Kammermusiksaal
Bach: Chorale, ‘Von deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit’, BWV 327
Hindemith: Trauermusik for viola and string orchestra
Bach: The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080: Contrapunctus I and III
Schnittke: Monologue for viola and string orchestra
Bach: The Art of Fugue: Contrapunctus II and IV
Shostakovich, arr. Rudolf Barshai: Chamber Symphony, op.111a
Bach: Chorale Prelude, ‘Von deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit’, BWV 668
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| (My photograph) |
The Berlin Philharmonic’s International Chamber Orchestra series, its home in the Philharmonie’s younger sibling, the next-door Kammermusiksaal, always offers a rich and rewarding selection of programmes. This Mahler Chamber Orchestra concert, given with artistic partner, violist Antoine Tamestit, was very much a case in point, music by Bach interspersed with works of lament and mourning by Hindemith, Schnittke, and Shostakovich. Bach of course offers life, death, and the beyond. Here we began and closed with him approaching God’s throne, beseeching the Almighty for hope, forgiveness, and the promise of everlasting life, including a transcription of his deathbed chorale prelude, with the first four Contrapuncti from the Art of Fugue offering a taste, even a banquet, of the music of the spheres. ‘Bach, c’est Bach, comme Dieu c’est Dieu,’ in the words of Berlioz.
The opening chorale, BWV 327, bears no words in the surviving text and sets a melody associated with the hymn ‘Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir,’ the alternative words given to it by the editors of the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe. If you were expecting a rousing ‘Old Hundredth’ opening, nothing could have been further from the reality. Instead, front desks only from the string orchestra offered a slow, veiled, vibratoless, Passion-like introduction, soft humming suggesting a congregation, perhaps even of the netherworld. In a sense, it brought together old and new Bach, the speed more Klemperer-like than anything one might hear today, the total lack of vibrato looking back (or so we imagine) to early consorts as well as forward to the present, the difference being that this proved to have been an artistic rather than a dogmatic choice.
The chorale is quoted in Hindemith’s Trauermusik for George V. The British monarch may not seem the most promising object of a musical tribute, but there have been far worse—before, in Bach’s age, Hindemith’s, and our own. Trauermusik was written on 21 January 1936, following news of the king’s death the night before (as we now know, killed by his physician in order to make the following day’s newspapers). The concert in which Hindemith had been due to play his own viola concerto was cancelled, but this new work, conjured up at Mozartian speed in a BBC office for the occasion, was given in a broadcast instead, with the same performers: Hindemith, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Adrian Boult. I have not especially warmed to the piece before – indeed, last time I heard it, I found it rather dull – so was delighted to find myself far more involved this time around, no doubt on account of the excellent performance from Tamestit and the MCO. The effect of the ‘new’ orchestral sound was of coming into ‘modern’ focus that yet intangibly built upon Bach. The four brief movements were dignified, at times passionate, yet never lachrymose, always guided by melody, harmonic rhythm, and their combination. This was recognisably the world of Mathis der Maler, with Bach’s chorale (which Hindemith was unaware had not set the words printed in the BGA) sounding as a reminiscence of the world in which it had been set as well, obviously, as of Bach. Played initially with low – not no – vibrato and gradually intensifying, it imparted a sense not only of coming ‘up to date’ but also of a life gathering force until its close, at which the music duly receded.
Contrapunctus I followed, each of the Art of Fugue pieces given by four solo strings, Tamestit one of them. Each begins in a different voice, this therefore initiated by the ‘second’ violin (actually, front desk first violinist, but not leader) Alexandra Preucil, to which Matthew Truscott soon responded as ‘first’. It was interesting, even before the entry of viola and cello, to note how different the two violinists’ playing was: not in any sense predictably so, but in response and complement. In a sense, it offered a microcosm of a concert in which nothing was taken for granted. This was warm, intelligent, unaffected playing, in which the illusion of the music ‘speaking for itself’ could readily be believed in, though it offered subtle insight aplenty as soon as one listened, just as in, say, music from the ‘Golden Age’ of vocal polyphony. The following fugue sounded as if a long-range ‘answer’, which in a way it is. Procedural relationships were clad in both flesh and the emotions that attend it. It was deeply involving and affecting.
Like Contrapunctus III, Schnittke’s 1989 Monologue begins with a viola line, albeit against a backdrop of orchestral second violins and violas. Written for Yuri Bashmet, it is as well that it has been taken up by other violists, since we are unlikely to hear Bashmet in the ‘West’ for the foreseeable future. Tamestit, in any case, had nothing to fear from comparisons, leading a performance it was not difficult to think ‘definitive’ (however vain the idea), every note being made to count without a hint of pedantry. The piece’s darkness was apparent; so too was the happenstance of kinship with Hindemith, at least in initial retrospection, though its ghostliness extended, as one might expect, far further. Indeed, it offered a kind of bridge between Hindemith and Shostakovich. If sometimes I had doubts about the quality of the material ‘itself’, performance rendered such doubts, as it were, more or less immaterial.
Bach returned for Contrapunctus II and IV. No such doubts here, of course, the extraordinary, unanswerable invention and integrity of harmony and counterpoint reminding us once again of Berlioz’s dictum. What struck me on coming to the fourth was how the player first intoning the subject had apparently taken the lead for the way in which the fugue would be played as a whole: not, of course, that this had not been playing of mutual responsiveness, but that it had rightly made its mark (just as voicing would necessarily do so on the piano). Chromaticism naturally offered its own seasoning.
Rudolf Barshai’s Chamber Symphony arrangement of Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet has long been admired, not least by Shostakovich himself. It sounded here in no way as if it were ‘merely’ an arrangement, but rather as if it were what had always been intended. Moreover, it would be difficult to imagine a better or more committed performance than that we heard from the MCO, Tamestit in its ranks on the first viola desk. The opening ‘Largo’ seemed, perhaps inevitably, to speak to our current predicament, little more than two days after the shocking attack on Iran. It was sad, bleak even, but human. Detail and the longer line were unerringly drawn, contributing to one another. The second movement as hysterical outburst knocked Schnittke into distant second place, its astonishing string playing further vindication of Barshai’s work. Capturing letter and spirit to perfection, the third movement performance moved from initial innocence to something lunging and sardonic; for once, comparison with Mahler did not seem beside the point. The weird after-life of this ‘Allegretto’ seemed more like hell on earth. For the two remaining ‘Largo’ movements, the first lament was icy yet warm, briefly brought into a winter sun that was swiftly banished; the second, kindred in spirit, also performed its function of quasi-cyclical return. Even for someone such as I who is not in general Shostakovich’s greatest fan, this was haunting music and haunting music-making.
And so, to Bach’s final work, the last of the ‘Leipzig chorales’, moving effortlessly in true Bachian fashion from organ to strings, binding together the programme in various ways, not least since it was also the chorale with which Bach closed but not completed The Art of Fugue (albeit under the name ‘Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein’), allegedly on his deathbed. Hindemith was, of course, unaware that Bach had always used a different melody for the chorale that he included in his work. This true ‘Von deinen Thron’ therefore effected a kind of historical as well as aesthetic reconciliation, albeit of a properly complex variety. I have simplified the above, perhaps to the extent of distortion, for which please accept apologies if necessary. There was no distortion and certainly no need for apology, though, in the profoundly moving music-making that concluded this outstanding concert. The whole string orchestra, Tamestit included, gave an intimate, unveiled performance of ultimate integrity, reminding us that Bach offers as close to ein’ feste Burg as we shall come in this life: not in stoicism, which may or may not be all we have, but in faith.
