Alban Berg
Saal, Carinthian Music Academy, Ossiach
Schubert:
Quintet in A major, D 667,
‘Trout’
Weber:
Trio for flute, cello, and
piano in G minor, op.63
Berg,
arr. Martyn Harry: Fragments from ‘Wozzeck’ (world premiere)
Alban Berg Ensemble Wien (Sylvia Careddu (flute), Alexander Neubauer (clarinet)
Ariane Haering (piano), Sebastian Gürtler, Régis Bringolf (violins), Subin Lee (viola), Florian Berner (cello))
Ivan Kitanović (double bass)
The Vienna-based Alban Berg
Ensemble is hosting its first BERGfrühling (Berg Spring) festival, in Ossiach,
home to the Carinthian Music Academy, close to the Berg family estate, aptly
enough called the Berghof, where the young Alban would spend his summer
holidays. Four out of the five concerts will take place in the CMA’s Alban Berg
Saal, a splendid new hall with an excellent acoustic, three with a work by Berg
on the programme, the other with a piece by his fellow Schoenberg pupil, Webern;
the fifth, a performance of a Dvořák’s G major String Quintet, op.77, will be
heard in the parish church of St Georg, in nearby Sternberg. (Whether referring
to mountains or composers, the word ‘Berg’ is rarely far away here.)
It was with, Schubert, one of
the most indispensable forerunners of the Second Viennese School, that the
festival opened, members of the ensemble joined by double bass player Ivan
Kitanović for the Trout Quintet. The
resonance of that bright A major chord, piano arpeggio included, seemed to
announce both ensemble and acoustic in one: as it should be. A cultivated yet
clear sound characterised a first movement full of tension, yet never
aggressively so, the second group relaxed in the best sense, permitting a
further increase of tension to propel us into the serious business of development.
Modulations retained, or better revealed, their magic. Harmonic tension built and
then exhausted itself, not unlike Mendelssohn, the onset of the recapitulation
almost yet not quite imperceptible. A poised, almost chaste Andante sounded in almost neo-Classical
style (vis-à-vis Mozart, that is, rather than anything Stravinskian!) It made
me listen – and think. And yet, was it not too late for chastity? Such was
subtly hinted at too, especially as the movement progressed. A propulsive
reading of the scherzo, not without Beethovenian affinities – elective or
otherwise – was counterbalanced by a somewhat neutral trio, but perhaps that
was the point.
Having seen the wondrous
Ossiacher See only that afternoon – the Abbey, now the Academy, stands by the
lake – it was especially lovely to welcome the freshwater fish of the fourth
movement theme and variations, here characterful, without overstatement. Well
seasoned, one might say. There was plenty of time and space left to build,
preparing for true vehemence in the minore
fourth variation. I loved cellist Florian Berner’s shaping of his melody in the
fifth: aristocratic, without aloofness. The final variation took us to the
coffee house: where better a place to round off proceedings? The finale seemed,
almost likewise, to hint at Brahms, whilst rightly remaining very much of its
own time. Our tragedy, as well as its, may well be to be too late for Mozart;
yet, as Brahms would counsel, there are sometimes worse things than lateness.
Weber’s trio for flute, cello,
and piano, op.63 is an engaging, if sometimes perplexing, oddity. The first
movement proved more fantasia- than sonata-like, likewise the finale. It was
often not entirely clear what the material was doing where it was, nor how their
tonal structure might operate. And yet, even there, there were hints of
something darker, more Freischütz-like.
The second movement scherzo benefited from nicely sprung rhythms and a pleasing
semi-rusticity for its ‘trio’ material. Those two tendencies are more bound
together in a single dance – and here, the music certainly danced. A
beautifully posed ‘Schäfers Klage’ (‘Shepherd’s Lament’) was the highpoint,
subtle in its navigation between Classical and Romantic tendencies – as one
must be in Weber, or Schubert for that matter. It is a truly fascinating
movement, all the more so in so illuminating a performance as this.
For the final work, we turned
to Berg: to the world premiere of Martyn Harry’s arrangement for the
ensemble of the composer’s own Fragments
from ‘Wozzeck’, echoing the celebrated performances of Schoenberg’s Society
for Private Musical Performances. The opening sounded on a knife-edge, between
something frozen and molten lava: not unlike Bartók, perhaps. A labyrinth
opened up before our ears, making us listen and listen anew, to find our way
around something we thought we knew, yet perhaps did not after all. Indeed, for
the first two fragments at least, I listened in more ‘abstract’ fashion, less
heedful of the plot. Clarinet echoes from Berg’s op.5 Four Pieces led us, via Pierrot
lunaire, so it seemed, into a whirling martial vortex: even here, the
Captain seemed more an ‘instrumental character’ than reminiscence of a stage
performance. The flute sang too, duetting, engaging with other instruments,
bringing the ensemble to life – or perhaps to death.
In the second fragment, the
viola came to the front: literally, Subin Lee acting as our instrumental Marie.
Eloquent, even desperate, she (Marie, the viola, the violist?) remained
splendidly collegiate; this was always true chamber music. In some ways, the
music’s context within Berg’s instrumental œuvre came to seem clearer, or at
least newly, even differently, emphasised. Curiously – in the best sense –
enigmatic, it was very much the centre-piece to an aural triptych. Marie
confounded us again, or perhaps Berg did, or Harry: surely, in practice as well
as in theory, all three did. The drowning music with which the final fragment
opens sounded properly hallucinatory, lulling, drawing us in as society draws
in future Wozzecks. The ‘D-minor-ness’ of what followed somehow sounded
underlined, its richness not quite that of nineteenth-century chamber music: perhaps,
rather, of that music remembered, as both cage and liberation for Berg.
Alexander Neubauer’s clarinet deputised for the children’s song to follow:
childlike or childish? Certainly sardonic. The halt to which the music came chilled, as ever.
