Salzburg Festival (7) - Three Sisters, 24 August 2025

Felsenreitschule

Irina – Dennis Orellana
Masha – Cameron Shahbazi
Natasha – Kangmin Justin Kim
Tuzenbach – Mikołaj Trąbka
Vershinin – Ivan Ludlow
Andrei – Jacques Imbrailo
Kulygin – Andrei Valentiy
Anfisa – Aleksander Teliga
Solyony – Anthony Robin Schneider
Doctor – Jörg Schneider
Rode – Seiyoung Kim
Fedotik – Kristofer Lundin
Mother – Eva Christine Just
Protopopov – Henry Diaz
Girl – Johanna Lehfeldt

Director – Evgeny Titov
Set designs – Rufus Didwiszus
Costumes – Emma Ryott
Lighting – Urs Schönebaum
Sound design – Paul Jeukendrup
Dramaturgy – Christian Arseni  

Klangforum Wien

Maxime Pascal, Alphonse Cemin (conductors)

Images: © SF/Monika Rittershaus
Masha (Cameron Shahbazi), Solyony (Anthony Robin Schneider), Vershinin (Ivan Ludlow)

Chekhov operas are distinctly thin on the ground. I am not sure that is a bad thing. Adaptations that end up being little more – at least dramatically – than abridgements with music are rarely the most convincing of operas. There are splendid cases of plays more or less set to music and thereby transformed, but they are not especially common—and with good reason. Whatever one might say of Pelléas et Mélisande, it is an exceedingly uncommon work (with apologies to Mr Kipling). Some transformations much more than that, of course, yet remain strangely misunderstood. I cannot help but think, one year on from his death, of Alexander Goehr’s Brechtian reworking of King Lear, Promised End. Yet cases in which a work is truly rethought as a musical drama are fewer than one might hope for. Peter Eötvös’s first opera Three Sisters (Три сестры/Tri Sestry) triumphantly succeeds in that respect and in others, not only ‘in itself’ as a work but also in this estimable Salzburg production, a fine cast and Klangforum Wien conducted by Maxime Pascal (and Alphonse Cemin offstage) and directed by Evgeny Titov. 

I was interested to learn after the event that librettist and dramaturge Claus H. Henneberg had initially presented Eötvös with ‘a pared-down version … able to offer us an overview of the play’s dense content in just a few dozen pages’. It was, Eötvös went on, ‘a respectable piece of work. But as I read it, I realised that this was absolutely not the kind of thing I wanted. His endeavours to abridge Chekhov’s play had robbed it of all his drama. The subtle tensions between its characters had been completely lost. The drama had become empty.’ To the great credit of both composer and librettist, they started again, Henneberg affording Eötvös ‘complete freedom to change any aspect of his libretto at my own discretion, even if it meant writing a completely new text for the work I wanted to compose.’ That is what happened with ‘an utterly different approach’ that instead focused on different ‘sequences’ of events in the play, organised around three of the characters, Irina, Andrei, and Masha. It worked – and works – both as a drama in itself and indeed as a metadrama on the original Three Sisters, without ever falling into the trap of mostly being the latter. How so? Partly through skilful re-adaptation by Henneberg; partly through the drama’s coming into being as a musical drama, music integral to the text just as it would be in Mozart, Wagner, Debussy, Berg, or any other opera composer worthy of the name; and partly, of course, through staging and performance. Ultimately faithful to Chekhov through infidelity, the adaptation presents human relationships, missed opportunities, their detail, and their sadness, reimagined with great power and humanity, in and through the bleakness. 

Olga (Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen), Masha, Irina (Dennis Orellana)

Indeed, the opening Prologue impressed upon us not only the bleakness – though it did, in ineffably ‘Russian’ sound – but also the way suffering becomes memory, as the three sisters (not, be it noted, identical to the persons of the ensuing three Sequences) imagined themselves about, once more, to start again. There was an unmistakeably – if impossible to define – ‘Russian’ sound, both from the musicians in the pit and from the offstage orchestra. It complemented, was complemented by, and seemed almost to be in a state of co-creation with the memories turned to Felsenreitschule stone of Rufus Didwiszus’s set designs, as well as what we heard. And in one important sense, despite it all, this was a starting point, for the opera, as we moved first to Irina, the Baron, the fire and so on, leaving that first sequence with the Baron’s death—thus returning us to where we started, undermining it, and preparing the way for a different sequence. Triangular relationships – for Eötvös, the ‘primary construct’ for play and opera alike’ – characterise what we see and hear, transforming before us, but also offering a foundation for the composer’s dramaturgically generative use of triadic harmonies, ‘constantly changing … internal structure’. A post-Webern world of intervallic construction, even constructivism, merges with a sort of modern (in some ways, even pre-modern) world of Affekt, whilst instrumentation mirrors and contributes to characterisation: Olga ‘represented’ – to use Eötvös’s own term – by flute, Irina by oboe, Masha by clarinet, and Andrei by bassoon; likewise their spouses, in variants of those instrumental timbres, Natasha, for instance by saxophone, related to, yet perhaps mocking or holding in outrage Andrei’s essence. ‘Representation’ is not a static matter, of course; one follows their instrumental lines just as one does their words, vocal lines, and gestures. That is the performing text—and it is far from a reduction. 

The element of Japanese theatre often strong in Eötvös’s music, overtly dramatic or otherwise, is also pervasive here, not least in the use of male singers for all parts. Eötvös settled on the idea having originally intended to cast conventionally, then deciding to have all roles sung by women, an option rejected since he thought it would ‘come across as fetishism’. Here, the very different vocal qualities of the different counter-tenors, nonetheless retaining adherence to a certain vocal type that can suggest abstraction, felt as if it were performing a role not entirely dissimilar to use of masks. (Eötvös wrote the three sisters’ parts so they could be sung by men or women, but had his preference for male singers confirmed by experience.) Titov’s staging took a different route, rubble and memory all around, highly ‘dramatic’ in a more conventional Western sense, yet also alert to moments of humour, crisis, and much else. Indeed, homing in on the expressive and dramatic content of particular aspects of the sequences fulfilled a quasi-musical role of its own. There was something deeply moving, for instance, to Andrei’s difficult emergence from his fat suit, like a butterfly from its (in this case cruelly imposed) chrysalis, albeit shorn of hope at either end. Olga’s celebrated observation that her brother had grown fat and slothful had marked him until now (in his sequence, if not previously). Was this now an opportunity for him to sing or at least to lament freely? Yes and no. He was naked, literally and figuratively, onstage; inevitably, though, it changed nothing. We could not be in the business of happy endings. 

Kulygin (Andri Valentiy), Vershinin, Irina, Masha,
Tuzenbach (Mikołaj Trąbka), Doctor (Jörg Schneider)

None of this would have amounted to much without a set of excellent, often outstanding musical – and acted – performances. Klangforum Wien, with its two conductors, led us into a musical labyrinth that, whilst hardly Boulezian, certainly showed many points of contact, following the mini-series ‘À Pierre’, which had finished the afternoon prior to this performance. Pascal’s timing, whether of moments, sections, or the greater span of the constructed drama, had a sense of ‘rightness’ to it: both in itself and in combination with Titov’s staging. Balance, atmosphere, momentum, and magical moments of reflection all contributed to the greater whole. 

As our first ‘featured’ sister, Irina, Dennis Orellana offered a deeply sympathetic, emotionally complex reading, setting the stall, as it were, for further explorations and in fine counterpoint with Mikołaj Trąbka’s ardent Baron Tuzenbach. Cameron Shahbazi’s alluring, compelling Masha – neither quite drag-like or entirely un-drag-like – and the poignantly wise (if only up to a point) Olga of Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen were equally well drawn, both in themselves and in the constantly shifting ‘triangles’ of the work. Kangmin Justin Kim’s increasingly outrageous Natasha, at one point pulling her lover Protopopov (Henry Diaz) along with a leash, was perhaps all the more monstrous, all the more hateful than in Chekhov. Jacques Imbrailo’s Andrei both deserved better and yet did not, given a reading that helped explain, rather than simply depict, his personal tragedy. Aleksander Teliga made an outsize impression as the Prozorovs’ old nurse. Ivan Ludlow’s Vershinin did much to convey a hinterland that in context could often only be suggested. All contributed to the success of a production which deserves to be seen elsewhere. Let us hope other houses will take it up, thereby proving more than a melancholic memory.

This image: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Salzburg Festival (6) - Aristidou/Klangforum Wien/Cambreling: Ravel, Boulez, and Varèse, 23 August 2025

Haus für Mozart

Ravel: Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé
Boulez: Improvisation sur Mallarmé III
Boulez: Éclat/Multiples
Varèse: Déserts

Sarah Aristidou

Klangforum Wien

Sylvain Cambreling (conductor)

Images: © SF/Jan Friese

Sarah Aristidou, Klangforum Wien, and Sylvain Cambreling presented another splendidly Boulezian programme for the concluding concert of the Salzburg Festival’s ‘À Pierre’ series. In one sense, it helped complete – with due provisos concerning eternal work-in-progress – Boulez’s Salzburg 1960 debut, which included the first two Improvisations sur Mallarmé, by presenting the third, alongside Eclat/Multiples, Varèse’s Déserts (with tape sections), and Ravel’s response to Pierrot lunaire, the Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé.

Quasi-Symbolist harmonies fashioned a magical portal to the concert as a whole, instrumental opening responded to by Aristidou in a deeply sympathetic performance attentive to words, music, and an alchemy that involved ‘meaning’ but went considerably beyond it. In all three songs, we heard Ravel as if through Schoenberg, the second song ‘Placet futile’ seemingly approaching Debussy too, though the melodic impulse could only ever have been Ravel’s. Klangforum Wien’s approach, perhaps unsurprisingly, sounded all the more fashioned from a new music standpoint—which is not to say that it lacked warmth, any more than Boulez’s own music-making did, far from it. The suspended song – to borrow from Nono – of ‘Surgi de la croupe et du bond’ seemed to offer a further opening to the explorations ahead as a conclusion to those so far.

Nowadays, we are more likely – when we have chance at all – to hear Pli selon pli as a whole; it was interesting to step back and hear it in part, like this as part of such a varied, yet coherent programme. Moreover, Klangforum Wien and Cambreling seemed to approach it more as an ‘early’ performance, closer to Boulez at the time of composition or not long after, as opposed to his increasingly luxuriant, even Romantic way with the score in the twenty-first century. Bar some early stiffness in Cambreling’s direction, it worked well, with initial contrast between something more rebarbative – these things are relative – and Aristidou’s spinning of the vocal line, ravishing melismata and all, in itself instructive. Ensemble tapestry grew before our ears, four flutes crucial to that proliferation. It was, moreover, very much an ensemble rather than orchestral sound. Nevertheless, there was no denying that sultry heat, nor the sublimated frenzy.

Éclat/Multiples offered as much contrast as complement, though the two necessarily involve one another-pli selon pli, as it were. The initial éclat to Éclat could be missed by none; all the more remarkable, was its subsequent dissolution in proliferation (resonance included). Here was responsorial Boulez already, in timbre – piano and various instruments and combinations – and much else. Webern’s example was readily apparent, probably more so than in the preceding piece. There were all manner of wonderful moments: combination of mandolin, harp, and piano lingered long in the mind. It was ultimately, though in their connection, their progress, and the magical surprises of diversion, if only in retrospect, that the substance of the musical journey was truly instantiated. Once fully within the labyrinth, even part of its fabric, one could only be mesmerised, albeit actively so.

 Certain sounds at the opening of Déserts – percussion especially, but wind too – seemed familiar yet also unfamiliar from what had gone before. Hieratic, primaeval, yet urban, here was the uncompromising voice of Varèse. Noise, sound, or music? Why choose? Partly, the work suggests that we ought, or at least might, or does it? At this distance, it seemed to suggest awe in the face of what was yet historically to come, but also foreboding. One found patterns, progression, even ‘meaning’ or the illusion thereof, both in the tape music and in its relationship to other material: an endless and endlessly fascinating task. Grand yet fragile, abstract yet evocative, it cast quite a spell as sounds ricocheted around the Haus für Mozart.

Salzburg Festival (5) - Concertgebouw/Mäkelä: Schubert-Berio and Mahler, 21 August 2025

Grosses Festspielhaus

Schubert-Berio: Rendering
Mahler: Symphony no.5

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Klaus Mäkelä (conductor)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Klaus Mäkelä’s multiple orchestral appointments have ignited animated discussion among those preoccupied with such matters. Never having heard him before, I was curious to hear which was (more justified): the sky-high praise or, well, the opposite. On this basis, I am afraid to say the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra does not appear to have chosen well for its artistic partner and chief conductor designate. Not only were Mäkela’s readings of two symphonic works half-baked at (very) best; his flattening effect on the orchestral sound, robbing it of so much of what should have one reaching for superlatives, suggests still more serious problems ahead. A single concert can only give an impression, but it was saddening, even maddening simply to have to wait for the end. Herbert von Karajan would have said he needed a few years away in Ulm, away from the spotlight. There seems, alas, little prospect of that, so Mäkelä’s orchestras will have to work with what they have. I wish them luck. 

Berio’s Rendering showed little at length, other than that Mäkelä’s apparent lack of feeling for either Berio or Schubert, on whose symphonic fragments the work is founded. The first movement opened freshly enough with commendable precision, yet also presented a stiffness that did not augur well. As Schubert ceded to Berio, the latter’s timbral and harmonic invasions were well handled, suggestive of uncertainty and unease, the orchestra’s long pedigree in music written for it evident. The music sounded more and more faceless, though, as time went on. Grave trombones made their presence keenly, magically felt in their big ‘moment’, but this was at best a collection of moments, with mere ‘filling’ in between. The opening of the second movement promised something more, Mäkelä largely letting the music take its course, the orchestra well balanced and pointed. But again, it lost its way—and not in the way Berio intended. A gorgeous oboe solo and, in general, gorgeous wind playing offered some compensation. This, though, was a listless affair that seemed as though it would never end. Strangely thin string sound marked the onset of the finale; it seemed intentional, thoughI could not tell you why. It moved more or less as it ‘should’, albeit without any ear for harmony. Vaguely Mahlerian counterpoint suggested a connection with what was to come, but it was not enough. By the end, it felt as if an hour had passed rather than just over thirty minutes. 

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is an extremely difficult piece to bring off. I have heard more than a few conductors come unstuck in it; this was to be no exception. Mäkelä again presented a succession of episodes that not only had little connection with one another; they even lacked sharp characterisation on their own terms. The orchestra, steeped in this music since the composer himself, played well enough, but there is only so much one can do in Mahler with such rudderless direction. At first, it sounded as though we might have Mahler as Shostakovich: not the way I hear the music, but a point of view, even a guiding principle, at least. Mäkelä soon began to mould the first movement a bit too obviously and, more to the point, incoherently: unconnected, so far as I could hear, either to what had passed or to what was to come. The storm, when it came, was merely petulant. Tempo changes in general were arbitrary; long passages seemed pretty much to grind to a halt. Very much in the line of his Schubert-Berio, there was little to no sense of harmony, let alone harmonic motion. 

The second movement proceeded similarly, in fits and starts, however admirable the playing in itself. It either felt too fast or too slow; not that there is a ‘correct answer’ for tempo matters, but tempo relationships made no sense, still less relation of tempo to other aspects of the score. Balance was often so askew as to sound uninterestingly bizarre. ‘Much the same’ would, I am afraid, be the verdict for an increasingly laboured attempt at the third movement too. The ‘Adagietto’ fared better, at least begin with. If on the moulded side, it held together for quite a while, with genuinely fascinating echoes of Wagner’s string writing, prior to the masturbatory meal Mäkelä made of the close. The disconnected string of aural images, for want of a better phrase, that made up the finale simply had me long for the concert to be over. Eventually it was, in a performance that lasted about 74 minutes. Again, it felt not far off twice that. What a contrast with this same orchestra, almost exactly two years ago, in Mahler’s Seventh Symphony under Iván Fischer. A depressing evening, all the more so since it was acclaimed by the audience to the rafters.

 

Salzburg Festival (4) - Stefanovich, Lečić, Widmann, SWR: Debussy, Boulez, and Stravinsky, 20 August 2025

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Debussy, arr. Bavouzet: Jeux. Poème dansé
Boulez: Dialogue de l’ombre double
Stravinsky: Concerto for two pianos
Boulez: Piano Sonata no.2

Tamara Stefanovich, Nenad Lečić (pianos)

Jörg Widmann (clarinet)

SWR Experimentalstudio

Michael Acker, Maurice Oeser (sound direction)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

The most radical of Debussy’s orchestral works, perhaps the most radical of all Debussy’s works, Jeux held a special place in Boulez’s conducting repertory. He even served as Myriam Chimènes’s co-editor for this instalment in the critical edition, incorporating several of the revisions Debussy made following the 1913 premiere. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s transcription for two pianos, published in 2005 and taking up the memory of a lost version Debussy mentioned in a letter to his publisher, was given here with further modifications from the performers, Tamara Stefanovich and Nenad Lečić. One piano (Lečić), then the other, then two pianos, quickly dissolving into the sound of one, equally swift in sonic reinstatement as two: this brought different, at least equal challenges to the performers as the magically elusive orchestral score. At times, pitch seemed to gain a certain priority among parameters (as Boulez’s generation would know them) but other substitutes, complements, and contrasts vied for position too, not least the fascinating distinction between piano touch and orchestral timbre. It flickered in different ways, inevitably sounding closer to the piano works, both solo and En blanc et noir, in some ways akin to a continuous suite of études. The narrative was there too, though, both in detail and mood, often insouciant, sometimes languorous, infinitely malleable, always unhurried, yet precise and directed (if neither in a Boulezian nor a Beethovenian way). Seemingly as overflowing with melody as a work by Schoenberg, the piece and its harmonies could barely have registered more irresistibly in a performance both responsive and responsorial (to borrow from the Boulezian future). Sly, ineffable seduction led to a nonchalant closing shrug as perfectly prepared as it was delivered. 

Dialogue de l’ombre double was dedicated to Berio for his 60^th birthday, coinciding precisely with that of Boulez, in 1985, thus neatly combining this year’s two great musical centenaries. Although the most recent performance will well-nigh inevitably stand freshest in one’s mind, I think I can safely say I have never heard a better performance than that from Jörg Widmann, doubling with his recorded self, courtesy of Michael Acker and Maurice Oeser of the SWR Experimentalstudio (another important Boulez link). In some ways – it can probably only ever be some – it may also have been the most faithful to Boulez’s conception, originating in Paul Claudel’s Le Soulier de satin in which a double shadow of the central pair Rodrigue and Prouhèze is projected onto a wall, yet surely also inspired by Antonin Artaud’s idea of the glimpse of uncorrupted reality afforded by theatre’s ‘double’, and indeed to the ‘double’ variation form of the French eighteenth century, as well. as the doubling and shadowing in the relationships of work/composer and performance/performer characteristic of all notated music. All were certainly present, from the lighting that created Widmann’s silhouette on the wall to the continuation of Jeux’s responsorial two-piano elements with new means, transforming in the hall around us, more than hinting at the work’s relationship to Boulez’s own Répons. There were surprises too, such as the plunge into darkness at the beginning, the first notes we heard being the double rather than Widmann, who must have come onstage during those magical first arabesques. Perhaps one could see him, perhaps not; my mind’s eye and ear where rightly elsewhere. Unending melody, punctuated and structured in highly visible as well as audible form, created a form of music theatre that yet remained above all music. 

Stefanovich and Lečić returned to the stage after the interval for another outstanding two-piano performance, this time of Stravinsky’s Concerto for two pianos: not the most Boulez-friendly Stravinsky, and thus arguably all the more welcome in this context. Scènes de ballet might have been provocative; this, the more one listened, was thoughtful and productive, complementing as well as contrasting, whatever the two composers might have thought (or said). It would make a fascinating companion piece to Structures one day, perhaps alongside Stockhausen’s Mantra—Mozart or Schubert too. Its quietly ferocious regularity – ‘who me? igniting a debate?’ – made for an opening contrast of equal intelligence and beauty, not least in the chiaroscuro of this performance. The first movement’s surprising yet undeniable approaches to Shostakovich registered with startling clarity, and then Stravinsky pulled another rabbit out of the hat, then another… Much could be learned – in my case, was – from simple observance of the pianists’ body language and again that responsorial quality. The hollowed-out quality of Stravinsky’s tonality shone keenly, even brazenly in the second movement. At the same time, so did its undeniably ‘Russian’ roots, for instance in Petrushka. The final two movements, increasingly involved, offered ever more radical complement and development the more closely one listened. There was play too, of course, categories slyly undermined as soon as they were established. Perhaps this was not so distant from Boulez, even from his Second Piano Sonata, as we might have imagined. 

Thus to Stefanovich’s thrilling, astounding climax. I have heard fine performances of this work but none finer. Indeed, I think it may well have been the most all-encompassing, red in tooth and claw, white in heat, and both desolate and bracing in numerous aftershocks, I have heard, whether live or on record. The work’s beauty and violence were dialectically present from the opening of the first movement. How Stefanovich had the piano yield, melodically and still more harmonically, brought a surprising yet welcome touch of Brahms (perhaps via the unstable ‘model’ of Beethoven). Phrasing too was just as crucial—and revealing, every bit as much so as in Mozart or Beethoven. Artaud was more palpably, viscerally to the fore than in the Dialogue: ‘organised delirium’ (the title both for Caroline Potter’s recent study for Boydell and for Stefanovich’s still newer Pentatone CD tribute: grab both!) As Messiaen recalled his young pupil, ‘like a lion that had been flayed alive’, so not only was the work, not only was the performance, but so were we in audience response. There was a quasi-religious fervour to a fire that also signalled Beethovenian concision (the Fifth Symphony’s first movement, for instance). It was over before we knew, yet remained with us. 

If the first movement in some sense prepared us for the second – the first moment of aftershock – it also could not, given the new paths taken. Given the enormous challenges of communication, Stefanovich’s command of line proved close to incredible. It built on unerring power and a sense of ‘rightness’, that it could not be otherwise. Doubtless it could be; there are always alternatives. In the moment, though, one should (generally) feel otherwise. The third movement, unsurprisingly given its earlier origin, connected most obviously with Boulez’s earlier piano music, yet only as a starting point. Once again, the clarity and direction of what we heard, work and performance, was striking. Reconstruction and annihilation on seemingly endless, yet soon ended, repeat were the hallmark of the fourth movement, at least its beginning, all at once—and yet with Mozartian clarity. Ever transforming, ever bewitching, it stretched mind and ears, inviting them to repay the compliment. It scalded, it froze, liquid extremes imparting simultaneous life and death. The final, undeniable aftershock offered, if not peace, then a sense of human spirit in varied abundance.

 

Salzburg Festival (3) - Le Balcon/Pascal: Nono, Boulez, and Stockhausen, 19 August 2025

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Nono: A Pierre. Dell’azzurro silenzio, inquietum
Boulez: sur Incises
Stockhausen: Klavierstück XIV – ‘Geburtstag-Formel’
Boulez: …explosante-fixe…

Julie Brunet-Jailly (flute)

Alphonse Cemin (piano)

Augustin Muller (IRCAM electronics)

Sylvain Cadars (IRCAM sound diffusion)

Le Balcon

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

Images: © SF/Marco Borrelli

Pierre Boulez’s broader musical-cultural legacy lies everywhere, both in what he achieved and what, sadly, he did not. Quite rightly, in this centenary year we are taking time to focus more specifically on his musical works. From his 1960 Salzburg debut (Stockhausen, Webern, and Boulez, in the presence of Herbert von Karajan), the Festival has long experienced and participated in both—and especially from 1992, at the invitation of Gerard Mortier and Hans Landesmann. I shall rue till my dying day having passed up the opportunity to hear his Moses und Aron, on my first, student visit. It was inevitable, given the choice of one opera, that I would opt for Mozart, yet nevertheless… Here, in any case, the Festival’s centenary tribute will focus on both strands, or rather on three or more, the third being the presence and influence even in non-presence of electronics both in his music and in that broader legacy, exemplified by IRCAM and represented here by Augustin Muller and Sylvain Cadars. 

The mini-series ‘A Pierre’ opened with this concert, which in turn opened in pleasing symmetry with Luigi Nono’s sixtieth birthday tribute for his colleague, A Pierre. Dell Azzurro silenzio, inquietum, for contrabass flute, contrabass clarinet, and live electronics. One instrument entered, then the other: were they playing together or separately? Had they merged? One asked that even before the advent of electronics, or was it? Differences were almost, yet never quite, imperceptible, a message dell-ascolto from the somewhat non-Boulezian world of Prometeo. One was drawn in to listen, in harmony, in polyphony, ever transforming, ever deeper. I could have sworn at one point I heard voices – as in vocal music – and perhaps, in a way, I did. The role of electronics was ‘for’ Pierre, at least, as the Venetian waves lapped and almost Mahlerian vistas opened up before our ears. 

It is an obvious point, but I do not think it had quite registered with me, at least experientially, quite how much difference the performing space would make to a performance of sur Incises. My ears, doubtless my eyes, associate it above all with Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, where I have heard Daniel Barenboim conduct it more than once (including the hall’s opening concert) with his own created Boulez Ensemble. In a more conventional smallish hall, not in the round, lines seemed more obviously to lead from the conductor—and, in a sense, seated not far behind Maxime Pascal, from the ensemble too—with clear consequences for experience of many aspects of the work ‘itself’. Whether it was that, or the performances of Le Balcon and Pascal—it may have been both—that made the opening section sound quite so Debussyan, I am not sure. It came as a subsequent shock to my ears to hear quite so many floating roots, if you will, in Scriabin in the writing for pianos of the following section. Perhaps it was simply me; never underestimate the role of your own preoccupations or chance connections. However strictly organised, listening as well as composition and performance will break free. When rhythm took its place as first among equals, Stravinsky came most forcefully to mind and, a little more surprisingly, Prokofiev, although then I remember hearing Boulez express admiration for the piano writing in the composer’s concertos. These where ghosts, though, rather than definite influences, and soon one felt—at least I did—fully immersed, albeit actively immersed as, I flattered myself, a participant, enticed and welcomed by performers and work alike. What also struck me was the liminal passages in which not only classic parameters but time and music seemed stretched, even bent: Debussy again, perhaps, even Chopin. Resonance, in more than one sense, played its part too. Waves of a different kind were felt, not only heard, sound and music moving through space as well as time, as Gurnemanz might (not) have put it. 

Following some much needed fresh air, we returned to the hall (the same hall that hosted Boulez’s 1960 debut) for Stockhausen’s contribution to that same 1985 Baden-Baden birthday tribute: Klavierstück XIV, later to be heard as part of the composer’s Montag (for various reasons, a work Boulez was unlikely ever to have conducted). My heart went out to Alphonse Cemin when, just before he was about to begin, a lengthy telephonic intervention rang out. Such was its length that, at least for the audience, it became quite amusing. Was it Karlheinz himself, attempting to dial in from Sirius? When Cemin, a worthy successor to Pierre-Laurent Aimard, gave his fine performance, we were immediately in a different world from anything heard in the first half, though the whimsy of that introduction perhaps persisted a little in his verbal contributions. Here, unquestionably, was a miniature drama, though not only that, and in its ‘birthday formula’ mode, an intriguing set-up for Boulez’s own …explosante-fixe…, founded as it is on what has reasonably been considered a compositional ‘kit’. It was also music unquestionably ‘for’ the piano and to be enjoyed as such by performer and listeners alike in something not so very distant from what we know as music theatre. 

And so, to …explosante-fixe…, which I had not heard live for a little while: the last time, I think, ten years ago for Boulez’s 90^th anniversary, at the Proms. Julie Brunet-Jailly was joined by fellow, ‘shadow’ flautists and other members of Le Balcon in the fullest ensemble of the evening, as well of course as our friends from IRCAM and Pascal. It worked very differently, perhaps better, in the space than sur Incises; or maybe it was more that my ears had adjusted. The immediacy, even straightforward volume, nonetheless took a little getting used to, though only a little. The alchemy of sound in space proved quite magical, even seductive, as if presaging Boulez’s own, later Szymanowskian enchantment. Here was not only a labyrinth, but something between riot and delirium within a labyrinth that was always transforming before our ears: itself somewhere between Pli and pli and the orchestral Notations, which, I suppose, is where the work lies in Boulez’s œuvre. The bending of time I had felt in sur Incises continued, here in a world of very different, dazzling, (quasi-)orchestral fantasy that it was difficult not to think almost classically ‘French’. (Perhaps the presence of French performers contributed to that.) Dimming the lights for passages of ‘pure’ electronics was a theatrical touch, yet a winning one: in highlighting the organ pipes at the back of the stage, it almost suggested a role for that instrument, though alas not. I certainly heard things I could not recall from previous encounters: unexpected guests from The Rite of Spring, the sage’s procession turned post-Sixties psychedelic (or was that Messiaenic)? There was a sense, I fancied, of an almost Bachian mirroring and inversion in the electronics: not necessarily literally, but a quality felt or imagined. Other aspects comfortably, yet never too comfortably returned: those trills and tremolos, for instance. And I realised, only at the close, one thing that made this a relatively unusual soundworld for Boulez ensemble music. Obvious when you think about it: no percussion. So long as we continue to listen, we shall never cease to learn—even the most basic of things.

 

Salzburg Festival (2) - One Morning Turns Into An Eternity, 18 August 2025

Felsenreitschule

Schoenberg: Erwartung, op.17
Webern: Five Orchestral Pieces, op.10
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde: ‘Der Abschied’

Director – Peter Sellars
Costumes – Camille Assaf
Set designs – George Tsypin
Lighting – James F. Ingalls
Dramaturgy – Antonio Cuenca Ruiz

Aušrinė Stundytė (soprano)

Fleur Barron (contralto)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

Image: Ruth Walz
Aušrinė Stundytė

'At a time when violence seems ubiquitous and the future uncertain, Peter Sellars argues that the extremes and intensity of Erwartung are not expressionist exaggerations, but instead reflect the actual experience of existential wounds. Rather than viewing the work as a portrait of a disorientated woman, the director approaches Schoenberg’s masterpiece as a lyrical poem expressing doubt, heartbreak, and hope in the face of despair.' 

My heart sank on reading these words on the Salzburg Festival website a couple of days ago. Not that I in any sense mind a production transforming, questioning, or pretty much anyth-ing a work, so long as it works, but rather that my experience of Peter Sellars’s brand of interventionism has, at least for the best part of two decades, not been entirely positive. The celebrated Harlem Don Giovanni still packs a punch; the other instalments of that 1980s Da Ponte trilogy retain their devotees. Last year’s Salzburg Gambler did no harm, if only because it worked well enough even if one missed – which I largely did – the concept. There is no need to rehearse other experiences; one should give something new a chance, or simply stay away.

Perhaps unwisely, I read Sellars’s programme synopsis immediately prior to the performance. It was of the variety, as for The Gambler last summer, in which the director outlines his vision of the work rather than the work ‘itself’: no bad thing, one might say, if one is trying to establish what the former might be (or have been). Again, I cannot say it inspired ‘hope in the face of [not quite] despair’ and it certainly coloured my initial impressions. To cut a long story short, Sellars has decided to present Erwartung as presenting a woman in search of her probably unfaithful lover, whose child she is bearing and who ‘she has reason to believe … has died under torture’, both of them being ‘part of a resistance movement’. There is much more of it, but actually I discovered – at least to me – that it did not really matter. I am not sure how much of it one would glean without reading the synopsis: the broad setting, probably, given an introduction in which two men with tablets show the woman and forest ‘trees’ that have something of surveillance towers – or is it the other way around? – to them. Beyond that, though, what one actually sees can pretty much be the basis for a more faithful – for me, more interesting – or indeed any other reading of the work. If that sort of realism helps the director, perhaps helps inspire the Woman’s movements, and so on, that need not worry us unduly. 

Whether such ‘working’ would be better left unsaid is a question one might ask, but one is not obliged to take it on board, and for the most part it does not get in the way. The stagecraft is well wrought, to my mind more in sympathy with the work. How much was Sellars and how much Aušrinė Stundytė I do not – need not – know. A boulder on which she rests for a while connected with other stagings, actual or in our minds’ eyes, including that of the recently departed Robert Wilson for Jessye Norman here in Salzburg, that bench a permanent fixture in the foyer. Lighting, shadows, and the Felsenreitschule backdrop suggest and create: for instance, crucifix shadows that might threaten or console, according to taste or situation. 

Image: Monika Rittershaus
Peter Sellars

Once past initial slight irritation, then, I found myself able to concentrate on the performance—and excellent it was too. Stundytė fully inhabited the role: Schoenberg’s and, I imagine, Sellars’s too. A true stage animal, she is – and was – a singing actress in the very best sense: not a euphemism for someone who convinces on stage but cannot sing, but rather one who uses her outstanding lyrical art to truly dramatic ends. Without undue pedantry, every move, every gesture contributed to a greater whole, whilst crucially – for this piece, perhaps, above all – giving the impression of spontaneity, of conception in the moment. Not that there was any shortage of vocal shading, of telling phrasing, of much else in more ‘purely’ musical categories, but the distinction was false and indeed never occurred. 

Guided, inspired by, and in dialogue with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Vienna Philharmonic, as musically all-encompassing a performance of Erwartung as I can recall emerged. Every orchestral flash and flicker, every transformation of timbre and harmony, every imperceptible – in some cases, well-nigh unanalysable – connection between snatches of melody to create musicodramatic form before our ears: these and much more reminded us why this is and always will be a work that presents far more than we can ever grasp in a single experience, why it will always remain one of Schoenberg’s and indeed the Western tradition’s most radical, most extraordinary works. Rarely have I felt so strongly, immediately, and unquestionably the truth of Schoenberg’s 1929 explanation: ‘the aim is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour.’ And yet, still it was too much to handle. The ‘resistance movement’ scenario: well, who cared, or even noticed? 

Image: Ruth Walz
Fleur Barron

And so the musical drama continued, distinct yet related, through the Webern op.10 Zwischenspiel, moments and connections of inscrutable, undeniable magic, now all too brief, yet more evidently sufficient, even (relatively) comprehensible. These were exquisite jewels, on the face of it, yet jewels that – crucially for Webern in particular – were in truth developed and developing organisms, not objects. One naturally heard what Schoenberg, Webern, and Mahler, as we moved to ‘Der Abschied’ from Das Lied von der Erde held in common, as well as what distinguished them. How much of that was conscious in Salonen’s performance, again, I do not and cannot know. There was certainly no sense of imposing anything on the music (however loaded such categories may be in an art that remains one of performance, never mere execution). There is a great deal of art in concealing art, yet Salonen and the orchestra, throughout on exquisite, burningly committed form, gave one the (flattering) impression one was discovering for oneself rather than being unduly led.  Equally apparent were Schoenbergian motivic snatches, burned in Webernian purgatory, and deftly turned into deceptive Mahlerian chinoiserie, and a broadening of time, the ‘single second’ of the ‘morning’ cited in Marie Pappenheim’s libretto transformed into a window on Mahler’s ‘eternity’. 

I had skipped over Sellars’s Mahler synopsis more quickly, so much so that it left little mark on my experience. In some senses, it seemed closer to the text; at least, it was saying farewell (to a friend) rather than doing something else completely. It remained specific, realistic, and (for better or worse) couched in what seems to me a rather dated sense of therapeutic self-realisation. But we all come to things from different standpoints and experiences; it doubtless helped him – presumably others, too – and it did not get in the way for me. There were again magical images, such as that of silhouetted flautist Karlheinz Schütz far above, birdsong beckoning Fleur Barron – and/or her friend – to the beyond. Barron’s own performance was, as you would expect, less agitated, yet an eminently worthy complement. Imbued with vocal and quasi-instrumental wisdom, it lived and breathed and brought to its culmination a related, liminal world of words, music, image, and gesture that, whatever the words in the programme, never confused sentiment and sentimentality.

BBC SO/Lintu - Boulez and Mahler, 4 August 2025

Royal Albert Hall

Boulez: Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna
Mahler: Das klagende Lied

Carlos Gonzales Napoles (treble)
Malakai Bayoh (boy alto)
Natalya Romaniw (soprano)
Jennifer Johnston (mezzo-soprano)
Russell Thomas (tenor)
James Newby (baritone)

Constanza Chorus (chorus master: Joanna Tomlinson)
BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Neil Ferris)
BBC Symphony Orchestra

Hannu Lintu (conductor)

For my generation, as well as for me personally, Pierre Boulez’s Mahler was probably the most influential of all. My Mahlerian coming of age coincided with his decisive return to the composer, as recorded by Deutsche Grammophon. I recall hearing music from the Sixth Symphony for the very first time, on Radio 3’s Building a Library and immediately rushed out to buy the CD. I would hear Boulez conduct the work live twice, with the LSO in 2000 and with the Staatskapelle Berlin in 2007 (during those extraordinary Festtage in which Boulez and Daniel Barenboim between them performed all of the completed symphonies and most of the orchestral songs). Alas, I never heard him conduct Das klagende Lied, though he recorded it twice. Nor, unless I am forgetting, did I hear him conduct his Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna, though I was privileged to hear him conduct much of his music. (Alas, no Répons either, though surely the Ensemble Intercontemporain in 2015 continued to bear some of his imprint.) If London tributes to Boulez in his centenary have not been so plentiful as one might have hoped – surely Répons would have been in order somewhere – then many of us will continue to hear his repertoire through a Boulezian lens, not least when given by an ensemble such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Rituel emerged paradoxically – a mixture, perhaps itself paradoxical, of dialectic and mystery – out of something and nothing: not quite creatio ex nihilo, but not entirely unlike it either. The precedent of Berg’s op.6 Orchestral Pieces came strongly to my mind, but there are many others too. That quality of being neither one nor the other and of the music lying in that encounter extended to other apparent oppositions too: subjective and objective; involved and observed; regular and irregular (though never imprecise); tuned and untuned (though never, it seemed, unpitched). But above all, this was an immersive ritual, in which order and process, heard and felt, revealed.  Arabesques, flourishes, spirals, repeated experience of a figure so familiar from the composer’s future, all unfolded in eminently ‘natural’ fashion, Hannu Lintu knowing precisely when to conduct and when not. (In that, he reminded me of Peter Eötvös in a 2015 performance with the LSO.) It was a procession for the ears but also for the eyes, the spatial element readily appreciable in both ways. A mass of detail combined into something both complex and remarkably simple, or so it seemed. An array of different attacks on a single triangle was not only palpable, but connected with other musical parameters on that instrument, with others in its instrumental group, and beyond to other groups, mirroring, responding, combining. Reverberation, timbre, pitch, and so much more grew indissoluble: the very idea of serialism, one might say, as a musical and emotional necessity. Ultimately, it was the mesmerising, well-nigh Mahlerian quality that remained with us, long after the music had ceased; indeed, one doubted that it had ceased. 

For Das klagende Lied, the Proms programme heading (not Monika Hennemann’s informative programme note) told us we should hear the ‘original version, 1830’: a rarity indeed from thirty years before Mahler’s birth, contemporary with the Symphonie fantastique. This mysterious prenatal version, however, sounded pretty much the same as the more familiar ‘original’ written between 1878 and 1880 and could be experienced as such. Boulez gave the first British performance and made the first recording of the excised first movement, ‘Waldmärchen’. (His two recordings of the cantata as a whole are of the 1898 revision, as was his 1976 Proms performance.) One can go round in circles discussing versions, revisions, and editions, often to little avail. Suffice it to say I should always rather hear the full three movements; more to the point, Lintu and his musicians duly vindicated that choice. 

It was fanciful, no doubt, but in context perhaps not entirely absurd to hear the opening emerge similarly to that of Rituel, before taking a very different path. Mahler’s ‘voices’, as Julian Johnson has shown, are many. One of the many striking things about this work in particular is how many of them already seem to be here: not only stylistic traits, compositional method, even thematic material, but aspects of subjectivity such as we had already heard explored in Boulez’s work. ‘The great novel is sketched,’ as Boulez once wrote of this cantata, and we should ‘read its chapters progressively in the works to come’. From this orchestral introduction to ‘Waldmärchen’, Lintu seemed to have the music’s measure. If, occasionally, I found he drove a little hard, more often there was splendid flexibility, the BBC SO responding in further hallucinatory quality to his direction, Romantic vistas opening up before our ears. The Lied elements of this movement were also clear from the outset, or at least from when voices entered, as was Mahler’s Wagnerian inheritance. Uncanny choral singing – here from outstanding joint forces of the BBC Symphony Chorus and the amateur Constanza Chorus – already imparted a ghostly element, doubtless founded in German Romanticism but extending far beyond it; again in context, the versicle-response quality to Rituel endured. At least from where I was seated, the female solo voices made greater impact than tenor and bass, but that may have been as much a matter of acoustics as anything else. Natalya Romaniw switched from almost instrumental blend with Mahler’s woodwind to hochdramatisch declamation. Jennifer Johnston sounded splendidly Erda-like, harps a further Ring-echo. If there were inevitable echoes of Götterdämmerung in the choral writing, what struck in general was how little could have been written by anyone else, how intensely, convincingly personal this music was already. Harmonic coincidence with – at this stage, it could not be influence from – Parsifal, aptly enough on the words ‘Ihr Blumen’, pointed back to Tristan und Isolde, though again spoke clearly on its own merits. 

That sense of a page turning, of a new ‘chapter’, was readily apparent in the orchestral introduction to the second movement, ‘Der Spielmann’. One could almost see the illumination, even the script. Chorale snatches disconcertingly yet unmistakeably pointed to the Mahlerian future, the Rückert world of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. Courtly echoes of Wagner’s ‘Romantic operas’ Lohengrin and Tannhäuser cast their spell, off-stage bands suggesting the former’s festivities turned (still more) sour. Johnston’s perfectly judged match of emotional intensity and humanity helped the tale on its way, at the close of the movement turning to an inheritance from Waltraute. The two boy soloists sang very well so far as I could tell, though evident amplification (perhaps necessary, though a pity) made it difficult to discern more. Throughout, the orchestral narrative was both founded in and punctuated by Mahler’s fateful descending scales. That is the composer’s doing, of course, but it was also a matter of performance to have it felt in our bones. The riotous celebration of the final ‘Hochzeitstück’ was, quite rightly, never without its dark side. The ‘proud spirit’ of the ‘proud queen’ was always going to be broken. Mobile telephone (really!) notwithstanding, the hushed close rightly took its time and made its mark.

BBC SSO/Wigglesworth - Birtwistle and Beethoven, 28 July 2025

Royal Albert Hall

Birtwistle: Earth Dances
Beethoven: Symphony no.3 in E-flat major, op.55, ‘Eroica’

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Ryan Wigglesworth (conductor)

This was a strangely disappointing Prom, which promised much in programming, received excellent playing from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and yet was somewhat let down in the first half, rather more than that in the second, by Ryan Wigglesworth’s conducting. Birtwistle and Beethoven offer in many ways an excellent pairing: much in common, not least aspects of temperament, an indomitability of what we might still cling to as embodying human spirit, and much that contrasts too. The goal-orientation that Birtwistle often – not always, and not always fully – eschewed is unquestionably central to Beethoven’s music, nowhere more so than in the ‘middle period’ more or less inaugurated by his Eroica Symphony. By the same token, the importance of continuity, no matter what the obstacles, remains crucial to both. Birtwistle himself pointed to the ‘wonderful example’ of Beethoven in ‘order or disruption of order’: ‘He never does what you think he is going to do. The surprise is perpetual.’    

We could have done with more surprise on this occasion, in both halves, though Earth Dances fared better. I should not be unduly harsh about what was in many ways a fine performance. Wigglesworth conducted The Minotaur at Covent Garden twelve years ago: very well, I thought, though I see now that I noted a certain ‘Classicism’ to his approach, which might be read in more than one way. Here, that translated, if indeed it were a similar thing at all, into apparent reluctance, doubtless furthered by the Royal Albert Hall’s cavernous acoustic, to let the music have its head. Clarity of detail was admirable and the performance was not without cragginess, but it came perilously close to drifting at times, especially during softer, slower passages. That said, there was a proper sense of the primordial at the beginning, of an aural landscape that had both always been and yet was anything but constant. It is difficult not to summon up some sort of images here, but the grit remained, as it should, in the music ‘itself’ and its tectonics, its dances not balletic but rather stratified and hieratic successors to Stravinsky’s Rite via Symphonies of Wind Instruments. Brute force and melancholy emerged as near-dialectical opposing forces in a world that lay beyond good and evil, a world that might be that of Nature yet is surely not only so. The performance was strongest when its dances registered as such, when fractures opened, volcanoes erupted; sometimes, though, it would have benefited from a stronger, not necessarily more interventionist but more determined (even Beethovenian) hand in having them do so. A due sense of return, not complete, not merely cyclical, proved nevertheless necessary and palpable at the close. 

The ecstatic reception accorded the Eroica in the hall bewildered me. To my ears, it never so much as stirred, at most skimming the surface in a performance that, to quote Dorothy Parker, ran the gamut of emotions from A to B. Put another way, it moved from an amiable first movement to a merely inconsequential finale, with only a hint of something more interesting in a Funeral March that disintegrated into something approaching stream of consciousness. It felt long, although it was probably on the quick side. (The two tend to go together, whatever metronome enthusiasts may tell you.) The first movement was certainly Allegro, arguably more than that, though brio was more or less entirely absent. It was less Bonaparte, let alone the memory of a great man, than Petit Trianon—with apologies to Marie Antoinette, in reality a far more interesting figure than that might imply. It had line, though scant sense of harmony, with a little more ib the way of temperament as time went on. Sadly, though, it was a matter of too little, too late. 

The second movement opened with greater promise. Although on the swift side, it was not unreasonably so; one sensed both greater character and more appropriate character. It was hardly granitic, yet there was nonetheless a darkness emerging from instrumental timbre without being limited to it. The turn to the major was odd, by turns tentative and insistent. Without a stronger – much stronger – sense of harmony, it all sounded rather episodic and empty. If designer Beethoven were your thing, the scherzo might have been it: sleek and, if not quite empty, little more than blithe. Exquisite horn playing notwithstanding, the trio offered little in the way of contrast. The finale offered a disjunct if pretty set of variations, with little in the way of humour, defiance, exultancy, anything Beethovenian. If ever there were a time in which our world needed to hear from the symphonic Beethoven, it would be now. Alas, he seems more distant than ever.

Hadelich/BBC SO/Oramo - Stravinsky, Mendelssohn, Davis, and Strauss, 24 July 2025

Royal Albert Hall

Stravinsky: Chant du rossignol
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, op.64
Anthony Davis: Tales (Tails) of the Signifying Monkey (European premiere)
Strauss: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, op.28

Augustin Hadelich (violin)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Stravinsky seems unfashionable in London right now. Maybe it is my imagination, or maybe it is a consequence of increasingly non-existent public funding that what once stood at the very core of twentieth-century repertoire is now not considered ‘safe’ enough. I am sure, though, we used to encounter his music more frequently. Like the opera from which it is drawn, the Chant du rossignol seems always to have been curiously neglected. Goodness knows why; both are magical works and not obviously ‘difficult’. Boulez was, of course, a persistent and compelling advocate. It is perhaps especially fitting, then, that the BBC Symphony Orchestra should programme the work in his centenary year for the music festival at which Boulez was a longstanding, greatly valued guest, probably in no composer more often than Stravinsky. 

Sakari Oramo’s predecessor would surely have admired the éclat with which this performance opened and might well have heard more than a little of his own compositional history in what followed. Not that Oramo neglected Stravinsky’s ‘Russianness’ in a colourful, detailed, incisive, and magical performance that also boasted a good measure of Debussyan languor when called for, humour too (for instance in downward trombone slide). Echoes – more properly, pre-echoes – of Petrushka and The Rite of Spring were to be heard in harmony, metre, timbre, and much else. Narrative was clear and meaningful, in what duly sounded as a drama in (relative) miniature. Perhaps, though, it was the haunting stillness at the work’s heart that lingered longest in the memory. Solos – flute, violin, trumpet, and others – were all finely taken by BBC SO principals. I have little doubt Boulez would have loved the harp playing too. 

I cannot recall offhand whether Boulez ever conducted the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, but I imagine he might have done. He certainly admired the composer’s orchestral music, contrasting it and that of Berlioz to Schumann’s, in that one would never retouch or rebalance, given the composers’ perfect scoring. The opening is tricky, though it should never sound so—and certainly did not here, in a beautifully ‘natural’-sounding performance of the first movement that flowed fast without ever sounding rushed. Conductor, orchestra, and the simply outstanding soloist Augustin Hadelich captured Mendelssohn’s world, emotional as well as stylistic, to a tee. A poignant second subject was never remotely sentimentalised. Indeed, all had just the right sort of Romantic ardour and humanism to it. There was a wonderfully fresh sense of discovery too; at times, one might almost have been hearing it for the first time—and doubtless some in the audience were. The movement’s concision once again astonished me: seemingly over before it had begun, and just as dramatic in its different way as the Stravinsky. Transitions between movements were equally well judged, the central Andante given with a rapt lyricism that was far from restricted to the violin. Unendliche Melodie, as Wagner might have been compelled to admit. Like the concerto as a whole, it was deeply moving without evidently trying to be. An elfin finale, as infectious as anything in the Midsummer Night’s Dream music, emerged bright as a button, Hadelich’s playing both splendidly old-world and very much of now. The encore – which I have had to look up – was his own arrangement, effortless in idiom and despatch, of Carlos Gadel’s ‘Por una cabeza’. 

It is probably better to pass over what Boulez might have made of the European premiere of Anthony Davis’s unabashedly tonal Tales (Tails) of the Signifying Monkey, drawn from his opera of the same year (1997) Amistad. Davis clearly has a fondness, as his admirably informative programme note made clear, for unsual metres: dances in 11/8, 13/8, and so on. Likewise for ostinato: perhaps one of Stravinsky’s deadlier legacies. He knows what he is doing in writing for the orchestra too, and deftly brings in sounds from the jazz world. I could not help thinking, though, that what we heard sounded considerably over-extended and might have worked better illustrating a television series. Applause was polite yet reticent; I think the audience had it right. The United States is truly a foreign country, nowhere more so than its musical culture. (Consider Boulez in New York.)

Till Eulenspiegel is a relatively rare example of a Strauss work Boulez conducted. There is an excellent live recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, once released by the orchestra itself and which seems to be available on YouTube too. How different things might have been, had Wieland Wagner’s death not brought to an end the prospect of Boulez and him collaborating on Salome, Elektra, and Ariadne auf Naxos. An endearingly, acutely strange commercial recording of Also sprach Zarathustra suggests they would have been as different from hitherto received wisdom as the Wagner and Mahler that changed the way we hear and understand that music forever. Back to the present, Strauss’s tone poem received a finely judged performance from Oramo and the BBC SO that lacked nothing in requisite virtuosity, yet likewise did not take that virtuosity for musical substance. If I found it occasionally a little hard-driven, there was plenty of flexibility where called for. Episodes were discerningly characterised whilst taking their place in the grander narrative. Counterpoint was admirably, necessarily clear, characters and situations leaping off the page. The BBC may have been in anything but safe hands since Boulez’s time; Radio 3 is now reduced to screaming ‘Adventures in Classical’ from garish banners hung around the Royal Albert Hall. Its eponymous Symphony Orchestra continues to do very well indeed.

Die schweigsame Frau, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 22 July 2025

Images: Bernd Uhlig

Sir Morosius – Peter Rose
Housekeeper – Iris Vermillion
Barber Schneidebart – Samuel Hasselhorn
Henry Morosus – Siyabonga Maqungo
Aminta – Brenda Rae
Isotta – Serafina Starke
Carlotta – Rebecka Wallroth
Morbio – Dionysios Averginos
Vanuzzi – Manuel Winckhler
Farfallo – Friedrich Hamel

Director – Jan Philipp Gloger
Set designs – Ben Baur
Costumes – Justina Klimczyk
Lighting – Tobias Krauß
Video – Leonard Wölfl
Choreography – Florian Hurler

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin 

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Christian Thielemann’s first new production as music director at the Staatoper Unter den Linden was always going to be a special event. A declaration of intent, no doubt: of respect for the house’s traditions, whilst subtly extending them. For all his superlative strengths, Daniel Barenboim was not much of a Straussian, at least in the opera house—and I think that points to a more fundamental difference between Thielemann and his predecessor, perhaps to be explored more fully another time. In any case, one might say that that regard for canon and tradition, whilst understanding and indeed aiding its mutability was tailor-made for the art of both Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig. So indeed it proved to be. 

Thielemann has been pretty much universally acclaimed for his Strauss—and rightly so. His ability to ‘play’ the orchestra as if it were a keyboard instrument is remarkable, yet equally worthy of note – and of hearing on this occasion – was his Barenboim-like willingness to have the musicians engage in Kammermusik that could be shaped, if needed, into something larger but never greater. The Staatskapelle Berlin, always the jewel in this house’s crown, played not only with perfection but palpable commitment. It could be a Mozart serenade writ large via Wagnerian polyphony; it could be a telling arabesque duet with voice; it could be a sly piece of word painting; it could, just occasionally, be the full orchestra letting its presence felt, but also felt as necessary. Everything felt ‘natural’, however much art there might be in that; everything felt both rehearsed and spontaneous. Most important of all, the orchestra told us what mattered most—to Strauss and, one hopes, to us, at least during those magical hours spent in the theatre. Art is not to be equated to life; it is both less and more. Strauss knew that; so did Thielemann and the orchestra; so, I think, did we. 

For Strauss – Zweig too – is here, as ever, intimately and, yes, beautifully concerned with music and its history, with art more broadly and its history too. The canon is not an immutable thing He can do no other, which is part of the wonder of his aestheticism. The craft from both is astounding, especially when one does not notice it. Everywhere an allusion, everywhere an illusion—all the more so when one barely notices. Some of that is doubtless unconscious; one might say the same of performances and staging too. None of us works, thinks, makes art, or indeed makes society in a vacuum. Is/was Henry and Aminta’s sheltering in another room whilst Sir Morosus finds rest – low D-flat for contrabassoon, organ, and his ‘Dank!’ – an echo of Walther and Eva doing likewise at the close of their second act in Die Meistersinger? It looked and even sounded like it, but may also be a function of genre, of the unconscious, even of chance. We make our own connections, though we are led along the way. Actual quotation is less mistakeable, or is it? How many of us waver over Rossini-Monteverdi here? Presentiments too: how much of Sir Morosus is there in Capriccio’s La Roche, or vice versa? Is he Baron Ochs partly wiser, even transfigured, or is that to partake in the cardinal sin of sentimentality? Perhaps it is all, as the Marschallin would counsel, a farce, no more but also no less. Yet what knowing irony there is in that claim, as Straussians will know all too well. 

Let us leave that on one side for the moment to consider Jan Phillip Gloger’s production. Thielemann and Gloger have collaborated at Bayreuth and in Dresden, so again this might offer a harbinger of sorts. I had my doubts at points yet ultimately was won around by Gloger’s concept, not least since it developed so finely in collaboration with musicians onstage and in the pit—what opera is or should be, and be about. There is none of Ben Jonson’s London here, though predicaments that faces Londoners still more than Berliners – yes, I know the latter will protest, but they should try living here – come to the fore: initially, the housing crisis, but increasingly that of loneliness and how society treats the elderly in an age of generational conflict in which the latter may seem to hold too many of the cards. (They do not, of course, or not straightforwardly; it is a useful culture-war camouflage for capital. But enough of that for now.) As the opera begins, we see increasingly desperate ‘refreshing’ of a screen by someone attempting to find city accommodation – many of us have been there – followed by the stage revelation of a wealthy, single, older person living in an expansive apartment to himself, attended to by housekeeper and barber (here, more general ‘wellness’ consultant). Yet we are also confronted – I can see, even hear, the raised eyebrows – with statistics before the second and third acts, that is on the curtain during the intervals, that challenge our preconceptions, for instance how many older people who might wish to move to smaller accommodation might end up paying more in rent if they do so (and they might not be able to).

That, however, becomes ever more a context than concept. More fundamentally, the tale is one of conflict and reconciliation, furthered by understanding and willingness to accept the new. A trick, in many ways quite horrible, is played on Sir Morosus. The characters relish it in some ways, yet are also not without guilt, faithfully following Zweig and Strauss. One may or may not like the garish way in which Sir Morosus is married to his apparently ‘silent’ woman, Timida/Aminta, but it makes its dramatic point. Perhaps some of the metadramatic interventions are, like the statistics, a bit crass, but they do no real harm. Holding up a sign saying ‘Regietheater’ both alerts some, less receptive in the audience, to what might be happening not only onstage but to the stage that has been enacted onstage, and may even remind them that all this is not nearly so new as some would have them believe. No one, after all, was a greater practitioner of the cause they excoriate than Richard Wagner, whose Hans Sachs, one of Morosus’s many progenitors, reminds us: ‘Es klangt so alt und war doch so neu!’ 

Reconciliation is arguably more problematical in Die Meistersinger than here, the world of what is ‘deutsch und echt’ notable by its absence (which may, admittedly, prove to some still more problematic). For the time being, though, we can share in the old man’s joy in true acquaintance with, perhaps even growing love for his nephew and adoptive son and his wife, their troupe, and even a little of the music he once so detested. We can share in theirs for him too, heartwarmingly portrayed – for once, I mean no irony, and Strauss appears not to do so either – in the closing display of a Morosus Community, in which none need be silent and, just as important, none need be alone. One can be, of course, and Morosus is grateful for time on his own, for peace and quiet, for the music to have stopped, but as a free choice rather than faute de mieux. Solitude, as any Romantic will tell you, can be a good or bad thing; it depends very much on context and will. 

Stage performances were outstanding. As Sir Morosus, Peter Rose was everything would have hoped for, placing the character somewhere justly between Ochs and La Roche – I have been treated to the former, though not yet to the latter – but above all creating an individual human being of his own, whose ‘difficulty’ we increasingly understood and sympathised with, coming to know a somewhat different person than the one we had assumed he was. His way with Zweig’s German was second to none. Siyabonga Maqungo presented an ardent, lovelorn, equally human Henry, well matched to Brenda Rae’s Aminta. Rae played that role in a very different production (Barrie Kosky’s) the only other time I have seen the opera in the theatre. Here, her vocal glitter and precision were matched, indeed exceeded only by her humanity. The animating presence of Samuel Hasselhorn as the barber Schneidebart was a joy from start to finish, as finely conceived theatrically as it was musically. It was a similar, if more fleeting joy, to welcome Iris Vermillion back to the Berlin stage as Morosus’s housekeeper. There was the finest sense of company from all concerned, not least a chorus superbly trained by Dani Juris, which reciprocated the ensemble favour in appearing very much as a cast of individuals brought together. 

This proved, then, an excellent and deeply moving evening. Strauss and Zweig’s Schweigsame Frau sang in and for itself; but also for music; for opera; for Berlin; and, I like to think, for this exiled Berliner back in town for all of twenty-two hours, a good few of them, like those of Sir Morosus, spent asleep before returning to the city in which the opera ‘should’ be set and in which Jonson’s Volpone not only is set but was first performed. These three-and-a-half hours, though, proved more than worth the journey, a reminder less of the horrendous world around us – though that made its presence softly, touchingly felt – than of what, if we can make it a little horrendous, we might actually live for. That is, it reminded us what Strauss and his aestheticism are ultimately concerned with and why this work from the 1930s, derived from and transforming an English comedy of more than three centuries earlier, might yet matter to us in 2025.

‘Wie schön ist doch der Musik!’ And just perhaps, as Morosus continues, ‘aber wie schön ist, wenn sie vorbei ist!‘ The music was indeed beautiful, and there was unquestionably something poignant, even painful in the beauty of its fleetingness, of its passing. That it cannot be grasped is worth our grasping; in that way and in reflection both upon it and upon its passing, it will often remain with us all the longer. As ever, at least in a performance worth its salt, one does not want the Straussian epilogue to end, but it does and it must, and we are better for it. And with that, both my opera season and that of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden draw to a close. The latter’s next will open with Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Ring, conducted by Christian Thielemann.