Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Widmann:
Zweites
Labyrinth
Schumann:
Piano Concerto in A minor,
op.54Debussy: Images
Maurizio Pollini (piano)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
 |
| View from my seat |
Following the mixed fortunes of
the opening night’s Scenes from Goethe’s
Faust, the second night at the reopened Staatsoper Unter den Linden showed,
in addition to unalloyed musical excellence, that the theatre can work once
again, indeed better than ever, as a fine concert venue too. Daniel Barenboim
has been conducting quite a bit of Jörg Widmann’s music recently, not least at
the newly opened Pierre Boulez Saal, at which Widmann himself has appeared
regularly too. This concert opened with his 2006 Zweites Labyrinth, premiered by the SWR SO Baden-Baden and Freiburg
(since, unforgivably, merged) under Hans Zender. It followed his Labyrinth for forty-eight strings from
the previous year, albeit with very different forces: five instrumental groups,
namely (1) two pianos, two harps, Hungarian and Ukrainian cimbaloms, zither,
and guitárron; (2) bass clarinet, two contrabass clarinets, two bassoons, and
two contrabassons; (3) eight horns; (4) four piccolos; (5) fourteen first
violins and twelve second violins. It would be a spatial challenge for the most
modern of halls – say, the Boulezian salle
modulable around the corner. What struck me most clearly, as well as the
excellence of the performance, was, in a tribute to the Staatsoper’s acoustic, how
clearly and meaningfully the work sounded, without any unusual spatial
arrangement. All instruments were simply on the stage, as one would have expected
expect.
The performance – and work –
opened forbiddingly. Forbidding, that is, in dramatic terms, rather than
denoting anything especially ‘difficult’. The harsh strength – walls of the
labyrinth? – of the opening gave way to aural ricocheting across the various
instrumental groups, as if the orchestra were a giant keyboard, across which giant,
timbrally transforming glissandi were played. (In programming retrospect,
Debussy seemed to have been echoed.) The skill with which such quicksilver threads
were sewn in performance proved mesmerising in itself. What a joy it was to
hear the Staatskapelle Berlin in such music, not least as different instruments
seemed almost to transform before our ears into each other, Widmann and the
players displaying equal mastery of extended techniques. Barenboim and his
musicians brought a keen sense of drama, almost of wordless opera to
proceedings: not at all inappropriate for Widmann in general, nor for a concert
in the Lindenoper.
Maurizio Pollini joined the
orchestra for Schumann’s Piano Concerto, picking up the thread, as it were,
from the previous evening. Seated where I was, in the third row of the stalls,
just slightly to the left of the centre, I could hardly have had a better view
of the pianist. The combination of acoustic – clear and warm – and visual
proximity meant, if this makes any sense, that I could hear precisely what I
saw, and vice versa. Music so well
known to many in the audience, still more so to Pollini, seemed to be
recomposed on the spot, before my eyes and ears, an equal or at least
appropriate weight accorded to the horizontal and vertical, as if leading to Brahms
or indeed to Schoenberg. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Pollini recorded the
Schumann and Schoenberg concertos together with Claudio Abbado. The richness of
string tone was truly a wonder in itself, especially when experienced with such
physicality. Moreover, both Barenboim and Pollini brought a command of line to
all three movements such as to hold absolute attention throughout. There was chamber
music intimacy too, married to an undeniable sense of playing upon oscillation
between tonic minor and major, which put me in mind of Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, op.73, only writ large(r).
Schumann’s Beethovenian inheritance seemed especially apparent in the first
movement: not just its scale, but its character too. The integrity, humanistic
as much as ‘merely’ musical, of the cadenza spoke volumes: once again,
Schoenberg beckoned.
The sense of derivation from a
single phrase, even a single note, was perhaps still stronger still in the slow
movement. I thought of something Webern writes, in The Path to the New Music: ‘To develop everything … from one principal idea! That is the
strongest unity … But in what form? That is where art comes in!’ The music
seemed once again to achieve an ideal balance between chamber and orchestral
tendencies: not quite Mozartian, for this is not Mozart, but recognisably in
his line. I was particularly struck by the way particular string sections
sounded as one. The transition to the finale was emotionally as well as
technically spot on, the swing from the tragic to the exultant effected within
a single breath, without the slightest sense of abruptness. That was surely a
brevity that would have impressed, perhaps put to shame, even Webern! And indeed,
it was a quality of constant transformation, not entirely unlike the music of
Liszt, that characterised the performance of the finale. Line was not
sacrificed, far from it, but as in the very different work by Widmann, it
proved to be a dramatic line.
The second half was devoted to
Debussy’s Images, a work – and of
course, composer – closely associated with one of Barenboim’s greatest musical
collaborators, Pierre Boulez, Honorary Conductor of this orchestra. The opening
of ‘Gigues’ sounded duly mysterious, combining haze and precision; it was as if
we hearing the solo lines through an aural gauze of varying intensity. Not that
the performance lacked rhythmic definition, nor indeed a strength, when
required, that seemed almost to echo La
Mer. There was mystery too, albeit a different mystery, to the opening of ‘Rondes
de printemps’: germinative and generative, spiritual and material. The idea of ‘smudged
dialectics’ may be a little too ‘Impressionist’ for some, but it is what came
to me listening anyway. I loved the way in which instrumental colours and
harmonies – are they actually two sides of the same coin or different ‘parameters’?
– shifted into each other at times, suggesting a different variety of Klangfarbenmelodie from that generally associated
with the term. Barenboim’s command of line, so different from that in Widmann
and Schumann, and yet equally important, again proved crucial to the dramatic
progress of the piece.
A sardonic quality marked the
first panel of ‘Ibéria’, ‘Par les rues et par les chemins’: not unlike
Stravinsky, yet not quite like him either. The players were clearly enjoying themselves;
that one could see as well as hear. Once again, a Tarnhelm-like dissolution of
boundaries between different varieties of colour was splendidly apparent. A
sultry penumbra of timbre seemed to surround the pitches of ‘Les parfums de la
nuit’. Harmonies shifted between ambiguity and more definite progression,
preparing the way for a performance of ‘Le matin d’un jour de fête’ that was
surely warmer, more southern, than Boulez’s, perhaps more sardonic too, not
least in Soldier’s Tale-like fiddling
(whether from the excellent solo playing of Jiyoon Lee or from the entire
section). It made for a fine conclusion to a fine concert indeed.
