heart, and the state of my mind. As in this surrounding gloom, so my heart is surrounded by shadows, horrible and fierce ghosts.”)
Together, Crowe and Cutting closed each half of the concert with a pair of Italian duets. They have much in common: they both often sing with absorbing quiet, with the same details of phrasing, and he matches her ability to sustain long, calm notes with finesse. The evening’s most marvellous moments occurred in these duets, especially when - something Handel does so well - one singer covers a wide range at speed while the other sings slow and steady. At moments, Crowe’s voice is more incisive than Cutting’s: when they sang the duet “Streams of pleasure” from “Theodora”, her words were more intelligible than his but her voice, even singing quietly, overrode his. But it’s a luxury to hear such Handelians together.
@Alastair Macaulay 2026