Kammermusiksaal, Berlin
Haydn:
Symphony no.22 in E-flat
major, ‘The Philosopher’
Martinů:
Double Concerto for two
string orchestras, piano, and timpani
Ligeti:
Hamburg
Concerto, for horn and
chamber orchestra
Haydn:
Symphony no.103 in E-flat
major, ‘Drum-Roll’
Holger Groschopp (piano)
Stefan Dohr (horn)
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
François-Xavier Roth (conductor)
If anything can offer light in
dark, dark times, it is music: not only music, but music such as this,
performed such as this. Goodness knows if, let alone when, an Englishman such
as I will be able to live in Berlin again once this stay comes to an end. As
things stand, it feels that the lamps are going out all over the world, if less
in this part of continental Europe than elsewhere. Shall we see them lit again
in our lifetime? Who knows? Amidst such gloomy, frankly despairing thoughts,
this concert from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and François-Xavier Roth proved
just the tonic, even if it rendered all the more glaring the gulf between the cosmopolitan
civilisation of Haydn and the way so much of the world has turned.
What could be more singular
than Haydn’s Symphony no.22? Has any other symphony in recorded history had the
scoring of strings, two French horns, and two cor anglais (if one prefers,
English horns)? That particular singularity one noticed—how could one not?—from
the outset, perhaps enhanced, even amplified by having violins, violas, and
wind standing. But the processional quality to the ‘Adagio’ first movement, here
as well-judged and vivid as the pilgrims’ march in Harold en Italie, is ultimately the more unusual, the more
fascinating; and so it was here. Horns, French and English, engaged in dialogue
as if this were versicle and response. Suspensions told, ‘naturally’, quite
without exaggeration. Above all, the music developed, meaningfully and
movingly: so long as one listened. The second movement, marked ‘Presto’, burst
forth in bright, vigorous necessity: hungry in the best way, nourishing too.
Above all—and how sorely this was needed for this listener at this time—it made
me smile: not in the condescending ‘Papa Haydn’ way most of us have now
consigned to the rubbish bin, but inspired by the invention and humanity not
only of Haydn but of these wonderful, international musicians. ‘Revelatory’ is
a word overused, but I cannot resist it to describe the MCO and Roth in the
minuet: taken one-to-a-bar and it felt just right. The balance between courtly
and something more rustic, yet still cultivated, once again felt spot on.
Slight relaxation for the trio seemed inherent rather than imposed. Then came
the finale, ‘Presto’ as only Haydn can be. Roth took it fast, yes, yet never
harried the music. Natural horns crackled; cor anglais echoed; strings provided
the ultimate engine of development as rigorous as it was joyful. Truly this was
music-making to lift the spirits.
Bohuslav Martinů’s Double Concerto for two string
orchestras, piano, and timpani—not ‘strong orchestras’, as my original typo had
it, though on reflection...—comes from similarly dark times to ours, composed in
Switzerland in 1938, the final page of the manuscript completed on the day the
Munich Agreement was signed. It is difficult not to read the turbulence and
tragedy of world events into the music; yesterday, for me at least, it proved
impossible, although by the same token, it reminded me that such human
flourishing should never be reduced to external influence and ultimately can
never and will never be crushed. The first movement sounded urgent, incisive,
troubled, controlled, its counterpart in Stravinsky’s subsequent Symphony in Three Movements very much Martinů’s
offspring. Procedures and sounds evoked Bartók too: another salutary reminder
of opposition to fascism. Anger was retained and transmuted in the second
movement, accompanied now by the deepest of grief, whether voiced by piano (Holger
Groschopp), strings, or both. How that grief told in present circumstances! The
finale renewed the virtues of the opening movement, taking the forward in a jagged,
mordant dance of death, culminating in grim apotheosis. Tragedy, then, in every
sense of the word.
And yet, onward we must go,
however bleak and dark our prospects may seem. What better way to make that
attempt than with the twin inventions of Ligeti and Haydn? Stefan Dohr joined
an ensemble of outstanding MCO players, four natural horns (José Cicente
Castelló, Jonathan Wegloop, José Miguel Asensi Marti, and Lionel Pointet) among
them, for Ligeti’s Hamburg Concerto,
outstandingly led as ever by Roth. As Haydn laid before us an almost Newtonian
tonal universe—not for nothing do many consider The
Creation his supreme masterpiece of masterpieces—so Ligeti went beyond,
to genuinely new discoveries, explaining: ‘In
this piece I experimented with very unusual non-harmonic sound spectra. … By
providing each horn or group of horns with different fundamentals I was able to
construct novel sound spectra from the resulting overtones. These harmonies,
which had never been used before, sound “weird” in relation to harmonic
spectra. I developed both “weird” consonant and dissonant harmonies, with
complex beats.’ The controlled mystery of the opening ‘Praeludium’—perhaps in
its way a late-twentieth-century ‘Representation of Chaos’—seemed to tell us so
much of what the work would be about. Moreover every note, ‘weird’ or not,
told, as it might have done in Haydn, Webern, so many others from the great
tradition with which Ligeti had far from entirely broken. The second of seven
short movements, ‘Signale, Tanz, Choral,’ suggested an almost Benjaminian sense
of play, first between horns, then between other instruments, not least the
basset horns specifically chosen by the composer for enrichment and blend of
sounds. A truly mesmerising solo duet from Dohr announced the three inner
movements: ‘Aria, Askak, Hoketus’, ‘Solo, Intermezzo, Mixtur, Kanon’, and ‘Spectra’.
An ensemble of untold yet controlled giddiness led us by the hand toward that
fifth movement of near-Messiaensque sublimity. The closing ‘Capriccio’ and ‘Hymnus’
lived up fully to their names and yet equally expanded our understanding of
them and their possibilities. For an encore, Dohr treated us to some of the
finest playing and musicianship I
have ever heard on any instrument, in a riveting Messiaen ‘Appel interstellaire’
from Des Canyons aux étoiles.
And so, we returned to Haydn
and to E-flat major for the Drum-Roll
Symphony, his penultimate, written more than thirty years later than the first
symphony we had heard. Just as Ligeti’s work had, in context, picked up the
importance of horns from Haydn, now Haydn picked up from Martinů aspecial role
for timpani. Matthias Kelemen, beguilingly inventive without a hint of
narcissism for his Intrada, was responded to in kind by cellos and others: a
not dissimilar relationship of versicle and response from The Philosopher. Indeed, the first-movement introduction as a whole
proved uncommonly dramatic, finding form in that drama as much as drama in that
form. The exposition likewise presented Haydn both as single-minded and multi-voiced,
an example for us all. Contrapuntal density and similar direction characterised
a development section as full of surprises as the moment of return—whether one ‘knew’
or not. In the second movement—no sense whatsoever here of this being a slow
movement—Roth’s swift tempo and lightness of texture did not in any sense
preclude depth or exultancy. It was full of colour and delight, even—especially?—for
someone such as me, who hears it so differently in his head. Matthew Truscott’s
violin solo delighted equally; so too did a purpose that we only call
Beethovenian because, quite frankly, it is, however much avant la lettre. I learned much from this and can say no better
than that. The minuet witnessed a properly generative balance between the straightforward
and sophisticated, echoed yet far from banally repeated in its trio. The controlled—that
word again—helter-skelter of the finale offered kinship to Ligeti and a glint
in the aural eye far from dissimilar, for both were surely the most European of
composers. Haydn’s joy brought tears to my ears for a number of reasons. Catharsis,
then, in humanism.
