Konzerthaus, Vienna
Szenen
aus Goethes Faust, WoO 3
Faust, Pater Seraphicus, Dr
Marianus – Christian Gerhaher
Gretchen, Una poenitentum – Christiane
KargMephistopheles, Böser Geist – Alastair Miles
Marthe, Sorge, Magna Peccatrix – Christina Landshamer
Mangel, Maria Aegyptica, Mater Gloriosa – Gerhild Romberger
Noth, Mulier Samaritana – Jennifer Johnston
Schuld – Anna Huntley
Ariel, Pater Exstaticus – Andrew Staples
Pater Profundus – Franz-Josef Selig
Eine Büßerin – Elisabeth Erhenfellner
Chorus soloist – Michael Sachsenmaier
I have had to wait a long time to
hear Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s
Faust ‘live’, since, as an undergraduate, buying a second-hand copy of
Britten’s recording. Perhaps there has been a London performance since I have
become a regular concert-goer; if so, I have not noticed it. Quite why is
baffling. It is, by any standards, a fine work, perhaps not so ‘individual’ as
the Schumann we know from the piano music and songs, although perhaps that is
as much a matter of our conception of ‘individuality’ as anything else. There
is certainly ‘originality’ – that most Romantic of constructs, but a construct
to which we all, if we are honest and not absurdly modish, remain rightly in
thrall – in much of the orchestral writing, which whatever its kinship with the
work of other composers, could hardly ever, perhaps could never, have been
written by anyone else. Yes, it requires a good few soloists and a chorus, but
so do many other works. And if Goethe notoriously told Eckermann that Mozart
would have had to compose his Faust,
then Goethe was notoriously wrong about all manner of things musical.
Comparisons more odious than
usual presented themselves early on, given that I had heard Bernard
Haitink and the Chamber of Orchestra just two nights earlier. Nevertheless,
if Daniel Harding’s brisk way with the Overture, at least initially, was not
how I hear it in my head, it had its own justification, and he showed himself
perfectly willing to yield, rather beautifully, for the more ‘feminine’ –
forgive the gendered language, but it is surely apt in this of all cases –
music. A contrast between Faust and Gretchen was clearly being set up, both in
work and in performance, and yet something in common too: in typically
nineteenth-century terms, Eve was created from Adam’s rib. I need not labour
the point by saying too much about
Robert and Clara. In any case, female voices are far from neglected as the work
proceeds, Schumann almost careless in his requirements. And so, after that rather
Harnoncourt-like opening, I had no quarrel, or even query, with Harding’s
tempi. There was plenty of ebb and flow, and if there might sometimes have been
more colour in the Vienna Symphony Orchestra’s response – not to mention a few
too many fluffs in the brass department – there was good playing throughout,
excellent in the more vigorous sections and often beguiling in the more ‘poetic’,
sensitive passages. Choral singing was excellent throughout, too, both from the
Wiener Singakademie, large in numbers yet lithe and lively, and from the young
singers from the Opernschule der Wiener Staatsoper, winningly seraphic. The Dies irae passages properly chilled, yet
without melodrama; musical values were always to the fore.
The solo singing was for me the
highlight. Since he had the lion’s share of it, it is hardly surprising that I
should mention Christian Gerhaher first and foremost. The beauty of his vocal
delivery was matched to a tee by the acuity of his verbal response. These were
clearly words that meant a great deal to him – they do, surely, to any German –
but nothing was taken for granted. Gerhaher was not ‘just’ singing Goethe; he
was singing Schumann’s Goethe. His shading and phrasing were such as one might
have expected in a performance of Dichterliebe.
There was, moreover, Faustian defiance, when called for; and drama worthy of
the stage – if unstageable – in Faust’s death. Gerhaher’s roles in the Third
Part were carefully differentiated; now he was one soloist among many. And
those other soloists were an impressive bunch too; there was not a weak link in
the cast. Christiane Karg offered a well-judged match of vocal refulgence and drama,
again always founded in the text. Andrew Staples sounded every inch a Tamino in
his roles, Schumann’s fantastic writing for Ariel benefiting from a meltingly Romantic
evocation in vocal and instrumental terms. Alastair Miles proved a stentorian
Mephistopheles, and Christina Landshamer a perky, intelligent soprano.
Franz-Josef Selig sounded as his usual, beneficent self: always more than welcome. Ensemble writing was always well attended to, balances permitting Schumann’s
lines to tell both contrapuntally and harmonically.
This is a work we need to
hear far more often, but this was a good occasion on which to start. Like many, I really have not
the slightest idea what Goethe meant by his ‘ewig-Weibliche’ panacea, and
probably should rather keep it that way, but Schumann’s unexpectedly – even when
one knows it – non-soaring conclusion offers, if not a solution, then, after
the splendidly blazingly writing beforehand, a welcome deflection. That,
moreover, was how it sounded here.
.
