Metamorphoses and revelations in music

I:   Elisabeth Leonskaja at the Barbican

Music and dance are arts of alchemy, arts in which we keep hearing and observing metamorphosis, often at a profound and dramatic level, on both macro- and micro- levels.  Although the talent of the great pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja for showing the transformations of music is most potently shown in the great sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert, she’s also wonderful in Mozart.  On Tuesday at the Barbican Hall, she began with his Sonata no 18 in D Major K. 576, marvellously showing the tiny strokes of harmony that subtly darken its seemingly light elegance.

She no sooner reaches the piano on the platform than she sits and starts to play – she studied with Sviatoslav Richter, whom people still remember beginning the same way.  On Tuesday, she moved on to Beethoven’s sonata no 32 op.111 and, after the interval, Schubert’s sonata in B flat major D. 960. There’s never a doubt of her grasp of the architecture of these vast pieces, yet there’s never a doubt of the particularity she brings to their details. Part of her command derives from the lucid attack she brings to every note: you see how the attack of individual fingers is supported from her back.

Yet the Schubert makes much use of a left-hand phrase that begins with staccato attack of several notes and then, with that left hand now crossing over the right, a single softly enounced upper note:  with Leonskaja, that note was literally stroked, in a gesture of tenderness so peculiar from this player that people were imitating it – with great admiration – after the concert.

II:   Anna Netrebko in recital at Covent Garden

This has been the season in which the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko returned to Covent Garden, after a ban of more than seven years.   Until Wednesday night, there have only been Puccini operas – Tosca, Turandot – roles which show little of the remarkable younger stylistic range.  We may assume she has now renounced coloratura roles such as Donizetti’s Adina, Anna Bolena, Lucia, Norina– but it is to be hoped that Covent Garden will try to bring her back as Verdi’s Lady  Macbeth or as Leonora in “Trovatore”.

Certainly on Wednesday, in recital with piano (Pavel Nebolsin) and occasionally with violinist Kurt Mutterfellner and mezzosoprano (Elena Maximova), Netrebko was showing plenty of her range: she sang songs and opera, tragedy and comedy, and in four languages (German as well as French, Italian, Russian).  She was every inch the flourishing diva, gorgeous and consciously theatrical: her two capacious gowns were in shades of pink (before the interval – shocking pink was the dominant shade) and of black and white (after that interval).  She sang arias from two different Juliets: Bellini’s and Gounod’s. Her songs included numbers by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Richard Strauss, and Rachmaninov;  her encores were the Susanna-Cherubino duet from Mozart’s “Figaro” and Arditi’s “Il bacio”.   Although she often stands absolutely still to sing, she just as often crosses the stage, interacts playfully with her colleagues, and employs grand gestures.  One particular gesture stays in my mind: singing Rachmaninov’s gorgeous “O do not sing again your songs of Georgia”, she passed one hand before her eyes (the palm facing outward) in a way that – I’m told – was a gesture from Georgian folk dance, often quoted by the choreographer George Balanchine, who was proud of his Georgian ancestry.

I alternate between loving her and not loving her, between finding her voice beautiful and unlovely, between admiring her technical mastery and wishing it were more complete. Some of this is deliberate: you could hear the luscious bloom in her voice as she sang Bellini’s Giulietta as she sang Gounod’s Juliette (“Oh quante volte”), but any such bloom was gone as she sang (the very next aria) dramatically addressing the prospect of death.  Her technique is least complete in controlling her line under pressure:  her vibrato often spreads heavily when she is singing loud.  And yet oh! how she can fine her tone away into diminuendi and pianissimi of remarkable beauty and finesse.  Both in physique and voice, she has voluptuousness aplenty:  witness her singing of “Depuis le jour” (the famous female account of erotic bliss from Charpentier’s “Louise”) and, in duet with Maximova, of the “Tales of Hoffmann” Barcarolle and the “Lakmé” Flower duet.

After more than thirty years of professional singing and some twenty-four years of major international appearances, she is at an age where some divas retire, but she is performing with powers that seem set to keep going strong. Her voice is larger and tone darker than when she first became a star.  It’s fair to guess she will be before the public for several years to come.

III.  Handel’s “Serse” in concert at the Barbican

I’m old enough to feel some element of surprise at the return of any Handel opera to repertory – in the 1970s;  any Handel opera was a rarity – and yet in truth many of us now have witnessed several Handel operas in more than one productions and with more than one team of musicians.  On Friday a concert performance of “Serse” at the Barbican, conducted by Laurence Cummings, began by disappointing me. This is partly due to Paula Murrihy in the title role:  her vibrato does not quite suit the length and steadiness of Handel’s longer lines, although she certainly has drama and intelligence.  And partly it’s because Cummings & Co. didn’t reveal all the shades of “Serse”, so the opera dragged when it should have been gathering steam.

Curiously, Louise Alder – though her voice in my experience has not quite had the steadiness of line for Mozart – rose to the role of Romilda with a musical firmness that made this the finest singing I have experienced from her. As the opera proceeded, everybody rose to greater heights of eloquence (though the mezzosoprano Claudia Huckle, negotiating Handel without any true chest register, remained pallid in the touching role of Amastre).  Rebecca Leggett (as Serse’s brother Arsamene, a role Murrihy sang in concert four years ago) and Rachel Redmond (Atalanta) became increasingly welcome elements of the drama. At the start of the opera, I felt I needed a break from “Serse”; at the end, I wanted to experience it again.  And Handel kept – keeps – growing in my mind as a dramatist: he is often elusive just because every one of his music dramas has its own complex character, often with disconcerting elements of humour or sophistication that are easy to misjudge.

IV:  Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien in Beethoven at the Wigmore Hall

The violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cédric Tiberghien,  both with illustrious solo careers, have been playing in duet for over twenty years, all over the world.  On Thursday, they played three Beethoven sonatas at the Wigmore Hall – no 8 (in G op. 30 no 3), no 10 (in G op. 96), and, to close the concert, no 9 (in A op.46 “Kreutzer”):  Tiberghien played the fortepiano.  Very stylishly, they made the most of Beethoven’s contrasts and changes of mood, so that each sonata covered a great deal of ground, with Beethoven seeming to surprise himself as well as us in each work. The “Kreutzer” sonata, closing the concert, was the often startling event it should be:  even shocking.

@Alastair Macaulay 2026