Electric classical

(No, I'm not talking about the kind that involves amplifiers. Not in this post anyway...)

While setting up this blog I had to re-listen to The Turn of the Screw, just to make sure that I had correctly quoted it in the blog title. I've listened to it many times, obsessively. I find myself quoting from it at inopportune moments. ("Small? It's huge!" is always a favorite, in part because I can actually sing it.) And yet no matter how many times I come back to the recording, it always seems fresh. I speak of course of the recording, the original, composer-conducted, Pears-containing version.

Yet I would argue that a large part of its freshness is due not to Britten and not to Pears, but rather to the amazing acting of David Hemmings in his boy soprano incarnation. Every other version of the opera that I've heard, including the Oxford student production, had a better singer in the part. I wouldn't trade any of them for David Hemmings, who for all his wobbly high notes inhabits the role of Miles so fully that he makes him the most vivid character in the opera.

I have a lot of doubts about Greg Sandow's concept of "alt-classical," especially when the definition seems to boil down to "classical wot I like," but there's something to his argument that classical performance could stand to have more immediacy and passion. Hemmings had that passion and instinct for performing, which must have come less from his membership of the choir at Hampton Court Palace and more from his experience singing standing on tables in pubs with his father accompanying on piano.

It's rare that a performance has the sort of verve that makes you sit up and take notice. One other example that comes to mind is the Theatre of the Ayre production of Venus and Adonis led by Elizabeth Kenny, which I saw at the Sheldonian this spring. All of it had a quasi-improvisational lustiness and liveliness that was miles away from the tweeness of some early music, but the standout singer was Jason Darnell in the small role of the Huntsman. A Gramophone review of the recording of an earlier Wigmore Hall performance says that "Jason Darnell's virile Huntsman is a bit of a shock when he hurls out plenty of top Bs during a short passage but his contributions possess plenty of characterful verve." That's one way to put it. Even though I was sitting behind the stage, I could see his face turning scarlet and tell just how much effort and power he was putting into it. I leaned forward in my seat, I watched him for the rest of the scene in the hopes that he would have more to sing. Listening to the recording later, I found my eyes opening equally wide when I came to that passage. My knowledge of singing is still not good enough to judge his technical ability (is there some intentional pitch-bending in there? is that what makes it sound less strictly classical?), but wow, it was exciting. I keep checking to see where else he's performing in the hopes of seeing him do something more substantial.

Any other examples of really electric performances? It's such an intangible concept but I can't help agreeing with Greg Sandow... that sort of feeling is important.