Milton Court
Andrea
Gabrieli: Maria stabat ad monumentum
Stravinsky:
Fanfare
for a New TheatreMozart: Missa Brevis in F major, KV 192186f, interspersed with:
Stravinsky: Pater Noster and Ave Maria
Salonen: Concert étude, for French horn
Bruckner: Aequale no.1, for three trombones
Gesualdo: Two movements from Tenebrae Responsories for Good Friday
Stravinsky: Mass
Ben Goldscheider (French horn)
Britten Sinfonia Voices Britten Sinfonia
Eamonn Dougan (conductor)
It was a little early, perhaps,
to be hearing ‘Easter Voices’ in the middle of Holy Week. However, this was not
especially an Easter programme – and, in any case, included two pieces from
Gesualdo’s Tenebrae responsories for Good Friday. Given the continued vileness
of the weather, a little foreshadowing of something warmer was in any case most
welcome. (Yes, I know: I should hang my head in Lenten shame.)
Andrea Gabrieli’s Maria stabat ad monumentum functioned
splendidly as an introit: Mary Magdalene weeping at the tomb, telling the angels
‘they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid Him’. It
cautioned us against the adoption of anachronistic models of ‘expressiveness’.
This is no heart-on-sleeve lament, nor was it in performance. Britten Sinfonia
Voices, under Eamonn Dougan offered a warm, nicely flowing account, the choral
sound recognisably ‘English’, no doubt, but there is nothing inherently wrong
with that. Who on earth, or indeed beyond, knows what the composer’s ‘intentions’
were here, in any case? The very question most likely makes no sense. He would
surely have been astonished to hear that the piece was being performed in a
London ‘concert hall’ in 2018, let alone that someone was writing about that on
a ‘computer’, that writing soon to be posted on a noticeboard on which, in
theory, anyone on God’s earth would be able to read it, although most would
not.
The same, of course, would go
for Mozart, and parts of it would at least have been a stretch for Stravinsky.
Their music formed the twin pillars of this concert, the rest of the first half
given over to Mozart’s F major Missa brevis, KV 192186f, introduced by and interspersed with short pieces by Stravinsky,
the second half offering pieces by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Bruckner, and Gesualdo,
leading up to a performance of Stravinsky’s Mass. Both masses were written, ‘intended’
for liturgical performance, although Stravinsky would not have been so greatly
surprised to hear of concert performance, however much he might have affected
to disdain it, or indeed genuinely done so.
His 1964 Fanfare for a New Theatre heralded ‘the start of the concert proper’,
according to Dougan, quoted in Jo Kirkbride’s booklet note. Written for the
opening of the New York State Theater, it proved, as ever, blazing,
uncompromising, in its forty-second-odd, post-Webern character, whilst at the
same time having one wonder: might that actually be a passing reference to
Monteverdi? Probably not: one just thinks of Orfeo anyway. In any case, no one time-travels quite like
Stravinsky; no one ever remains so much himself. Stravinsky’s Pater Noster and Ave Maria, following Mozart’s ‘Gloria’ and ‘Credo’ respectively,
spoke, almost unmediated – or such was the trick. The composer would surely
have approved. Choral blend was impeccable, the words highly audible. (Both
were given in their later, Latin versions, as per their 1949 revision.) The
former sounded a little more Russian, perhaps, as if a neo-Classical
remembrance of the world he had left, the latter whiter still, with a strong sense
of a musical ‘object’, a Stravinskian icon.
Stravinsky notoriously affected
disapproval of Mozart’s early masses: ‘Rococo-operatic sweets of sin,’ he
called them, having discovered some scores in 1942: ‘I knew I had to write a
Mass of my own,’ he continued, ‘but a real one’. Give me a fake one any day –
as well, of course, as Stravinskian ‘reality’. Classical sacred music, whether
that of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, or others, less canonical, is
woefully un-performed, with the signal exception of Mozart’s Requiem and
perhaps, though only perhaps, the Mass in C minor. Granted, Beethoven’s Missa
solemnis is not a work for every day. But many of Mozart’s and Haydn’s masses
and other works are just that – or should be. Here we heard a small-scale
performance of the Missa brevis: small choir, with soloists drawn from it, two
violins, cello, double bass, chamber organ, and occasionally, those two
Stravinskian trumpets. This was, not
unreasonably, the sound world, if hardly the acoustic, of the church sonata,
slightly augmented. It worked well in a small hall with nothing of the ‘Rococo-operatic’
to it. One can always go to Salzburg’s churches for that.
Performances were again
generally warm, if occasionally less so – an interpretative decision, no doubt –
from the solo strings. Words again were crystal clear. I especially liked the
rich timbre of Tim Dickinson’s bass, but all solos and ensembles were well sung
indeed; a fine balance between solo line and blend. The culminatory nature of
the ‘Amen’ in the ‘Gloria’; the learned counterpoint of the ‘Credo’, whose
contrapuntal tag has one think, whether one likes it or no, of the Jupiter Symphony; the nimble ‘Osanna’
music; and the darkness of the imploring harmonies of the ‘Agnus Dei’, which
yet hung over the concluding ‘Dona nobis pacem’: such were just some of the
highlights of a lovely performance, well shaped, without interventionism, by
Dougan.
Salonen’s 2000 Concert étude for solo French horn, a
homage to his teacher, Holger Fransman, offered an equally refreshing opening
to the second half, not least given the outstanding, indeed mesmeric quality of
Ben Goldscheider’s performance. It acted here almost like a wordless second
introit, Messiaen heard from another, related world. The twin requirements of a
single line and, at times, multiple voices (various extended techniques,
including singing a line in addition to that played) were handled beautifully
and, more to the point, meaningfully. The first of Bruckner’s two Aequale followed from the gallery,
rooted in tradition and yet, in both melody and harmonic implications,
unmistakeably Bruckner.
Gesualdo’s weird chromaticism –
is that the best way to think about it at all? – stood out, without undue
exaggeration, in carefully unfolding performances of ‘Omnes amici mei’ and ‘Vinea
mea electa’. The former proved, perhaps, more of an object, almost in the
Stravinskian sense, the latter more developmental, opening in chaster fashion,
yet blossoming. Is this how such music, such words ‘should’ be performed? Who
knows? Again, the question is hardly the right one to ask. One could certainly
imagine what might have fascinated Stravinsky in this composer’s music.
And so to his ‘proper’ Mass,
with its non-string, wind orchestra. I was interested to read Dougan speak of ‘the
more lush sound world of the winds and brass in the Stravinsky’, as compared to
Mozart’s strings. I hear it the other way around – and did again. Although this
was anything but a cold performance, an austere, even angular quality, with
roots in Symphonies of wind instruments
nevertheless manifested itself. We all have our own Stravinskys, I suppose;
yet, as Boulez, once put it, Stravinsky
demeure (the title of his Rite of
Spring analysis). Is there, was
there, something ‘Oriental’, or at least ‘Orientalist’, in the opening wind and
vocal arabesques of the ‘Gloria’? Or is/was that just recollections of Paris? Whatever it might
have ‘been’, it was delightful. The ‘Credo’ perhaps spoke a little, yet only a
little, more nostalgically, of a service from ‘home’ now once again viewed or
heard as an ‘object’, its jangle of ecclesiastical Latin leading inexorably to
a beautifully floated Amen. Intonation throughout was spot on, as it must be,
truly permitting one to appreciate the originality of Stravinsky’s own heavenly
host in the ‘Sanctus’ and the imploring
qualities of the closing ‘Agnus Dei’. As a surprising encore, another object of
fascination, we heard Mozart’s Ave verum
corpus motet, with accompaniment from the wind orchestra on stage: Mozart
and Stravinsky, perhaps, united at last.
