Pierre Boulez Saal
Takemitsu:
Le
son calligraphié I-III
Strauss:
Metamorphosen, in version for string septet by Rudolf
Leopold
Prokofiev
Sonata for Two Violins in
C major, op.56
Bruch:
Octet in B-flat major, op.
posth.
Daishin Kashimoto, Noah
Bendix-Balgley, Luiz Felipe Coelho, Christophe Horak (violins)
Amihai Grosz, Naoko Shimizu
(violas)
Ludwig Quandt, Bruno
Delepelaire (cellos)
Matthew McDonald (double bass)
It is doubtless in the nature
of such varied programmes, in which the emphasis seems to lie upon variety in
itself rather than on a unifying theme, that some works will appeal to any one
listener more than others. In that respect, I should count myself fortunate
that only – doubtless predictably – Max Bruch’s musically anonymous late string
octet that failed to intrigue me. (If, as a Bruch fanatic, should such a thing
exist, you prefer: I failed to be intrigued by it.) The date of composition,
although it apparently is based upon earlier materials, beggars belief: 1920.
It is not so much that it was written eight years after Pierrot lunaire, as that it sounds rather like a talented, yet
uninspired attempt to imitate the young, and I mean very young, Mendelssohn. Not
that the eight players – all of those listed above, save for Matthew McDonald
on double bass – in any sense failed it. Quite the contrary: I cannot imagine
it receiving a more committed, enlightened performance, determined to make the
most of its craftsmanship, without attempting to turn it into something it is
not. The spirit and cultivation of the playing were, from the opening of the first
of its three movements, undeniable: far more thrilling than the material
itself. It was surely to that, quite rightly, that the audience so warmly
responded. There were darker moments (relatively speaking) too, especially in
the central Adagio-Andante con molto di
moto. And if even these players could not quite convince one that the
generic character and/or form of a finale were transformed into something more
than that, they did their very best. No one should begrudge such pieces an
occasional outing – and who knows? Maybe others heard something in the piece I
did not.
Written for the same forces, Tōru
Takemitsu’s three early Son calligraphié
works (1958-60), proved more fascinating, at least to me. If their miniature
status and their spare directness of utterance perhaps inevitably brought to
mind Webern and – from the future – Kurtág, the harmonic language, especially
in so warm, yet never over-egged a performance proved more suggestive of Berg.
It might seem contradictory, and perhaps it is, to speak of spare directness
and then to mention languor, but there seemed to be plenty of space, however
considered, for that too, timbres often suggestive of a more Gallic sensibility.
The wholeness of the players’ conception, combined with attention to (Japanese?)
‘calligraphic’ detail, might have had one think these pieces repertoire works.
There seemed to me, at least on a first hearing, no good reason why they should
not be.
Strauss’s Metamorphosen is, unquestionably, although not necessarily in this
form, the version for string septet by Rudolf Leopold, made following
rediscovery of Strauss’s short score and first performed in 1994. The players
turned around so as to face in the opposite direction for this, following in
the footsteps of many musicians, Daniel Barenboim included, eager to play the
hall, even its audience, as a living instrument rather than a mere space for
performance. Not for nothing is the Pierre Boulez Saal’s motto ‘music for the
thinking ear’. Seven strings will never sound the same as twenty-three. Nor
should they attempt to; for, if that were the aim, why not use twenty-three?
Here there is, almost by definition, a greater sense of chamber music, but it
was a greater sense in performance too, the players seemingly relishing the
opportunity to play with the difference, although never to be different merely
for the sake of it. What I noticed earlier on was an apparently slower tempo
than often one hears. (I say apparently, since it sounded to be as much a
matter of holding back harmonically, and have no idea whether it was in terms
of accursed metronome beats.) Such was not how it was to be all along, though,
for lighter, even relatively brighter passages seemed to gain momentum, both in
terms of tempo and harmonic rhythm. (Are the two in fact distinct?) This was a Metamorphosen which, perhaps unusually,
had more of late Strauss’s typical Mozartian sonata form balance and dynamism, vis-à-vis
dark Wagnerism. It was not, however, a case of one against the other, but of
dramatic conflict. Likewise, the balance and generative conflict between
harmony and counterpoint sounded almost as if born of a Mozart quintet,
rendering transitional passages – yes, I know the whole work is essentially
transitional… – especially interesting. The cultivated gravity of return led to
a soft-spoken sense of approaching yet never reaching suspension. And yes, the Eroica moment spoke as eloquently as
ever, in its new yet old setting: a metaphor perhaps for the performance as a
whole.
Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two
Violins, played by concertmasters Daishin Kashimoto and Noah Bendix-Balgley, fared
wonderfully well, in a performance as dramatic, even aspirantly balletic, as it
was razor-sharp of intonation. The bitter-sweet post-Romantic intertwining and
separation of instruments in the first movement proved a masterclass, performative
as well as compositional, in two-part writing. Bartókian fury, soon transmuted
into something else, which in turn was soon transformed, and so on, characterised
a powerfully yet never pedantically developmental second movement. Sweetly,
songfully enigmatic, the simple, side-slipping pleasures of the third movement
delighted. What I thought of as the sincere tricksterism of the finale did so
too, in its very different way. It offered both a sense of uniting the work’s
strands and yet also questioning them. Strauss was far from the only composer
of this period to don compositional mask upon mask.
