Mozart-Saal, Konzerthaus, Vienna
Vier
Male, pieces for solo
clarinet (2000)
String Quartet no.4 (1980-81)
Four Studies for clarinet
quintet (2002)
Marino Formenti (introduction/piano)
Jörg Widmann (clarinet)
Ulrich Isfort, Annette Reisinger (violins)
Aroa Sorin (viola)
Matthias Diener (cello)
This concert of music by
Wolfgang Rihm was part of the Vienna Konzerthaus’s ‘Nouvelles Aventures’
series, organised and introduced by pianist Marino Formenti. I could not help
but wonder whether Formenti’s format would have been better suited to a concert
in which he was actually performing. As it was, we heard him play a Rihm miniature
– typically Schoenbergian harmony if, equally typically, somewhat lacking Schoenberg’s
bite and strength of purpose – and sketch a little general musico-historical
background, which did not necessarily seem to be closely connected with what we
proceeded to hear. Nevertheless it remains an enterprising series and deserves
to do well.
Jörg Widmann’s increasing
renown as a composer – indeed a pupil of Rihm – should not obscure his status as
an excellent clarinettist. The opening work for solo clarinet offered ample
evidence, should it have been required. Not only did Rihm’s demands hold no
difficulties for Widmann; he shaped the Vier
Male as if they were repertoire pieces. (They probably are for him.) Well
contrasted in traditional fashion – this might almost be a sonata, or at least
a set of Second Viennese School-style pieces – the second piece, ‘sehr langsam,
wie aus weiter Ferne,’ came across as the most emotionally satisfying: a slow
movement that accomplished something not entirely different from what Bruckner
might have recognised. The first movement offered considerable use of the
further ends of the clarinet’s range, without ever sounding extreme for the
sake of it. Doubtless that was a matter of both composition and performance,
extended techniques used sparingly. This is no Berio Sequenza.
The slow movement – here in
final place – also apparently offered the key to Rihm’s Fourth String Quartet,
granted fine advocacy by the Minguet Quartet. Solo violin lines and distant
echoes fashioned a journey into nothingness; again the weight and tradition of
German Romanticism and post-Romanticism were perceptible and, for the most
part, productive. For the rest, I felt as I often do with Rihm. The music was
well-crafted enough, closely argued though occasionally digressive; yet I could
not, hand on heart, say that I found a distinctive voice, nor that I did not
feel that it might just as readily – perhaps preferably – been a work of half
or at any rate two-thirds the length. There was nothing to frighten the horses
in terms of harmony, extended techniques, or anything else. Might we have
experienced more of an adventure if there had been?
Much the same could be said
of the Four Studies, in which Widmann joined the Quartet. Again, it would not
take a huge leap of imagination to consider this a sonata-style work. One of
the problems, or at least features, of a clarinet quintet is the tendency of
the clarinet to assume a solo role set against the strings. Rihm and the
performers skilfully made a point of that. Earlier on, we might have been
hearing a small-scale concertante work, a successor to the 1999 Music for Clarinet and Orchestra. Yet
the journey was towards fully incorporating the solo instrument into the
ensemble, sometimes allying with individual string players, other parts set
against them. Whether I should have felt differently in a context that was more
mixed – this concert, introduction included, exceeded two hours without an
interval – I cannot say, but again I felt the work to be longer than necessary
in terms of its material. A little Webern always goes a long way; here it would
have been manna from heaven. And he certainly knew how to write for the
clarinet.
