Zemlinsky, Die Seejungfrau

Zemlinsky and Schoenberg, Prague, 1917
Image: Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna

‘I have always thought and still believe that he was a great composer. Maybe his time will come earlier than we think.’ Arnold Schoenberg was far from given to exaggerated claims for ‘greatness’, yet he could hardly have been more emphatic in the case of his friend, brother-in-law, mentor, advocate, interpreter, and, of course, fellow composer, Alexander Zemlinsky. Ten years later, in 1959, another, still more exacting modernist critic, Theodor Adorno, wrote in surprisingly glowing terms. Zemlinsky had ‘made more of the compromises characteristic of an eclectic than any other first-rate composer of his generation. Yet his eclecticism demonstrated genius in its truly seismographic sensitivity to the stimuli by which he allowed himself to be overwhelmed.’ We perhaps look more warily than Adorno or Schoenberg upon Romantic notions of genius, even as our concert halls, opera houses, and much popular discourse cling to them. Has Zemlinsky’s time come? Or is the question now beside the point?


In that Romantic vein, the Lyric Symphony remains Zemlinsky’s ‘masterpiece’: frequently performed, recorded, and esteemed. His operas are now staged more often, at least in Germany. In that same 1949 sketch, Schoenberg praised Zemlinsky the opera composer extravagantly, saying he knew not one ‘composer after Wagner who could satisfy the demands of the theatre with better musical substance than he. His ideas, his forms, his sonorities, and every turn of the music sprang directly from the action, from the scenery, and from the singers’ voices with a naturalness and distinction of supreme quality.’ What, then, of the invisible theatre of the symphonic poem, historically related to Wagnerian drama from Liszt onwards – as indeed in the œuvre of Richard Strauss? There are no voices, nor is there scenery. But what of ideas, forms, sonorities, and action? Die Seejungfrau (‘The Mermaid’) is Zemlinsky’s sole essay in the genre and now his most widely esteemed non-vocal work. 

Image: Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna

It was not always so. After only three performances, in Vienna, Berlin, and Prague, Zemlinsky withdrew the score. The first performance on 25 January 1905 was also noteworthy for the premiere of Schoenberg’s tone poem, Pelleas und Melisande, and for being the final concert of the Vereinigung schaffender Tonkünstler (‘Society of Creative Musicians’), founded by Schoenberg, Zemlinsky, and fellow conductor-composer Oskar Posa only the previous year. It had already performed Strauss’s Sinfonia domestica and the Vienna premiere of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder. Here each of the founding members conducted his own premiere, five songs for baritone and orchestra by Posa given between Zemlinsky and Schoenberg’s symphonic poems.


The audience did not react kindly to Pelleas, which had most likely been poorly performed (and conducted). Schoenberg would subsequently recall that ‘reviews were unusually violent and one of the critics suggested to put me in an asylum and keep music paper out of my reach’. That is what musical history has tended to remember. However, Zemlinsky’s piece, although misunderstood as merely ‘charming’, even in one review ‘heart-warming’, was received with greater enthusiasm. Such misunderstanding is nevertheless understandable, given that Zemlinsky’s aesthetic would always remain attached to an old-fashioned notion of ‘beauty’. In a 1902 letter to Schoenberg, he declared: ’A great artist who has everything required to express himself meaningfully, must observe the boundaries of the beautiful, even if he should stretch them further.’ To do so, he continued, would have a trained ear, ‘our era … yours and mine,’ hear mere ugliness. For him, Strauss crossed that line in Ein Heldenleben. Such would not be the path taken in the ‘symphonic poem, Das Meerfräulein, by [Hans Christian] Andersen,’ soon renamed Die Seejungfrau. 

Marie Pappenheim, oil painting by Schoenberg, 1909
 Image: Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna

It is uncertain why, following those three performances, Zemlinsky suppressed the work. He did not even mention it in a 1910 worklist he sent to Universal Edition. It appears he may have come to regret the persistence of elements of less-than-symphonic repetition, which he saw as more at home in the Viennese operettas he conducted to earn a living. The unpublished score was divided, the first movement given to Marie Pappenheim, a friend of Zemlinsky, now best known, alongside achievements as dermatologist and sexual liberationist, as Schoenberg’s librettist for Erwartung. Zemlinsky retained the second and third movements, taking them with him when he fled Europe for the United States in 1938. Only in the early 1980s did scholars come to realise that the three movements belonged together. Die Seejungfrau was finally published, receiving its first ‘modern’ performance, conducted by one of those scholars, Peter Gülke, in 1984.


In the letter to Schoenberg quoted above, Zemlinsky outlined his plan:

Part I a: At the foot of the sea (entire exposition) b: Mermaid in the human world, storm, the prince’s rescue.

Part II a: The mermaid’s longing; with the witch. b: The prince’s wedding and mermaid’s demise. Thus two parts, but four sections.

As work progressed – Zemlinsky wrote far more slowly than Schoenberg – the four sections remained, yet spread across a ‘fantasy in three movements for large orchestra’. The shift to three movements speaks of developing symphonic ambition; ‘symphonic poem’ is how Zemlinsky persistently referred to it in correspondence with Schoenberg. Even the narrative and pictorial ambition of the first movement, its storm included, are bound together by a Brahmsian mode of thematic working. ‘I had been a “Brahmsian” when I met Zemlinsky,’ Schoenberg recalled; ‘his love embraced both Brahms and Wagner and soon thereafter I became an equally confirmed addict.’


The scherzo has less in the way of narrative; it is more of a symphonic movement ‘after’ Andersen. Not for nothing do the waves of La Mer, Debussy’s three ‘symphonic sketches’, come to mind at its opening. The third movement too proceeds in notably symphonic fashion, earlier music revisited and transformed. It may ultimately offer a hymn to ‘man’s immortal soul’, yet far from dependent upon a programmatic idea, let alone a detailed narrative. We should not push such claims too far. Zemlinsky’s themes are motifs, associated with objects, ideas, emotions, as that ‘New German School’ of Wagner, Berlioz, Liszt, and even their successor Strauss would have understood. ‘Home’, ‘joy’, ‘despair,’ seabed, mermaid, ‘human world’, and many others speak of a conceptual dramaturgy extending beyond ‘absolute’ music, even if it eventually returns us to that realm. An age old problem of ‘programme music’ – do we need the ‘programme’ or not? – is resuscitated in a tale of neither fish nor fowl that, both in subject matter and in aesthetic controversy, redramatises and rephrases that very same problem.

Routledge translation, 1883

It is generally wise to beware reading autobiography explicitly into music. In this case, however, the romantic ardour Zemlinsky had felt prior to rejection by his pupil, Alma Schindler (subsequently Mahler) seems unavoidably related, at least in generalised fashion, to the work’s subject matter. Such would be the case more specifically in two operas, Der Traumgörge (‘Görge the Dreamer’) and Der Zwerg (‘The Dwarf’). The history and hysteria of the merwitch music, ‘bei der Meerhexe’, cut by Zemlinsky and only latterly restored in Antony Beaumont’s critical edition of the original version, tells its own bitter story. Dark brass writing at the opening proves unsurprisingly Wagnerian, although Strauss may be just as relevant. Disentangling the two hardly seems relevant. Haunting string chords, woodwind solos too, suggest Mahler’s early cantata, Das klagende Lied, which had finally received its first performance in Vienna, in 1901, albeit in heavily revised, truncated form. We might continue, isolating affinities with Till Eulenspiegel, Tod und Verklärung, and so on, yet what would be the point, without broader critical observation? Affinity is not necessarily influence; even when it turns out to be, there remains the question: ‘so what?’


Perhaps we come closer to appreciation of the work’s particular qualities when we recall that Zemlinsky, like Mahler and Strauss, yet unlike Schoenberg, was also a conductor of the first rank. The detail of his orchestral scores is noteworthy in itself and for its practicality, born of experience. That is not to say that he does not make strenuous demands; however, they are never absurd. (One might draw a comparison with, say, Liszt in his piano writing.) Beaumont identifies in this work the birth of an especially ‘singular aspect of Zemlinsky’s art,’ namely his ‘exploitation of the glissando,’ as opposed to Mahlerian portamento, ‘as an expressive device in its own right’. It could hardly have been signalled more emphatically, nor indeed originally, than in the scherzo: four unison trombones at fortissimo. Beaumont rightly acknowledges one contemporaneous usage: Schoenberg’s Pelleas, which requests muted trombones at ppp. Mere coincidence is unlikely. Who influenced whom? We shall probably never know – although Schoenberg’s greater speed at writing may just give him the edge of probability.


At any rate, as Adorno realised, Zemlinsky’s voice, impulse, and general priorities were more typical for ‘Vienna 1900’ than Schoenberg’s. Erik Levi has astutely described Zemlinsky as ‘very much a child of his time, a composer who enthusiastically absorbed a wide array of contemporary cultural influences, but whose distinctive voice only emerges after sustained exposure to his music.’ We stand in a better position to receive and learn from such exposure than previously; indeed, we have now for a little while. Zemlinsky’s time may have come upon us earlier than we knew.

(This essay was first published to accompany the Pentatone recording of Die Seejungfrau by the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and Marc Albrecht. See below.)

Staatskapelle Berlin/Schiff - Bach, 6 December 2019

Pierre Boulez Saal

Orchestral Suite no.2 in B minor, BWV 1067

Piano Concerto no.3 in D major, BWV 1054

Orchestral Suite no.3 in D major, BWV 1068

Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor, BWV 1052

Claudia Stein (flute)

Staatskapelle Berlin

András Schiff (piano, conductor)

Celebrating its 450^th anniversary next year, the Staatskapelle Berlin traces its proud history long before Bach: be that its ‘own’, Carl Philipp Emanuel, his father, Johann Sebastian—‘Gentlemen, old Bach is here!’—or indeed any family member whom we know as a composer. It is a sad state of affairs to report that, on the similar brink of another anniversary, the 70^th of the great Bach year of 1950, in whose wake Theodor Adorno wrote his coruscating denunciation of authenticist ideology, we still live so much in its baleful shadow that a concert from this ancient orchestra in which it performs only relatively ‘alte Musik’ should remain so remarkable a thing. Whatever reservations I may have felt, then, concerning András Schiff’s direction of this wonderful orchestra—a few, alongside many positive observations—I remain grateful indeed for the experience, for the reminder that it is still just about possible to hear Bach played by a modern orchestra without compelling its players to sound like an end-of-pier band, or indeed simply to hear Bach from a modern orchestra at all. To see Daniel Barenboim in the Pierre Boulez Saal audience, moreover, was encouraging; dare we hope for some more Bach from him, whether as pianist, conductor, or both?

For the B minor Orchestral Suite, with Claudia Stein as the excellent flute soloist, Schiff, conducting rather than direction from the keyboard, called on a very small string orchestra (4.4.3.2.1) plus harpsichord (Schaghajegh Nosrati). The opening to the Overture, like its counterpart in the D major Suite later on, sounded clipped and inhibited. The main body of the movement came as a significant relief: not only a sensible tempo, so rare nowadays in this music, but with no attempt to inflict weird, egotistical mannerisms upon it. Rhythms were nicely sprung. Crucially, that sense of line strangely lacking earlier on was present throughout. It was initially not clear to me that Schiff’s hand-waving had much bearing on the excellent playing, other than setting the parameters within which it would operate, but entries were well pointed, so perhaps it did after all. The Rondeau and Sarabande proved graceful, without some effete, allegedly French idea of ‘grace’ becoming an end in itself. Once again, the lack of breakneck, attention-seeking tempo was greatly appreciated, also enabling the first Bourrée to come as a vigorous contrast that yet did not neglect its fundamental musical worth. The second, played only by soloists and with darker tone, offered a more relaxed foil. The martial qualities of Polonaise rhythm were communicated, yet again without ‘style’ being taken for idea. Stein’s playing in particular highlighted rhythm in revealing, generative fashion. A further solo foil, this time from flute and continuo, proved idiomatically and emotionally refreshing in the Double. A courtly Menuett led to a Badinerie that was swift without taking speed to fashionable excess, Stein’s agile musicianship matched by a highly responsive orchestra.

Moving to the relative major, a slightly augmented string section (6.6.4.3.2) accompanied Schiff in the D major Concerto, BWV 1054, directed—without harpsichord—from the piano. The first movement’s opening was bright and clear. Just when I was longing for greater variegation of piano tone, Schiff offered some, though I could not help but wish we had heard a little more in that respect. Such is his way, however, as his refusal to use the sustaining pedal; we should all be wary of claims that there is only one way. Light piano ornamentation proved stylish and did not obscure the fundamentals. An eminently musical account of the slow movement permitted depth to come from the notes, as opposed to being some thing applied to them. Command of the long line was here crucial—and unfailing. Some may well have found Schiff’s tempo for the final movement too slow; it is, after all, marked ‘Presto’. For me, his relatively unhurried approach had much to be said for it, permitting the music to speak, with no fashionable sense of harrying it.

The larger string band was retained for the second half, joined of course by two oboes, three trumpets, kettledrums, and harpsichord for the D major Orchestral Suite, not least in the main body of the first movement. It was taken fast, but far from unreasonably so: music and players could take it. What cultivated string-playing we heard, trumpets in particular enhancing the sense of the festal. If my ears took a minute or so to adjust to a more ‘period’ sound for the kettledrums, I soon ditched my prejudice in the light of such intelligent, rhetorically and harmonically expressive playing from Stephan Möller. Apparent determination to wrest the ‘Air’ from ‘on the G string fame’ left it in a curious state: skated over, with most uncharacteristic vibrato-lite playing. Nosrati’s continuo playing, however, proved a delight. Following a pair of Gavottes that were lively and vigorous, if somewhat short-breathed, the Bourrée and Gigue sounded a little too much as if translated from the keyboard, fine orchestral playing notwithstanding.

The D minor Concerto, BWV 1052, opened in forthright fashion, Schiff’s tempo choice spot on. (Not that there is a ‘correct’ answer here, but rather that it should work within the context of the performance—which it did.) There was energy enough, but also space. I may have wished it to breathe more at times; again, however, it would be folly to insist upon one’s own aesthetic being applied to everything, for on its own terms, this worked well. A greater problem for me was a lack—at least on certain occasions—of piano legato and a certain heavy-handedness which may have led some to doubt the role of a Steinway in this music. The slow movement, similarly to the Suite’s Air, seemed haunted by a fear of ‘romanticising’; what we heard instead sounded oddly unengaged, Schiff’s piano tone often unforgiving. The finale, however, came off much better: tempo, clarity, and dynamism all just right. Most important of all, it possessed a sense of grandeur such as Bach demands and yet all too rarely receives. Old Bach, it felt, was truly here: not in Potsdam, still less in Leipzig, but in Berlin.

Tristan und Isolde, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 18 March 2018

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Tristan – Andreas Schager

King Marke – Stephen Milling

Isolde – Anja Kampe

Kurwenal – Boaz Daniel

Melot – Stephan Rügamer

Brangäne – Ekaterina Gubanova

Steersman – Adam Kutny

Young Sailor, Shepherd – Linard Vrielink

Tristan’s Mother – Kristin Becker

Tristan’s Father – Mike Hoffmann

English horn (onstage) – Florian Hanspach-Torkildsen

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, set designs)

Elena Zaytseva (costumes)

Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)

Tieni Burkhalter (video)

Tatina Vereshchagina, Detlef Giese (dramaturgy)

Berlin State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Raymond Hughes)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Tristan (Andreas Schager) and ensemble

No one doubts the supreme challenge presented in performing Tristan und Isolde. After seventy-seven rehearsals, the intended 1861 Vienna premiere had to be abandoned. A work that had taken less than three years to write took more than double that, as John Deathridge has observed, to ‘overcome prejudice about its viability. … Strasbourg, Karlsruhe, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Dresden, Hanover, Stuttgart, Prague, and Vienna: in the end none of these opera houses would touch it.’ When Munich finally did, in 1865, Wagner’s Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, died after just four performances. Wagner’s foes, political, aesthetic, and ‘moral’, seized on the opportunity to claim, ludicrously, that Tristan, rather than typhus was the agent of death. If audiences today avoid quite such high (melo)drama, more often than not they meet the curse on the other side of Wagner’s melodramatic coin: ‘only mediocre performances can save me! Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive people mad, - I cannot imagine it otherwise. This is how far I have gone!! Oh dear! – I was just in full career! Adieu!’

The twin dangers of unviability and necessary mediocrity were avoided in this outstanding performance from the Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim, and a cast headed by Andreas Schager and Anja Kampe. When I last heard Barenboim conduct Tristan, in 2010, I observed that this, ‘of the three Tristans in the theatre’ I had heard him conduct, had ‘surely [been] the best, above all in as searing a first act as I have ever heard, reminiscent of Karl Böhm at Bayreuth.’ This proved a more powerful musical experience still, and quite different. Yes, the first act was ‘searing’, but it had little in common with Böhm, save perhaps for the visceral, overwhelming quality to the close, which left me in quite a state of shock: not so far from Wagner’s ‘perfectly good ones … bound to drive people mad’. Barenboim now appears to be hearing Tristan more overtly through ears transformed by his recent Parsifal performances – or at least leading us to do so. (Perhaps it is not entirely a coincidence that they too have been collaborations with Dmitri Tcherniakov – and Schager, and, oneyear, Kampe too.)

Some people have, apparently, been complaining that his tempi were ‘slow’: do they really want a ‘fast’ Tristan? I fear that, unconsciously or even consciously fearful of Wagner’s ‘perfectly good,’ they actually might. Perhaps sometimes they were. I have no idea, not being a clock-watcher. More importantly, there were ample space and tension, for the ebb and flow of Wagner’s Schopenhauerian Will to find orchestral representation. For, still more than Parsifal, the music of Beethoven – and Barenboim’s recent Beethoven, as heard in a life-changing symphonic Proms cycle with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra – made its harmonic mark. The ‘growth’ of harmony from the bass line, even when, indeed particularly when, Wagner’s extreme chromaticism tugs away from it, ensured both musicodramatic comprehensibility and a placing between Beethoven and Schoenberg, yet reducible to neither. The Staatskapelle Berlin might almost be taken for granted in this, so inveterate is its Wagnerian excellence; it should not be. Without its dark, ‘German’ tone, ‘traditional’ and yet probing so many of those new musical worlds seemingly born in this score, we should come nowhere near The World as Will and Representation at all, still less to a ‘perfectly good’ Tristan.

Isolde (Anja Kampe), Brangäne (Ekaterina Gubanova)

Likewise Barenboim’s excellent cast, crucial to far more than the ‘surface’ role Schopenhauer’s aesthetics might suggest. Schager again might readily be taken for granted. (Remember when we had no such Heldentenor? It was not so long ago.) His was certainly the finest account of the role I have heard in the theatre, fully worthy of comparison with the great, doubtless mythologised performances of the recorded past, although again certainly not to be reduced to them, nor indeed to comparisons therewith. If the seemingly infinite vocal resources Schager can call upon to make his way through the third act monologue – it was to that in particular that Wagner referred in his letter – suggest Lauritz Melchior, there was none of the laziness or, at least, somewhat cavalier attitude that could afflict the latter’s work. Schager can sing the part and he does, but dramatically it needs to be hard work; we need to feel, to share in, Tristan’s struggle, even as it frightens, repels us. We did, in this, a performance for the ages. Kampe’s Isolde was perhaps not on quite so grand a scale; nor did it need to be. She offered her own detailed portrayal, again matching ‘musical’ and ‘dramatic’ imperatives – as if they might ever formally be separated! – to a degree it would be difficult to match, let alone to surpass. Boaz Daniel and Ekaterina Gubanova offered far more than support as Kurwenal and Brangäne, the latter’s ‘operatic Lied’ approach, unfailingly sensitive to words and their implications, without permitting them to override the imperatives of the musical line. King Markes rarely disappoint: what a gift of a role it is in a more traditional sense. Nevertheless, Stephen Milling’s depth of tone and grace of character impressed greatly. Amongst a strong ‘supporting’ cast, Linard Vrielink’s beautifully sung Young Sailor and Shepherd stood out.

There remains, however, another common danger, increasingly common, to contemporary Tristan performances – more strictly, to productions. That is of missing the point of the work entirely. I hope it will not be taken that I am referring in some generic reactionary fashion to the ‘creator’s intentions’. However, Tristan seems in practice to prove unusually resistant to attempts even to question what it might be ‘about’. The idea of the work being shoehorned, for instance, into a justified protest against anti-immigration policies hardly bears thinking about. Tristan is certainly not in any emphatic sense ‘about’ its ‘characters’, insofar as they be characters at all; it seems to come closer than any other of Wagner’s dramas to that all-too-celebrated description of ‘deeds of music made visible’. Prior to Tcherniakov’s staging, I had yet to see what might broadly be termed an ‘interventionist’ staging that worked.

King Marke (Stephen Milling), Tristan, Melot (Stephan Rügamer), Kurwenal (Boaz Daniel)

Does Tcherniakov change that? I hope it is not unduly pretentious – it may already prove a little late to sound that alert – to say I think it too soon to tell. What I can say is that his production has made me think about the issues involved like no other: an achievement I think worth lauding in itself. By contrast with his perhaps atypical, unquestionably brilliant Parsifal – the best I have seen since Stefan Herheim – we return to Tcherniakov’s homeground of the unpleasant rich. Fair enough: with kings, queens, and princes, that is what we are dealing with. Elena Zaytseva’s costumes and Tcherniakov’s own set designs – in the first act, a true luxury vessel, replete with ‘bespoke’ anything you might care to mention; in the second, a ‘tasteful’ Jugendstil indoor forest ‘theme’ we want to hate, yet secretly want – instantly evoke the excesses of a corporate, materialistic world we know only too well. The third act by contrast retreats to a homely comfort zone for Tristan, an old moneyed boy who never grew up (haunted, as his monologue tells us, by the circumstances of his birth, visions of his parents appearing in his delirium).

Is that all too specific, though? Does it fall into the trap of making Tristan about the trappings of wealth? Not really, for there is an intriguing, deadly game afoot. Tcherniakov does not treat the lovers as identical, as two mere parts of ‘Tristan and Isolde’. He does not accept Wagner, let alone Schopenhauer, at face value. Instead, he implicitly, even explicitly, criticises some of their (neo-)Romantic premises. Is Tristan, perhaps even Isolde at times, actually mocking whatever it is they play out? It is not always clear, but there is a degree of unnerving alienation to the proceedings that intrigues, questions, even (metatheatrically?) frightens. A woman fainting in the second act seems to fall into their trap, or is she in on the game too? Or, perhaps most important, is this a critique of the game we play, when we sit around, almost as Nietzsche’s ‘Wagnerians’, ‘disciples – benumbed, pale, breathless!’, both at the performance, enraptured, and afterwards, discussing how singular this work is, how it refuses directorial interventionism? The question of aestheticisation is live, just as in the Staatsoper’s newproduction by Hans Neuenfels of Salome, which I saw the previous evening: a fascinating, provocative pairing. Who, both productions seem to ask, is the Wagnerian now, whether on or off stage? The English horn player on stage (the excellent Florian Hanspach-Torkildsen) perhaps asks us something similar, his deeds of music rendered unusually visible.

Shepherd (Linard Vrielink), Florian Hanspach-Torkildsen (English horn)

Tcherniakov seems to me on balance to succeed where many others have failed, presenting an element of alienation that holds work and musical performance at arm’s length, without descending into mere reductionist banality. In the separation of ‘work’ and staging, even of musical performance and staging, the two become problematically, rather than mystically, reengaged. Romanticism is decisively rejected, whether in work or reception. It need not always be, perhaps, but it is here – and fruitfully. For instance, Karol Berger has recently argued that that is, part way through Tristan’s monologue, it ‘is clear thus far … that the escape from the separating illusions of Day into the unifying truth of Night remains Tristan’s goal, but a goal he cannot accomplish in Isolde’s absence, since they need to escape together.’ Perhaps. I should certainly allow, at least, that that was Wagner’s intention, most likely even what he thought he had achieved. The work here, though, I think, knows better than its creator. Wagner’s need to ‘transcend’ at the close already betrays the relative poverty of such Romanticism, just as Mozart’s terrifyingly clear-eyed coda to Così fan tutte does (more knowingly, I think, although that may be debated).

Tristan and Isolde

Tcherniakov’s treatment of the so-called Liebestod – Wagner’s own ‘Verklärung’ is worth fighting for against Liszt’s well-meaning misunderstanding – seems to me of particular interest here, sharing, even intensifying the ambiguity of work, conception, and tradition. Tristan’s room returns to darkness, Isolde having cocooned herself with him, safe from prying eyes – whether ours or those on stage. The prior onstage separation between Shepherd and his instrument, the scenic and the musical, seems thereby at a remove almost to have been overcome. We could believe in what she is doing, she doubtless could too; but we do not, and we doubt whether she does. Wagner’s reconciliation is false. Which returned this listener at least to one of the most searching – as well as, on occasion, utterly wrong-headed – of Wagner’s critics after Nietzsche: Theodor Adorno. On the final page of his Essay on Wagner, we read: ‘Tristan’s curse upon love [Minne] is more than the impotent sacrifice intoxication offers up to asceticism.’ It is rather music’s rebellion against its own ‘constraint of Fate’. In that rebellion, music will often benefit from enlisting the services of ‘drama’, and vice versa. Negative dialectics indeed.

BPO/Thielemann - Beethoven, Missa solemnis, 14 December 2017

Philharmonie

Mass in D major, op.123 (Missa solemnis)

Luba Orgonášová (soprano)

Elisabeth Kulman (mezzo-soprano)

Daniel Behle (tenor)

Franz-Josef Selig (bass)

Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Philipp Ahmann)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

There are musical works at which, in awe, one strain’s one’s aural neck – and then there is the Missa solemnis (no need, just like the Ninth Symphony, to say whose). It has its detractors; so does Fidelio. However, their accusations, in both cases, seem founded on gross misunderstandings of what Beethoven was doing. Ultimately, they perhaps even add to the works’ stature: almost unquestionably so, I think, in the case of the Missa solemnis. Its extreme difficulty is both the point and not the point. As with all late Beethoven, indeed pretty much all Beethoven, dialectics ensure that difficulty and simplicity, rupture and wholeness, so on and so forth, are not just banally ‘connected’, but inconceivable, conceptually let alone performatively, with one another.

Performance: there’s the rub, or perhaps the greatest rub. I have noticed that, with many honourable exceptions, it is singers who are most likely to condemn those works of Beethoven that include voices. (It is surely an error to name them ‘vocal works’, a mistake that gets close to the heart of the matter.) If you want concessions, to your personal taste, to your ease of performance or listening, concessions to anything really: Beethoven could hardly be less your man. It is not ‘about you’, as the modern slogan has it. And yes, I know very well that I am drawing upon, thinking and writing within, the Romantic myth of Beethoven, of the towering, glowering genius. Such knowledge, whether we like it or no, is the essence of our modern and/or post-modern predicament. Guess what, though? The myth happens to be true. The enigmatic quality and the extreme difficulty are integral to the work; in the complexity of its attempted, impossible mediation between subject and object, they are, just as in Hegel (well, more or less ‘just as’), doing the work of Geist (Spirit), of God, of history, of whatever we want to call it, or It. Calling the Missa solemnis a ‘concert work’ is at best misleading, despite its actual – as opposed to envisaged – performance history. It is not only a sacred work, but a resanctification of, through serious reckoning with, the Mass itself – and not only its text. Reactionaries will not like that, but so what? Nor does Geist.


Performance, however, is not, as it were, the only rub. The business of aesthetics, of reflection upon art, almost immediately, even immanently, arises with this work. Such is modernity – and is this not most likely Beethoven’s most modern work of all? I have long entertained the fantasy – and who knows: sometimes fantasies are realised – that the Missa solemnis in particular and perhaps Beethoven in general would be my retirement job. (Let us leave aside the sad reflection that retirement itself will doubtless remain a mere fantasy for those of us betrayed and destroyed by the ‘Brexit’ generation.) I certainly do not feel remotely prepared to tackle it yet. In that respect, I both take heart and become ever more fearful from Furtwängler’s decision no longer to perform it. Like Beethoven himself – and surely we ought to afford his view a little respect, Wellington’s Victory notwithstanding – Furtwängler thought it Beethoven’s single greatest work, yet considered its challenges too great for him or indeed anyone else ever to be able to realise. And if Furtwängler, surely the greatest recorded Beethovenian of all, thought so…

Furtwängler’s view has overwhelmingly, tragically, been proved correct. I cannot, of course, claim to know all recorded performances of the Missa solemnis, let alone all other performances. Of the recordings as such (as opposed to performances that have survived on recording) only Klemperer’s 1966 version for me really confronts its challenges head on and emerges with credit. (One can hardly say ‘surmounts’ them; no one surmounts Beethoven’s challenges, or if (s)he does, that is perhaps the most lamentable fate of all.) And, perhaps perversely, although I should like to think in some sense dialectically – well I would, wouldn’t I? – I had, before this performance from Christian Thielemann and Berlin forces, attended only one performance in the concert hall. True, they do not necessarily come along so very often, but nor are they so rare as that might imply. I had not wanted to risk a mediocre, let alone a poor, performance: bad enough in symphonic Beethoven – what is more soul-destroying than thinking ‘pointless’ and-or ‘meaningless’ to a performance of the Fifth Symphony? – but somehow even worse here, for it might end up sounding like what its detractors think it does. I had chosen my single performance well: Colin Davis, shortly before his death, and with mortality seemingly, even at the time, hanging over Beethoven’s grand reckoning not only with the Mass but with God Himself. It was a performance I shall never forget – and again, like Klemperer, that is part of the problem for whatever comes after. It may, it would seem, also be (re)listened to on YouTube, but I have never felt the desire to try – and doubtless to fail – to repeat an unrepeatable experience. (Indeed, although I have offered a link to the review, I do not yet even wish to re-read it.) And the thoughts it gave rise to, seemingly spanning the entirety of musical and theological history, or doubtless I flatter myself…

Apologies for having spent so long, relatively speaking, concerning my own thoughts, or attempts at thoughts, about the work rather than the performance. (Believe me, I could have gone on for much, much longer; I almost thought myself retired.) They seemed necessary, though, not even merely advisable, to explain how I heard Thielemann’s performance – or perhaps, to those who gained far more from it, how I did not hear it. Or perhaps I too was avoiding a confrontation. It seems somehow almost unforgivably banal to move to saying ‘it had much to admire, yet…’. And yet, that is what I must do; for, despite many very real virtues, the sheer excellence of all performing forces the greatest among them, I was left almost entirely cold. Was that another turn, as it were, of the Adornian dialectical screw? I thought I had truly grasped the work, however fleetingly, and then had not? Maybe a little, but not really, I think.

Thielemann clearly knew the work, or the notes, and what he wanted from it, or them. He was conducting from memory. Moreover, he clearly knew exactly how to get what he wanted from those uniformly excellent performers. Any criticisms I shall make are in no sense criticisms of them. One might have thought that a musician who, not unaggressively, positions himself as a standard bearer of the great German tradition would have been in a good position to communicate the mysteries of this work. There is, of course, no single tradition, though. And whilst I have in the past admired Thielemann’s Beethoven greatly – his recordings with the Philharmonia, for instance – his more recent Beethoven, still more so his Wagner, seems to have been filtered through a materialist conception that might work for Strauss, and often does work for him, magnificently, but which cannot really cope with the meaning(s) of works by Beethoven and Wagner. We can certainly applaud the need not to say the same thing over and over again, or indeed merely to imitate the past; but that does not mean that an alternative, simply by virtue of being an alternative, has any of the answers.

The full, warm sound of the Berlin Philharmonic at the opening of the Kyrie augured well: not entirely unlike Thielemann’s Philharmonia Beethoven; perhaps also with a certain kinship to the Klang of Leonard Bernstein’s Concertgebouw recording; not much at all in common with the sound of any of Herbert von Karajan’s intriguing multiple attempts at reckoning with the work (see, for instance, here and here), although perhaps at another level – deeper or shallower? perhaps both? – not so distant conceptually from Karajan’s approach. Militant authenticists would not have liked it, but who cares? And the bounds of the movement – perhaps the only one that has recognisable bounds – were well chosen; I was put in mind of an observation from Joseph Kerman to the effect that this was the only part of Beethoven’s setting that had no hyperbole. (I cannot recall his precise words, and do not have them here with me to check, so I hope that I shall be forgiven for distortion, misattribution, or even downright invention!) Moreover, whilst, from observing Thielemann, one might have feared an overly moulded performance, it did not – at least not here – sound like one. And if one had a problem with what it looked like, one could also, as with Bernstein, close one’s eyes. (Even Karajan did not, of course, do that for works with chorus when conducting them.) There was, moreover, a fine sense of a ‘natural’ – however constructed that might have been – tread to the movement’s progress. Beethoven, quite rightly, was not to be hurried; nor was he to be static. Individual soloists versus the ‘mass’ of the chorus sounded in balance, and dramatically rather than banally so. It did not ‘sound like’ Haydn, but perhaps still belonged in a similar conception to his. Beethoven as (sort of) Haydn? That is hardly unreasonable, especially here.

The rest of the Mass does not, of course, and rarely if ever did Thielemann seem quite to know – not that I think he was not trying – to portray, to dramatise that. The breakneck speed of the opening of the Gloria was surely an attempt, far from unreasonable, to do that – but what does reason, at least Enlightenment reason, have to do with this work? Superlative playing from the orchestra and superlative singing from the chorus impressed, as did the extraordinary clarity of what one heard: bassoons beneath the chorus, for instance. It ‘worked’, I think, but something was missing. The beating Larghetto heart of the movement arguably did not, Thielemann seemingly struggling to establish a basic pulse, although the woodwind solos predictably ravished in a materialist fashion. Even once the pulse had settled, though, it all sounded a little too glamorous. There was, though, a welcome sense of decision to follow: there can be no argument with either Beethoven or Whoever Stands Above Him; or alternatively, there can, but it will fail. Such good work, very sadly, was largely undone by a preposterously indulgent Luftpause before ‘in glora Dei Patris’. What might work – might – in Thielemann’s Meistersinger ‘Wach auf!’ does not work here; it came across as mere egotism. Just because you can do something, it does not follow that you should. Following that, perhaps not inappropriately in situ, came weirdly operatic ‘Amens’. Beethoven as Verdi? No thank you.

Still more is at stake in Beethoven’s Credo, both statement of and struggle to believe. Here, alas, there was far too little sense of struggle. Tension was built up admirably in the first section, very controlled, even controlling, but that is not to be disdained; we hardly want a free-for-all. It was, again, mightily impressive. ‘Et incarnatus est’ brought Palestrina, increasingly adorned, to the stage, not unlike an aural representation of a Gothic church, decorated by Rococo successors. Egotism once again, however, brought a bizarrely prolonged silence between the ‘Crucifixus’ and ‘Et resurrexit’ sections. Perhaps this is unfair, but it was almost as if Thielemann wanted to dare the audience not to fidget, or even to applaud. What followed was highly theatrical – one may argue about whether it should be, but it is not an outrageous conception – without ever conveying any real sense of theological, or other, meaning. Neutrality as opposed to neutralising tendencies doing batter with subjectivity in the material and its development? Beethoven as sewing pattern? Again, no thank you.

That tendency to draw out ‘preparations’ – not in a liturgical sense – was again to be heard in the Sanctus as we approached the ‘Pleni sunt coeli’ section. Alas, it sounded more like a trick of the trade than a reading or communication of the text. There was no gainsaying, though, the outstanding level of execution. Warmly cultivated playing from concertmaster, Daniel Stabrawa – I wish violinists would not stand as if concerto soloists for this – was greatly to be admired, but did this feel in context as if it represented, even embodied, the descent of the Holy Ghost? Oddly, the music of the ‘Benedictus’ section sounded closer than I could recall hearing before to Die Zauberflöte. Beethoven as Mozart? Well, we can argue about that.

Darkness, even if again of a somewhat materialist conception, rightly haunted the opening of the Agnus Dei. Franz-Josef Selig’s solo seemed to speak with something close to perfection of both that darkness and the humanity that might emerge de profundis. A comparison with Sarastro would be indicative, but only if it involved contrast too: there is nothing of a noble yet flawed character to the music here. (The flaws obviously, I hope, refer to Sarastro, not to Mozart!) Once more, although Thielemann often looked as if he were about to pull the music around, he did not do so unduly; indeed, the sternness with which he conducted the Berlin strings was greatly to be admired in terms of potential meaning as well as executive accomplishment. There was no doubt that we were all, worthless sinners, to be on our knees here. The longed for unambiguous major chord, when it came, was treated to what I thought of as ‘fleeting length’: not indulgent, now, but provocative in a better, productive sense. What never quite materialised, though, was the cosmic scale to the later sounds of this movement. It was as if we had returned to the world of the Kyrie; even the terror of war sounded as if heard a little too much from afar, or even as a near-visual, ‘beautiful’ representation.

I was not overwhelmed, then, either by this microcosm, or by Thielemann’s Missa cosmogony. I do not doubt, and certainly do not mean to call into question, that he had considered what he was doing. Perhaps it was just not for me. I am not sure, though, that it was for Beethoven – whatever we mean by that – either. Still, it made me think, if more afterwards than at the time. I was led to think even about what it meant not to have been made to think. And then I returned to Adorno, and with the unquestionable egotism of a mere fallen human being, to something I had written in my first book (on Wagner’s Ring), towards its close:

Adorno was quite justified to claim that serious consideration of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis – perhaps the most enduringly enigmatic musical work yet written – could only result in its Brechtian alienation, in rupturing ‘the aura of unfocused veneration protectively surrounding it’. One of the greatest problems with respect to the Ring is that such rupture has become well-nigh impossible. To be aware of this is only a beginning, but better than nothing. We should remain grateful that the enigma of the Ring pales besides that of Beethoven’s work. If we could understand why Beethoven set the Mass, we should, Adorno claimed, understand the Missa Solemnis. Understanding why Wagner wrote the Ring and beginning to understand the work itself suddenly seem less forbidding prospects.

Until, then, (impossible) retirement…

Elektra, Vienna State Opera, 13 November 2015

Images: Wiener Staatsoper/Michael Pöhn

Vienna State Opera

Elektra – Nina Stemme

Chrysothemis – Gun-Brit Barkmin
Klytämnestra – Anna Larsson
Orest – Matthias Goerne
Aegisth – Herbert Lippert
First Maid – Monika Bohinec
Second Maid – Ilsyear Khayrullova
Third Maid – Ulrike Helzel
Fourth Maid – Caroline Wenborne
Fifth Maid – Ildikó Raimondi
Overseer – Donna Ellen
Young Servant – Thomas Ebenstein
Old Servant – Hans Peter Kammerer
Orest’s tutor – Il Hong
Confidante – Simina Ivan
Trainbearer – Aura Twarowska

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)

Rolf Glittenberg (set designs)
Marianne Glittenberg (costumes)
Andreas Grüter (lighting)

Chorus of the Vienna State Opera

Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Peter Schneider (conductor)

 

It almost seems wrong to be thinking and writing about a visit to the opera in the wake of the Paris attacks last night. Yet, beyond the justified claim that we should not be deterred from going about our business – there are, I think, some exceptions, but let us leave them on one side for now – we should also remember that art speaks of the human condition. It enables us to deal with what goes on around us: not, I hope, as mere escape, but as an exploration of some of the most fundamental issues with which we grapple. Strauss’s æstheticism continues to challenge us – and so it should. It will do so in different ways at different times, and that is all to the good.

 

Whilst Elektra is far too important a work to be simply, or even mostly, ‘about’ one particular character or artist, Nina Stemme was clearly a principal attraction in a very strong cast. She might not be how we all ‘imagine’ Elektra, but such a situation can often present a justified challenge to our preconceptions. Stemme proved tireless, constantly musical and, just as important, constantly communicative with Hofmannsthal’s words, and a fine actress. It was interesting to note, and I do not think this was simply a matter of acclimatisation on my part, that she looked more ‘like’ the Stemme we know from other performances as the evening went on. To start with, Marianne Glittenberg’s costume cunningly doing its work here, I am not sure that I should have recognised her with my eyes alone. A Lieder-like approach to text as music and words, though, marked out her artistry. And the accuracy, volume, and tonal quality of her climaxes – there are many! – would have given Birgit Nilsson a run for her money, although the sound is of course quite different. Indeed, Stemme struck an excellent balance between strength of character and necessary – for survival – ability to adapt, wheedling herself, if only temporarily, back into the affections of her mother and detested stepfather.

 

With the exception of a weakly-sung Aegisth, a part often given to former Siegfrieds – surely Vienna could have done better than this! – the cast was excellent. All of the ‘smaller’ roles were very well taken, attesting to the casting in depth that a great company can offer. For me, Thomas Ebenstein’s lyric tenor, as agile as the singer on stage, and the warm humanity of Ildikó Raimondi’s Fifth Maid – what a gift of a role! – stood out, but this is definitely a case of almost all deserving prizes.

 

Gun-Brit Barkmin grasped what I assume to have been Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s concept – and of course, the work’s concept, at least implicitly – of Chrysothemis as a young woman repressing, somewhat kinkily, her adulthood, Marianne Glittenberg’s over-sized, little-girl costume again making the point strongly in visual terms. Barkmin grasped it and ran with it, helpless, but perhaps – we could never quite tell – knowingly so, again as a survival mechanism in impossible times, domestically and politically, whilst maintaining as impressive control over Strauss’s musical lines as she had Berg’s in Wozzeck last month. Barkmin was impressive in Semyon Bychkov’s magnificent Proms performance of Elektra in 2014; here she was more so still and, crucially, offering a different reading according to context.

 

Anna Larsson’s portrayal of Klyämnestra was also in its way a revelation. I have grown so accustomed to thinking of this wonderful contralto voice ‘simply’ as the earth-voice of sincerity and truth in the Ring and in Mahler, that it came as quite a jolt to hear and indeed to see her in so different a role. Again, visually I should not have recognised her. I am not sure I have heard a true contralto sing the part before; it is, of course, rare nowadays to hear a true contralto at all. Yet, not only was the musical result beautiful, although not too beautiful, Larsson’s stage presence matched her vocal artistry, again in a way that confounded narrow expectations based solely upon narrow, personal experience.

 

Matthias Goerne proved a chilling, psychopathic Orest. When I had heard him previously, his approach had been, for want of a better word, more ‘intellectual’. Here, again apparently grasping the needs of the moment, this undoubtedly intelligent artist sounded splendidly instinctive. (It is not that the two are polar opposites, or in any sense exclusive, but they are often treated as if they are such.) He sounded and looked – the costume initially concealed him more than Elektra’s had her – like a voice from beyond: almost a male Erda, perhaps a Charon or a Pluto. We could not but doubt that he brought death, nor that he was deeply damaged by experience. The culmination of the Recognition Scene, in which brother and sister relied as much upon their sense of touch as their sense of sight – perhaps they have seen far too much truly to be able to see any more – proved both moving and provocative in the expectation of something incestuous, only to be thwarted, not the least intelligent of Laufenberg’s double moves.

Peter Schneider seemed almost a different conductor from when I had heard him conduct the work, disappointingly, in Dresden almost a year ago. Everything was much sharper, and the Vienna orchestra was in far better shape than its Straussian rival. (Perhaps, last December, that was something to do with Christian Thielemann having had the pick of the bunch the previous evening, but such variation remains difficult to account for entirely.) Strauss’s score danced with exuberance and with sickly longing; it lingered only too long early in what seemed almost an interminable Recognition Scene, a rare lapse. The phantasmagorical array of colours, harmonic as well as instrumental, which the composer conjures up was well served by the Vienna orchestra. If it were not quite at the level of inspiration of Daniele Gatti with these players in Salzburg in 2010, it was still a very fine orchestral performance, that golden Vienna string tone unmistakeable. There were, moreover, a good few passages which seemed, tantalisingly, to reach out towards Erwartung.

Laufenberg’s production is intelligent throughout and, for the work, intriguingly different, although not for the sake of ‘difference’. I say ‘for the work’, since most Elektra sets seem to end up looking more or less the same. There is an element of the familiarly granitic and fascistic in Rolf Glittenberg’s designs, but they do not overwhelm as often they do. (Not that I am arguing such designs should not; it is not, however, the only way.) Accentuating the domesticity, as it were, seems very much in line with the Strauss-Hofmannsthal Freudian approach to the myth. And death hangs over the piece with a visual stench that would pack quite a punch, could I bring myself to mix metaphors quite so flagrantly. (If I am shamelessly having my cake and eating it in the preceding sentence, so, in many respects does the work itself.)

 

A lift connects the palace proper to the courtyard, although we do not necessarily notice it to begin with, the action very much taking charge of itself. (I am not sure that I had previously noticed quite so strong a kinship between the opening scene and its sister in Maeterlinck’s, though not Debussy’s, Pelléas.) It is in that that Klytämnestra descends (and Aegisth never manages to ascend). Behind the glass, she already seems encased: almost a taxidermist’s objet d’art. Her entrance – with that music, she simply has to make an entrance – thus proved, if one can have such a thing, a slightly understated coup de théâtre. If I mention her having a wheelchair and Elektra a suitcase, cries of ‘cliché’ will doubtless issue forth – and often, I should sympathise. But Elektra prevaricating over packing her bags is hardly an inappropriate idea here and, more importantly, the specific use of the wheelchair offers an interesting and indeed surprising commentary not only upon Klytämnestra, but also on her relationship with her daughter, which after all lies at the heart of the drama. The queen does not need it at all, or at least she sometimes realises that she does not. She is in many respects keeping up appearances, although for whom? Her retinue? Which way might they turn, if the going gets tough? Their indecision later on subtly underlines the point. Is there an ‘outside’ the palace and its environs? Is the queen’s act for them? We are not sure, and that seems to me quite an interesting reading of Strauss and Hofmannsthal on Sophocles: extending their seeming lack of interest in the political and turning it in – or should that be ‘out’? – upon itself. Her confidant and trainbearer inject her with something. Who is controlling whom? And yet, when they are out of the way, when finally she can settle herself to speak with her daughter as something approaching – at least in House of Atreus terms – her mother, Klytämnestra can walk freely: discuss, perhaps even take some agency for the self-interpretation of, her dreams. Elektra at one point takes her place in the wheelchair. Is that not in a sense right, given all she has suffered? And yet, she cannot of course remain there, or all would fail.

I have dwelled upon that particular scene, since it seemed to me unusually central to interpretation of the work and production on this evening. Its presentation is also typical of Laufenberg’s impressively text-based approach to the work. He is not necessarily a director to set off music against words – often a fruitful approach with Strauss – but not everyone can offer the layered approach, at least all the time, of a Stefan Herheim. (This is yet another work in which I should love to see what he might accomplish.) Laufenberg’s, however, is a thoughtful, faithful, yet far from subservient reading, to which I should readily return. The treatment of Elektra’s Dance is a case in point, and here there was perhaps a deeper engagement with the music too. I still think that, as I wrote when discussing that Proms performance, to speak, as Adorno did, of the discontinuity ‘between the wildness of most of Strauss’s music in Elektra and its blissfully triadic conclusion’ is wilful. However, there is an element of (false?) relapse here; the emergence of strikingly beautiful, untarnished, unreal (?) young waltzers, offering the banal hope of a utopian future amidst Mycenaean devastation, knocked sidewise by the unexpected turn of the music and carrying Elektra off with them, makes a point I thought not un-Adornian, although perhaps more fruitful. What, then, are we to make of the shell-shocked Chrysothemis, who remains?