Kollegienkirche
 |
| © Salzburger Festspiele / Marco Borrelli |
Les
Espaces acoustiques
Maria Gheorghiu (viola)
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
Maxime Pascal (conductor)
Rarely have I been so inundated
with messages of envy than when I let friends and followers on Facebook and
Twitter know that I was attending this performance of Gérard Grisey’s cycle of
six pieces, Les Espaces acoustiques.
Unlike many of them, I am very much a Grisey novice. For some reason, I was
unable to attend a (relatively) recent performance of this work in London;
likewise, other Grisey performances have not fallen at good, or even possible, times
for me. I was therefore especially keen to begin to discover what all the fuss
was about, and am most grateful to the Salzburg Festival for offering such an
opportunity, not least in Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s glorious
Kollegienkirche, which underlined the quasi-liturgical nature of the work – or at
least one way in which it might be received.
Mario Gheorghiu’s performance
of the first piece, a ‘Prologue’ for solo viola, captured, even instigated,
that sense of visual and aural theatre very well, preaching to us, as it were,
from the spotlit pulpit. The simplicity of Grisey’s opening material, phrases
undergoing only very gradual transformation, certainly had something of an
ancient, though not only an ancient, ritual to it. Coming to the work blind –
or perhaps ‘deaf’ – I thought also of a slowly evolving fractal display.
Whatever the truth or nonsense of that, Gheorghiu and Grisey imparted a true
sense of the exploratory, albeit on an almost defiantly unhurried timescale. At
some point, I realised that what I was hearing had undergone an almost complete
transformation from what I had begun hearing, but I could not put my finger on
when I might have begun to realise such a thing.
Gheorghiu wandered down within
the wall, still audible, no longer seen, in order to join the orchestra for the
second piece, ‘Périodes’, for seven musicians. Other string players joined
gradually: double bass first, if I remember correctly. Again, transformation
was slow, yet unmistakeable. There were here, though, I think, definite
milestones, or perhaps it was more that my ears were becoming more accustomed
to style, method, even idea. A duet between violin and viola, both apparently ‘tuning’,
seemed a little obvious, but I suspect that was deliberate, prompting one to
ask questions about expectation. Or was that just my own, almost
metatheatrical, preoccupation being brought to the table? The ritualist element
seemed to intensify in ‘Partiels’, for eighteen musicians. Many sonorities and
harmonies were familiar in one sense, and yet, in contrast, not necessarily so.
Spectralist technique seemed almost to reinvent a Straussian waterfall or
Messiaenesque birdsong. Perhaps, again, that was just me; for context, again,
was quite different, similarity seeming incidental if unmistakeable. I was
certainly fascinated once again by the realisations that material had been
transformed out of all recognition, or so it seemed. The non-cymbal-clash at
the close again seemed all too predictable, but perhaps that is the point. Is
it intended humourously? Or is that how we deal with unknown ritual, as in
Stockhausen, with nervous laughter?
Following the interval, the
fourth piece, ‘Modulations’, for thirty-three musicians, sounded perhaps still
closer – but still only –er – to Messiaen. There was perhaps even a sense of
éclat suggesting (to me) that pupil of Messiaen who will not be mentioned here.
Any such (idle?) thoughts, though, were soon more or less banished, or at least
subdued, by the spectralist framework within which this particular celestial
banquet unfolded. ‘Transitoires’, for large orchestra seemed to develop from
that movement with an expectation that was not entirely (at least for me)
un-Wagnerian. Earlier onomatopoeia without an object – a forest perhaps? – was now
set against and combined with a darker, deeper menace. There is clearly an
extraordinary simplicity to what one hears at one level, but it is equally
clear that that is not the only level at which one can, perhaps should, listen
to this music. Around it, a fractal halo of sound both heightens and questions ‘familiarity’.
With the ‘Epilogue’ for four
solo horns and large orchestra we return also to solo viola. That
phantasmagorical ‘waterfall’ sounded here both exultant and an agent of
disintegration, perhaps even tragedy. If descending the mountain is not a
mirror image of the ascent, then it hardly would be; ask Strauss. Was the final
drumming arbitrary or tragic? Why should it be either/or? The lady seated next
to me probably came closer than any of my musings, when she turned and
exclaimed: ‘Die ganze Kirche klingt!’ The church did itself resound, but it
would not have done so without outstanding performances from all concerned. Maxime
Pascal’s conducting of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra gave the
impression, which I have no reason to doubt, of having mastered not only the
detail of the score, but of its connections, and of the challenge of communicating
all that and more. The players’ commitment was similarly beyond doubt. This is
just what festival music-making should be: something quite out of the ‘ordinary’.
My immediate reaction was that
I should now like to hear another performance, having just begun to establish
what might be going on. I hope that my review will be taken in that spirit. I
doubt, at this point, that I am about to become a devotee of Grisey’s music,
but who knows? There are many instances of composers whose music it has taken
several hearings for me to even to begin to respond to it; on the face of it,
there is no reason why Grisey should not join their company. We shall see – or rather,
we shall hear.
