Kammermusiksaal
Helmut
Lachenmann: Marche fatale (2016-17); Berliner Kirschblüten (2016-17)
Toshio
Hosokawa: Birds Fragments II (1989)
Peter
Eötvös: Secret Kiss (2018, German premiere)
Hosokowa:
Birds
Fragments III (1955)
Eötvös:
Sonata
per sei (2006, German
premiere)
Ryoko Aoki (Noh-performer)
Mayumi Miyata (shō)
Ulrich Löffler (piano)
Helen Bledsoe (flute)
Dirk Rothbrust (percussion)
Ensemble Musikfabrik
Peter Eötvös (conductor)
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| Images: © Adam Janisch |
The metaphor of the journey has
been so overworked, so
debased, that it will often now elicit little more than a groan. Perhaps,
though, there was something to be retained, lightly, even playfully, from the
idea of composers and their music – and its performance – travelling in different
directions here, in a splendid concert from Cologne’s Ensemble Musikfabrik.
Helmut Lachenmann might seem initially
here to have travelled quite some distance indeed from the composer we know
and, in many cases, love. However, as Schoenberg once remarked, ‘a
Chinese poet is certainly not only someone who sounds Chinese. Rather, he says
something else as well!’ Lachenmann’s Marche
fatale acquired a cult following – I account myself
a member – last year, when, in its new orchestral version, it heralded
Stuttgart’s New Year. It was originally composed for piano, though, which is
how we heard it on this occasion, from Ensemble Musikfabrik’s Ulrich Löffler.
That in itself made me listen, re-listen, to material with which I had perhaps
become over-familiar. (Is that not what Lachenmann bids us do all the time with
the debris of German Romanticism?) Oddly, and perhaps only because I knew the
orchestral version first, the piano piece sounded more akin to a piano
reduction: again, an interesting challenge for my ears. But then, I started to
wonder: was not the grit in the oyster here clearer; were not the dissonances
harsher; was the music not more evidently fractured? Was this not, in a strong
sense, the ‘original’, and what did that mean? Subversion of Liszt’s most
celebrated Liebestraum seemed more
pronounced. The close certainly had more of the abyss to it. And if I had my
doubts about Löffler’s rubato at times, it made me listen – and rendered those
fractures more pronounced. Again, surely the point.
Berliner Kirschblüten
came as all the more of a surprise, since I neither knew it nor its antecedents
(for instance, the 2000 Sakura-Variations
on a Japanese folk song, and its 2008 expansion, Sakura mit Berliner Luft). An opening that can sound sentimental
immediately has one question one’s own orientalism. Is there anything one can
do about it? Perhaps not, but at least it alerted me to the problem in time for
the works by Toshio Hosokawa. Then the song from Paul Lincke’s operetta, whose
jazzy deconstruction was more than welcome. As with Marche fatale, this was unmistakeably Lachenmann’s mind at work. He
was taking a walk on another side, perhaps, but was that not all the more
Adornian? Yes, most likely, but it was enjoyable too. Here, the cavernous abyss
at the close drew comparison with that of Marche
fatale, but was longer and, most likely, deeper, resonance and dissolution
two sides of the same coin.
Next came the second of Hosokawa’s Birds
Fragments, for shō – used, most likely not coincidentally, in Lachenmann’s Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern – and
percussion. An opening invocation, with strokes on bass drum and piercing cries
from crotale, provided in its continuation ritualistic (I think, but am I
orientalising?) backdrop for shō chords that drew one in, had one listen to
every pitch, to the movement of lines: not entirely unlike Marche fatale, in fact. Its form and duration seemed to me
perfectly judged; nor could there be any doubting the distinction of
performances from Mayumi
Miyata and Dirk Rothbrust. After the interval, in the third, for shō
and flute (Helen Bledsoe), the same could certainly be said of performances and
form. The flute part, first alto flute, then piccolo, sounded here more akin to
commentary upon shō
processional, that commentary then susceptible to transformative influence; or
so it seemed in terms of a drama that perhaps approached our notions of
music-theatre.
Music-theatre
in a more emphatic sense had been heard in between, in Peter Eötvös’s Secret Kiss, for reciter (the splendid
Ryoko Aoki) and ensemble, here receiving its German premiere. An opening
percussion invocation forged a connection with Hosokawa – as well as readying
the audience for the world of Noh. Aoki’s recitation of the text (from
Alessandro Baricco’s novel, Seta, in
Oriza Hirata’s Japanese translation) moved between speech and song, the
ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and percussion) inviting further,
more or less inevitable, comparison with Pierrot
lunaire. And indeed, it was just as much in the instrumental lines that narrative
weight and content seemed to lie, all exquisitely crafted yet dramatically involving.
Ominous, unsettling, beguiling, radiant: this distilled tale of a nineteenth-century
Frenchman travelling to Japan to learn secrets of silk manufacture, of subsequent
orientalist enchantment, and of something we might call death, duly enchanted
and, moreover, duly invited us to question its and our journey.
The
programme closed with Eötvös’s Sonata per
sei, only now, thirteen years late, receiving its German premiere, again
conducted by the composer. Written for two pianos, three percussionists, and
sampler keyboard, it inevitably invites comparison with Bartók’s Sonata for two pianos and percussion, as
well, perhaps, as with the wondrous spatial acrostics of Boulez’s sur Incises. Bartók certainly seemed to
be echoes in the entry of the first percussionist, as well as in the pianists’
first entry. That did not, however, ultimately seem to be the point, the
sampler reminding us that, certain formal correspondences notwithstanding – was
that at some point a Bartók-like arch? – Eötvös’s procedures were quite
different. Groups – that is, the keyboard players and percussionists –
sometimes functioned more or less as one, sometimes very much as individuals.
Overall form strongly echoed, without quite replicating, movements of a classical
sonata and their ‘character’. As with the rest of the programme, I was left
wanting more: a sign, then, of a journey well travelled.
