The Sunday Times - UK (2021-11-28)

ON RECORD | OPERA

POP & ROCK

CLASSICAL

ALBUM

OF THE

WEEK

Lady Gaga’s coworker

Arca

KicK ii, iii, iiii

XL

The innovative

Grammy-

nominated

Venezuelan DJ,

composer,

singer and producer, a go-to

collaborator for Björk, Kanye

West, Lady Gaga and FKA

Twigs, follows last year’s

KicK i with three further

instalments. Shirley Manson

and Sia are among the

contributors, the latter on

the majestic,

unapologetically OTT Born

Yesterday. As ever with

Arca, fearless and

often unsettling

experimentation

rubs shoulders with

club bangers,

ambience and roiling

Crebassa is

one of the

most striking

young singers

from across

the channel. With her

luminous top, plummy

middle and inky chest notes,

the French mezzo might

Marianne Crebassa

Séguedilles — songs and

arias by Bizet, Massenet,

Offenbach, Ravel, de Falla,

Mompou et al

With Orchestre et Choeur

du Capitole de Toulouse,

cond Ben Glassberg

Erato (Warner Classics)

Nils Frahm

Old Friends New Friends

Leiter

A double album featuring 23

tracks for solo piano that the

German recorded between

2009 and this year, Old

Friends New Friends is

sonorous, Satie-like, intimate

and comforting. The eddying

Rain Take is accompanied by

a downpour outside;

Wedding Waltzer is like

winter in song. DC

Amy Duncan

Cocoon

Filly

The Scottish multi-

instrumentalist’s eighth

album sits between Cocteau

Twins and the Blue Nile, its

broad cinematic sweep,

folktronic textures,

crystalline vocals and lyrics

imbued with introspection

and memory-lane inventory-

taking yielding moments of

breathtaking beauty. DC

hyperpop. The three albums

are discrete, although they

rarely sit in any one groove:

ii is the most structurally

formal (but this is Arca, so

that isn’t saying much), iii

embraces chaos and iiii

mixes the celestial and the

dissonant. On each she puts

down roots in the territory

she has marked out: ii’s

Prada and Tiro are

excursions into dystopian

and glitchy reggaeton;

iii’s Incendio and Señorita

evoke sweat-soaked

makeshift dancefloors; and

on iiii Boquifloja and

Whoresong’s treated vocals

and floaty

soundscapes come

as close as these

fascinating albums

get to something

approaching

serenity. Dan Cairns

have been born to sing

Bizet’s Carmen. But the

Spanish theme reveals her as

an ideal Dulcinée (Massenet’s

Don Quichotte), Périchole

(Offenbach) and Concepcion

(Ravel’s L’heure espagnole)

— smokily seductive and

sultry. In the genuine

Spanish items she’s a searing

Salud in de Falla’s La vida

breve. Orchestral items —

stylishly conducted by

Glassberg — include

Mompou’s gorgeous song

cycle Combat of Dreams

with piano-accompanied

songs by de Falla and Guridi.

Hugh Canning

Launching a Ring cycle is an

ambitious undertaking for

any opera company, and one

fraught with risks. For its third

attempt at Wagner’s tetralogy,

English National Opera has

chosen Richard Jones as

director. These days he’s a

safe pair of hands rather than

the firebrand iconoclast

whose mid-1990s Royal

Opera Ring, conducted by

Bernard Haitink, divided

London’s Wagnerians. This is

Jones’s own third attempt at

the Ring’s second day (his

first, in 1991 for Scottish

Opera, in some ways his

most interesting, progressed

no further).

Designed by his regular

collaborator Stewart Laing,

this new Valkyrie — in a stilted,

prosaic new translation by

the Wagner scholar John

Deathridge — is as drab

and dull as Jones’s earlier

designer Nigel Lowery’s

sets were colourful and

cartoonish. The grey

curtained open

space that serves as

the backdrop

suggests a want of a

design budget, and a

deficit of imagination.

The cycle, when

complete, is scheduled to

go to New York’s grand

Metropolitan Opera, but it

looks bargain basement even

by ENO standards. It’s hard to

see it making the trip without

a thorough redesign.

That, though, is the least

of ENO’s problems with its

projected Ring. Its music

director, Martyn Brabbins,

leads a performance that

sounds like the work of a

rookie Wagnerian: erratic

tempi, fitful momentum,

plentiful brass fluffs. The

latter can be ironed out

during the run, but it’s

difficult to see Brabbins

emerging as a Ring

conductor of note. Forget

ENO’s legendary Reginald

Goodall, who led the

company’s first Ring in the

1970s; forget, more recently,

Richard Farnes’s superlative

achievement for Opera North

between 2011 and 2016.

Astonishingly Brabbins has

conducted this before,

at the late Richard

Hickox’s

St Endellion

Festival in 2011, but

my advice would be

to attend ENO’s

performance on

December 7, when the

Goodall disciple Anthony

Negus conducts (he was

mysteriously axed, then

reinstated in another PR

“triumph” for the

beleaguered management).

Brabbins’s Acts I and II storms

were of the “teacup” variety.

The seeds of this fiasco,

however, were sown long

before the chief executive,

Stuart Murphy, and the

artistic director, Annilese

Miskimmon, took charge of

the company (although

presumably they signed

off the design and

concept). A

production of

The Valkyrie

was originally

mooted by Mark

Wigglesworth during

his curtailed musical

stewardship as a possible

prelude to a complete Ring,

but the ENO board’s

acceptance of his resignation

and the subsequent

appointment of Daniel

Kramer as — briefly — artistic

director suggests a Ring born

under an unlucky star.

On paper at least ENO’s 2021

cast looked promising: Rachel

Nicholls’s valiant, girlish

Brünnhilde plays darts in her

opening scene with Matthew

Rose’s powerfully sung — if as

yet insufficiently probing —

Wotan, but her voice is small

for the Coliseum and she has

to push at the end of a

long evening. Act I

fares better thanks^

to strong vocal

performances

from Emma

Bell as a wild,

temperamental

Sieglinde, and Nicky

Spence, admirably

singing through a cold as a

poetic and near-heroic

Siegmund and Brindley

Sherratt’s baleful, thuggish

Hunding. Susan Bickley

acted a powerful,

glamorously dressed

Fricka, but has to mime to

Claire Barnett Jones’s plush

voice from a stage box.

This fine young ENO singer

later joined an excellent team

of Valkyries — hampered

perhaps by their green

all-weather fruit-pickers gear

and silly biped pantomime

horses — among whom she,

Nadine Benjamin (Gerhilde)

and Jennifer Davis (Helmwige)

were the vocal standouts.

At the start of the evening

Miskimmon apologised

for cast illness and asked us to

use our imaginations for the

missing fire effect that was

banned by Westminster

council. Even with it this

Valkyrie would have been

a damp squib. c

THE

CRITICS

Valkyrie in the rough

TRISTRAM KENTON

Wagner’s Ring is always a challenge, but Richard Jones’s version

is let down by fitful playing and a drab set, says Hugh Canning

Hear, hear

Rachel

Nicholls as

Brünnhilde

24 28 November 2021