RSB/Brabbins - Mendelssohn and Stravinsky, 16 March 2024

Konzerthaus

Mendelssohn: Symphony no.4 in A major, op.90, ‘Italian’
Mendelssohn: Hymne, op.96
Stravinsky: Symphonies of Wind Instruments
Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms

Denis Uzun (mezzo-soprano)

Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Philipp Ahmann)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Martyn Brabbins (conductor)

Mendelssohn and Stravinsky might not seem the most obvious bedfellows, but this Berlin Radio Symphony (RSB) concert, originally planned with Andrew Davis but conducted by Martyn Brabbins, offered pause for thought as well as enjoyment. Both composers had fraught relationships either with Wagner or his music—and, by extension, with that strain of musical Romanticism. (Even Liszt, that most generous spirited of composers, could refer dismissively to the ‘opposition’ as ‘leipzigerisch’.) The nature of their (neo)classicism is far from the same, but it offers an interesting perspective, even when the music performed is not so markedly in that mould. One could certainly spill a good deal of ink in discussing the relationship of the two Stravinsky works here to ideas and practice of neoclassicism. That, you will doubtless be relieved to know, must await another day, but such initial thoughts offered a frame through which to hear the works concerned. 

The RSB played Mendlessohn’s Italian Symphony with irresistible élan, string sheen and sunny woodwind a delight throughout. Brabbins was surely on the fast side for ‘Allegretto vivace’, but many conductors are.  Throughout, he imparted a proper sense of development to Mendelssohn’s writing, nowhere more so than in the featherlight counterpoint of the development section proper, though that certainly continued in the recapitulation. There was Abruzzo-like heat too in a reading full of colour and incident, aptly foreshadowing the processional of the second movement, which similarly benefited from transparent textures and a keen sense of direction. A graceful minuet, replete with trio that went properly beyond it in more than one direction, led to a saltarello both disciplined and wild, its contagion as impressive as its chiaroscuro. 

The op.96 Hymne, ‘Three Spiritual Songs’ (as they are known in the version with organ) plus a concluding ‘Fuga’, received a winning performance, mezzo Deniz Uzun and the Berlin Radio Chorus joining Brabbins and the orchestra. Telling detail could be heard without exaggeration, variety in scoring (the opening of the second, an especially lovely ‘hymn’, setting solo voice against woodwind consort) registering in every case. A lively third, with growing sense of jubilation, revealed once again what a fine chorus this is: ideal in weight, balance, and clarity. Much the same could be said of the concluding fugue. 

Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments sounded as seductive and rebarbative as ever, a perfect objet trouvé that find itself somehow chiselled to still further perfection. Apparently ossified lines suggestive of The Rite of Spring were imbued with radically new life, the performance as a whole splendidly alive: a liturgy in itself, to which we were permitted audience if not participation. If Boulez was an ideal interpreter (celebrant?) of this hieratic music, I could not help but think Stockhausen must have loved it too. At any rate, it made for a splendid introit to the Symphony of Psalms, whose similar strangeness registered visually in orchestral layout (famously, no violins and violas, nor clarinets) before a note had been heard. 

It proved another labyrinth, as full of incident in its way, above all in the first movement, as Mendelssohn’s Symphony. Glorious choral sound was well complemented by the orchestra; if there were occasions when the two threatened to go their separate ways, it never quite happened. More to the point, the inscrutability of Stravinsky’s musical devices – utterly characteristic ostinato in the first movement, the double fugue of the second – proved once again to pass all ‘expressive’ understanding, the composer’s ever-surprising ear made musically manifest. What a strange ‘response’ to the text Stravinsky offers in the words from Psalm 150 in the third movement. He would doubtless have said he was not responding at all, but simply setting them. That can readily become play with words, for ‘expression’ here, if hardly Romantic, was no less powerful for being what it was: quite the contrary. Brabbins took the opening daringly slow, providing all the greater contrast with what was to come. Music seeming at times to circle the worlds of the Symphony in Three Movements and even the Circus Polka never seemed remotely incongruous; roots and essence led to a hypnotic, even sanctified close.

BPO/Petrenko - Schoenberg, 25 January 2024

Philharmonie

Chamber Symphony no.1 in E major, op.9
Die Jakobsleiter

Gabriel – Wolfgang Koch
One who is called – Daniel Behle
One who protests – Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke
One who struggles – Johannes Martin Kränzle
The chosen one – Gyula Orendt
The monk – Stephan Rügamer
The dying one – Nicola Beller Carbone
The soul – Liv Redpath, Jasmin Delfs

Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Gijs Leenaars)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Image: © Stephan Rabold

150 years on from the birth of Arnold Schoenberg, we could be forgiven for lamenting this world still does not know what to do with him and his music. The most important of twentieth-century composers, he languishes respected yet for the most part unperformed. The muted tones in which even this, his anniversary year, is being celebrated – if not now, then when? – are such that it could readily be missed altogether. There are exceptions, not least my friends and colleagues at Vienna’s Arnold Schönberg Center; I am referring essentially to the world of musical performance—and listening. And just perhaps here also in Berlin, second of Schoenberg’s three major cities. (Los Angeles, alas, has long seemed a lost cause.) Not so much in the city as a whole: we search in vain for contributions from its opera houses – surely things would have been different, were Daniel Barenboim still at the helm of the Staatsoper – and indeed from most of its orchestras, yet in the Philharmonie, home to the Berlin Philharmonic, we at least see in the foyer a little exhibition, mounted in conjunction with the ASC, and here we have now also heard the first of several contributions planned from the orchestra. 

If they continue even to approach the level of this instalment, all will not be lost. The First Chamber Symphony offered a splendid way to start. It was the first live Schoenberg I heard, travelling down as a schoolboy to London on the coach from Sheffield for my first Prom; I think it was actually the first piece on the programme, so the first notes I heard at the Proms, at the Royal Albert Hall, indeed in London, were Schoenberg’s. An attempt at comparison would be pointless: I cannot remember much other than that, even then, it impressed me greatly. But this is therefore a work with which I have lived for a while, and of which I have heard a number of fine performances since that CBSO Prom with Simon Rattle (and Maurizio Pollini), one next door at the Kammermusiksaal included (from members of this same orchestra as the Scharoun Ensemble and Pierre Boulez). Today’s Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko have little to fear from even the most exalted comparisons, but it is better simply to consider their performance on its own terms. 

In some ways the most conservative – in the proper rather than the debased, contemporary sense – of revolutionaries and surely the most revolutionary of conservatives, Schoenberg stands Janus-faced, that historical position readily conveyed here in immanent, performing terms. For a work so sunny and life-affirming, it is haunted by ghosts, many of whom cheerfully partook of this particular feast. First up, in the opening bars, was Richard Strauss, already balanced by a heightened sense that this was as much chamber music, a gathering of soloists, as symphony (or indeed symphonic poem). Brahmsian developing variation, Wagnerian melos, passage of transition that owed much to both, and of course Lisztian formal inheritance were to the fore, but through the particular material and character of this piece; it never felt like anything other than itself, though there was to be heard something of a more traditional, darkly ‘German’ sound and warmth to the ensemble than might often have been the case from Petrenko’s two immediate predecessors, Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle, albeit without sacrifice to clarity and balance. So assured was the latter that one might almost have forgotten what an astonishingly difficult feat it is to bring off (as Herbert von Karajan, Abbado’s predecessor, freely admitted). Illuminating detail – sepulchral, Alberich-like playing from violist Diyang Mei, a snatch of Pierrot-laughter from Kilian Herold’s clarinet – was present to an extent sometimes difficult to believe, but always within a sure and malleable sense of the whole. The development truly developed, showing Schoenberg as heir to Beethovenian struggle. The ‘lightness’ of the beginning of the ‘slow movement’ offered a surprising presentiment of the ‘air of another planet’ soon to be experienced in Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, prior to well-nigh Mahlerian ‘deepening’. No performance of this complex piece can be perfect; it contains more than can ever be achieved in a single performance. This came closer than most.   

True revelation, though, came with Die Jakobsleiter. So seldom is this extraordinary work heard that I cannot have been the only audience member hearing it live for the first time. I had thought I knew this incomplete oratorio well enough, yet such were the strength and all-round excellence of this performance that I realised I had hardly known it at all. Indeed, not the least of my realisations was that one cannot really begin to know it other than through live performance. Recordings, however excellent, can barely suggest the spatial dimension – here the hall came into its own as much as the performers – nor, more important still, the overwhelming power and conviction inherent in the work and any performance worthy of it. One felt the work’s constructivism from the off, its opening cello hexachord so clearly, powerfully generative of what ensued: musical expression first, words from Wolfgang Koch’s Gabriel next. ‘Whether right or left, forward or backward, uphill or downhill’: one felt, harmonically, motivically, conceptually the multi-dimensional Schoenbergian Idea. Just as important, its colours, not only orchestral (though the inheritance of the Five Orchestral Pieces, op.16 was thrillingly apparent) but vocal too, not least from the souls of the Berlin Radio Chorus, individual and as a mass. Instrumental lines, as if generated by the Chamber Symphony and further developed here, contributed equally to the composer’s hyper-expressivity and the sense of its absolute necessity. It was relentlessly dialectical, relentlessly communicative, already pointing to elements of the world of Moses und Aron. A well-nigh flawless cast of vocal soloists had been assembled and exceeded expectations. Again, the variety of colours and expressive gestures within a single performance, be it that of the increasingly Wagnerian Daniel Behle, the dark, rich Gyula Orendt, Liv Redpath and Jasmin Delfs’s souls in vocalise, or anyone else had to be heard to be believed. Schoenberg’s vivid imagery – or is that too representational a characterisation? – was brought still more vividly to life that was both fleeting and aspirant to the eternal.

All the while, we moved, after Swedenborg, upwards, heralded by the sweetest of violin solos from above, instruments and voices surrounding us as if truly from the heavens. This was less the air of another planet than of another dimension, music and post-Wagnerian, post-Mahlerian redemption above, beyond, around us. This was a magic unlike anything I had yet heard. Part of our world, then, does know what to do with Schoenberg and his music. May it serve as an example to the rest.

Kelly/BPO/Rattle - Strauss and Beethoven, 5 March 2020

Philharmonie

Strauss: Oboe Concerto in D major

Beethoven: Christus am Ölberge, op.85

Jonathan Kelly (oboe)

Iwona Sobotka (soprano)

Benjamin Bruns (tenor)

David Soar (bass)

Berlin Radio Choir (chorus director: Simon Halsey)

Simon Rattle (conductor)

Not all conductors make for excellent accompanists, but such has long struck me as a particular strength of Simon Rattle. At any rate, so it was on this occasion, Rattle leading the Berlin Philharmonic in Strauss’s Oboe Concerto: beautifully shaped, yet never unduly moulded; full of telling chiaroscuro. Jonathan Kelly’s account of the solo part perfectly complemented such playing, offering a true sense of having risen from within the orchestra’s ranks – empirically true in this case too! – to spin a magical line both vocal in quality and beyond the capabilities of the voice. Orchestral woodwind echoing and shadowing the soloist heightened such magic, in a detailed performance that was yet quite without indulgence. The first movement offered greater variation of mood than one often hears, much to its expressive, formal advantage. Transitions between movements were expertly handled, first by Rattle, then by Kelly, Strauss’s Goethian conception of metamorphosis vividly, meaningfully apparent. A songful slow movement, never exaggerated, led to a finale of Elysian lightness. Who, after all, could resist Kelly’s duetting with Emmanuel Pahud, or such cultivated string playing? And why would anyone wish to try? Imbued with all the melancholic cheer of an Indian summer, this was as fine a performance of the work as I have heard.

A true rarity followed: Beethoven’s oratorio, Christus am Ölberge. Rattle has been touring the work with the LSO, so perhaps a recording is in the offing. On the evidence of this performance, it would prove a welcome addition. The opening Introduzione struck me as especially well judged: not unduly ‘symphonic’, but rather an opening to something one might have guessed to be a vocal work if one did not know. The chamber orchestra employed for Strauss had been somewhat expanded; Haydn’s presence was discernible, yet neither here nor elsewhere was this music simply to be reduced to influence from forebears. Already, as throughout, there were distinct flashes of something closer to Fidelio. Benjamin Bruns’s opening, unaccompanied recitative, sweet-toned and lyrical, suggested an inspired choice of casting, a suggestion furthered as the work progressed. Like Beethoven, one must endure a dated and at best mediocre libretto, very much run-of-the mill Aufklärung, but when the orchestra re-entered, it prepared psychological advances such as those mere – often very ‘mere’ – words could never have anticipated. The post-Mozartian agitation of Christus’s following aria speaks in somewhat generalised terms: Idomeneo without the focus, one might say. That said, Bruns not only brought an extraordinary command of colour – the wanness of ‘nahen Grab’, for instance – but also, alongside the Berlin woodwind, a growing sense of that most indispensable Beethovenian quality, hope.

Iwona Sobotka’s recitative and aria as Seraph travelled with ease between truly hochdramatisch delivery and greater intimacy: operatic, then, in the best sense. Her coloratura glittered yet never for its own sake, put to excellent musico-dramatic use. Echoes of The Creation, long a favourite Rattle work, were clear; so too, I think, was an affinity in the aria’s central stanza with The Magic Flute. In both cases, there are decidedly worse models to follow. Once the first-rate Berlin Radio Choir had entered, the number became ever more developmental, Beethoven’s symphonic inclinations here, as in later numbers, offering intriguing, individual, and for the most part highly convincing formal solutions. Such was certainly the case in the ensuing duet between Christus and Seraph and the choruses following, the dated libretto if anything heightening the sense of formal innovation. Again, Fidelio, or at least Leonore, beckoned. There were times when I felt the music would have benefited from being taken less hurriedly, but I should not exaggerate; other tempi were more judiciously chosen.

David Soar’s human Petrus, consoled by a Christus palpably increasing in strength and resolve, heralded a delightful return from Sobotka’s Seraph. An heroic last hurrah from Bruns’s Christus, ready to brave and vanquish Hell, proved just the herald for a closing chorus strikingly reminiscent both of Mozart (La clemenza di Tito) and Haydn (The Seasons). Once more, Beethoven and his performers chose their models well, finding inspiration rather than constraint in them.

RSB/Hrůša - Dvořák, 17 November 2017

Philharmonie

Stabat Mater, op.58

Simona Šaturová (soprano)

Elisabeth Kulman (contralto)

Steve Davislim (tenor)

Jan Martiník (bass)

Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Rustam Samedov)

Schola of the Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Benjamin Goodson)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Jakub Hrůša (conductor)

For whatever reason – I could speculate on a few, but shall not do so here – many, if not all, large-scale choral works from the nineteenth century seem to have fallen out of fashion, perhaps especially in Britain. Brahms’s German Requiem will surely always have a following, and rightly so; but I have managed to hear Elijah – formerly, at least to the Victorians, ‘“the” Elijah’ – precisely once, and St Paul never. Nor had I ever heard Dvořák’s Stabat Mater before in concert. (As for the following Verdi’s Requiem has, it can only be accounted for by the following mysteriously acquired by the rest of his regrettable œuvre.) It was a delight, then, to hear such a fine performance from the Berlin Radio Choir and its ‘Schola’, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB), and Jakub Hrůša. Even if I had my doubts about some of the solo contributions, they were largely on matters of taste rather than anything more fundamental.

To ascribe grief – and ultimately, consolation – in such a musical setting straightforwardly to personal circumstances will usually be to sentimentalise; artistic creation is never, thank God, quite so straightforward as that. Nevertheless, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the sequential loss of his three children may have had some connection with what Dvořák wrote, even though it goes far beyond that, to what we might at a pinch – before deconstruction sets in – still consider a (more) universal message. His setting is certainly an unusually powerful, focused work for a composer whose unevenness and, sometimes, formal inadequacy are often skated over by apologists of nationalist and other hues. (That hapless Seventh Symphony, for instance, whatever its incidental pleasures!) At his best, Dvořák is excellent indeed; all too often, however, he is not at his best. He comes at least close to that best here, I think, and often indeed reaches it.

Its opening sadness – first, those extraordinary repeated F-sharps, the sharp sign a longstanding piece of musical crucifixion iconography, then a crucial, as it were, descending figure – registered not only powerfully, but, in a dynamic sense, dramatically. Icy or, better, cold – since it is certainly human – that descending orchestral figure grew ever more intense with every sequential or developmental reliving of its pain. Here, as often in this work, Dvořák proves more ‘symphonic’ than in any of his symphonies, or at least more consistently so – with, as ever, the great exception of the deservedly popular Ninth. Or maybe, I began to wonder, given the distinction of the performance, it was just that I had not heard Hrůša conduct them. The music seeped into, formed the foundation, motivic and dramatic, for the first movement (choral and soloists): soft at first, building to beautifully shaped climaxes, without merely determining it. Indeed such was the distinction of the choral singing, words and notes equally well projected, that one had the retrospective sense that the words of the poem had determined the music of the introduction too.

Alas, soprano Simona Šaturová’s first entry was, quite frankly, weak, and both the tenor (Steve Davislim) and bass (Jan Martiník) proved rather ‘operatic’, in an almost Verdian way, for me. Only Elisabeth Kulman’s predictably excellent way, rich of tone, thoughtful of words, seemed in keeping with the rest of the performance. Davislim and Martiník sang very well on their own terms, though, and I can only presume that Hrůša had no problem with those terms either. It does one no harm, in any case, to listen to performances of high quality that do not correspond to how one instinctively, or indeed otherwise, hears a work in one’s head. In that sense, only Šaturová was disappointing, and she improved as the work proceeded. If her vowels were odd, and her consonants often indistinct, in her later duet (‘Fac, ut portem Christi mortem), her line was much cleaner by then.

A great strength to Hrůša’s reading was that there was always a strong sense of the work as a whole, just as in a symphony. Individual movements, or numbers, or whatever we want to call them, were sections of the poem, not poems in themselves. And so, the second movement Quartet followed on, related to, intensifying, certainly not repeating the mood of its predecessor. Even if I did not always care for the style of the solo singing, the RSB’s playing was second to none, not least the sweetness and warmth of the strings. (Czech music is no better served by ascribing some birth right to ‘national’ orchestras, than English music is. Who, after all, is better with Elgar today than Daniel Barenboim?) Fundamentals, in the harmonic and a more general sense, were always well taken care of: generative, again just as they would be in a symphony. The following chorus continued in similar vein: which, again, is to stress ‘continued’, with the kinship and difference that implies. The cries of ‘fac’ were every bit as ‘dramatic’ as one could have hoped for, not least since they were presented in context, no mere ‘effect’.

Different characters were to be heard in the following movements: never unnecessarily contrasted, but likewise never quite drawn from the same colours. Brahms, for instance, haunted the tenor solo and chorus, ‘Fac me vere tecum flere’, but in the orchestral sound itself, orchestral and textures themselves simpler, yet undeniably radiant. As the work progressed, transformation, even perhaps transfiguration, crept upon us. It was difficult to say precisely where or when: doubtless as it should be. Hrůša’s control of large-scale structures proved just as un-showily impressive as it had earlier this year when I heard him conduct – magnificently – the Beethoven Violin Concerto.

The neo-Baroque character of the penultimate movement, the solo contralto ‘Inflammatus’ was for me very much a highpoint – both of work and performance. Compassion here seemed very much to the fore, both for Kulman and the orchestra. Perhaps unsurprisingly by now, but certainly not to be taken for granted, Hrůša proved masterly in binding together the work in its final quartet and chorus. It was not merely a recognition of reappearance of earlier material, but of its developmental quality; contextual difference spoke just as strongly as similarity. There was ambiguity, quite rightly, at the close: exultant, yet not unalloyed. That one could – and this listener, at least, did – read back into what we had heard before. This, then, was an excellent concert; I was sad only to have had to miss the bonus concert of a cappella works scheduled immediately afterwards.

BPO/Koopman - Bach, 27 October 2017

Philharmonie

Mass in B minor, BWV 232

Yetzabel Arias Fernandez (soprano)

Wiebke Lehmkuhl (contralto)

Tilman Lichdi (tenor)

Klaus Mertens (bass)

RIAS Chamber Choir (chorus master: Justin Doyle)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Ton Koopman (conductor)

Theodor Adorno: how I wish we could have heard your thoughts on this concert. In his 1951 essay, ‘Bach defended against his devotees’, written in the wake of the commemorations of the bicentenary of Bach’s death, Adorno so sharply characterised the reactionary delusions and disingenuities of musical ‘authenticity’ that one might well have thought that would have been the end of that. Except, of course, that it was not; we had barely reached the end of the overture. Vast swathes of repertoire have been entirely colonised, placed off-bounds to modern orchestras in the maniacal name of an ‘authenticity’ so self-contradictory that a five-year-old could instantly demolish its claims. And yet, so it continues. It was, then, with great interest that, two-thirds of a century after Adorno’s essay, I approached the rare opportunity of hearing the Berlin Philharmonic in the B minor Mass.

Not, alas, that this was a large-scale, ‘symphonic’ performance. (‘Symphonic’ is an especially silly word here: as if Klemperer or Jochum approached Bach as they did Beethoven…) The opening of the first Kyrie was, rather to my surprise, not at all brusque, although the chamber-scale of the forces – not small by contemporary (to us) standards, although certainly small by Adorno’s – immediately struck me, not least given the size of Berlin’s Philharmonie. After the tempo change – call that Largo?! – however, Ton Koopman’s approach proved both glib and metronomic: not unlike his strangely uncompelling way with the organ. A plea for divine mercy? Forget it. Perhaps a request for afternoon tea, although even that might have been to impart too much meaning. And therein lay the real problem. The musicians playing and singing were nearly all excellent: the Philharmonic, the Berlin Radio Choir, and at least two of the vocal soloists. But they were directed by someone who seemed not just to have a decidedly peculiar sense of what the text of the Mass might mean; he seemed to have none whatsoever. And here, as throughout the work, he simply took the piece one archly articulated phrase at a time, giving no indication of a longer line, let alone a unified conception. Even dynamic contrasts were minimal – and, when they were to be heard, weirdly arbitrary. The following ‘Christe’, then, however beautifully sung by Yetzabel Arias Fernandez, might on Koopman’s part have been computer generated – or, to return us to the 1950s, ‘sewing-machine Bach’. The second ‘Kyrie’, the clarity of choral lines remarkable in itself, sounded as a mere pendant.

Parts of the ‘Gloria’ fared better. The first section was hardly profound, and suffered from fussy articulation, but it more or less looked after itself. Moreover, much to my surprise, the ‘Et in terra pax’ section relaxed properly, even daringly, as did the ‘Gratias’. And yet, whilst instrumental obbligato parts were all very well taken (Emmanuel Pahud on flute, for instance), most of the vocal solos likewise – Wiebke Lehmkuhl’s ‘Qui sedes’ an object lesson in sounding imploring without sentimentality – there was never any sign of an overall conception. When musicians were allowed to get on with it, they generally did very well indeed; often, however, they seemed circumscribed. To return to Adorno’s essay, one could hardly avoid the suspicion that the sole concern of Bach’s ‘devotee’ was to ensure that ‘no inauthentic dynamics, no modifications of tempo, no excessively large choirs and orchestra’ should be employed. Is that your idea of Bach, I wanted to ask? Bach’s scoring of genius in the ‘Quoniam’ told properly, the bassoonists shining just as brightly as the horn player; it was a pity, here and later, that Klaus Mertens sounded so dry of tone, and that he faltered so audibly at one point. His tenor colleague, Tilman Lichdi fared better, but his light instrument – or performance – was put in the shade by Arias during their duet. The Cum sancto Spiritu’ was, to no one’s surprise, taken at breackneck speed. Whilst the choir acquitted itself with distinction, the question that lingered was: ‘why?’

Following the interval, an almost aggressively domesticated ‘Credo’ – without the ‘almost’, it might ‘almost’ have been interesting – signaled little more than the sense that the conductor might have a train to catch at the end. Everything sounded as if it were surface; that Bach might have held beliefs, even held them to be eternal truths, that we might need in some sense to reckon with that, with them, seemed never to have been considered by Koopman. If your vision of Resurrection is in pastel, then the ‘Confiteor’ and what immediately followed might have been for you. The ‘Sanctus’ can rarely have sounded less like the swing of a censer, Koopman unwilling to let go, stopping it at the end of every phrase so as to permit it to move another few inches. As for his decision to play the organ himself for the ‘Benedictus’, it added a disconcerting sense of the listless, of the merely meandering, but is that what the coming of the Holy Ghost should signify? Following a bar-to-bar, highly laboured ‘Agnus Dei’, very well sung on its own terms, an effort towards mild grandeur was made in the closing ‘Dona nobis pacem’. It was unclear, though, where it had come from, or what it might denote.

‘They say Bach, mean Telemann,’ was one of Adorno’s most devastating charges. Bach was being reduced to the level of a generic ‘Baroque’ composer. (Telemann devotees should feel free to choose someone else; there are more than enough to choose from.) The problem with Koopman was not that he said Bach yet meant Telemann; he did not seem to mean anyone or anything at all.

BPO/Nézet-Séguin - CPE Bach and Brahms, 19 October 2017

Philharmonie

CPE Bach: Heilig, Wq 217

Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem, op.45

Hanna-Elisabeth Müller (soprano)

Wiebke Lehmkuhl (contralto)

Markus Werba (baritone)

Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Gijs Leenaars)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor)

A slightly – well, perhaps more than slightly – baffling programme this. One might have presumed that the short CPE Bach cantata (eight minutes according to the programme, but I did not check my watch), Heilig, were present as a curtain-raiser for Brahms’s German Requiem. Brahms, after all, thought highly of Emanuel Bach, editing some of his music. And perhaps it would also have offered another opportunity for one of the vocal soloists. But no, the vocal types are different, so we had Wiebke Lehmkuhl sing a short solo and disappear for the rest of the evening. Perhaps even odder, the two works required different platform arrangements, so we had an interval in between them. Might it not have made more sense to have heard a selection of earlier music – Schütz, perhaps, even JS Bach or Handel? – with a more overt connection to the specific Brahms we were about to hear?

 

Anyway, we did not. It was a welcome opportunity to hear this 1776 cantata, for solo contralto, double chorus, and double orchestra, its text drawn from Herder, Isaiah, and the Te Deum. I cannot say that I found anything, save for its forces, especially individual in the writing: far more conventional than, say, many of CPE Bach’s orchestral or piano works. It would be difficult to begrudge it its Berlin Philharmonic premiere, though, and I have no wish to do so. Orchestra and choir (Berlin Radio Choir) alike offered a glorious sound throughout, antiphonal (Handelian) contrasts registering – although perhaps not quite so strongly as they might have done. Lehmkuhl’s performance sounded beautifully sincere, verbally and musically. It is always enjoyable to hear a little trumpet-led rejoicing too, and so we did. Yannick Nézet-Séguin ensured, greatly to his credit, that there was nothing unduly hurried to the performance, encouraging and retaining a note of necessary grandeur. It was nevertheless soon over, though, and I at least was left wondering ‘why?’

 

There was certainly nothing ‘off-the-shelf’ to Nézet-Séguin’s German Requiem either, conducted from memory. If I cannot say that his conception of the work was particularly close to mine, that is no reason to disqualify it; indeed, it was every reason to try to engage with it on its own terms. As sound, it was difficult to fault the performances of choir and orchestral alike, and again I have no wish to do so. What a joy – although is joy really what we should feel here? – it was, for instance, to hear those lower strings at the opening of ‘Selig sind, die da Leid tragen’. The blend of orchestral sound, moreover, was irreproachable, whilst offering plenty of opportunity to hear individual instruments and sections: the three harps, in particular, stood out beautifully, even celestially. And there was real warmth, even consolation, to that opening chorus, although I have heard Brahms sound darker, much darker. I was not at all sure, however, why we heard quite so robust an emphasis on ‘Freuden’; it came out of nowhere and merely sounded mannered. The great second number, ‘Denn alles Fleisch’ was a little darker, as surely it must be, but with a strange touch of ‘glamour’ to it. It was certainly worlds away from Klemperer or Furtwängler. What the performance did have, in spades, was clarity. Nézet-Séguin shaped the movement well, preparing transitions, rendering them convincing, the winding down at the close was handled especially well. What I missed, I think, was a greater sense of ‘meaning’: not just theological or even verbal.

 

Markus Werba proved a relatively light-toned soloist, which seemed to fit with the general approach. In ‘Herr, lehre doch mich,’ however, I could not help but think that the orchestral sound was a bit too close to Strauss; there is no single way that Brahms sound, of course, but I am not sure, by the same token, that just anything goes either. It would be churlish, nevertheless, to deny the sonic pleasure of the build-up above the movement’s pedal-point. Following a duly lieblich ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen,’ Hanna-Elisabeth Müller got off to a shaky start in ‘Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit’. Brahms’s solo writing here is exposed, even treacherous, and so it sounded. She settled down before too long, though.

 

Nézet-Séguin took the opening of the following number, ‘Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt,’ very deliberately: not just pace, but choral enunciation too. It certainly focused attention on the words, whatever else I thought of it. However, the blazing, almost ‘operatic’ approach – more Strauss again, even Wagner, than Brahms, I thought – to the Last Trump seemed somewhat out of place. A cappella writing in the final ‘Selig sind die Toten’ reminded us that the choir was in itself just as impressive as the orchestra. It flowed nicely, and sounded consoling. Concerning what, however, did we need to be consoled?

BPO and Academy/Rattle - Gruber, Bartók, Ravel, and Berio, 18 March 2017

Philharmonie

HK Gruber – Piano Concerto

Bartók – Bluebeard’s Castle, Sz 48
 

Ravel – Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé

Berio – Sequenza III
Berio – Laborintus II

Emanuel Ax (piano)

Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano)

Rinat Shaham (mezzo-soprano)

Gábor Bretz (bass)

Ulrich Noethen, Dino Scandariato (narrators)

Members of the Berlin Radio Choir and Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart

Paul Jeukendrup (sound direction)

Orchestral Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

In this pair of concerts, the first a ‘standard’ Berlin Philharmonic concert, the second a shorter, ‘late night’ event with members of the orchestra’s academy, both conducted by Simon Rattle, we found our ideas concerning musical drama subtly challenged. The ‘principal’ event featured a somewhat odd pairing of HK Gruber’s Piano Concerto, receiving its first German performances, and Bluebeard’s Castle. Many stronger works would pale alongside Bartók’s opera; Gruber’s new offering certainly did. Its opening showed promise, as if straining to remember the 1920s jazz age, muted trumpet and all, then gradually appreciating that it did not need to remember; it could try something new. Except then it did not, at least to these ears. The piano seemed oddly to be on a different track from the orchestra, whether harmonically or rhythmically. In its part, ably performed, so far as I could tell, by Emanuel Ax, there was perhaps something at least analogous to the potential circularity of early twelve-note writing, but it did not seem to move beyond that circularity, to become generative. Otherwise, there was much post-Berg, post-Weill meandering – just as in any other work by Gruber I have heard. Dance rhythms – yes, waltzes and others – came and went. Perhaps the material might have lent itself better to a shorter piece: ten minutes? Two-and-a-half times that felt much too long.

 

That out of the way, there was a great deal to enjoy in the Bartók performance, Ulrich Noethen’s Prologue (in German) setting the scene nicely, with a fine balance between the theatrical and what a concert can provide much better, the suggestion of theatre. Rattle’s conducting of the Berlin Philharmonic was for much of the time, especially earlier on, unobtrusive, seemingly content (however illusory this impression might have been) to follow the highly dramatic performances, concert garb and setting notwithstanding, of Rinat Shaham and Gábor Bretz. Bretz showed considerable, even irresistible charm, as well as darkness, in a dangerous, silken-smooth performance. Dark violas, piquant woodwind solos accompanied, questioned him, even held him to account, although we knew that we, like Judit, must ultimately submit. His repetitive questioning – ‘Félsz-e?’ – had great cumulative force, as much musical as verbal. Shaham’s wilful yet sensitive portrayal was well matched, equally well contrasted; one followed her decisions, understanding them even as one knew how foolish they were. Her fear was very real, no mere recitation. Their interaction, visual as well as vocal, came across as the key to unlocking the particular secrets of this evening. Without slipping into banal psychological realism, their portrayals treated Bluebeard and Judit as characters, not simply archetypes. Words and, more broadly, drama came first, one felt, but where does the drama lie?

When the orchestra moved, as it were, centre stage, one certainly knew, for instance in the ominous yet never exaggerated ostinato writing following the closing of the iron door behind our unhappy pair. The effect was not entirely un-Wagnerian (Act II of Die Walküre, for instance): not the only time I thought of that particular predecessor in this performance. Each door brought full tragedy a step nearer; one felt that, score and performance telling one so, rather than ‘merely’ knowing it. Golden enchantment would have tempted us all, and doubtless did, all the more so for the fatalism surrounding it. And when that moment, the opening of the fifth door, came, not only did the earth tremble, as it never could on a recording, but the Berlin orchestra glowed – again, as it never could except in the flesh. As the world darkened, the orchestra increasingly took over: not to the detriment of Bluebeard and Judit, but to seal their fate: implacable, irresistible. Here, Rattle’s shaping proved just the thing, alert to the narrative, without imposing upon it. Judit’s pride, as she insisted on opening the final, seventh door, led to quite the orchestral climax, almost Wozzeck-like. Thereafter was the tale, in every sense, of Bluebeard coming home, the evening glow again more redolent of Wagner than of Strauss. The forbidden question of Lohengrin, then, turned dark indeed.

 

It was unlikely, indeed undesirable, that, having attended the earlier concert, one would not approach the ‘late night’ event with Bluebeard in mind. Berio’s works in particular shone in that light, as well as immediately providing their own illumination. First, however, Magdalena Kožená, the Academy musicians, and Rattle offered us a fine performance of Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé. One cannot but hear these songs and fail to appreciate the depth of Ravel’s response to, as well as his distancing from, Schoenberg. Debussy hovers too, of course, with all the (fruitful) problems of that relationship both in general and with particular reference to Mallarmé. Hearing the instrumental lines so soon after Bartók, though, one also felt a kinship in that respect: twin responses rather than ‘influence’ as such, no doubt, but no less interesting for that. The timbral radicalism of the very opening might almost have come from a chamber arrangement of Bluebeard or The Wooden Prince. Ravel’s word-setting, though, sounded as particular as ever, Kožená, like Shaham’s Judit before her, shaping the tonal universe before her, even as the conductor and instrumentalists might actually have been doing it for her. The precision and style of these young musicians left nothing to be desired; they might have been a crack new-music ensemble, and indeed that is precisely what they were.

 

Kožená turned Berio’s Sequenza III very much into a piece, if this is not too much of a paradox, of music theatre for voice. (I do not think it is too much, when one considers what Berio is doing both in his Sequenzas more generally and in this in particular.) Language emerged from music, drama from both, but the relationships were never one-way. She was almost a Mélisande torn between her husband (Rattle sat at the corner of the stage, ready to make a percussion intervention) and a younger man suddenly lit up above. She gestured, shouted, sang. Did she decide? Was she even interested in decision, or indeed in those apparitions? The ‘shadows of meaning’ of which Berio spoke were ever apparent, ever new: such is the essence of performance. Drama lay not only in ‘portrayal’, but in the relationship between the performer and her voice, again just as Berio envisaged – yet doubtless, in another sense, quite different. ‘The voice,’ to quote the composer, ‘carries always an excess of connotations, whatever it is doing.’ So it did here.

 

Laborintus II proved, if anything, more invigorating still. It is, of course, quite an occasion to have opportunity to hear it, to experience it in the flesh. Expectations were not only fulfilled; they were perhaps even exceeded. Members of the Berlin Radio Choir and Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart were, just as the soloists in the Bartók and Kožená in her pieces, active participants in shaping, in making the drama: no mere executants. So too were the instrumentalists. Berio is not a composer to erect barriers; this performance proceeded very much, then, in his vein, wisely directed by the collegial Rattle as first among equals. Musical references from Monteverdi onwards took their place in what one might, perhaps misleadingly, think of as a musico-dramatic collage, but which in ‘reality’, whatever that may be, was both ever connecting with anything and everything else, and yet never anything but itself. Memory rules, it seems: but do we remember or misremember those Biblical genealogies, those journeys of Dante, even the passages conventionally written, as it were, by Eduardo Sanguineti himself? Dino Scandariato proved, rightly, both a sure and questioning guide to our humanistic labyrinth. As often with Berio, Italo Calvino came to mind; La vera storia beckoned. If other works had tended towards music theatre, and if in some senses this might even have looked forward towards a reimagining of opera, this was nevertheless the real music theatre thing, however intangible definition and reality might be. My immediate reaction was to wish to hear it again, except differently; or, as Wagner put it, ‘Kinder, macht Neues!’