Prom 74: BBC PO/Noseda - Schubert, Schumann, Holloway, and Mozart, 9 September 2010

Royal Albert Hall

Schubert – Symphony no.8 in B minor, ‘Unfinished’, D 759
Schumann – Introduction and Allegro appassionato, in G major, op.92
Robin Holloway – RELIQUARY: Scenes from the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, enclosing an instrumentation of Schumann’s ‘Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart’ (BBC commission: world premiere)
Mozart – Symphony no.40 in G minor, KV 550

Dorothea Röschmann (soprano)
Finghin Collins (piano)
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Gianandrea Noseda (conductor)


This was not, thank goodness, the Last Night of the Proms, a jamboree better left to readers of the Daily Mail, but my last night of the 2010 BBC Proms. The principal attractions a priori were the Schumann Introduction and Allegro appassionato, a rarity in performance, and Robin Holloway’s new RELIQUARY: Scenes from the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, enclosing an instrumentation of Schumann’s ‘Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart’. In practice too? By and large, for the performances of the two symphonic masterpieces on either side, whilst benefiting from fine orchestral playing, were marred by insensitive conducting from Gianandrea Noseda.

I did not necessarily expect Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony to sound so shattering as upon the last occasion I had heard it in concert, in a truly great performance from Bernard Haitink and the London Symphony Orchestra. However, I was nevertheless disappointed when an intriguingly nervy opening gave way to the merely abrupt, with stabbing accents that would have been out of place in Beethoven, let alone Schubert. Worse still, the music was never permitted to breathe. Toscanini-followers – perhaps a few still exist somewhere – might have enjoyed this, I suppose, but no one who has responded to Furtwängler. There were occasional oases of mystery in the development section, when Noseda was not hurrying – or better, harrying – the music along, but this remained a bandmaster’s reading. The swift ‘slow’ movement was similar: not only could one hear every bar-line, every beat; one could predict where those following would fall too, and a good deal hence. Beautiful playing, judged in itself, above all from the BBC Philharmonic’s woodwind section, was hidebound by such regimentation.

The Schumann piece emerged similarly, though mitigating circumstances of rarity and some impressive piano playing lessened the disappointment. The ‘Introduction’ actually sounded relatively relaxed, chamber-like, if still too obviously directed. One only had to recall Claudio Abbado’s conducting of the Berlin Philharmonic for Murray Perahia’s recording to realise how this fell short. Yet, if Finghin Collins is not Perahia, his pearly tone proved not wholly dissimilar. He managed to conjure up moments of true Schumannesque delicacy and fantasy, before being corralled by the bandmaster at his side. Occasional moments of orchestral intimacy again suggested what might have been, but they seemed snatched by the players rather than part of Noseda’s strategy. Ultimately, and despite real promise from Collins, this wonderful piece sounded both rushed and laboured – and insubstantial.

After the interval, it was, then, a great pleasure to turn to the premiere of Holloway’s orchestration and encasing of and commentary on Schumann’s Songs of Mary Stuart. In a new work – well, new and old, in this case – one is less likely to be distracted by interpretation and more likely to focus upon the work itself, whatever that might mean. Moreover, this premiere proved a splendid follow up to the Nash Ensemble’s Proms matinee performance of Holloway’s Fantasy-Pieces (on the Heine ‘Liederkreis’ of Schumann). I was intrigued by the Prologue, Holloway’s own. Marked ‘Brief, lamenting, calming,’ the orchestration sounds relatively ‘German’, but the harmony surprisingly Gallic, recalling Poulenc at his more solemn. The Abschied von Frankreich is characterised by ever-present harp, and occasional hints of Webern-like instrumentation, Wagner becoming more present in Holloway’s re-imagining of the epilogue, highlighting its Tristan-esque tendencies. Nach der Geburt ihres Sohnes is more radical, with an orchestral ‘halo’, including iridescent celesta and woodwind, shining, in different tempo and tonality, above the song itself. Violins evoke a refractory dreamlike world somewhere between Rosenkavalier and early Schoenberg. The gravity of the concluding vocal ‘Amen’, here perfectly delivered by Dorothea Röschmann, draws attention back to the sombreness that has essentially characterised the contrasting vocal setting itself. An entr’acte of sarabande and bourrée, evocative of Mary’s happier days in France, prepares the way for her imploring, yet reproachful song to her cousin, An die Königin Elisabeth. Wagner again sprang to mind, and this time it was more Schumann’s doing than Holloway’s. These songs have been so undervalued!

Woodwind solos in the ensuing entr’acte provide Wagnerian presentiments of material that will follow, but also assist the sense of moving downwards, a perky enclosed miniature scherzino notwithstanding, to the sombre business of saying farewell to the world. Sadly, this most Mahlerian (almost inevitably so) of the songs, Abschied von der Welt, was disrupted by a barrage of coughing excessive even by the standards of this year’s Proms. A Romantic cello solo lies at the heart of the next entr’acte, harp and other strings prominent, woodwind responding thereto. The drum’s intervention hints ominously at Mary’s fate. The final song, Gebet (‘Prayer’) brings resignation, but also more play with the ‘past’. The vocal line, ‘Ersehne ich Dich,’ is echoed movingly by plangent viola, apparently joining cause with the viols of another age. And the arch-Romantic horn provides the solo that echoes, hopelessly, Mary beseeching her God to rescue her. Holloway’s ‘Epilogue’ provides a neat encapsulation of the conflict and synergy between centuries, the sarabande reprised, likewise material from the Prologue. As a whole, the song cycle appeared transformed, more akin to an operatic scena, and yet restrained, fastidious enough to mark the difference. Röschmann’s performance seemed beyond reproach, equally responsive to words and music, her vocal line modulated yet never strained.

Finally, Mozart’s Symphony no.40. This performance, again not unimpressive in purely orchestral terms, started off better than the Schubert, preferable to the appallingly mannered reading I endured from Sir Simon Rattle last year. The first movement was swift, on the light side, but nevertheless possessed grace. It was hardly Karl Böhm, and would have benefited from a more open response to Mozart’s astonishing proto-Romanticism – or, as ETA Hoffmann had it, simply Romanticism, and he should have known – but Mozart was not entirely misrepresented either. The slow movement flowed, more quickly than one used to hear, but it is an Andante. Noseda’s was a highly vocal conception, more Figaro-like than knocking at the Beethovenian door: a valid standpoint, even if somewhere in between might have revealed more. Repeats, though, made it a bit of a long haul. The third movement, however, took a turn for the worst. Noseda took it far too fast, almost waltz-like, albeit without the slightest hint of relaxation. It turned out rather choppy, each phrase here and in the inconsequential-sounding trio – how does one make Mozart sound inconsequential? – being merely followed by another, with no sense of overall line. The finale was fast – fair enough – but fatiguingly hard-driven. Tragedy is so much more interesting than this.

Zehetmair Quartet - Mozart, Holliger, and Beethoven, 16 March 2010

Wigmore Hall

Mozart – String Quartet no.3 in G major, KV 156
Heinz Holliger – String Quartet no.2
Beethoven – String Quartet no.16 in F major, op.135


Thomas Zehetmair, Matthias Metzger (violins)
Ruth Killius (viola)
Ursula Smith (violoncello)


This really was a splendid concert from one of the world’s great string quartets. Early Mozart, when it is performed at all, tends to be condescended to, but not here. Hans Keller’s dismissal of the early quartets as ‘on the whole, … quite abominable,’ could not have been better disproved. At first, I wondered whether the tempo for the first movement of KV 156 was going to prove too fast, but then I checked, to see it marked Presto; more to the point, nothing was rushed and the music was given space to breathe. Ever stylish, and ever attentive to each other, the members of the Zehetmair Quartet permitted a welcome sense of the outdoor serenade to permeate their reading. At times, their tone could veer a little towards ‘period’ sound, but never offensively so. Likewise, the Adagio, perhaps a little quick for the marking, never sounded rushed, for which the freedom of the players’ divination of the musical melos must be held responsible. Poised between the Baroque and Beethoven, the performance encompassed both moments of extraordinary stillness and instances of rhetorical boldness, whilst structure remained clear throughout. In the closing minuet, as elsewhere, not a single note was taken for granted. Contrapuntal interplay was very much to the fore, especially in the trio.


Heinz Holliger’s 2007 second string quartet, commissioned by KölnMusik for the Zehetmairs, followed the Mozart. It is a work full of ‘effects’ – retuning of strings, harmonics, playing on the bridge, and so forth – which yet never seem effects for their own sake. What might seem on paper like too much of a conspectus of techniques fits clearly and dramatically into a single movement structure, divided into six sections. The first is akin to a French overture, inspired by frescoes of angels’ music-making. Its contrary-motion glissandi certainly give a sense of the other-worldly, but equally apparent are glassy, angular energy and complexity of texture. The work, far from incidentally is dedicated to Elliott Carter) Next comes a Moderato section with a Hölderlin inscription, ‘… wie Wolken um die Zeiten legt …’ (‘… as clouds surround the times’.) The Zehetmair Quartet ensured a sense of the fragmentary – glimpsed through or beyond clouds? – which could yet, at least retrospectively, be pieced together. They made the most of Holliger’s post-Second Viennese School lyricism, a thread running throughout the quartet, presented with characteristic intensity. A chorale emerges in the form of an ‘embellished canon’, not unlike the emergence of the Bach chorale in Berg’s Violin Concerto, a work Holliger has recorded as conductor, with Thomas Zehetmair as soloist. There was to this section an unsettling stillness, as if one were viewing a lake, but a lake from an alien world. Neo-Bartókian night music follows, leading into the fifth, heterophonic section, which also carries the Hölderlin quotation: an extraordinary lyrical outpouring, as work and performance, overlapping entries creating greater intensity still. Finally comes the ‘singbarer Rest’ (‘singable remainder’), the phrase taken from Paul Celan. Whether consciously post-Holocaust or no, I sensed an effort and achievement to grant voice to the voiceless. The twelve parts are created by double-stopping and singing from each member of the quartet: a ‘human’ alternative to electronics? This may be fanciful, but I also was put in mind of mediæval music, Notre Dame even. Finally, voices of whatever kind faded into the ether. A wonderful work and a wonderful performance!


After the interval came Beethoven: his final quartet, op.135. The players adopted a more ‘modern’ sound than for Mozart, but there was still nothing comfortably ‘Romantic’ to their approach. Yet, if throughout, every note sounded considered, the approach never seemed self-consciously moulded. A Haydnesque sense of fun characterised the opening ‘Muss es sein?’ And as with Haydn, fun does not preclude something more serious, far from it. Such is the players’ sense of structure that the whole pretty much took care of itself, allowing one to concentrate upon motivic and dramatic incident; indeed, the work’s motivic integrity was powerfully portrayed, engendering an aptly late-Beethovenian dialectical tension between totality and fragmentation. Had Hegel been a composer, or Adorno a better composer, the music might have resembled this. Concision can present ‘difficulty’, as in the op.95 quartet, but not here, so convincing was the players’ presentation. A wonderful throwaway ending to the opening Allegretto made one ask once again, must it be? Who knows? Such is the shocking modernity of the scherzo that much of the music might have been by Holliger – except that Beethoven here perhaps sounds still more ‘new’. His truly extraordinary syncopations and harmonic clashes were relished but never exaggerated. A sense of alienation and yet equally of profound humanity brought one close to the world of the Missa Solemnis. The human spirit somehow can and did still triumph. In the slow movement, I was immediately put in mind of the final movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony, yet there was also something intriguingly veiled to the Zehetmairs’ presentation. And then the finale: there was no attempt to beautify, but Beethoven has his own strange beauty, and certainly did on this occasion. Stark, unvarnished, undoubtedly angry, the music is never impetuous; release, if only of a kind, will come – and the Zehetmairs ensured that it did. What sort of answer is this? Must it be? Again, who knows, but in this performance, the ambiguity of the Beethovenian oracle was now a recognition of complexity, not a signal of nonchalance. The ‘difficulty’ of Beethoven’s marking, Der schwer gefasste Entschluss, again brings one to the world of his late Mass. Should one even be here? There truly is no ‘newer’ music than late Beethoven.

Apropos Mozart

A combination of factors has meant that concert-going in May has been a little thinner on the ground than some previous months. There should be an LSO report from this coming Sunday's concert (Elgar, Stravinsky, Brahms: Nikolaj Znaider, Sir Colin Davis), heralding something of a flurry in June.

In the meantime, I thought this link might be of interest: Apropos Mozart is an excellent site, the brainchild of distinguished Mozart scholar, Bruce Cooper Clarke. It includes a large number of essays translated from the original German, many of Clarke's own papers, and a significant selection of essays by guest authors, including one of my own, on power and patronage in La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte.