Queen Elizabeth Hall
Schoenberg – Four Songs, op.2
Alma Mahler – Four Songs
Berg – Seven Early Songs
Schoenberg – String Quartet
no.2, op.10
Barbara Hannigan (soprano)
Reinbert de Leeuw (piano)
Yunpeng Zhao, Guillaume Latour (violins)
Franck Chevalier (viola)
Pierre Morlet (cello)
Has Barbara Hannigan ever
given a performance that did not stand at the highest level, technically, musically,
and with the most exquisite taste in repertoire? I am sure she must have done
at some point, but I am equally sure that I have never heard it. From what I
think was the first time I heard her, singing ‘Djamila
Boupacha’, from Nono’s Canti di vita e
d’amore, to a 2011 Pli selon pli under Boulez himself,
I have been spellbound. This was not the first time I had heard as the soprano
for Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet; a rugged EdinburghF estival performance with the Arditti Quartet provided an interesting
comparison with the present performance. Nor was it the first time I had heard
her sing Berg’s Seven Early Songs, this concert having been preceded by a Berlin outing for Reinbert de Leeuw’s chamber arrangement, again conducted
by Boulez. But which other sopranos would one be likely to hear not once but
twice in this repertoire, let alone in the gorgeous unfolding of Boulez’s
masterpiece?
We began with Schoenberg’s
op.2 songs: a rare opportunity, though I really cannot understand why. De Leeuw
featured in this first half as pianist, offering a highly intelligent ear – and
equally intelligent fingers – to proceedings, Schoenberg’s harmonies in the
opening ‘Erwartung’ already full of unexpected twists, never underlined but
permitted ‘simply’ to speak for themselves. Echoes of the Cabaret Songs, in
harmony if not in verse, also manifested themselves, seemingly without intervention, though we know how much art will
often be involved in art’s concealment. Coolness and Romantic warmth were heard
not to be mutually opposed, but in what, almost paradoxically, one might call a
gentle dialectic. Hannigan’s diction and general way with Richard Dehmel’s
words were irreproachable, the musical world created in response very much post-Tristan. It was Parsifal, and Kundry, Schoenberg seemed to be answering in ‘Schenk
mir deinen goldenen Kamm’. Delicious near-blasphemies sounded, in work and
performance, very much as if part of Klingsor’s armoury. ‘Oh, Maria!’ indeed. Somehow
Hannigan managed to combine purity and eroticism on the final ‘Magdalena’. One
needed a cold shower afterwards. The closing ‘Waldsonne’, the only one of the four
songs not to a text by Dehmel, sounded almost pastoral, with a musically
undulating quality set up in the piano and responded to in the vocal line. Longing
and ecstasy were yet never far behind.
I wish I could enthuse about
Alma Mahler’s music. Well, perhaps I do not, since I find her difficult to warm
to as a person, but anyway, it is always a pleasure to make interesting
discoveries of the unjustly neglected. However, I have never heard a work by
Alma that has not suggested that, questionable though Gustav’s discouragement
of her as a composer may have been in moral terms, it was no disaster for the
history of music. No matter: doubtless Alma has her fans, and we are not
exactly deluged with performances of her music. It is worthwhile hearing such
pieces from time to time in order to remind ourselves that we do not need to
hear from again for a while. Alas, the performance was not helped by a
programme that referred to and printed the texts for the wrong songs. Much of
the first song, Die stille Stadt was
therefore spent, not unreasonably, by the audience trying to work out what was
going on. We then heard, I later discovered, Laue Sommernacht, Ich wandle
unter Blumen, and Licht in der Nacht,
the only song actually present in the programme booklet, although there it was
claimed we should hear it first. To be fair to Alma, the harmonies and range of
expression were greater than I recalled; perhaps this was a mark of superior
performance too. Certainly Hanningan’s contribution was committed, sensual,
highly evocative. The music sounds more ‘late Romantic’, even decadent, than
that of Gustav, perhaps closer to the world of Schoenberg’s op.2. If ultimately
one can hardly claim the songs to be more than accomplished, there is a place
sometimes for accomplishment too.
For all that, the gulf
between talent and genius was immediately apparent upon hearing the piano
introduction to ‘Nacht’, the first of Berg’s Seven Early Songs. Hallucinatory harmonies worked their way up
through the piano, joined by a vocal line that, unlike those of Alma, is simply
unforgettable. Hannigan’s performance combined beauty, danger, and sexiness.
Musical form was expertly shaped by both musicians, ‘Und aus tiefen Grundes Düsterheit’
offering a proper sense of return. The final ‘Acht!’ was as much breathed as
sung: dangerous stuff! De Leeuw brought to our attention the ‘involved’ Brahmsian
quality of Berg’s piano writing in ‘Schilflied’, harmony and counterpoint
already peering into the twelve-note future. A glorious, radiant account of ‘Die
Nachtigall’ prepared the way for the central ‘Traumgekrönt, Hannigan’s nocturnal
soaring, half-dream and half-nightmare, offering a presentiment of Lulu. Eroticism far surpassing that of
Schoenberg: this could only be Berg. ‘Im Zimmer’ offered a glance back to a
more innocent early Romanticism; well, perhaps. De Leeuw’s vast experience
showed in the masterly building towards climax of ‘Liebesode’. Finally, in ‘Sommertage’,
whilst still very much in the world of the Lied,
we again seemed to be on the verge of the operatic stage, Berg’s destiny
already manifest.
The intimacy of the opening
to Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet took me rather by surprise, the tone
adopted by the Quatuor Diotima far removed from the rich, heated late Romanticism
more commonly adopted in this repertoire. It was not chilly modernism, either,
but something more refined, even Gallic. Harmonics offered a portent of things
to come, not just in Schoenberg’s music but even in the post-war avant garde.
Great clarity permitted the counterpoint truly to be heard; there was not the
slightest sense of congestion. If understated, the performance remained
febrile. Crucially, the extraordinary concision of Schoenberg’s writing told;
this might have been the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The
stuttering hesitancy of the second movement’s opening seemed both to hail from
late Beethoven and to denote something entirely new: rather like late Beethoven
itself, one might say. Seemingly infinite rhythmic flexibility was a hallmark
of the Diotima’s performance. Motivic construction was lain bare, though not
drily; it truly involved. ‘Litanei’ opened with warm, yet anything but un-variegated,
string consolation, offering a sense that this was indeed uncharted territory,
the voice anticipated. When it joined the performance, it was not as interloper
but almost as if another instrument, heightening and furthering a drama it was
increasingly difficult not to consider ‘expressionist’. That is not to say that
earlier sublety was lost, far from it. Stefan Georg’s words took on new meaning
after having heard Schoenberg’s op.2, an interesting quirk, perhaps intended,
of this performance. Kundry again seemed to be invoked in words and music: ‘Töte das sehnen, schliesse die
wunde!’ Even before the voice entered in the final movement, there was a true
sense of liberation, of that celebrated air of another planet. (The programme
translation rather unfortunately had it, ‘I feel wind from other planets.’) Was
tonality suspended or had it been truly escaped from? It seemed, as a sports
commentator might have it, that there was everything to play for. Yet this new
harmonic world did not detract from tightness of motivic working, either in
work or performance; rather it was set in new relief. Hannigan’s delivery of that line was simply ravishing. Indeed
throughout, Georg’s verse and Schoenberg’s notes were equally relished. ‘Ich lose
mich in tönen, kreisend, webend...’ We certainly did lose ourselves in those
tones. As ever, one wished that this would prove a world in which one might
stay forever, yet equally one knew that that could no more be the case for
Mozart’s world, or that of Tristan.
There was a true sense of the Liebestod
to Hannigan’s final lines, after which the quartet proper re-emerged, though it
had always been there, not unlike Mahler’s music in Berio’s Sinfonia. This performance, quite
rightly, looked ahead as much as back.
Hannigan will next be heard
in London in February for Stravinsky’s Renard
and Satie’s Socrate at the Queen
Elizabeth Hall, again part of the Southbank Centre’s festival, ‘The Rest is
Noise’. March will bring the British premiere of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin. Again, they are
performances to which discerning listeners would likely gravitate on repertoire
grounds alone, but Hannigan’s presence will do them no harm at all.
