Wigmore Hall
Cerha – Acht Sätze nach Hölderlin-Fragmenten
Jānis Petraškevičs – gefährlich dünn (world premiere)
Johannes Schöllhorn – sous-bois (world premiere)
Schoenberg – Verklärte Nacht, op.4
Jagdish Mystry, Giorgos
Panagiotidis, Corinna Canzian, Diego Ramos Rodriguez (violins)
Megumi Kasakawa, Patrick Jüdt
(viola)
Eva Böcker, Michael M. Kasper
(cello)
The Ensemble Modern is an
organisation to which we all owe a great debt. Rehearsing an average of seventy
new works every year, twenty of which are world premieres, it involves itself
in orchestral, ensemble, and chamber concerts, theatre works, dance and video
projects. This Wigmore Hall concert fell into the chamber category, although,
with eight players in Janis Petraškevičs’s gefährlich
dünn, for double string quartet, it was not so distant from the disputed
border with ‘ensemble’ territory. The other works were all for string sextet,
concluding in what, Brahms notwithstanding, is surely now the most celebrated
of all essays in the genre, Schoenberg’s Verklärte
Nacht.
Friedrich Cerha, like Anthony
Payne, seems fated to be known first and foremost for his realisation of
another composer’s work. And indeed, it is difficult not to think of Berg as a
forerunner for much of Cerha’s music, these 1995 movements after Hölderlin
included. There is nothing wrong with that; is it possible think of a better
model or inspiration? And indeed, what we might consider to be the last gasps
of expressionism keep on gasping. The first, slow movement, ‘Fair life! You lie
sick, and my heart is/Tired from weeping, and fear is already dimming in me,’
came across as a slow processional, with some high-lying violin writing
offering textural contrast. After its
Bergian melancholy, the second movement, responding to the third stanza of the Schicksalslied, as set by Brahms, offered
highly rhythmical contrast, the general sense of unease exacerbated by passages
of voluptuousness I am again tempted to call Bergian. Terse on the whole, it leads
to a brief, inconclusive third-movement attempt to settle, which in turn seem –
and certainly seemed, in this fine performance – to set the scene for the scurrying
lines of the fourth movement, Presto
misterioso. Its lightness registered as almost scherzo-like. ‘The lines of
life are different,/Like paths, and like mountain ranges,/What we are here a
god can fulfil/With harmonies and eternal joy and peace.’ That inspiration for
the fifth movement fulfilled its promise as the beating heart of the work, its
sweetness of harmony more than once reminiscent of Messiaen. A highly
rhythmical contrast, echoing that between the first and second movements, was
offered in the sixth: vehement, even furious at times. I should have defied
anyone not to be impressed by the unanimity of ensemble, but such was the level
of performance that this simply seemed to ‘be’ the work. Late-twentieth-century
Brahms was one thought that came to mind. The slow, seventh movement proved
richly expressive: mostly homophonic until a degree of unravelling, presaging
what seemed like the new birth of the final movement, with its rapt scurrying. ‘The
heart is awake again, but heartlessly/Immense night draws me always.’ If the
words seemed almost to suggest Tristan,
then the sense of hypnosis did not seem so very distant from Stockhausen.
gefährlich
dünn (fragile pieces for double string quartet),
by the Latvian composer, Jānis Petraškevičs, is the second piece he had
written for the Ensemble Modern, following the 2012 Darkroom. It was definitely for double quartet rather than octet,
the two quartets seated as such. Early, rapt – that word again – harmonies provoke
intrusions and elicit blossoming of a kind, which does not seem entirely
conciliatory. It is a work of considerable intensity and contrast, not least in
the audible and visible contrast between those playing with and without
vibrato; that intensity and contrast certainly registered strongly in this
performance. Repetitions bring to our attention and perhaps also call into
question the ‘fragility’ of the pieces, which, through their harmonics and
quarter-tones, sing in a tradition of which Cerha and Berg may stand as
forerunners.
Johannes Schöllhorn’s sous-bois (as in the French for ‘undergrowth’
or ‘forest floor’) also received its premiere. Is it perhaps an echo of Richard
Dehmel’s poem for Schoenberg, and indeed Schoenberg’s response thereto? Here
one was led to think that it might be. An arresting, swarming opening set up a
contrast, even contest, with silence, employed not necessarily ‘like’ Bruckner
or even Mahler, but nevertheless suggestive of the (Bavarian) Alps in which the
composer was born. Indeed, more than once, I found myself considering this
fascinating work in a post-Mahlerian context: doubtless partly a matter of
personal preoccupation, but not, I think, entirely so. For the melancholy one
felt was recognisably in such a mould too. There was always a discernible line,
even if, at least on a first hearing, I might not be able to explain how. ‘Atmosphere’
there was aplenty, amongst the glissandi, the col legno playing, the tremolandi,
the trills, and the other ‘effects’, but they never came across as anything but
integral to this progress through the undergrowth, if that indeed be what it
is. I should very much like to hear this work again. May we hope for a
recording?
Finally, Verklärte Nacht. It had been but a fortnight earlier that I had
heard members of the London Sinfonietta give a splendidly modernistic performance of this work at Kings Place. Perhaps inevitably,
the programming and the nature of the ensemble tilted this performance also
towards what was to come rather than the inheritance from Wagner and Brahms.
Yet there was palpable sadness at the opening, in a performance which, like
that of the Sinfonietta, gave a strong sense of the six players as individuals,
as if members of a quartet. Vulnerable, even halting, this opening contrasted
markedly – perhaps not unlike the Cerha movements – with the richness of what
to come. Sometimes I longed for a little more expansiveness, but in retrospect
I thought the players had been in the right. There were intriguing, far from
arbitrary, moments of restraint too. Intonation was not always impeccable, but
in context, I was far less distracted by that than I might have been expected;
if anything, (relative) imperfection heightened the ‘edge’. And there was no
doubting the silvery ‘transfiguration’, imbued with a more than usually
powerful sense of musical return. For a performance that refused to treat this
as ‘popularly acceptable’ or ‘accessible’, ‘late Romantic’ Schoenberg, we had
good reason to be grateful.
