Royal Albert Hall
Webern:
Five Orchestral Pieces,
op.10
Mahler:
Symphony no.10: ‘Adagio’
Wagner:
Die
Walküre, Act I
Siegmund – Robert Dean Smith
Sieglinde – Anja Kampe
Hunding – Franz-Josef Selig
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)
One of the joys of writing
regularly – sometimes, just sometimes, I think too regularly – about performance has been the transformation, both
conscious and unconscious, of my scholarship. My most recent published book, After Wagner,
would have been and was originally intended to be quite a different endeavour, had
the example of Stefan
Herheim’s production of Parsifal
and many other performances and productions not intruded and helped shape it
otherwise. Not only did a concluding chapter on staging and performance turn
into a fully fledged third part (of three chapters); perhaps more importantly,
I began to read back such concerns into more ‘work-based’ writing too. Indeed,
the idea for the first chapter, on
Parsifal ‘itself’, initially intended as a self-standing article, arose
from my reflections on another
production of that work: in many ways, a very bad production, however
wonderfully performed, yet one that still had me think about the role of
history and historical thinking in Parsifal.
And so it was with this Prom
concert too. Hearing Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia in Webern’s Five Orchestral Pieces, the opening Adagio to Mahler’s unfinished Tenth
Symphony, and the first act of Die
Walküre had me scribble in my programme booklet, lest I forget, not only
that I should add a specific reference to Webern and Wagner’s unendliche Melodie (‘endless melody’) in
what I am currently writing. I should also explain more clearly, I realised, in
the section I had drafted that afternoon, how the legacy of that idea for so
much twentieth-century music, Mahler’s included, was predicated on a
qualitatively different understanding of ‘melody’ from that which previously had
held sway – and still, in certain quarters, does:
The term
has often been misunderstood; it has little to do, even in Tristan, with the long
phrases of Italian bel canto opera, but
rather refers to the need for each and every note to be expressive, significant
within the whole. Therein surely lies one of Wagner’s most important legacies
to Schoenberg, his pupils Alban Berg and (especially) Anton Webern, and beyond,
to Boulez, Stockhausen, et al. It is
as much a way of understanding the greatest music of the past – usually, yet
not necessarily Austro-German – and of placing works, here the Ring,
within that lineage as it is of offering prescriptions for the ‘music of
the future’ (a term Wagner endowed with often unacknowledged irony).
Whether that thought will make
it into the final cut remains to be seen – my co-editor may be cursing yet
another round of Wagnerian expansion on my part – but it can remain here, at
least, with thanks to the performers and indeed to the Proms.
For, as Carl Dahlhaus pointed
out, when Wagner coined the term, he did so with respect to Beethoven, divining
in the Eroica Symphony the unfolding
and development of a single coherent melody – perhaps not so very different
from what Schoenberg, defying interpreters ever since to make final sense of
his term, called the Idea of a musical work – an idea of an Idea that was
unquestionably familiar and congenial to Webern, if not necessarily to be
identified with his. ‘According to
Wagner,’ Dahlhaus continued, ‘music is “melodic” when every note is eloquent
and expressive; and in contrast to a “narrow melody,” in which the melodic
element is continually interrupted in order to make room for vacuous formulae …
avoidance of cadences is not the nature of the principle, but one of its
consequences.’ Such was what we heard in Salonen’s – and the Philharmonia’s –
Webern and Mahler, at least insofar
as audience bronchial activism and telephone calls permitted. Salonen’s
principal revelation here, at least for me, was Webern’s build-up of harmonic
tension, owing much to Wagner, and in Webern’s case at least to Brahms too, on
the (relatively!) micro- and macro-levels. Not that that was at the expense of
other parameters (as Webern’s fruitfully unfaithful successors would soon term
them), nor at the expense of ‘character’, but rather underlying them.
Hearing
op.10 and the Adagio together, the
one emerging from the other, was a masterstroke: a familiar enough idea in
itself now, largely thanks to fellow composer-conductors such as Michael Gielen
and Pierre Boulez, but not always endowed with such immanent meaning. We heard
what was different too, of course, the particular quality of Webern’s iridescent
sweetness, his dancing: so much more echt-Viennese,
for better or worse, than the ever-alienated Mahler, who perhaps speaks in more
familiar tones yet to us and our condition. (Assuming, that is, we are not all Austro-German
nationalists!) Yet the overwhelming quality of the climaxes, musically
prepared, never appliqué, had much in
common – provided, that is, one listened. How keenly, moreover, one listened to
the intervals and their import at the close of the Mahler, having been led to
do so by Webern – and how keenly would one therefore be led to do so in the
first act of Die Walküre, following
the interval.
Wagner’s storm cleared the Mahlerian
air – just as was happening outside the Albert Hall in ‘real’ life too. Robert
Dean Smith as Siegmund sounded in better voice than I have heard him for quite
some time. Certainly his opening phrase was such as one could have taken
dictation from it, verbal and musical: an implied caesura both from the
expressionism of the first half and from the inhuman dialectics of Das Rheingold, whose precedent was
implied to many of us. Anja Kampe’s Sieglinde answered with almost instrumental
colour – a modern chalumeau, perhaps – which yet did not preclude the keenest
verbal response to Wagner’s text too. As so often in Wagner, as in Mahler and
Webern, emphasis upon one element and excellence therein heighten rather than
detract from other elements. It was clear, very soon, that this woman was damaged
(are not all the characters here?) but also that she was emphatically a human
being and a woman. Philharmonia chamber music – as with Liszt, most of Wagner’s
chamber music is to be found in his orchestral writing – both beguiled and
underlined dramatic tension: Hunding was already present in absentia. The sadness of cellos en masse commented on and extended the message of that
unforgettable cello solo at the beginning of the scene. Wind anticipated the
springtime (Lenz) with which
Sieglinde would later identify Siegmund.
Enter Hunding. Franz-Josef Selig, in one of the greatest performances I have heard from him – which is saying quite something! – endowed Wagner’s Stabreim with all the significance it needs, and which yet it does not always receive. Selig realised and communicated how those consonants interact with the vocal line and indeed with the orchestra. So too, clearly, did Salonen. Unendliche Melodie! The febrile, almost Erwartung-like orchestral cauldron Salonen stirred drew attention to how anti-melodic, in the bel canto sense, these vocal lines can sometimes be – even in this, one of the most lyrical of the Ring acts. Occasionally, Dean Smith sounded a bit tired here, but he recovered – and really made the most of his role as saga narrator, as did Selig. One could almost see the ghostly horses of past, invisible dramas; one certainly heard them. Gurrelieder seemed but a stone’s throw away. Whilst Sieglinde was silent, one could not help but notice that she was. Hunding’s venom – not a quality I have usually associated with the often kindly Selig – was such as to draw still greater attention to the lack of a female voice. Timpani upon his departure, likewise brass response, further darkened the scene.
One of the few doubts I
entertained about the entire performance was the excessive – to me, at any rate
– holding of Dean Smith’s second ‘Wälse’. Still, if that is all I have to say
on the negative side, there should be much rejoicing in Valhalla. Kampe’s
return incited that turn to the vernal at which she had previously hinted,
Philharmonia woodwind especially responsive – and generative. How she spun her
line, verbally and musically: she
might almost have been taking lessons from Wagner in Opera and Drama on the poetic-musical period. Perhaps, indeed, she
had. It certainly was not long before her delivery sent shivers down this
particular spine. That identification of Siegmund, as yet with ‘Lenz’ took
place in more of a hothouse setting than often one hears, testament doubtless
not only to Salonen’s long experience with Tristan,
but also to the re-examined standpoint from which he is now addressing the Ring. Release when she named him
Siegmund was as much musical as – well, whatever else you want to call it.
Preparation had proved just as assured as in Mahler and Webern, and had
doubtless, quite rightly, been coloured by Wagner’s posthumous history in their
work. This, then, proved to be
a performance both magnificent and fruitful. Salonen would seem to have come to
the Ring in earnest at just the
right, or at least a right, time –
for him, for me, and, I hope, for you too. We shall see, or rather hear, over
the next few years as his Ring
gathers pace both in concert and in the opera house.
