Philharmonie, Cologne
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| Images: Holger Talinski |
Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne
François-Xavier Roth (conductor)
All
music once was new: uncontroversial statement, one might have thought,
however much one sometimes imagines having heard its particular strains before. ‘Es
klang so alt und war doch so neu!’ as Hans Sachs muses to Walther of the latter’s
melody. New music needs, after all, to be performed if not as if it were old
music, then with at least as much commitment and understanding, both ‘in itself’
and of whence it has come. A celebrated concert, entirely Beethoven’s music,
with no fewer than four world premieres, took place on 22 December 1808 at the
Theater an der Wien, Beethoven both playing and conducting. How might we have
heard it? We can never know – and probably should not want to, not least on
account of what seems, given but a single rehearsal, to have been an unsurprisingly
poor orchestral performance. We faint-hearted would-be-modernists can only marvel,
however, at a programme that ran: Symphony no.6 (premiere); Ah, perfido; Mass in C major, ‘Gloria’;
Piano Concerto no.4 (premiere); Symphony no.5 (premiere); Mass in C major, ‘Sanctus
and Benedictus’; solo piano improvisation; Choral Fantasia (premiere).
There
have been occasional repetitions of the programme of this particular ‘academy concert’,
which experience will of course be entirely different from that of its first
audience. Cologne, however, has presented something quite different for the
composer’s anniversary year, a ‘new Beethoven Academy’, entitled ‘Alleyn
Freyheit: Eine Beethoven-Séance’. The city’s Gürzenich Orchestra,
Pierre-Laurent-Aimard, and François-Xavier Roth, invited us to this séance of
freedom with what, through the offices of infidelity, may actually have proved
in some senses a more faithful or at least imaginative recreation of its
spirit. We were told nothing of the music to be performed other than its
composers – and that pieces by Isabel Mundry and Francesco Filidel would receive
their first performances. What we had heard would be revealed to us only at the
end, on a programme insert to be collected as we left the hall. With that in
mind, I have uniquely placed details at the close rather than the opening of
this review, following not only that chronology but also that of Debussy in
naming his piano Préludes. The
impatient or merely curious are of course free to skip the following
paragraphs, but I thought it might be more valuable to record my impressions as
they came to me rather than to edit with inevitable hindsight. I thus took notes
during the performance and shall make do with as little editing as possible, doing
little more than turn them into full sentences (usually). The reader will have
to take my word for it that I correctly identified Beethoven’s scores and
matched composers to music. works by Helmut Lachenmann’s and Bernd Alois Zimmermann I knew; the others I could not possibly. However, after
a little metaphorical head-scratching, I worked out that Isabel Mundry’s music –
orchestral fragments, as I learned later on – was interspersed with Beethoven
and Lachenmann. For what it is worth, I have also refrained from reading
interviews and notes in the actual programme, although I shall certainly take a
look after posting this.
A
large orchestra, soloist, and conductor having assembled onstage, it was
perhaps surprising – although what here would qualify as unsurprising – for the
concert to open to the strains of the Moonlight
Sonata, yet from afar. It made sense, though, if this were to be a
retrospective appreciation of the composer, for this was not only from afar. A
second pianist and Aimard began to collaborate with what we had heard –
recorded, or was it? and for the soloist as such to assume his proper role. Immediately
memories, ears, the imagination started to play tricks – as did orchestral
percussion. Musicians turning, bowing their heads, and so on acknowledged the
billing of choreographer Jörg Weinöhl. The orchestra grew, though it took longer
for relatively conventional – non-extended? – techniques to be employed. There
was no doubting, however, the éclat of Lachenmann’s contribution, nor of the
orchestra’s performance, gradation of attacks and resonance both precise and
visceral, waves of sound passing across the orchestra so as to send shivers
down the spine.
A
change in lighting (Bernd Purkrabek) heralded something different: a new piece,
so it seemed, although not for long. [This, to avoid confusion, was the second
of Mundry’s Fragments, Lachenmann having followed Beethoven.] It used both
pianos and orchestra, calling on six horns and two oboes to stand; at least the
choreography did. Then suddenly, without warning came something familiar yet
strange: the introduction to the first movement of Beethoven’s First Symphony.
Or was it? So disoriented had my expectations become that I found myself asked the
occasional question about Beethoven’s scoring. (‘Did he really write that
phrase for the flute?’ is one I recall, and afterwards recall Beethoven having
been criticised for supposedly excessive use of wind in this work.) I think I
was wrong to have done so, but to be enabled to listen critically in that way
concerning music I allegedly know so well was a fascinating experience in
itself. It was an unfashionably large orchestra we heard for this symphony, or
however much of it we were going to hear – and all the better for it: it had
bite and heft, colour and…
…
then the light changed, downward orchestral glissandi were heard, and Aimard
and his page-turner solemnly left the stage. So too did a number of other
musicians from the orchestra, those six horns and two oboes included. This
mysterious Mundry (?) interlude – was it a continuation of what we had heard
previously? – led us to another Beethoven introduction, that of the Fourth
Symphony, darkly expectant. This time, it was my sense of pitch that I did not
quite trust. Was it at modern pitch? A nagging doubt remained. After all, I
told myself as the exposition progressed, context is all: this means something
different here and now, if indeed it ‘means’ anything at all. Departed wind
players reappeared on the balcony above to signal to us friends nicht dieser Töne, but something again
unexpected: the transition to the finale of the Fifth; and then the opening of
the portals of heaven itself. Those trombones! The rest of the orchestra too,
of course, not least the excellent Cologne timpanist, but those trombones: what
a thrilling Beethovenian moment it was once more, ‘authentic’ in the best
sense. I could after all be excited by this music again when conducted by
someone other than Furtwängler, Klemperer, or Barenboim. (There are others, I
admit, but a list would be beside the point right here.) Moreover, I could do
so without the tonal preparation of the rest of the symphony, which I should
otherwise have insisted was necessary. How long, I wondered, would it go on?
When would it be transformed into something else? The scherzo reprise came and
went; heaven reopened. Wind were again especially prominent, hinting perhaps at
the contemporary music – to Beethoven – of French Revolutionary processionals. Was
I merely romanticising? If I were, why should I not, given a tradition dating
back at least so far as ETA Hoffmann? On this occasion, at least, we reached
the end, thus signalling the interval.
Upon
returning to the hall, it was clear that some audience members had left. My
initial reaction was to wonder why, but perhaps just as valid a question would
be ‘why not?’ It is difficult, for whatever this may be worth, to imagine that
some did not in 1808 – and their departure did no harm to anyone. It was not
the full orchestra that was back on stage, although Aimard was back. The
opening piece [the fifth and final of Mundry’s Fragments] played with piano and orchestral response. Cellists,
percussionists, others shone in ways traditional and not. [Alas my memory
deserts me here with regard to precisely what.]
We were invited, even compelled, to listen and indeed to watch. Was that
Aimard playing a ‘light’ version of Beethoven? It took me a few seconds to
realise that such lightness, as ever with the Bagatelles, was largely deceptive; hearing them at the same time as
other music, seeing them at the same time as other actions was undeniably
strange. The orchestra, intriguingly, seemed at times almost asleep and needed
to be roused.
‘Warmer’
lighting signalled an impending change; as if by magic, we were part way
through the first movement of the Emperor
Concerto, somewhere in the development, leading us to the recapitulation. Aimard
offered some delightful leaning into phrases, blinding clarity too, not least
in trills reminiscent of Pollini in his prime. Once the movement had come to a
close, a further dialogue between piano and orchestra began, piano seemingly
querying the chordal responses it received, responses that nevertheless led it –
and us – away from Beethoven, whether we liked it or not, initial memories
disintegrating. This different voice fashioned music to metamorphose into a new
concertante work: hectic, rhythmically insistent, playing on the ruins of
tonality with a fine sense of the sardonic that occasionally brought Prokofiev
to mind. Childhood and even childish memories, clockwork machinations, other,
darker remembrances of things past or imagined fascinated in a veritable riot
of invention, after which Aimard left the stage. The second movement of the
Seventh Symphony followed, as compelling a processional as ever, after which
Aimard and missing orchestral players returned. The orchestra stood and the
lights went down. There was, notably, no applause, although it seemed like a
moment when there might have been. What was Aimard, seated, about to play?
It
was the final movement [ultimately only part of it] of the final piano sonata,
op.111, exalted yet also strangely exultant. Oddly, given the elements of choreography
throughout, I started to wonder about the silhouetted organist’s head,
sometimes still, sometimes moving, I saw to the side of the stage. Was it, too,
part of the performance? It was difficult to see how, yet once seen, I could
never quite forget my wondering. The music led without a break into something
new – and yet perhaps not quite so new. By this stage, I had forgotten that
Zimmermann was on the programme, and it took me again a little while to realise
that this music, with its unnervingly oscillating opening, an oscillation seemingly
retained yet transformed into a dialectic between precision and vagueness, was
indeed what it was. So this was why an
organist had appeared: for the horrific fragments of musical remembrance – how apt!
– of Photoptosis. Yet there was no ‘O
Freunde…’ moment; the finale to the Ninth had been revoked, as in Mann’s Doctor Faustus, or at least averted. Truly
this was a nightmare from which we might never awake. Parsifal, The Nutcracker,
and, for some reason the most unsettling, Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy took their bows, but for what? Did they, did the
Bach and plainchant, ‘mean’ anything any more? Do we not hear them all now in
the shadow of Beethoven, which is to say of our construction(s) of ‘Beethoven’?
Does not all music, old and new, Beethoven’s included, stand in that shadow? As
if it had not been with us all along, darkness fell.
Isabel Mundry: Orchestral
Fragments to Beethoven I-V (2020, world premiere), interspersed with (and on
occasion played simultaneously with):
Beethoven:
Piano Sonata no.14 in C-sharp minor, op.27 no.2, 1st movement
(1801)
Lachenmann:
Tableau (1988/9)
Beethoven:
Symphony no.1 in C major, op.21, 1st movement to bar 109 (1800);
Symphony no.4 in B-flat major, op.60, 1st movement to bar 333 (1806);
Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67, 3rd movement from bar 324 and 4th
movement (1804-8); Bagatelles,
op.119: nos 7,9, 10, and 11 (1820-22); Piano Concerto no.5 in E-flat major,
op.73, 1st movement from bar 258 (1809-10)
Francesco Filidei: Quasi una bagatella,
for piano and orchestra (2019, world premiere)
Beethoven: Symphony
no.7 in A major, op.92, 2nd movement (1811-12); Piano Sonata no.32
in C minor, op.111, 2nd movement to Variation IV (1821-2)
Zimmermann: Photoptosis
(1968)
