Golda Schultz Sings Gershwin and Bernstein

Golda Schultz Sings Gershwin and Bernstein
Royal Albert Hall

It's Saturday night, and I'm half cut. Had a pint and a half of Guniness at the Irby Club with my Dad and brother, and washing it down with my new friend, the Ayinger dunkel, a bottle of which I purchased at the Crafty Tavern earlier this evening. And I can't enjoy a dark ale without a bag of Maltesers and a Wispa. 

Anyone expecting a cerebral analysis of this evening's offerings at the Royal Albert Hall have come to the wrong place. But that won't stop me giving it a go. Incidentally, I am listening to this on BBC Sounds, about an hour behind the live broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Tonight it is the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and they will be playing a veritable selection of numbers. Joining them for a couple is Golda Schultz, a soprano singer. 

The first piece played is Franz Schreker's Chamber Symphony. It does not put a foot wrong.

Next we have 'By Strauss' - a composition by George Gershwin [you've no idea how long it took to get my head round that one]. This is where Golda Schultz comes in, and I'm taken aback by her vocals. I'm not actually sure what my ear was expecting from a 'soprano,' but I don't think it was quite this. It's got a Julie Andrews resonance to it, which is surely something to celebrate. And there's something near the end that reminds me of  Oom-Pah-Pah from the 1960 musical, Oliver! 

To tell you the truth, these resonate vocals are casting me back to the Viennese Waltzes Prom, earlier in the season. That is not a bad thing!

There's an edition Summertime from the opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin. Good grief, was that that Gershwin?! Thought it was Lana Del Ray? [Joking aside, Lana has done a pleasurable variation of this]. 

After the interval I pick up on Somewhere from West Side Story - watched that a couple of Christmases ago. 

Stravinsky's Firebird is neither here nor there.

Photo by me, 20th July 2025,

Shostakovich’s ‘Lady Macbeth’

Shostakovich’s ‘Lady Macbeth’

Royal Albert Hall

It's Monday, and I'm even more tired than usual. Managed about three hours sleep last night, so after work today I'm not in the mood to do much bar laze about in the house. I catch another hour or so of sleep, and and head back downstairs to arrange some food for myself. Picked up a few nice meals-for-one at the Cook shop in Heswall yesterday, so there's not much in the way of cooking to be done - I can allow the microwave to take the strain. The day overall has been overcast, and today for the first time I've sensed a subtle flavour of autumn, as opposed to late-summer (and not just because it's September 1st). Not too long now before I'm sitting here with a hoodie on.

I turn on the kitchen radio just a few minutes shy of 19:30. and it's not until a minute or two after this time that I realise I'm late to tonight's Prom at the Royal Albert Hall - it started at 18:30! It's the kind of sinking heart attack you face when you realise you've overslept and are going to be rolling into the office an hour late with your shirt flapping out. Even ten years ago, such sloppy punctuality might have put the kibosh on my all-Proms ambition. Fortunately though, we now live in an age that allows us to restart the show from the top, even in real-time when it is still going out live. So it is that I instruct BBC Sounds to take me back an hour, and it duly saves the day.

Tonight we have Shostakovich’s The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Now, I am aware of the Shakespearean Lady Macbeth and, as I recall, she was a bit of a shit. So why would someone of Shostakovich's calibre be composing for her? I ask ChatGPT for some help, and it lets me know that this isn't so much Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, but rather it's someone called Katerina, who is monikered as such (I think in a display of irony) on the author's part. It's all from a novella by Nikolai Leskov. While Katerina commits adulterous and murderous crimes and the like, the point being made is that it is the repressive society surrounding her that has ultimately pushed her to it. This is what Stalin didn't like about Shostakovich's Lady Mac, and my mind now is starting to think back to what I dubbed 'Shostakovich on trial' at the Proms, just a few weekends ago, when we heard his fifth symphony by heart. Overall, the impression I'm getting from Shostakovich is that he is capable of both jollity and subtlety, and he does a sterling job of both. Basically, he does what he wants. And this (for now, anyway), cements my leaning towards the idea that his fifth symphony was a clever hoax.

Now I will move on to my thoughts on the performance itself. It's being sung in English, and this gets me to thinking. Bland sentences like "I came to ask you for a book" suddenly don't sound so exotic. There's something that deceives one into feeling more cultured and sophisticated when listening to opera in a language unintelligible. Fortunate, then, that all the dramatic vibratos make sure I still don't understand what's going on. [Prommers at the hall have surtitles to help them, I gather].

A few times I hear derisory 'ha!, ha!, ha!'s', in a sharp staccato fashion. I can't stop my mind travelling to The Laughing Policeman by Charles Penrose. At first I think it's yet another case of me wandering to inappropriate elements; but, in way, it couldn't be more appropriate. 

The second half starts - is this the wedding of Katerina and Sergey? That it sounds like a grotesque circus fanfare could be another confirmation of the Shostakovich witticism I mused on earlier.

The Marriage of Figaro

The Marriage of Figaro

Royal Albert Hall

Tonight I'm taking a detour into Liverpool after work, as I need to collect an Ikea Kallax unit (1x4), that I've bought from someone on Facebook Marketplace. £10 and ready assembled. A couple of light marks. Perfect for my little bedroom which I use to store my own musical instruments and music books, the latter for which I need said shelving. These books have been the best part of two years in plastic bags all over the show.

This evening's Prom begins at the earlier-than-usual time of 18:30, due to the length of the work, (Mozart's Marriage of Figaro) that is going to be performed. I'm driving back home when it begins, but at least I'm with the live broadcast this evening, for the first time since the busy Proms weekend in Bristol.

Let's talk about two irreverent things my mind wanders to when the music starts:

1) The opening tinkle of this piece of work is a famous one, and it always takes me back to the 1971 Gene Wilder film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. There's a scene where Wilder's Wonka [the one and only, IMO] plays a little melody on tiny piano, in order to unlock the door to the chocolate room. Mike Teevee's mother pipes up, proudly declaring it to be the work of 'Rachmaninov,' in an arrogant effort to showcase her cultural knowledge. In actual fact, it's the opening to Mozart's Marriage of Figaro - and this is how I like to remember it's Mozart, hoping I never fall into the same embarrassing trap.

2) Secondly, my mind is floating to the 1993 film Mrs Doubtfire, in which Robin Williams sings 'Figaro, Figaro, Fi-Ga-Ro!', while holding up a funny little music stand. Chat GPT informs me that this is actually a reference to Rossini's Barber of Seville, but it is the same Figaro we're talking about here - the character having been invented by the French playwright, Pierre Beaumarchais. 

As for what is happening at the Royal Albert Hall, I'm speechless. Even though I'm only listening on the radio, the quality of the performance is crystal clear. It's spotless. These are seasoned pros, and I wish I was there to witness it all in raw vision and hearing. Anyone who knows nothing about classical music will tell you that their favourite composers are 'Beethoven and Mozart.' There's nothing wrong with that, and it's obvious these boys are mainstream for good reason: their music gets as close to touching perfection as is humanly possible. 

 

It does drag on a bit though, and I'm left wondering when the interval is going to kick in.

There's the odd titter from the audience which is over my head at home. Something I'm recently starting to take away from Mozart is that he seems to like a bit of playful extravagance. The presenter calls it 'Mozart's Comic Masterpiece', and I think that's a fair conclusion. 

Pappano Conducts Puccini and Strauss

Pappano Conducts Puccini and Strauss
Royal Albert Hall

Tonight we've got a bit of opera! Two operas, in fact: 

1)  Die Frau Ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow), by Richard Strauss

2) Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica) by Giacomo Puccini.

It's to be the first time Suor Angelica has been outed at the BBC Proms. But guess what... I've met her before! Yes, in 2019 I went to see a performance of Suor Angelica at St George's Hall concert room in Liverpool. Before that time I had never seen an opera before, so it was a bit of a bucket list job more than anything. (It was on a double-bill with Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, but it was the Suor Anglica I've remembered more, out of the two). They were performed by the North Wales Opera Company. Before tonight's Prom airs I have a root around to see if I can find the programme from the time, and I am successful - it's under my bed, amongst the mountains of other tour programmes and museum guidebooks I've hoarded over the years [It's times like these I glad I did - thank God for Ottoman storage!]. I even find my programme from Prom 48 at the RAH on 2016 - the one and only Prom I had attended before this year - I will add a photo and more about this, retrospectively, in my Introduction Blog from the start of the run.

But on to the music, and first up tonight is Die Frau Ohne Schatten, by Strauss. It starts off with some short, coarse tears on the lower brasses. Feels like a summons. The strings soon take over though, and it's a breath of fresh air. It's glorious! Repeating a simile I have already used, it's like wandering at leisure though a floral meadow. Lots of lilac, green, and yellow colouring. Is this a bout of musical synesthesia I've got? Yes, it's beautiful. It's majestic, but in a benign way, rather than the forceful way. Is it extroversion? I do think it is, now that I think back to that meadow. 

There's a bit of Mahler and Berio during the interval and, Oh My God, it's not that bad. Also a bit of Bach, never-a-bad-thing, on piano, to soothe us through.

Second half is Suor Angelica. What is there to say about it, really? Obviously it's a solitary piece, and that in itself is what makes it stick out to me. I have a read of my old programme from St George's Hall in 2019, and it offers me a 'plain English' synopsis of the tale - which follows through as I listen. It's a tragedy as old as time, and arguably even more tragic now than when it was first written. Because we, as modern listeners, are all too aware that that reconciliation with her son and Our Lady at the end, are nothing more than one final, pre-death hit of noradrenaline.