Großer Musikvereinsaal, Vienna
Schreker – Vorspiel zu einem Drama
Mahler – Rückert-Lieder
Berg – Three Orchestral
Pieces, op.6
Pfitzner – Palestrina: Three Preludes
Petra Lang (mezzo-soprano)
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)
I struggle to recall the last
time I heard a piece by Franz Schreker in a concert programme. It is a great
pity, since, whilst he might not be a ‘great’ composer, he is often a very good
one, and certainly superior to many composers who occupy concert, still more
opera, programmes. This performance of his Vorspiel
zu einem Drama, an expansion of the opening Prelude to Die Gezeichneten, opened with what one might consider a classic
Schreker sound from the ORF SO under Ingo Metzmacher: lush yet variegated, with
a finely-judged phantasmagorical quality. Not that it lacked direction; indeed,
the onward tread, especially later on, of its progress was a particular quality
of this reading. Unsurprisingly Metmzacher sometimes emphasised the more
overtly modernistic qualities of Schreker’s writing, for instance for tuned
percussion, but never didactically. Performance and work veered between post-Gurrelieder, post-Tristan, post-Salome
writing, with a proper sense of nausea at the end. Having walked to the gilded Musikverein
from the Belvedere, where I had seen a good number of works by Gustav Klimt,
this seemed, as it was, properly golden late-late-Romanticism. If Metzmacher
did not wallow unduly, the music remained something of a guilty pleasure.
Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder followed, albeit in unusual order. ‘Ich atmet’ einen
linden Duft’ offered an immediately sparer sound: contrast with, perhaps even
respite from, what had preceded. Petra Lang’s voice was not always ideally
focused, although matters improved somewhat during the following ‘Liebst du um
Schönheit’. Her delivery, however, continued to tend towards the operatic; one
had to listen to the orchestra for a more detailed response. Turbulence aplenty
came from that quarter in ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!’ Nastiness and fear
– is this child’s play, or something more, and in any case is not child’s play
something fearful? – pervaded Mahler’s orchestral writing, Lang’s performance more
animated too. She certainly delivered gravity, a Nietzschean ‘deepness’, in the
opening of ‘Um Mitternacht’, though later on became more operatic again. There
was, however, a finely etched orchestral performance, the woodwind echoes of
the Nietzsche movement of the Third Symphony especially apparent. ‘Ich bin der
Welt abhanden gekommen’ brought Lang’s finest performance, unfortunately
disrupted by a mobile telephone. Blowsiness was banished; lines were clearer. I
still, however, could only make out about half of the words; that I knew them
already should neither have been here nor there.
Berg’s Three Orchestral
Pieces received a mixed performance. There was much to admire, for instance the
truly inchoate opening, out of which germinated all manner of things Mahlerian
and post-Mahlerian, though the harmonies could only ever have been Berg’s.
Metzmacher’s was not a chilly performance, not even a Boulez-like performance;
Romantic contrasts were more his thing than clarity. Sometimes that was
problematical, when balances proved less than ideal. However, as time went one,
communication of the hierarchy of voices – an extraordinarily difficult task to
accomplish in performance – improved, the odd occluded and/or tentative entry
notwithstanding. When waltz and march rhythms really got into their stride, the
musical narrative was compelling indeed – and there was something undeniably
moving to hearing this music in the Musikverein. A stray trumpet note after the
final chord was a pity, but did not obliterate memories of the
twentieth-century terror we had previously experienced.
Berg metamorphosed without a
break into Pfitzner. The idea was to present two different past visions of
musical futures. Of course, though, we knew whose vision won out, and in this
case juxtaposition served principally to underline the justice of the
musico-historical verdict. Pfitzner’s unpleasant nationalism aside, his
æsthetics led nowhere, and even in the Preludes from what many consider his
finest work, Palestrina, the
invention sounded a little threadbare in response to the Bergian labyrinth.
Metzmacher and the ORF SO certainly did what they could to level the score,
their performances more consistent than they had been in Berg; whether this
were the case or no, Pfitzner sounded more thoroughly rehearsed. The first
prelude was dignified and direct, rhythms taut. Though great contrast was
afforded by the performance of the second, I could not help but think that a
less hard-driven account might have been to its benefit. Debts to Parsifal are so obvious in the third
prelude, less productively (Debussy, Mahler) than just watered-down, that there
is not much to be done other than to perform the music with as much conviction
as one can muster. Metzmacher certainly did that. However, as I said, we knew
only too well whose vision of the future won out, and were grateful for it.
