WEDO/Barenboim - Mendelssohn and Brahms, 4 November 2024

Royal Festival Hall

Mendelssohn: Symphony no.4 in A major, op.90
Brahms: Symphony no.4 in E minor, op.98

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Images: Pete Woodhead

A performance from Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has always been an experience hors concours. That has not changed; it is arguably all the more so than ever. The warmth of applause Barenboim received coming on stage was in itself striking, arguably beyond even that Bernard Haitink did during his later years; that with which Barenboim and the orchestra met on departing was something else again. The reasons for this are obvious and do not need rehearsing, but they are very much part of the context in which any listener from this planet, perhaps even from beyond, would experience this concert. 

Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony was not a work I associated with Barenboim, but that was clearly a matter of my ignorance, since he conducted it, as he would Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, without a score. The manner in which it opened banished any such doubt for good: buoyant, transparent, directed, at an ideal tempo, and imbued with chiaroscuro. Ravishing woodwind solos characterised not only this first movement but the performance as a whole. Split violins brought the dialogue further to life—and what a luxury it was to hear this music with an orchestra ranging from sixteen firsts to eight double basses. That depth of strings truly told in the struggle of the development, more Beethovenian than one generally hears, and all the better for it. Indeed, it was not only Beethoven but the Beethoven of Furtwängler who increasingly came to mind: surely a matter not entirely dissociated from the state of the world around us and, above all, around these extraordinary young musicians and their wise guide and mentor. It was likewise perhaps my imagination, but I am not sure I have heard the second movement sound so mournful. It was neither slow nor lugubrious, but told of an underlying pain that could never be put into words (thinking of Mendelssohn’s own aesthetic claim). This processional, steeped in the deepest melancholy, maintained its line from beginning to end, detail and broad sweep in perfect equipoise. Moving to the major mode brought Schubertian bitter-sweetness. The close, alas, brought a less than welcome intervention from mobile telephone. 

Was the minuet too loving? I imagine some might have thought so. For me, as a one-off, it offered a fond backward glance to a world before, ever vanished, yet tantalisingly close, whether to Mozart or whatever one might choose politically. Again, woodwind were to die for. Horns and bassoons in the trio, beautifully hushed, seemed to recall the world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, building to a stern climax with militaristic trumpets and drums. In that context, the finale offered a wake-up call in several senses. Fast, furious, unrelenting, it had never terrified me as it did here. String figuration again darted from the Dream music, the Scherzo in particular, yet turned to acid, disturbingly close to the world of, say, Mahler’s Fifth. Throughout, the sense of purpose evoked Beethoven and anticipated Brahms.

 

The first concert I heard Barenboim conduct was of Brahms, in this very hall: not the Fourth Symphony, but rather the Third and First. He still has much to tell us and much to surprise us with. If the candle occasionally flickers, as here in the great finale, which almost yet not quite fell apart; it continues ultimately to burn, perhaps all the more movingly for its infallibility. There is little doubt that the Divan musicians would follow him to the end of the earth and there is hope in that. The first movement, deeply sad without sentimentality, felt well-nigh overwhelming. It may have been on the slow side, but it pulsed with life both in its harmonic fundamentals and in the motivic working of inner parts: Schenker and Schoenberg united, as so often in the best of Barenboim’s (and anyone else’s) performances. It became more frightening, more vehement, its insistence frightening, sweeter passages arguably still more so. Its fragility remained deeply moving. The development opened as if showing us a musical (and political) wasteland, from which the world somehow, just about, picked itself up. Horn calls and massed string portamenti sent chills, properly ambiguous, down the spine. Battle between first and second violins towards the close told its own unmistakeable story.

The second movement, intriguingly, seemed to take up whether the inner movements of the Mendelssohn had left off, building rhythmically (those hemiolas!) and harmonically into a tragic statement of Beethovenian stature, whose virginal tenderness troubled still more than external defiance. Truth, here, was the essence. It was not beautiful; nor was it intended to be. Yet in the richness of Brahms’s inner parts, there lay hope, as there did in something later, warmer, aptly (given Barenboim’s history) Elgarian. He may not have seemed to be doing very much, yet detail remained within his hands, as witnessed by a subtle signal to the firsts to tone down, instantly obeyed. The scherzo-like third movement offered ebullient contrast, as if a thunderbolt from Zeus. In dialectical contrast, it became almost balletic, only adding to the sense of what humanly was at stake. The passacaglia was as implacable, as naked in its honesty: the final, complete tragic utterance, laden with all the cares of the world and yet still able to speak, to resist, to bear witness. At times, it almost stood still; at others, it pressed on. All was part of the same flow, all rooted in harmony, musically Sophoclean. 

The Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as at the Waldbühne this summer, made for a fitting, featherlight encore: charming, yet with depth rarely achieved and perhaps never surpassed. Encapsulating so much of what had gone before, it also offered something refreshingly new. Again, a sign of hope.

Gerstein/BBC SO/Oramo - Bacewicz and Busoni, 1 November 2024

Barbican Hall

Grażyna Bacewicz: Symphony no.2
Ferruccio Busoni: Piano Concerto in C major, op.83

Kirill Gerstein (piano)

BBC Symphony Chorus

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Images: Copyright: BBC/Sarah-Louise Bennett

The centenary of Ferruccio Busoni’s death fell earlier this year, not that ninety-nine per cent of the musical world appears to have noticed. Where are the operas, even his masterpiece and summa, Doktor Faust this year, or any other? His Turandot will never rival Puccini’s for popularity, nor for various other attributes, least of all disturbingly alluring sadism. Yet, though I admire both, I think Busoni’s is ultimately the better piece. In the meantime, the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, Sakari Oramo, and Kirill Gerstein offered a rare opportunity to hear his genre- and much-else-defying Piano Concerto, which in its finale offers a male chorus setting of words from the Danish Romantic Adam Oelenschläger’s Aladdin, in Oelenschläger’s own German translation (long since superseded), which Busoni at one point considered turning into an opera. If that sounds more like Beethoven’s Ninth than any of his piano concertos – not, if truth be told, the work has much in common with either – then it points to an important truth: namely, that this superlative pianist and veteran of many a piano concerto, historical and contemporary, chose in his own to write, without sparing the pianist great technical challenges, a work that was more operatic symphony with piano than concerto in any traditional sense, adversarial or otherwise.

A composer such as Busoni needs a champion, and Gerstein probably has better claim than any other current performing musician to the title. During the 2022-23 season, he gave a series of three concerts at the Wigmore Hall, entitled ‘Busoni and his World’. I attended two and left enriched by both. He has also been performing the Piano Concerto, a live recording with Sakari Oramo and the Boston Symphony Orchestra having been warmly acclaimed. I have yet to hear it, but if it is anything like this performance with Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, it should be snapped up by anyone with the slightest interest or curiosity. I suspect it will be in broad outline, since swift overall timings of about seventy minutes are common to both. For the sake of comparison, John Ogdon takes about seventy-eight and Victoria Postnikova manages to stretch it to almost ninety. A signal achievement of this performance, though was that such thoughts never entered the mind. The work did not even seem long, but rather, like a Mahler symphony, the precise length that it needed to be, compelling from beginning to end. 

Indeed, from the outset, soloist, conductor, and for the most part orchestra approached it as if it were a repertory piece. The first movement flowed with notable fluency, with no question as to its depths. Whatever this is, it is not a ‘surface’ work. There was a Beethovenian strength to the string foundations, the Seventh Symphony in particular coming to mind. Gerstein, on his first entry, showed himself both secure in command and inviting—even if we did not yet quite know to what he and Busoni were inviting us. He made the massive piano chords sing in themselves, but equally in counterpoint with the orchestra, unleashing Faustian energy yet also relishing the more ‘feminine’ – in the old, gendered typology – passages in which Doktor Faust itself is at its least successful. If the creation of music from often simple elements required Beethovenian struggle, it rarely sounded like it, the effect closer to Mozart, to Liszt, and occasionally to Brahms. One sensed if not the birth of Busoni’s Junge Klassität, then a milestone in its evolution. 

That Classical-Romantic line ran through the following Pezzo giocoso too, its energy almost yet not quite delirious in piano and orchestra alike. Like its predecessor, it seemed effortlessly to capture the protean spirit of its composer, here pointing, tambourine and all, toward the warm, Mediterranean south. The longer Pezzo serioso struck, unsurprisingly, a more serious, even Teutonic note, pianistic shadows and rays of winter sun from the worlds of Beethoven and Brahms set against surprisingly Wagnerian trombones: a magical combination. Form was unerringly communicated as was a musical narrative perhaps closer to that of Liszt’s symphonic poems than to Strauss. Faustian tones became more pronounced, as if the good doctor himself were seated at the piano, performing his own concerto. The fourth movement tarantella sounded as a truly Italian vision, albeit an Italy different from anyone else’s. In its Lisztian figuration, we experienced a unique, even outrageous fever. And how could we not smile at the evocation of Rossini on entering the realm of commedia dell’arte? 

The transition to the final movement, as the male chorus stood, was a thing of wonder. Busoni instructed that it should be invisible, and the effect would doubtless be all the more magical if it were, if perhaps at the cost of intelligibility, though we had (welcome) surtitles in this case. A quietly ecstatic new and final chapter opened: ‘Lifet up your hearts to the Power Eternal. Feel Allah’s presence. Behold all his works.’ A splendidly warm and consoling choral sound led us into a realm in which it was difficult not to think, perhaps through a Goethian lens, of Die Zauberflöte—and of Mahler. The rapturous acclaim with which Gerstein and his fellow performers met was fully justified. I have no doubt it will prove to be one of my musical memories of 2024. 

Preceding it, we had heard Grażyna Bacewicz’s Second Symphony, a much shorter and more modest work, far from without its virtues, yet paling when placed beside the Busoni. The BBC SO and Oramo summoned just the right sort of mid-century sound in a committed performance of this 1951 work. Other composers came to mind, Prokofiev and Bartók in the first movement, Hindemith later on, but Bacewicz was never merely to be reduced to them, her personal contrasts of ‘voice’ and texture holding the attention throughout. The second movement evoked unease through traditional harmony and counterpoint. The third, a scherzo proved incisive and ambiguous. In the finale, not for the first time, the composer showed her ability not only to write a melody but to ensure that it was generated from the material in which it found itself. Bacewicz’s symphony could probably have found a more suitable home than this concert, but it was a good opportunity to make its acquaintance.

Dubois/Raës - Massenet, Fauré, Dubois, Godard, and Saint-Saëns, 28 October 2024

Wigmore Hall

Massenet: Elégie; Nuit d’Espagne; Sonnet
Fauré: Aubade, op.6 no.1; Chant d’automne, op.5 no.1; Dans les ruines d’une Abbaye, op.2 no.1; Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre; L’Absent, op.5 no.3; Tristesse d’Olympio
Théodore Dubois: Musiques sur l’eau
Benjamin Godard: Fleur d’exil, op.19 no.5
Camille Saint-Saëns: Mélodies persanes, op.26

Cyrille Dubois (tenor)

Tristan Raës (piano)

Tenor Cyrille Dubois and pianist Tristan Raës are to make Wigmore Hall history in a five-year series of the complete songs of Gabriel Fauré. Dubois will be the first artist to perform all of them at the hall; I presume, though do not know for certain, that Raës will be with him throughout. In this, the first concert which dovetailed neatly with 2024’s commemoration of the centenary of Fauré’s death, Dubois and Raës gave voice to ‘Young Fauré and his masters’, six of Fauré’s early songs heard with mélodies by Jules Massenet, Théodore Dubois, Benjamin Godard, and Camille Saint-Saëns. If there were a few, mostly by Dubois, I could happily live without hearing again, there were discoveries aplenty; it is hard and indeed would be foolish to begrudge outings for songs many of us will not have heard before, certainly in concert and quite likely at all. 

For me, the opening Massenet songs were quite a discovery. I have never been much of a fan, but that has been founded on the operas. These three songs from around 1870 offered a spur to reassessment. Whereas much of the operatic talk of Wagnerism has left me a little bemused, it was certainly present in the opening Elégie, from the harmonies of Raës’s striking piano introduction onwards. Their pairing, on Dubois’s entry, with Gallic elegance of vocal line made for a striking, even passionate mode of expression. ‘Nuit d’Espagne’ offered winning contrast and obstinate determination to prove the old saw, however fallacious, of the best ‘Spanish music’ having been written by Frenchmen. Affinity with Carmen was noteworthy; so too was the song’s composition having preceded that of Bizet’s opera. Enchantment of various kinds, eroticism without the Nietzschean decadence one might have expected, characterised Sonnet, which shared with its predecessor a frankly operatic climax chez Dubois. 

The Fauré songs initially inhabited stiller waters, yet already at the beginning of his œuvre, the closer one listened, the more varied the palette and the emotions, both within and between songs. Chant d’automne emerged as a splendidly Romantic response to Baudelaire, Dans les ruines d’une abbaye and, still more so, Puisque j’ai mis ma lèvre (as early as 1862) acting in not dissimilar fashion to Hugo. The passionate climax of another Hugo setting, L’Absent, was finely judged by singer and pianist alike, whilst the turbulence of the last in the set (also Hugo), Tristesse d’Olympio grew ‘naturally’, art concealing art, from the preceding verse and music. Few will need reminding of the difficulties attendant to French word endings in song; no one would have guessed so from Dubois’s seemingly effortless command of idiom. 

The tenor’s namesake – no relation – Théodore Dubois close the first half. I cannot say I really ‘got’ his (considerably later: 1904-10) cycle, Musiques sur l’eau, the musical material coming across as rather characterless. Despite committed performances, (Cyrille) Dubois here suffered from a persistent catch in his throat. If it were to happen anywhere, it was probably better here, and he soon recovered, maintaining line and style. Raës’s performances were at least the equal of his partner’s. I was a little confused regarding one song, ‘Promenade à l’étang’, whose text differed from that printed in the programme; checking afterwards, it would certainly seem to have been included correctly, so perhaps the wrong text was inadvertently included. No matter. 

There was no doubting the sincerity of responses, nor to Benjamin Godard’s songs, which followed the interval. One would hardly call them adventurous, but they seemed more comfortable in their skin than Dubois’s, and were again given with a fine command of idiom and, where appropriate, as in Fleur d’exil, delectable vocal hush. The turbulence of Amour fatal, piano scalic passages and all, built to tumultuous climax, Je respire où tu palpates falling somewhere in between. I shall admit to wishing at one point that I might hear Dubois’s Don José or Samson instead, but full marks for his keenness to explore little-known corners of the repertoire. 

Finally, we heard Saint-Saëns’s outrageously Orientalist Mélodies persanes from 1870. Problematic nature aside, they offered a welcome change not only in mood but in compositional ambition and, for the most part, achievement. A vigorous yet subtle account of ‘La Brise’ showed the way for what was to come, patient attention to detail paying off handsomely in painting a larger picture. Ringing top notes (‘La Solitaire’) and Orientalist melismata (‘Sabre en main’) rested firmly on the foundations of rock-solid piano rhythm. A haunted visit ‘Au cimetière’ prepared us, in contrast as much as complement, for the étude-like piano blizzard of ‘Tournoiement’. 

By way of a calling-card for what is to come, the musicians gave Fauré’s op.1 no.1 as an encore. Le Papillon et La Fleur received a performance both buoyant and seductive. A smallish yet enthusiastic audience certainly appreciated the endeavour as a whole and seemed keen to hear more. Dubois and Raës merit following in this journey. Watch, or rather listen, out for the new year’s next instalment, devoted to the theme of Fauré and Nature.

Tiberghien - Illean and Beethoven, 25 October 2024

Wigmore Hall

Lisa Illean: Sonata in ten parts (world premiere)
Beethoven: 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, op.120

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)

How to present the Diabelli Variations? What better way than commissioning a new, related piano work to precede them? I should never have guessed that Lisa Illean’s Sonata in ten parts was her first work for solo piano, so assured was the writing, realised beautifully and meaningfully, as if a classic work, by Cédric Tiberghien. Each of the ten ‘parts’, which I think we might consider in some sense variations – the interesting question being variations on what? – is derived from a short passage, often as little as a bar, from Beethoven’s set. Interconnections in Illean’s own work were sometimes clear even on a first hearing; I suspect there will be more to be discovered on levels subterranean and subliminal. The opening seemed designed, both in work and performance, to invite us in, questing and uncertain (in a positive sense), full of potential. It was not Beethoven so much as Debussy and Schoenberg who initially came to my ears, though his ghost certainly visited the feast later on, perhaps as much through passages of unmistakeable dignity as through thematic connection. So too did others, Chopin and Brahms included. Not that these were necessarily overt references or even reminiscences, more points in common via, for instance, exquisite voice-leading (again both Illean’s and Tiberghien’s), use of the sustaining pedal, or horizontal employment of chords. Here was a splendidly old-school beauty of pianistic sonority put to contemporary musical ends, to the distinct benefit of both. 

Tiberghien elected to offer his engaging spoken introduction to the Diabelli Variations immediately after Illean’s Sonata, leaving us to ponder during the interval before launching into the fabled Schusterfleck. That worked very well, I thought, both in forging a greater whole and in rejuvenating a Beethovenian shock of the new. The Waltz, at any rate, was delectably sprung, without affectation, the first variation an excellent alternative beginning, as if Beethoven were saying – and surely he is – ‘that aside, now let us begin afresh’. As soon as its successor, we were in definably ‘late’ territory, kinship to the composer’s early years apparent in the third, for a distinct virtue of Tiberghien’s performance was sympathy to the multiplicity of voices, letting them sing to combine in the unmistakeable single voice of Beethoven. Here were humour, vigour, sheer élan, the knowingly wayward, and so much more, stretching in reference from the beguiling contrapuntal legacy of Bach, through heartfelt Mozartian equipoise, to Boulezian ‘organised delirium’ (to borrow the title of Caroline Potter’s new book). Formal command and communication were crucial, however lightly worn: one experienced groups of variations as something akin to sonata movements, whether in the rapt hush of a slow movement or the display of a finale. Overall balance and individual character were equally well judged, a Beethovenian hour passing in the twinkling of an eye. The composer’s apparent, readily explicable unwillingness to let go for (almost) the last time was captured to near perfection, as heart-rending as it was truthful. We had come home, though home would never be quite the same again.

Burkhard/London Sinfonietta/Berman - Schoenberg, Lutyens, and Webern, 20 October 2024

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Schoenberg: Serenade, op.24
Lutyens: Six Tempi, for 10 instruments
Schoenberg: Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, op.41
Schoenberg: Six Little Piano Pieces, op.19
Webern: Symphony, op.21
Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony no.1, op.9

Andrew Zolinsky (piano)

Richard Burkhard (baritone, speaker)

London Sinfonietta

Jonathan Berman (conductor)

Concert images: Monika S Jakubowska

Much nonsense is spoken about all composers, all artists, all celebrated historical and contemporary figures. There can be few, save perhaps for Wagner, who at least bears a share of responsibility for the nonsense spoken about him, about whom more and greater nonsense is spoken than Schoenberg. A Queen Elizabeth Hall concert devoted to his music, with further contributions from Webern and Elisabeth Lutyens, sold out, once again disproving the claim that no one wishes to hear this music. Even if that were true, it demands nonetheless be performed. Whether readings from Schoenberg and others, and changes in lighting – a tricolore for the Ode to Napoleon – added up to anything much may have been a matter of taste. In the greater sum of things, they did no harm either, and perhaps offered a way in for some. So too will have an excellent pre-concert discussion from conductor Jonathan Berman and musicologists Jonathan Cross and Julie Brown. 

The problem is not that there is no audience for Schoenberg’s music, but rather that certain interests in the musical world wish us not to, as with modernist music of subsequent generations. There is more than a hint of the trendy vicar to (largely US American) neotonal evangelists insisting on the ‘popularity’ and ‘relevance’ of something that at best has long since had its day and probably never had one, whilst the Second Viennese School and what was once called the ‘postwar avant garde’ continue to nourish performers, audiences, and indeed composers alike. If, like many other cities, London has done culpably little to celebrate the 150th birthday of the most important composer of the twentieth century, this London Sinfonietta concert helped make amends. Its dedicatee, the late Alexander Goehr, would surely both have applauded this contribution and rightly deplored the establishment’s ongoing hostility. 

More important, these performances will surely have made fresh converts from a pleasingly mixed audience—save, alas, for those who more or less obliterated stretches of Webern’s Symphony with their coughs, shuffles, and worse. It was not entirely clear which was the chicken and which the egg in a surprisingly tentative performance, at least in terms of expression. We certainly heard pitches and timbres, various symmetries and their implications readily apparent. Yet the whole in combination fell somewhat flat, beautiful moments never quite combining to make the symphony the work is claimed to be—and is. For perhaps the first time in my life, I began to think a Webern piece too long. The music, however, sang more as time went on, Webern’s second movement a considerable improvement on the first. 

Lutyens’s 1957 Six Tempi for ten instruments had fared much better, as did all else that we heard. The influence of Schoenberg and Webern was certainly apparent in this, Lutyens’s breakthrough work, though nothing was to be reduced to mere precedent in utterances and performances of great integrity. The six movements’ varied quality, whether in approach to melody, emotional quality, and other aspects of character shone through. Scintillating piano writing, a strong sense of representation or embodiment, one movement that even suggested serial miniature Bruckner (one might say Webern does that too in the first movement of his Symphony), and much more combined to leave me keen to explore further. More please, London Sinfonietta.

The rest was Schoenberg, beginning with the Serenade, op.24, which received an outstanding performance from the opening viola line onwards. In its combination of precision and lilt, it indeed proved prophetic of much that was to come. ‘Serenade’ covers a multitude of sins, and a particular virtue of Berman’s knowing, idiomatic performance was its understanding of roots in more popular music, again without in any sense indulging in reductionism. One could hear, perhaps even see, the days of Schrammelmusik; I could not help but think, particularly in this first movement, of a 1900 Reichenau photograph of Schoenberg, Fritz Kreisler, and two others (Louis Savart, Carl Redlich, and Eduard Gärtner). So much was toe-tapping, here and beyond. Much was haunted, not only by the past, but also by the future. Even without knowing the first Chamber Symphony was coming, one felt that it was present in method, sonority, and harmony: both as complement and as contrast. 

Image: Arnold Schönberg Center

For Schoenbergian dialectical method, or better that multiplicity of dialectical methods, was the progenitor of dance and delight: doubtless no surprise to those who knew, but the most welcome of introductions on the cusp of dodecaphony for those who might not have done. A rich, flexible performance took us through Wozzeck-like dances, fantastic arabesque flights in multiple directions, nostalgia, resolution (in one sense, anyway), density, and lightness of being, in a flow as inevitable as it was endless imaginative. Command of detail from the Sinfonietta proved key to liberation of the Schoenbergian imagination; so too did seemingly effortless command of idiom and formal articulation. Here was a Viennese serenade and no mistake, yet it never fell prey to lesser composers’ confusion of sentiment and sentimentality. 

Richard Burkhard, baritone for the Serenade, shone equally as reciter in the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, which took its leave from Roosevelt’s ‘Day of Infamy’ speech in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, as well of course from Byron—and Hitler. Present-day comparisons will surely have come to many minds; but here, rightly, this emerged in melodramatic expansion of the piano quintet. ‘Expression’ of all kinds was intense, but it was founded in the notes, not least in Schoenberg’s inheritance from the chamber music of Beethoven and Brahms. We heard and felt the ghosts of earlier forms, not only genres, combining to form something both old and new: truly visionary and ultimately defiant. 

In a very different way, so we did in Andrew Zolinsky’s account of the op.19 Six Little Piano Pieces, Brahms the starting point and never vanquished, Wagner the purveyor of unendliche Melodie, Schoenberg the architect of an ever-transforming constellation in the musical skies. Zolinsky certainly had his own ideas, the third taken slower than one generally hears and gaining in weight of utterance. As with other performances of the evening, they were rooted in the score and in its potentialities, in letter and in spirit: in both style and idea. 

The First Chamber Symphony was long the Sinfonietta’s calling card. Let us hope that it might become so again, given so intriguing and satisfying a performance as we heard here. Berman approached it symphonically, in the sense of a Brahms symphony’s motivic working that requires a great deal of flexibility in elucidation, so as to sound the most natural thing in the world—which it both is and is not. Unshowy warmth and security in line and direction brought Brahms masters of old to mind and, not for the first time, had one regret more of them did not show such devotion to Schoenberg. Musical line horizontal and vertical flowed beautifully, without a hint of the problems of balance that bedevil so many performances. If the Sinfonietta’s long history with the work was part of the key to that, so too surely was something new brought to the party—and it was a party of Haydnesque joy, tonality (not neotonality) in context both relativised and rejuvenated. Happy belated birthday, Arnold Schoenberg.

The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera, 16 October 2024

Coliseum

Images: © Manuel Harlan
Peter Quint (Robert Murray), Flora (Victoria Nekhaenko),
Miles (Jerry Louth), The Governess (Ailish Tynan)

Governess – Ailish Tynan
Flora – Victoria Nekhaenko
Mrs Grose – Gweneth Ann Rand
Miles – Jerry Louth
Miss Jessel – Eleanor Dennis
Peter Quint – Robert Murray
Prologue – Alan Oke

Director, designs – Isabella Bywater
Lighting – Paul Anderson
Projections – Jon Driscoll

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Duncan Ward (conductor)

It had been a while since I last saw The Turn of the Screw, though there was a time when it seemed quite a regular . To my mind the strongest of Britten’s operas, it was last seen at the Coliseum in an excellent staging by David McVicar: again to my mind, one of his strongest. It now returns in a new ENO production by Isabella Bywater, also designed by her, with an impressive cast conducted by Duncan Ward. 

Flora, Miles, Mrs Grose (Gweneth Ann Rand), Governess

Bywater’s production seems generally to have been well received. Whilst acknowledging her effort to bring a new standpoint to the work, I am not convinced it succeeds; at least, it did not succeed so well for me as it apparently has for many. The drama is presented in the Governess’s flashbacks from a psychiatric hospital, events at Bly presumably at least having contributed to her committal. Scenic projections onto the hospital set lead us back to the house and its grounds: to my eyes, a little clumsily. This was clearly a traumatic, horrific experience for the Governess, all the more so as presented in a finely observed, deeply compassionate performance from Ailish Tynan. There is splendidly creepy – and chillingly meaningful – children’s play, for instance with Flora and her doll.

The problem – and I am not sure this was Bywater’s intention – is that in giving the impression the events may straightforwardly have been imagined by the Governess, the drama veers in a one-sided direction that has one ultimately question what the point of it might be. Asking ‘did the Governess see the ghosts’ is of course a reasonable and indeed necessary question; proceeding as Bywater does in her programme note and also, so it seems, onstage, to ask ‘Did she have a personality disorder?’ risks missing the point. ‘Ambiguity is what makes it unsettling,’ Bywater adds. Precisely, which is why it seems an odd move to rid it of most of that ambiguity; more disturbingly, it comes close to turning the Governess’s distress into a spectacle, and eclipsing the ‘real’ question of what has been done to the children. Having the Governess imagine so much seems both implausible and undesirable. It is perfectly possible, of course, to adopt a partial standpoint; many stagings of all manner of works do, with greater and lesser success. The Turn of the Screw, however, emerges somewhat shortchanged—whilst at the same time, to be fair, far from fruitlessly interrogated. 

Tynan’s performance was absolutely central to those fruits, both detailed and skilfully sketching the broader picture. Eleanor Dennis’s Miss Jessel and Robert Murray’s Peter Quint were similarly detailed portrayals, highly commendable, though the underlying premise perhaps worked all the more against them. Gweneth Ann Rand’s Mrs Grose, by turn warm and distanced, was permitted to offer greater ambiguity. Victoria Nekhaenko’s Flora and Jerry Louth’s Miles were both excellent too, walking dramatic tightropes with great skill and credibility, the latter’s icy delivery in particular both bringing home and into question the theme of innocence’s loss in work and staging. Alan Oke’s Prologue as medical consultant offered a masterclass in diction and framing, surtitles in fact proving unnecessary throughout.

Prologue (Alan Oke)

Ward’s musical interpretation seemed to have been formulated with Bywater’s concept in mind. Especially in the first act, a looser, more rhapsodic approach, suggestive of psychological disorder and even a shift from ghost story into outright horror, was prevalent. What I missed was a stronger sense of line, of the workings of scenic and longer-term construction, so crucial to this opera’s dramaturgy. Perhaps by design, this fell into clearer focus after the interval, suggesting a conflict between freedom and determinism far from irrelevant to the musical as well as stage action. Moments of horror registered in vividly pictorial fashion, at times presaging the desiccated late world of Death in Venice; their integration in this, perhaps Britten’s most constructivist score, was less clear.

Ultimately, then, Bywater’s production did not for me cohere as well as McVicar’s more straightforward yet deeply committed production or Anneliese McKimmon’s thoughtful, more properly ambiguous staging for Opera Holland Park in 2014. Likewise, the conducting of Charles Mackerras and Steuart Bedford on those occasions did more to enable and elucidate Britten’s turning of the musical screw. I was grateful nonetheless for the opportunity to have experienced it, not least for Tynan’s gripping Governess.

Miss Jessel (Eleanor Dennis), Peter Quint, Governess

The Snowmaiden, English Touring Opera, 29 September 2024

Hackney Empire

Snowmaiden – Ffion Edwards
Lel – Kitty Whately
Kupava – Katherine McIndoe
Mizgir – Edmund Danon
Spring Beauty – Hannah Sandison
Grandfather Frost, Bermyata – Edward Hawkins
Tsar Berendey – Joseph Doody
Bobyl – Jack Dolan
Bobylikha – Amy J Payne
Spirit of the Wood – David Horton
Masienitsa – Neil Balfour
Tsar’s Page – Alexandra Meier

Director – Olivia Fuchs
Designs – Eleanor Bull
Lighting – Jamie Platt

Choral Ensemble
Orchestra of English Touring Opera
Hannah Quinn (conductor)

Images: Richard Hubert Smith
Snowmaiden (Ffion Edwards)

English Touring Opera’s new season opened, as is now customary, at the Hackney Empire, with an excellent follow up to its 2022 production of The Golden Cockerel in the guise of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snowmaiden, both given in English and sharing some of their casts. Although there were, unsurprisingly, other points held in common, these ultimately proved very different works and productions, one from the early years of his operatic career (written 1880-81), the other his final completed opera (1906-7). Together, they pointed once again to the treasure trove awaiting curious audiences and performers in works that tend, admittedly, to be uneven in their achievement, yet are rarely if ever without interest. Here we saw – and heard – a folkloric passage from winter to spring that inevitably brought to mind Rimsky’s greatest pupil and his cataclysmic Rite, with a more tender heart than many might have come to expect. 

In ETO’s new version, Rimsky’s setting of Alexander Ostrovsky’s play is considerably cut, so that if one could hardly compare it to the concision of Janáček’s later Ostrovsky setting, Katya Kabanova, it certainly does not outstay its welcome. Interestingly, Tchaikovsky composed incidental music for the 1873 premiere of the play, sometimes employing the same folksong melodies. The work is reduced in another, perhaps even more fundamental way; instead of the typical large orchestra – no one would deny Rimsky’s mastery of orchestration – it is given by a very small one, with two strings per part (only one double bass), mostly single wind (two clarinets and horns), timpani, harp, percussion and keyboard instruments. In many ways, it offers a different standpoint on the composer. Some of this is doubtless the orchestral reduction, but some, I think, is a matter of earlier style. It was often a more Tchaikovskian Rimsky, a composer closer to earlier rather than later Wagner, with some characteristics difficult to place, yet, aside from somewhat characterless arioso writing early on, always of musical interest, if not always as we might have expected from later works. 

Snowmaiden, Lel (Kitty Whately)

Clarinet solos (Sascha Rattle) especially caught the ear: again, partly the writing, but partly the excellence of playing. And the folk derivation of some material intrigues without the undue repetition that can sometimes be the case when it makes its way into art music. Throughout, Hannah Quinn led orchestral and vocal forces in a fresh, direct account of the score. If big moments such as the third-act betrothal kiss necessarily lost some of their sensual quality, dramatic loss was surprisingly small. By that stage, we had listened our way in, and the fundamental musical method of structuring had firmly implanted itself in our consciousness. It may not be a ‘symphonic’ work in the way we understand that idea from Wagner – though nor is it trying to be – but there is interesting motivic development, as well as a good deal of ‘Russian’ lyricism. 

Alasdair Middleton’s English translation served the singers and audience comprehension well. Ffion Edwards gave a touching account, warm and precise, of the title role, with Katherine McIndoe a true, characterful foil as her friend-turned-rival Kupava. Kitty Whately made a fine impression as Lel, whether in expression of his youthful temperament or his role as conduit for song. Edmund Danon’s darker portrayal of Mizgir, keenly alert to his moodswings and their larger import, was equally successful. Joseph Doody’s Tsar Berendey, eye-catchingly frock-clad, presided over proceedings with graceful presence and elegance of line. Hannah Sandison’s compassionate Spring Beauty (Snowmaiden’s mother), Jack Dolan’s bluff Bobyl, and Edward Hawkins’s versatile dual turn as Grandfather Frost and Bermyata also stood out, but there were no weak links in the cast, who worked very well together. 

Olivia Fuchs navigated well the twin demands of telling what to most would be an unfamiliar tale whilst saying something with and about it. Russian, fairytale, and ultimately human lines of development came together in the figure of the Snowmaiden who yearns to love, yet cannot since her heart is made of ice. A strong sense was imparted of roots in the strife of her parents, Spring Beauty and Grandfather Frost, justifying at least dramatically what was perhaps less interesting in ‘purely’ musical terms. It merged more or less seamlessly with the long-desired passage of winter into spring and also, as Fuchs noted in the programme, allowed us to ‘reflect on our changed relationship with, and societal alienation from, nature’s cycles as well as our interference with them’. This was accomplished lightly rather than with overt didacticism, in a resourceful, suggestive staging that will travel to theatres of different sizes across the country. On top of that, a more feminist – or less misogynistic – twist was given, so as to save the central protagonist from merely being ‘rescued’ by a man who had ill-treated her. Here, then, was a tale of transformation in multiple, connected ways.

 

Levit - Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven, 27 September 2024

Royal Festival Hall

Bach: Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903
Brahms: Four Ballades, op.10
Beethoven-Liszt: Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92, S 464/7

Igor Levit (piano)

The Royal Festival Hall can seem too large for a solo piano recital. It needs a pianist to fill it, which, as anyone acquainted with the monstrous Royal Albert Hall will testify, is more a matter of drawing one in to listen than of external projection. Fortunately, Igor Levit showed himself fully able to do so, in a fascinating programme, given without an interval, of Bach, Brahms and Beethoven, the latter arranged by Liszt. 

A highly declamatory opening to Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue presented it unabashedly as ‘Steinway music’. Equally noteworthy, though, was the sense of its chromaticism, of all twelve notes of the chromatic scale coming into play. Not for nothing did Schoenberg call Bach the first twelve-note composer. This was not simply a matter of Bach, but of Levit too, inviting us to immerse ourselves in melodies, harmonies, in the workings of Bach’s modulatory tonal plan, both in a properly improvisatory fantasia and in a fugue whose subject emerged tenderly, wandering, to build and ultimately find resolution. Featherlight, almost Mendelssohnian playing combined with grander rhetorical delivery, as composer and pianist patiently and capriciously combined the learned and the mercurial. 

Twilight, experienced in certain Bach passages, characterised much, though not all, of the Four Ballades, op.10, of Brahms, one of its greatest kindred spirits. The first, in D minor, proved gravely beautiful, Ossianic in spirit, with tantalising hints already (1854) of the Schoenbergian future. Its rhetoric became surprisingly (yet faithfully) Lisztian before withdrawing into the shadows. In its D major sibling, it was Chopin’s turn to be revealed, not as an eccentric visiting stranger, but summoned from Brahms’s own material. It was an intimate, at times almost diffident portrait that led to more ardent, Schumannesque Romanticism. The B minor Intermezzo sounded in context as if its predecessor had been turned inside out, in a strange, Gothic transformation, only to turn itself inside out subsequently. All three seemed in some way to prepare the way for the fourth, in B major, a more mature Brahmsian butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. There was a deeper sadness here, which one might compare to Chopin, but which was in reality very much Brahms’s own. If there was a reluctance to fly freely in the sun, that was perhaps as much composer’s as the pianist’s. It was a markedly interior vision, which some may have felt a little too introverted, but I found it compelling. 

Liszt’s Beethoven symphony transcriptions are fascinating tributes, which take a peculiar combination of talents and insights to bring alive. The piano can of course only imitate the orchestra, but in some cases that can be a good thing. After all, one thing an orchestra cannot do is imitate an orchestra; it can only be one, at least before the later twentieth century. Here we heard the Seventh Symphony, which Levit gave (rightly, I think) as a symphony on the piano, not a sonata manqué. The chords announcing the first movement’s introduction necessarily sound different; Levit relished that difference with ear-catching detached playing, recapturing an element of surprise. And yet, thereafter, there was an increasingly Lisztian (and sustained) sound and style to chords and octaves, propelling us toward the exposition, whose provenance became unusually clear. The movement developed and returned as it should, yet heard anew. If anything, the coda sounded all the more of Weber’s ‘madhouse’. 

Even on the piano, the opening chord of the second movement sounded grey as the North Sea. It was given relatively swiftly, the marking Allegretto taken at Beethoven’s (disputed) word, without sounding rushed. Indeed, one felt as well as observed the processional element at work in all its multifarious glory—and dignity. Line was maintained throughout, and we were treated at times to just a little – a Goldilocks amount of – Lisztian grandiloquence. The ghostly quality to the fugato was spot on, making me keen to hear Levit in the third movement (and the rest) of the Fifth. Remarkable in its pianistic success, the scherzo’s performance was founded on great virtuosity that was nonetheless a mere beginning, a necessary given. Its Tiggerish quality and propulsion almost had one regret that Beethoven did not offer yet another reprise. The Trio relaxed, as of old, the Austrian pilgrims’ hymn truly felt as well as heard. 

It took my ears a little while to adjust for the finale: probably the most difficult movement to bring off, whether from orchestra or piano. I have heard some horribly merciless renditions, incomprehensibly praised, which have sacrificed the humanity without which Beethoven is traduced. Levit showed that one can have a thrilling ride, imbued with Lisztian spirit, which will ultimately grow into Beethoven’s too. His choice of encore was perfect, both in itself and for highlighting the contrast between Beethoven arranged for the piano and the composer’s own piano writing. The Adagio cantabile from the ‘Pathétique’ Sonata wedded lyrical impulse to Haydnesque roots in a performance at least as moving as anything heard previously.

Messiah, Komische Oper, 21 September 2024

Hangar 4, Tempelhof Airport

Images: Jan Windszus Photography

Soprano – Julia Grüter
Mezzo-soprano – Rachael Wilson
Tenor – Julian Behr
Bass – Tijl Faveyts
Woman – Anouk Elias

Director – Damiano Michieletto
Set designs – Paolo Fantin
Costumes – Klaus Bruns
Choreography, co-director – Thomas Wilhelm
Dramaturgy – Mattia Palma, Daniel Andrés Eberhard

Choral Soloists and Project Chorus of the Komische Oper (chorus director: David Cavelius)

Orchestra of the Komische Oper

George Petrou (conductor)

Many of Handel’s dramatic oratorios seem to cry out for staging, although they present certain difficulties in doing so, above all regarding how to direct the chorus. Messiah is, of course, a different beast: contemplative rather than dramatic, without real characters, and so on. It also needs little ‘help’, so familiar is it both to audiences and performers, even in an age that has long since turned away from choral society performance for much Handel. It does receive stagings from time to time, though. ENO’s 2009 effort, unintentionally comical at times – film of people running up and down a Liverpool Street escalator for ‘All we, like sheep’ – did not augur well. That, however, need not damn other attempts, and given the success of the Komische Oper’s season-opening staging of Henze’s Raft of the Medusa last year at Tempelhof, I was keen to see what similarly augmented forces, including a community choir, might make of Messias, as it was billed, albeit sung in English.

 

Musically and from the standpoint of the occasion, there was indeed much to admire. The community chorus and extras all did very well; there was little, if anything, to hear that would have suggested these were not professional singers. It was moreover, a welcome and excellent thing, in these days of Messiah parsimony, to see and hear a performance that built on rather than childlishly rejected the great oratorio tradition of the later-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, without going to Crystal Palace extremes (fascinating though that would have doubtless have been to experience). The point is not, of course, that any one way is ‘correct’ and other ways ‘incorrect’; such categories have nothing to do with performance, let alone with humanity. But that there should be room for all, or at least for many, is a good thing to be celebrated, and the experience ‘on location’ at Tempelhof was a splendid one, which will likewise surely have attracted many more in the audience than would have attended an opera house performance. This first night appeared to be sold out; there is no reason to think that others will not be. 

The soloists too were excellent, the presence of a variety of light accents (yet perfect English) only a reminder of the universality of the work and, of course, of Handel’s own ‘dual nationality’, as we now might call it. (That his English naturalisation required an Act of Parliament should offer a standing rebuke to all those who have put, and continue to put, barriers in the way of free movement of fellow human beings. Musicians and academics know this as well as many.) The quartet worked well together, vocally and on ‘stage’, whether singing alone or (occasionally) duetting. Julia Grüters finely spun soprano line and Rachael Wilson’s richly coloured mezzo offered character (in the non-dramatic sense) and contrast, as well as much textual illumination. So too did the effortlessly stylish tenor Julian Behr, imploring and resolute as required, and bass Tijl Faveyts, warmly compassionate yet precise. Joined by the astonishingly athletic actor Anouk Elias – more than one lap of the vast performing space accomplished with ease – cast and choral collaborators made for a fine team. In such a space, one simply has to tolerate the use of microphones; it is, as they say, what it is.

 

The Orchestra of the Komische Oper offered warm, stylish playing too. I could not help but feel that conductor George Petrou missed at least a couple of tricks in not using larger forces. The very small ensemble (even by contemporary standards) was vastly outnumbered by the singers: a practice with little, if any, historical warrant and which made little sense in an airport hangar. He might even have gone for ‘additional accompaniments’, be they Mozart, Prout, or (one can dream) Beecham. Moreover, some choral tempi went simply too fast for the assembled forces, 400 in choral sum, causing noticeable, avoidable discrepancy. That said, despite an Overture that suggested Petrou wished the performance to be over before it had begun, other tempo decisions were more sensible, permitting creditable variety, without becoming sluggish. There is no single text for the work; here, Petrou (I presume) offered a winning combination of familiar and (slightly) less familiar numbers. The great closing choruses to the second and third parts evinced proper Handelian grandeur and uplift, although not of the physical variety in the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, which this Englishman abroad rather missed. And we were spared, thank goodness, the ‘B’ section of ‘The Trumpet shall sound’.

Damiano Michieletto’s production concept was doubtless well intentioned. In a sense, that was the problem. I am not sure it ultimately worked any better than Deborah Warner’s hazy notion of ‘community’ for ENO, but Michieletto’s choice was one of those frustrating things that almost puts itself beyond criticism on account of sensitive content. Meshing Messiah with the story of Brittany Maynard, an American campaigner for assisted suicide, did not for me accomplish anything much either for her story – doubtless worthy of dramatic treatment in its own right – or for that of the Son of God. It made me aware of Maynard’s plight, but beyond that sentimental voiceovers, scenes of hospital scans, and perhaps worst, ‘Christian’ campaigners (no others, be it noted) against her cause seemed straightforwardly out of place. 

Messiah may not be a dramatic oratorio but it certainly has a narrative; paying at least some attention to that would not seem an unreasonable place to start in staging it. Moreover, the relative latitudinarianism of its theology stands miles away from the heartless fundamentalism of the American ‘religious right’, which in any case has little influence here in Europe. Adopting so hostile an attitude towards Christianity, as if it were not as multivalent as humanity itself, is not only all too easy a path in a secular, liberal society; it also sells Handel, Charles Jennens, and the extraordinarily rich performing history of their work miserably short. Quite why it began to rain at the end, the chorus having changed into plant-like green, I do not know, though the message of resurrection in general sat oddly with Michieletto’s concept. Such is the strength of Messiah, though, that many proper and possible messages could nonetheless be heard and felt.

Weilerstein/BPO/Shani - Prokofiev and Schoenberg, 19 September 2024

Philharmonie

Prokofiev: Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra in E minor, op.125
Schoenberg: Pelleas und Melisande, op.5

Alisa Weilerstein (cello)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Lahav Shani (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus

A concert of two halves would generally be taken to mean one good, one not so good. In this case, I more to suggest approximate temporal equality, albeit with a second half a little longer, and first-half bemusement followed by an excellent performance of an acknowledged masterpiece. Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto is one of those pieces I have long known of, without ever (I think) making its actual acquaintance. Bearing in mind the usual caveats from a single hearing, it is difficult to know for certain whether my bemusement related to the work itself. This performance, from Alisa Weilerstein, the Berlin Philharmonic, and Lahav Shani, seemed very good, but might another performance have dissuaded me from the reluctant conclusion that it marked a significant decline in the composer’s powers? For now, all I can do is report what I heard, and suggest that, even for great admirers of Prokofiev’s music, amongst whom I count myself, this material stood in greater need of revision than the composer’s death permitted. 

The first movement’s opening tutti was promising, Shani and the players managing somehow to sound both bright and dark: a matter of timbre and harmony respectively, if not exclusively. Weilerstein’s solo response was intense, in vibrato and other respects, Prokofiev’s trademark sidestepping melodic writing instantly familiar. This began, then, very much in the line of other late Prokofiev works, especially those in the minor mode. There were, moreover, no balance issues, cello and cellist more than holding their own: doubtless a matter of writing as well as performance. The movement had other ear-catching passages, for instance pizzicato cellos shadowing the solo cellist, whose rich, warm tone far from precluded precision. Shani handled tempo changes very well, all the way up to a final, curious winding down. 

Hand on heart, I could not have said I found it top-drawer Prokofiev, but there was enough to retain interest, and a hint – if only a hint – of the scherzando grotesquerie of old at the beginning of the central ‘Allegro giusto’ augured well. If the music soon lapsed into the most blameless of Prokofiev’s late style, I was not inclined to be censorious. Weilerstein’s often astounding virtuosity more than held the attention too, not least in the cadenza. Alas, at a certain point, it began to seem interminable. It was difficult to imagine not only quite why the music had to go on for so long, but also why it had been ordered in the way it was. As I said, it did not seem to be the performance, but I am not entirely sure. A new mood was struck, not before time, in the third and final movement, the BPO wind making the most of their solos, as was a cellist for whom no technical difficulty appeared insurmountable. If more rhapsodic than symphonic, then, Prokofiev was not dead yet. 

If the inevitable Bach sarabande – am I alone in thinking concerto encores should be the exception rather than the rule? – did little to dispel doubts concerning the quality of Prokofiev’s work, nor did Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande. As it happens, the last time the Berlin Philharmonic played it, fifteen long years ago, I was also in the audience. Shani had little to fear from comparisons with 2009’s Christian Thielemann; both performances made a considerable impression on me, this marking a fine contribution to the composer’s 150^th anniversary celebrations. Balances were finely attuned; a keen sense of drama was throughout achieved; overall coherence and an ear for colour were both in evidence, as were many other virtues. Every line – and there are many here – seemed to be heading somewhere, often to be opposed by another, in a motivic web that may have been complex but whose method was undeniable. As in so much of the best post-Wagnerian (and Wagnerian music) the violas proved crucial, as here in addition did the excellent solo violist. 

Seductive and consoling by turns, this was music for whom Maeterlinck’s drama proved a starting point to further exploration, as if an orchestra-only version of Gurrelieder or an expanded full-orchestral sequel to Verklärte Nacht. Schoenberg’s actual orchestral experience may as yet have been severely limited, but one would never have known it. The sincerity of his ‘voice’ was, moreover, never to be doubted in a gracious account for which Shani knew how to defer to the score without being hidebound by it. As Schoenberg’s music danced, as so often it does, echoes of old Vienna resounded. As it sank into darkness, we experienced all too well its tragic import. And as it gestured to the future, counterpoint always crystal clear, the First Chamber Symphony and even the Five Orchestral Pieces beckoned.

 

Musikfest Berlin (5) - Aimard/BPO/Nott - Mazzoli, Eötvös, and Ives, 8 September 2024

Philharmonie

Missy Mazzoli: Orpheus undone
Peter Eötvös: Cziffra Psodia (German premiere)
Ives: Symphony no.4

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ernst Senff Choir (chorus master: Steffen Schubert)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Gregor A. Mayrhofer (co-conductor)

Jonathan Nott (conductor)

Images: Stephan Rabold

This was, by any standards, a varied programme, though I am not quite sure what connected the three works on offer. That all received excellent performances from the Berlin Philharmonic and Jonathan Nott – Pierre-Laurent Aimard joining not only for Peter Eötvös’s Cziffra Psodia for piano and orchestra, but also as one of the pianists for Ives’s Fourth Symphony – will doubtless not surprise, but is nonetheless worth celebrating. The concert, dedicated by orchestra, soloist, and conductor to Eötvös’s memory, displayed an open-mindedness he would surely have approved. 

First up was Missy Mazzoli’s 2019 two-part suite, Orpheus undone, from her ballet Orpheus Alive. With American minimalism, I try, genuinely. Yet, having some sense of the aesthetic behind it in its admittedly varied manifestations has yet to help me respond as many others do. The piece began, like much of its school, in obviously post-Stravinskian mode rhythmically; here, there were also Stravinskian tendencies in something approaching melody. It offered compelling writing for trombones and playing from them; a strong sense of musical narrative; and, I think, an equally strong sense of personal warmth. I can imagine it working well for dancers, as of course does much Stravinsky. Otherwise, I regret that, for now, I shall simply have to keep on trying. 

Cziffra Psodia was first performed in 2021, by János Balázs, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and Mikko Franck, and has garnered a few performances since. This, I imagine, will have gained Eötvös, like Mazzoli, some new admirers, not least for its frank engagement with the piano and orchestral tradition of Bartók. It is neither pastiche nor epigonal, but the affinities, as with the hypervirtuosity of György Cziffra, are surely no coincidence. There were other affinities, naturally: some almost Debussyan chord sequences from piano and cimbalom, but the greater sense was of an organicism one could hardly fail to think of as post-Romantic, despite or perhaps in some ways even on account of the rhapsodic qualities suggested in Eötvös’s punning title. Incisive, substantial, and involving, this was music founded on harmonic progression as much as on melody and rhythm: again, not unlike Bartók. Its four movements and half-hour span offered vivid, helter-skelter writing, married to a keen sense of fun; solo sections that suggested a string of black pearls; a fascinating relationship between piano and orchestra in which the former often seemed to ignite the latter; pealing tubular bells; and more, both to thrill and delight. Rhythms propelled yet also, intriguingly, on occasion found themselves bent. In the enigmatic closing violin solo, was that a conscious echo of both Bach and Berg, or just another instance of the composer writing with unfailingly idiomatic command? 

Ives’s Fourth Symphony received its first Berlin Philharmonic performance nearly fifty years ago, in 1975, under Seiji Ozawa; it was last heard from them thirty years later, in 2005, conducted by Sakari Oramo. The Philharmonie will have added an important spatial dimension then too; Ives’s ‘extra’ solo strings were here placed up by the organ. But that is not really the point of a work that famously, according to Henry Bellamann’s 1927 programme note (in which Ives probably had a hand), seeks to ask ‘the searching questions of What? and Why? which the spirit of man asks of life’. This was ‘particularly the sense’ of the first movement Prelude then and now, given to us with warmth, depth, and astonishing translucency of tone. Yes, it sounded like a prelude, and yes, it sounded ‘Maestoso’. The combination of orchestra and choir, Nott joined by co-conductor Gregor A. Mayrhofer, matched apparent ease in performance with unease of harmonic and other undercurrents.   

The second movement ‘Comedy’ seemed to extend such characteristics in its mysterious introduction. Its stretching of pitches, even of pitch itself, sounded wonderfully fresh—almost as much as it must have done when written and first performed (these first two movements alone) in the 1920s. It rumbled, and continued to rumble, its frustration of unambiguous eruption deeply telling. The whirling vortex briefly put me in mind of Ravel’s La Valse and, more spiritually, of Mahler. Ives’s extraordinary multimetrics, though, were entirely his own, shockingly so. As in Aimard’s Concord Sonata of a few nights earlier, it was the vision, if not the finish, of a James Joyce that came closer as a comparison. Ives, unruly, untamed, and untameable, never took anything for granted. Nor did his interpreters here or in the rich, cultivated string playing of the Fugue, whose corners as well as its counterpart, its emotional import as well as its aesthetic ambition, again suggested kinship with Mahler. 

The fourth movement’s strangeness and conviction – doubtless, for many of us, also strange conviction – built and built, infecting and inspiring the whole. First, I thought it nightmarish, but its quality of apotheosis was not in the slightest negative, nor was it even really dreamlike. It stretched our ears, as Ives’s father told his son music must do. It stretched them, moreover, in multiple directions, more than might even be counted. If the build-up – though to what? – was masterly, so was the winding down, though words are beginning more than usually to fail me. This is music whose categories may not be mine, may not be ours; we probably do not even know what its categories are. At the close, I had no doubt that, whatever its imperfections and its impossibilities, or rather through and on account of them, this was a masterpiece we had just heard and in which, in some sense, we had participated.