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| Images: Kai Bienert |
Isang
Yun: Dimensionen,
for large orchestra with organ
Schoenberg:
Violin Concerto, op.36Nono: Julius Fučik
Beethoven, retouched by Mahler: Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67
Christian Tetzlaff (violin)
Max Hopp (speaker: Fučik)
Sven Philipp (speaker: Officer)
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)
My final – although not quite
the final – concert of this year’s Musikfest Berlin fell on the hundred
birthday of Isang Yun. Having heard some of his chamber music that afternoon,
it was an interesting prospect to hear a work for full, indeed large,
orchestra, with organ. (Alas, I was unable to find the name of the organist
anywhere in the programme.) Dimensionen,
or Dimensions, was commissioned by
the city of Nuremberg, as part of the 1971 celebrations for the five-hundredth
anniversary of Albrecht Durer. I wish I had been able to respond more than I
had, but found myself a little nonplussed; perhaps I needed to give it another
hearing or two, or indeed to do a little homework rather than coming to it
cold. The idea seemed to encompass three different planes of sound: the organ
and high, often very high, strings; deep percussion and brass; and woodwind in
between, less static than either. I was certainly struck by the passages in
which woodwind really took on the ‘persona’ of highly tremulant organ stops. One
section, in which loud organ was offset by vigorous percussion sounded oddly
like avant-gardist Poulenc, but I doubt that was the intention! There was a good
bit of (considerably earlier) Ligeti- or Xenakis-like violin swarming too. It
all, however, seemed to me a great deal of trouble to have gone to for
relatively little reward. And then, it stopped.
With Schoenberg, though, I found
myself back very much on home territory, and should have no hesitation in
saying that this was the finest performance of the Violin Concerto I have heard
in the concert hall. Indeed, I am not sure that I have heard a better one on
record, either. Opportunities are rare to hear the work; even I have only heard
it ‘live’ twice before. The
last time had been in 2009, in which Nikolaj Znaider had – sadly, if all
too predictably – been let down by a clearly unprepared Valery Gergiev. There
was no such question of that being the case here. Vladimir Jurowski and the
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB) were just as much party to the success of
this performance as the outstanding Christian Tetzlaff. The first movement very
much set the tone for what was to come: precise, yet dancing idiomatically.
Textures were almost incredibly clear, so much so as to have one wonder
whatever the ‘problem’ might ever have been with this work. More than once,
there seemed to be a strong orchestral affinity with the more or less
contemporary world of Berg, albeit more Lulu
than the Violin Concerto. (Schoenberg was anxious to make clear, in a 1936
letter to Webern, that he had conceived of the idea of his work at the same
time as Berg had his.) Tetzlaff’s tone could hardly have been more centred; one
might readily have taken dictation, however dazzling the virtuosity. The Andante grazioso brought a winning match
of doggedness and sublimity to the long violin line, dance again never far
away. Developing variation was here so much more than a mere description; it
was something one could hardly fail to experience. The mood of defiance to the
finale was brilliantly captured too. Perhaps there was just a little ‘formalism
to Jurowski’s conducting, but to be able to hear so much of this wondrous score
was more than ample compensation. Mahler seemed almost resurrected in its
militarism, and yet to very different purposes. Tetzlaff’s despatch of the
cadenza seemed almost calculated to echo Schoenberg’s workds: ‘Yes,
yes. That will be fine. The concerto is extremely difficult, just as much for
the head as for the hands. I am delighted to add another unplayable work to the repertoire. I want the concerto to be
difficult and I want the little finger to become longer. I can wait.’ And the
soloist’s choice of Bach’s D minor Sarabande as an encore was perfect. Not only
could one read back Bach’s line into Schoenberg’s, and vice versa; the choice of D minor picked up on and responded to
Schoenberg’s hints at that key – always a ‘special’ one for him – in the
concerto.
I
had heard Jurowski
conduct the British premiere of Nono’s unfinished Julius Fučik in London in 2011. ‘Pointillism’ was what had
immediately come to mind in the opening then; so it did now; far more so, say,
than in the later Il canto sospeso, heard earlier in this festival. Its melodramatic quality
inevitably puts one in mind of Schoenberg: for instance, A Survivor from Warsaw. There was certainly no doubting the
violence and the human ‘provocation’, such as Nono said he always needed: ‘an event, an experience, a test in our
lives, which provokes my instinct and my consciousness, as man and musician, to
bear witness’. In this case, the witness borne is to a Czech communist and
literary critic, hanged by the Nazis in 1943. (Fučik’s words would also be used
in Intolleranza 1960.) Drums and
trumpets again suggested Mahler (and Schoenberg), as the music led us to one of
those typical Nono passages of agonising beauty. The German ‘Schönheit’, spoken
shortly after, made the point clearly. And then, to hear the phrase ‘ein Motif
von Beethoven’ alerted us, with savage irony, to where we were heading.
Jurowski had followed that
London performance too with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The great difference
here was that it was performed with Mahler’s retouchings to the score – and with
a much larger orchestra. Interestingly, Jurowski now seemed liberated, no
longer hidebound by self-imposed ‘authenticke’ restrictions. It was, of course,
a splendid experience in itself to hear Beethoven via Mahler, but it was not
just that; we heard more, I think, of Beethoven ‘as Beethoven’ too. Moreover,
simply to hear a full-sized orchestra, still more one on such splendid form as
the RSB, let loose on this music – sixteen first violins down to eight double
basses – is an opportunity all too today too. Doubling of wind made perfect
sense in such a hall and on such an occasion too. Yes, of course it is not
strictly ‘necessary’, but what is? If we go down that route, we might as well
all stay at home and listen to recordings – or indeed to nothing at all. To
hear, for instance, the oboe solo in the first movement not as a solo at all
was fascinating, especially when played as well as it was here. We doubtless
will not hear it like that next time, but we might have the memory in some
sense with us, offering a different, reflective standpoint on what we hear.
Moreover, the first movement as a whole burst forth with all the radicalism of
Beethoven’s almost incredible gift for concision. Perhaps Jurowski might have
yielded a little on occasion, but one might say the same about Klemperer.
It was glorious to hear the
lower strings, so full and rich, so songful and soulful, at the opening of the
second movement. Even the slightly static approach Jurowski brought to the
music seemed to work, although I could not quite tell you how or why. I was
less convinced that this was really a ‘Mahlerian’ approach, but so what? To
attempt to imitate, whether something imaginary or otherwise, is an approach
for pedants, not for artists. The performance, moreover, benefited from all the
clarity we had heard in the Schoenberg. I very much like the stateliness, the
strength – I dare not invoke ‘stability’ here! – of the Scherzo, transmuted
into something similar yet different in the Trio. The reprise of the scherzo material
sounded as ghostly as ever; alas, the transition to the finale remained
somewhat foursquare, lacking in mystery. If there were times in that final
movement when Jurowski seemed to hold back – rather oddly, and overtly, in
forced ritardandi – many earlier
virtues remained, showing clarity, strength of purpose, and numbers to be anything
but antithetical. (It is extraordinary that one has to make such a point, but
given the current fashionable climate, alas one must.) And this time, the
surprise would be that the oboe solo was – yes, an oboe solo. Two piccolos, four
flutes, four oboes, four clarinets (including bass and E-flat clarinets), four
bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones: I have no
doubt whatsoever that Beethoven would have been overjoyed to hear his music
relished by and through so many. If, ultimately, I was perhaps more impressed
than moved by the performance, it gave me much to be impressed by – and to
think about.
