St John’s, Smith Square
Brahms:
Six
Piano Pieces, op.118
Berg:
Sonata, op.1
Schoenberg:
Six
Piano Little Pieces, op.19
Webern:
Variations
for piano, op.27
Brahms:
Four
Piano Pieces, op.119
Pina Napolitano (piano)
It is sometimes difficult now
to imagine a time when Schoenberg’s view of ‘Brahms the Progressive’, outlined
in his celebrated radio broadcast, was not widely accepted. At least for some
of us. I suspect, however, that the typical Brahms listener even now, safely
ensconced for a comfortable couple of hours in the Festival Hall or the
Musikverein, gives little thought to the implications of Brahms’s music, even
continues to hear it as the end of a line. Would that more of those listeners
might have had their ears and minds opened by Pina Napolitano’s St John’s,
Smith Square recital: for Brahms’s sake, for that of the Second Viennese
School, and above all, for their own. For the only disappointment of this lovely
evening was how few people had attended. The ‘Schoenberg problem’ remains, to
the intense frustration of his devotees.
An announcement was made at the
start of the recital to the effect that Napolitano was unwell, suffering from a
fever, yet would nevertheless perform. There was no doubt that she was indeed
ailing; the occasional lack of energy – for instance, an op.118 no.3 Intermezzo
that was some way from ‘Allegro energico’ – should doubtless be ascribed to
that. Otherwise, the opening op.118 set of Piano
Pieces had much to offer. A temptation to view them too much with
hindsight, be it Schoenbergian, Schenkerian, or something else was resisted,
motivic and other implications coming to the fore seemingly ‘by themselves’,
however much artistry that concealed. A slightly slower than usual basic tempo
for the second Intermezzo worked very well. It blossomed, moreover, as inner
parts increasingly ‘took over’, harmony and counterpoint proliferating in a
fashion one might call Schoenbergian, one might call Bachian, one might even
call Mozartian: let us, however, ascribe it to Brahms. There was true subtlety
of agitation in the third of the four Intermezzi (no.4), and likewise subtlety
of sadness in the final piece. Nothing was overstated: instead, we were made to
listen.
Berg’s Piano Sonata, his opus
1, benefited from similar clarity of line. Again, harmony and counterpoint
proved inseparable, indissoluble: I had better stop there with my negative
descriptions, lest I land myself in Moses
und Aron – and/or Adorno. I very much liked Napolitano’s disinclination to
turn this into some sort of ‘late Romantic’ farewell. Already, even at this
stage of Berg’s career, we instead heard seeds of a Neue Sachlichkeit too little acknowledged in clichés concerning the
most ‘Romantic’ of the Viennese Holy Trinity. If Berg is indeed the Son, that
need not make us Arians.
Schoenberg’s exquisite op.19
miniatures followed the interval. A great strength of Napolitano’s performance
was her ability both to hear and to communicate them as a whole. One utterance
provoked another, in true dialectical necessity. By the time we had reached
no.6, that magical evocation – in some sense – of the bells at Mahler’s
funeral, this was a symphonic finale in itself. Lines might readily have been taken
or developed from Brahms; and yet, the timescale is no irrelevance. We felt
difference and distance as well as roots. Likewise in Webern’s Variations for Piano, op.27. Napolitano
trod a fine line between Brahmsian roots and Boulezian implications. One felt
time and time again the future calling – Webern as Boulez’s ‘threshold’ – and
the potential for further development of the serial idea. And yet, equally
apparent, with more or less equal strength – coexistence or conflict? – the
deep rootedness of Webern’s music, at least as much as that of Schoenberg – in
that of Brahms.
Returning to Brahms’s op.119
set, the three Intermezzi followed by that final, defiant Rhapsody spoke both
of ‘lateness’ and of re-reading, re-listening in the light of what we had
heard. Half-lights invited us to adjust our aural eyes: are they quite the same
as ears? They invited us in, and yet reminded us of limits. Musical history,
like history in general, is a complex dialogue. Direct ‘influence’ – ‘I wrote x
because of y’ – is at best of limited interest. That is not how interesting
music is written to, performed, or heard. Sometimes we need to go back to the
beginning, wherever and whatever that might be; sometimes we should look
elsewhere.
As if to acknowledge that,
Napolitano offered Webern’s extraordinary little Kinderstück as an encore. This posthumously discovered work, from
1925, both denies and affirms what we ‘know’ about dodecaphony, about Webern,
about serialism – chronologically or aesthetically. Napolitano’s loving
performance – Webern teasingly marks it ‘Lieblich’ – treated it seriously, yet
never starkly. At the close, Webern writes: ‘D.C. ad libitum’. Napolitano took
the opportunity to play it one more time at least; the music is transformed in
the light of hearing it again and yet anew. I should not have minded another da capo, yet it is always better to
leave an audience wanting more. Moreover, there are, or should be, stringent
limits when it comes to repetition, as any of these composers would have been
the first to tell us.
