St
George’s Parish Church, Sternberg, and Alban Berg Saal, Carinthian Music
Academy, Ossiach
Berg:
Four Pieces for piano and
clarinet, op.5
Schumann:
Piano Quartet in E-flat
major, op.47
Schubert:
Octet in F major, D 803
Alban Berg Ensemble Wien (Sylvia Careddu (flute), Alexander Neubauer (clarinet), Ariane Haering (piano), Sebastian Gürtler, Régis Bringolf (violins), Subin Lee (viola), Florian Berner (cello)), Rya Yoshimura (bassoon), Peter Dorfmayr (horn), Ivan Kitanović (double bass)
This year’s BERGfrühling closed
in style with two final-day concerts: one at the lovely little Parish Church of
St George, Sternberg/Strmec (in this part of Carinthia, one is very close
indeed to Slovenia), the other back at Ossiach Abbey, now the home of the
Carinthian Music Academy. At the former, we heard Dvořák’s Quintet, op.77, the
little church full to the rafters. I found a place up in the organ loft, from
where I could look – and listen – down to an equally lovely performance. I was
struck immediately by the richness and sheer physicality of the string tone,
the first movement, like its successors, proceeding at a well chosen tempo,
with a fine sense of motivic cohesion and harmonic impetus. It thus perhaps
sounded closer to Beethoven than one often hears, and was certainly none the
worse for that. Not that ‘Bohemian’ lyricism was lost, far from it. Indeed, ‘local’
dance rhythms and melodies were transmuted into something more universal,
nowhere more so than in the scherzo. Darker undertones were given their due,
especially by the viola and cello. The melancholy lyricism of the third
movement was permitted to speak, even to be savoured, without indulgence. An
intangibly – sometimes tangibly too! – integrative finale again relied on
motivic cohesion, or rather on its communication to round things off in duly
good-natured style. Then it was out of the church for a little tasting of local
produce.
Back in Ossiach, Berg,
Schumann, and Schubert concluded the festival. I do not think I have heard a better
performance of the Four Pieces for clarinet and piano, op.5 than this, from
Alexander Neubauer and Ariane Haering, both musicians clearly in their element.
The first piece exuded Schoenbergian lyricism, horizontally and vertically:
paradoxically perhaps – or not – given its tendency to aphorism. (Schoenberg
could write aphoristically too, of course. When he and Berg do, it is striking
how little they sound like Webern!) Weighting and tone quality sounded just
right, an integral part of the work’s performance. A more fragmentary Busoni –
the Busoni of, say, the Sarabande and
Cortège – came to mind in the second piece, its line as long, or so it seemed,
as those of the Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet heard the previous day, yet endlessly
variegated too. The third piece, ‘Sehr rasch’ was sardonic, yet lightly rather
than aggressively so: a Mahler movement telescoped, not unlike Webern perhaps
in conception, and yet still very different in practice. It was a very
different radicalism we heard in the final piece, imbued with an unmistakeably
Bergian nostalgia, and yet related nevertheless, almost mystically, to Wozzeck too. Violent and serene, there
were dialectics aplenty here.
Schumann’s Piano Quartet seemed
to take leave from late Beethoven, prior to release in the exposition proper.
If hardly carefree, it nevertheless spoke of joy in its post-Mozartian lot.
(Given the key, E-flat major, one can hardly fail to think of certain Mozart
works in that same key: KV 482, 493, etc.) Not that we were ever in any doubt
that this was Schumann, of course, especially when it came to the piano writing
– and performance, but there is perhaps something more Classical, not least in its
very particular tension between major and minor, than in much of his music.
Beethoven inevitably came to mind in the scherzo, but Mendelssohn too, for its
opening proved truly featherlight, whilst lacking nothing in harmonic grounding.
Its fantastical paths spoke unmistakeably, though, of a darker, more troubled
woodland. Over in the twinkling of any eye, it prepared us for the necessary
contrast of the Andante cantabile,
ardent lyricism to the fore. A few intonational lapses could readily be
overlooked for chamber music with such a heart. The final fizzed as
post-Mozartian Sekt: necessary
release. There were darker passages too, of course, a battle still to be won,
yet we knew that it would be.
Additional woodwind caught one’s
ear from the off in Schubert’s Octet. Here, aptly for so welcoming a festival,
we found ourselves in the world of superior Hausmusik.
The first movement offered space and dynamism. For all that one can and should
delight in this music, it needs direction, which it certainly received.
Likewise the Adagio never dragged,
whilst remaining very much an Adagio
in character. There was darkness at its heart, but light too. The scherzo
gloried in its evocation of rusticity (not the same thing as rusticity itself!)
Like the first trio in the previous day’s Mozart Clarinet Quintet, the trio
both relaxed and intensified, Florian Berner’s cello a guiding presence here in
its counterpoint. The theme and variations developed with purpose, a rebuke to
those – there are still many – who underestimate classical variation form
(perhaps excepting the Diabelli Variations).
All musicians shone individually, yet, more important still, as an ensemble. There
was more post-Mozartian delight, but also pathos and tumult in the minor mode. The
strange minuet proved melancholic without exaggeration, preparing the way for
the extraordinary introduction to the finale, imbued with foreboding, close to
Beethoven, yet never quite to be identified with him. The main body of the
movement emerged as if a storm had passed, with the colours one might thereby
expect. There were reminders, yes, of what had passed, yet, as with Schumann,
it was clear where we were heading. And once we had reached that destination,
what was more fitting than to round off with a little Johann Strauss, the Kaiser-Walzer, as arranged by
Schoenberg? A delightful end to a delightful festival.
