Salzburg Mozartwoche (3) - Mozart and Salieri, 28 January 2024

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Mozart: Die Zauberflöte, KV 620, Overture; Andante for flute and orchestra in C major, KV 315/285e; Rondo for flute and orchestra in C major, KV 373/285c (arr. Pahud)
Salieri: Concerto for flute and oboe in C major
Mozart: Symphony no.38 in D major, KV 504, ‘Prague’

Emmanuel Pahud (flute)

Camerata Salzburg

François Leleux (oboe/conductor)

Images: Wolfang Lienbacher

This was an interesting concert of music by Mozart and Salieri, the lesser known music faring better for me than the celebrated symphony on the programme. There is nothing unusual in that, of course, especially in repertoire in which very different aesthetics are in play—and ultimately, it may be of greater importance to grant an opportunity to rarely heard music than to present a Prague Symphony to rival Karl Böhm or Daniel Barenboim. 

The Magic Flute Overture, well known though it may be, stood somewhere in between. Tempi were apt and François Leleux took evident care with elements of Camerata Salzburg’s shading. The performance was clear and directed, if somewhat excitable, even fierce. Better that, though, than the po-faced puritanism of many in the Anglo-American wing of the ‘authenticke’ brigade. I sensed an idea – and the most any of us can have is an idea – of the eighteenth-century theatre, though it was difficult to warm to the astringent string tone, worlds away from Sándor Végh. Salzburg woodwind, however, sounded splendid, as they did throughout. 

There followed two pieces for solo flute and orchestra, for which Emmanuel Pahud joined Leleux and Camerata Salzburg. I cannot claim to be a great fan of the lone Andante, KV 315/285e, probably an alternative slow movement for the G major Flute Concerto, KV 313/285c, but it was certainly played well here, with an Italianate long-breathedness that Salieri would surely have admired too. That said, a sense of the ballet – to my ears – is also suggestive of French music. (Think, for instance, of Gluck’s ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’.) Nothing wrong with that: Mozart often blends different stylistic influences. It is not always clear to me, though, quite how those different traits come together. Pahud’s arrangement of the C major Rondo for Violin and Orchestra, KV 373/285c, clearly struck a note of recognition among the audience. Hand on heart, do I think it works as well for the flute as for the violin? No, but it offers new repertoire for a solo instrument less blessed (though hardly without blessings) and, arguably, greater intimacy and sensuality. Occasional solo ornamentation was always tasteful. 

Leleux collected his oboe, whilst continuing to conduct, for Salieri’s Concerto for Flute and Oboe. The first movement’s opening tutti brought both a different voice and a recognisable sense, once again, of theatre. The two solo instruments’ duetting enhanced that impression of opera. Echo effects amused some in the audience: they were well done, if with diminishing returns. I was surprised by the motivic insistence of some passages, but then I suppose we should recall Salieri was a teacher of Beethoven. At other times, the orchestral part was more rhetorical, again breathing the world of the theatre. The slow movement was charming enough, if without the memorability of even lesser Mozart (or Haydn, for that matter). I was not always convinced by its twists and turns, but remained grateful for the opportunity to hear it at all. Here, as elsewhere, Heinz Holliger’s cadenzas offered something new yet in keeping. The finale offered a few surprises, though I struggled sometimes – doubtless labouring under an aesthetic too much derived from Mozart and Haydn – to understand their motivation. A sudden spotlight for the violas, for instance, was intriguing, but ultimately the movement remained somewhat four-square. As an encore, Leleux and Pahud played, without orchestra, the Magic Flute’s encounter between Papageno and Monastatos. 

And so, on to the Prague, its first movement introduction rhetorical, even theatrical, rather than a harbinger of a notably symphonic performance. It was certainly full of incident and notes continued to fly off the page during the main Allegro, whose hallmark, gentle contrast for the second subject notwithstanding, was ebullience: very much a D major for (natural) trumpets and drums. Although enjoyable enough in its way, it felt a little long, especially given the exposition repeat, for something that seemed more inclined towards the early ‘sinfonia’ than the traditional Austro-German symphony. The Andante flowed quickly, as is now fashionable. It was similarly strong in gesture, weaker in overall line. Ultimately, it seemed more a collection of episodes than what we have come to expect. The finale worked best for me, if still lacking a strong enough sense of harmony. Melodic events tumbled forth and sterner passages had an undeniable drama to them, sometimes blazingly so. In context, observing the repeat seemed questionable: again making the movement over-long for Leleux’s approach in performance.

Musical mysteries: melodies lost and found - works by Ligeti, Schubert, Dowland, and Kurtág, and Byzantine Chant

 

(This essay was originally published in a 2020 Salzburg Festival programme for a concert by Camerata Salzburg and Patricia Kopatchniskaja.)

GYÖRGY LIGETI: Concerto for violin and orchestra
ANONYMOUS: Byzantine Chant for Psalm 140 (arranged for violin and string orchestra by Patricia Kopatchinskaja)
FRANZ SCHUBERT: First movement (Allegro) from String Quartet no.14 in D minor, D. 810 – ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’ (arranged for string orchestra by Patricia Kopatchinskaja)
FRANZ SCHUBERT: Der Tod und das Mädchen, D. 531 (arranged for string orchestra by Michy Wiancko)
FRANZ SCHUBERT: Second movement (Andante con moto) from String Quartet no.14 in D minor, D. 810, ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’
JOHN DOWLAND: Pavane ‘Lachrimæ Antiquæ Novæ’ for string quintet from Lachrimæ, or Seaven Teares
FRANZ SCHUBERT: Third movement (Allegro molto) from String Quartet no.14 in D minor, D. 810, ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’
GYÖRGY KURTÁG: Ligatura-Message to Frances-Maria (The answered unanswered question), Op. 31b
GYÖRGY KURTÁG: ‘Ruhelos’ from Kafka-Fragmente, Op. 24
FRANZ SCHUBERT: Fourth movement (Presto) from String Quartet no.14 in D minor, ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’, D. 810

 

Ligeti: Anxiety and Transformation of Influence

Ligeti’s Violin Concerto stands as a truly indispensable work in its genre and a key musical work of the late twentieth century. Initially composed in 1989 and 1990, it underwent significant revision during which composer and work alike moved, so it seemed, towards a Platonic ideal, its sources lost, found, varied, and rediscovered.

During hospital convalescence, the composer engaged in intensive study of Haydn’s late quartets, which seems strongly to have influenced ensuing process of clarification. ‘From Haydn,’ he told his assistant, Louise Duchesneau, ‘you can learn how to achieve the clearest effect with the simplest means.’ When choosing ‘between a more ornate structure and a skeleton, Haydn always chooses the skeleton, never using one note more than he needs. I applied this principle of avoiding unnecessary complexity … and thought that it brought me closer to my ideal.’ Ligeti worried, however, that he had veered too close to Hungarian, especially Transylvanian, folk music, replacing the first movement entirely. He also revised and reordered the other two in an expansion to five movements that yet never reached his originally anticipated eight. The version the work’s dedicatee, Saschka Gawriloff, premiered in 1990 with Gary Bertini and the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra was always considered incomplete. Gawriloff and Ligeti employed material originally intended for movements never completed for the fifth-movement cadenza; Kopatchinskaja will play her own.

Ligeti’s interest in different systems of tuning is very much in microtonal play. With a few exceptions marked in the score, the soloist plays at concert pitch. Things are difficult enough for her already with virtuosic writing, according to the composer, born of models such as ‘Paganini, the Bach solo sonatas, Ysäye’s solo sonatas, Wieniawski, and Szymanowski’. However, the concertmaster – one of only five orchestral violins – and first viola – one of three – must play in scordatura, tuned to the seventh harmonic partial of the double bass’s first string and fifth of its third string respectively. Brass too offer natural harmonics, while use of ocarinas, slide whistles, and harmonica both subverts and expands our field of listening. By combining these ‘out of tune’ notes and harmonics with those of the normally tuned strings, Ligeti sought to ‘build a number of harmonic and non-harmonic spectra,’ such conflict between overtones resulting in a veritable voyage of harmonic exploration. The more Ligeti listened to non-Western music, the less he could allow himself to be constrained by equal temperament. ‘It almost hurts’, he said.

The opening is likewise elemental, alternating open A and D strings in lightning succession, furthering Ligeti’s desire for a ‘glassy shimmering character’. In this first movement, ‘Praeludium’, the solo line gradually distinguishes itself from an apparent multitude of other solos, emerging as a well-nigh traditional, first-among-equals virtuoso. Its magic can be tender too, though, as in the violin’s duetting with an array of tuned percussion.

Polymeters run riot, as they will too in the finale, much of whose folk material and allusion Márton Keréfky has discovered to have been reused, ‘albeit embedded in a totally new context’, from the discarded original first movement. The impression of ideas, remembered or misremembered, from earlier movements piling upon one another affords reinvented climax, never quite as we have known it. Listening to Thai, Khmer, and Laotian music afforded inspiration and example for Ligeti’s consciously seeking ‘for a new kind of way of building a melody’. So too did continuing influence from his Transylvanian heritage.

The second movement, ‘Aria, Hoquetus, Choral’ opens with a low solo, G-string adaptation of a melody from Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet, and thus ultimately from his still earlier Musica ricercata for piano, the former being a transcription of six movements of the latter. The movement seems to aspire to rootedness, be it folk- or chant-like – are the two ultimately so different? – yet to find its way thwarted, ‘continually splintering’, in Seth Brodsky’s evocative phrase, ‘into weird ironic homelessness’. Such weird irony and modal aspiration are only heightened by a quartet of woodwind pied pipers taking up their ocarinas for the chorale. High, fantastical writing in the central Intermezzo has any number of parallels in other violin concertos, yet can never be assimilated to their party. The Passacaglia makes play once more with time-honoured form, riveting in its never-quite-expected progress. Here beats the heart of the work and of Ligeti’s generative anxiety of influence.  



Byzantine Chant: To the source?

A chant-like, even ‘mediæval’ quality has been remarked on in Ligeti’s second movement. We now move closer to the elusive (illusory?) source, nonetheless mediated. Travel through musical history and you will find any number of instrumental works or movements based on song melodies. Such tended to be the practice in the writing of Byzantine chant. A text, in this case that of Psalm 140, ‘Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man’, would be set to a traditional melody and subsequently shaped – or not – to requirements of the verse. This tradition’s characteristic ‘four-element syllable-count cadence’ – four final syllables of a line, regardless of word accent, tied to four fixed, stylised cadential elements – has suggested to scholars an earlier psalmody than its Gregorian counterpart. To indulge in wild anachronism, is this also an early anticipation of modern clashes between words and music, given a further twist by arrangement for instruments alone?

Touched by Death

Schubert set Matthias Claudius’s Der Tod und das Mädchen in February 1817, two years after Claudius’s death. Here death approaches in instrumental sombre D minor. The Maiden vocally resists, bidding him not to touch her. He has his way, though, also vocally; he is not fierce and will have her sleep in his arms. The song closes with a foreshortened reprise of the introduction, albeit in an equally sombre yet peaceable D major. The manuscript might not have survived, having been cut into pieces by Schubert’s half-brother Anton, the Benedictine Father Hermann, yet was eventually reassembled. (It had in any case been published.) Ludwig Wittgenstein would muse on its fate more than a century later:

Recall that after Schubert’s death his brother cut some of Schubert’s scores into small pieces and gave such pieces, consisting of a few bars, to his favourite pupils. This act, as a sign of piety, is just as understandable to us as the different one of keeping the scores untouched, accessible to no one. And if Schubert’s brother had burned the scores, that too would be understandable as a sign of piety.

Showing the dead respect takes many forms.

Touched by Life


If the song is one of Schubert’s most celebrated, so too is the March 1824 string quartet taking its nickname and the theme of its second movement from it, touched by life rather than death. It stands as tall in its genre as Ligeti’s concerto in its. Resist undue romanticisation as we might, it is difficult not to think at least in partial relation to Schubert’s own coming appointment with the grim reaper. This was, however, the very time his friend Franz von Schober reported Schubert believed new medication had cured him. Either way, an artwork should not be reduced to biography, however tragic.


Tragedy is nevertheless present, vehemently so in the first movement, its second thematic group sweetly lyrical yet undoubtedly in the shadow of a furious D minor daemon not so very different from that which had captivated Mozart. The number of fortissimo and still more sforzando markings might visually suggest a score by Beethoven, although the triplet writing could not be more characteristic of Schubert: both in itself and for the particular variety of propulsion it offers. Such prospects of peace as there are, for instance a shift to D major during the recapitulation, find themselves swiftly, even brutally undercut. The uncertainty of where the coda will lead till it breathes its last offers an apt summation of tensions and overall tragedy in the movement as a whole.

We move to G minor for the Andante con moto theme and variations, five of them. Neither the first violin’s flights of fancy in the first variation nor the cello’s rapt lyricism in the second can forestall the pent-up fury unleashed in the third. If the penultimate variation, as might be expected, shifts to the tonic major and the final variation concludes likewise, this is as resigned, even exhausted a close as that to the original song. Only in the third movement trio, that Schubert can present a (relatively) sustained vision of major mode utopia. Sandwiched as it is, however, between the rhythmic insistence and almost bewildering syncopations of the scherzo itself, we know that it is too late. Is it fanciful to consider the rondo finale a Totentanz, a dance of death? Hardly, for this Romantic tarantella leaves us in no doubt as to the work’s ultimate destination, fury once more and now decisively winning out over resignation. Having the coda open in D major only prepares the way for the final nail in the coffin. Neither hope nor forgiveness is to be had; nor is it sought.


Old Tears New


John Dowland’s 1604 Lachrimae or seaven teares figured in seaven passionate pavans takes as its theme and first pavan Dowland’s existing song and lute solo, Lachrimae antiquae (‘Old Tears’). We hear here its immediate successor variation, ‘Lachrimae antiquae novae’ (‘Old Tears New’), its melodic melancholy and harmonic intensity both related to and a development – to borrow from the Viennese Classical future – of its thematic model. What Thomas Morley in his influential 1597 Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke had held necessary for expression of ‘a lamentable passion’ may be heard immediately: ‘motions proceeding by halfe notes. Flat thirds, and flat sixths, which of their nature are sweet’; semitones or ‘accidentall motions’ that will ‘fitly express the passions of griefe, weeping, sighes, sorrowes, sobs, and suchlike’. And yet, Dowland noted in his dedication to Anne of Denmark that tears differ in cause and effect. ‘No doubt pleasant are the teares which Musicke weeps, neither are teares shed always in sorrow but sometime in joy and gladnesse.’ Music mirrors yet relieves man’s fallen condition.

Kurtág’s re-enchantment






Two short pieces by György Kurtág ask further questions ‘answered’ and ‘unanswered’, perhaps even unanswerable in the case of Ligatura-Message to Frances-Maria, written in 1989, the year Ligeti began his Violin Concerto; and, in the excerpt from his Kafka-Fragmente, to continue the restless (‘Ruhelos’) Schubertian wandering that is our fallen lot. Solo strings and celesta in the former suggest re-enchantment of the traditional quartet, in a slow processional offering neither comfort nor discomfort but something beyond, magically or materially, even a foundational melody yet to be found. The latter piece’s whispered confidences and sudden eruption from intimate theatre into something finely balanced between cruelty and the absurd likewise seem beyond our ken, stretch our ears as we may. Like Ligeti’s Haydn. Kurtág never uses ‘one note more than he needs’. Musical mysteries endure.

Salzburg Mozartwoche (3): Pahud/Vents français/Camerata Salzburg/Leleux - Mozart, 26 January 2020

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Sinfonia concertante in E-flat major, for oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon, KV 297b/ (Anh. C 14.01)

Flute Concerto no.2 in D major, KV 314/285d

Flute Concerto no.1 in G major, KV 313/285c

Symphony no.36 in C major, KV 425, ‘Linz’

Emmanuel Pahud (flute)

Paul Meyer (clarinet)

Radovan Vlatković (horn)

Gilbert Audin (bassoon)

Camerata Salzburg

François Leleux (oboe, conductor)

‘Play it as if it were Mozart and Mozart it will be,’ seems a good rule of thumb for performance of the embattled E-flat major Sinfonia concertante for oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. In any case, it seems clear to me on a number of counts that Mozart’s was the primary, if not necessarily the only, hand in what has come down to us. Soloists from the French wind ensemble, Les Vents français, joined Camerata Salzburg for this and the two flute concertos and gave as good accounts of all three works as one has any right to expect, oboist François Leleux doubling as conductor for all three, plus the Linz Symphony.

It was a different sound we heard from the orchestra than from the Vienna Philharmonic for Daniel Barenboim the previous evening. That should not, for any number of reasons, surprise. More important were the warmth, brightness, alertness, and fineness of articulation these seasoned Mozart players brought to their music-making. The Sinfonia concertante’s opening tutti was lovingly – not too lovingly – shaped by Leleux, the well-blended wind quartet seemingly growing out of the orchestra rather than standing opposed to it. This was a performance as infectious as those of Mozart divertimenti the previous morning, yet necessarily fuller of sound and reach. The slow movement, spacious and poised, reminded us that there is no firm boundary, especially in Mozart, between hope and melancholy. Lifting the spirits without glibness, the finale proved a delight from start to finish. Cultivated and collegial playing afforded an opportunity for soloistic display that was also so much more than that.

Emmanuel Pahud’s two performances, either side of the interval, boasted from the first work’s – that is, the Second Flute Concerto’s – first solo phrase flute playing to have one sit up in wonder. Then another, and another… Clean, warm, above all musical in cognisance of where Mozart was taking us and why, it proved the perfect foil for elegant, attentive playing from Camerata Salzburg and Leleux. With lesser players, the flute can seem limited in range; here, we heard chiaroscuro to rival a Raphael. KV 314’s slow movement was a song of tender consolation, delivered with seemingly endless reserves of breath – and, again, musicianship. Gallic airs, but a mitteleuropäisch heart beating beneath: Mozart may not have been in Paris when he wrote the finale, or indeed any of the work, but there was an apt sense of affinity to that musical capital, style and form revealed as two sides of the same coin. A Jacques Ibert encore in which all five ensemble members could briefly come together offered wit and colour

The First Concerto offered many similar virtues to the Second, with warm, detailed orchestral performance, and clear, meaningful phrsaing from Pahud. Dazzling virtuosity, for instance in the first movement cadenza, remained entirely in the music’s service, the key to a veritable garden of delights. Seductive in its gracious euphony, the slow movement’s darker shadows were felt, without danger of overwhelming. The profusion of melody characterising the finale benefited from not dissimilar grace and formal understanding. Mozart’s turn to the minor rightly spoke of the opera house, while reminding us also how much his operas owed to his instrumental writing. I could not help but notice appreciation not only from Intendant, Rolando Villazon, but also from another audience member seated next to him, one Daniel Barenboim.

Leleux led an enthusiastic performance of the Linz to conclude. Its first movement proved full of contrast, not least between festal C major, trumpets and drums blazing, and something more intimated. If, at times, I found the contrasts a little overplayed, at least without more in the way of mediation, Leleux’s way with the work had me listen anew. There was, moreover, no doubting the excellence of orchestral response. The Andante breathed the air of a Salzburg serenade, its symphonic stature nevertheless made clear by the Haydnesque gravity of those trumpets and drums. If Beethoven’s music too sounded close, that is only because it is. A minuet both brisk and weighty was balanced again by winning intimacy in its trio, leading to a finale of great character and many (quasi-operatic) characters. Even in his later, more ‘monothematic’ writing, Mozart is not given to parsimony; nor should his interpreters be. Hearing the distinct character of each string section proved a particular joy as motifs passed between them. It was a duly celebratory close to another fine morning for Mozart.

Salzburg Festival (4) – Ottensamer/Camerata Salzburg/Viotti: Bartók, Weber, Koncz, and Kodály, 17 August 2019

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, Sz 106

Weber: Clarinet Concerto no.1 in F minor, op.73

Stephan Koncz: Hungarian Fantasy on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, for clarinet and orchestra

Kodály: Dances of Galánta

Andreas Ottensamer (clarinet)

Camerata Salzburg

Lorenzo Viotti (conductor)

A deeply frustrating concert, this: a fine orchestra and fine soloist, let down by odd programming and, more seriously, a conductor who only intermittently impressed. Mine, it is fair to see, was very much a minority view, the audience rising to give Lorenzo Viotti a standing ovation.

Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta opened with great promise, its first movement involving and intriguing. Musically, it was the highpoint of the concert, though the Weber First Clarinet Concerto, a considerably lesser work, could hardly be faulted in performance terms. Veiled yet clear from the outset, the Camerata Salzburg strings grew in muted – and then non-muted – intensity. Viotti guided them with skill and evident commitment, Bartók’s structure readily becoming form. There was a welcome physicality to the second movement, not only concerning rhythmic impact but of bows on strings: once again, the orchestra was on superlative fault. Corners, however, were more of a difficulty, Viotti communicating little of how the movement’s sections were connected, a problem that only increased throughout this admittedly difficult work. Eerie ‘night music’ passages registered vividly in the third movement, which, to be fair, also generated a good deal of harmonic and dramatic suspense, so long as one listened only a section at a time. There was a welcome sense of the dance to the finale, or at least to its opening. Overall line, however, eluded me.

Joined by Andreas Ottensamer for the Weber concerto, the orchestra and Viotti gave what was overall their most satisfying performance. Some might have found Viotti’s moulding of the first movement’s Romantic drama a little much, but it was a perfectly justifiable aesthetic stance to take, evoking responses from Ottensamer both surpassingly virtuosic and intensely dramatic. Phrasing and articulation here and in the remaining two movements were splendidly judged, the slow movement characterised by deeply-felt lyricism, tone variegated without affection, the finale winningly propelled with an Italianate verve that may not have been especially profound, but which was very much in keeping with music that neither asks for nor requires profundity. For Weber music that does, we turns generally to the final three operas, a flash from which – Der Freischütz – opened Stephan Koncz’s Hungarian Fantasy on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber. As a vehicle for Ottensamer’s virtuosity, it did its trick. Musically, it seemed to me quite without interest, mostly written in a language that would hardly have been avant-garde two hundred years earlier. Not everything need be Helmut Lachenmann, but it is difficult to imagine Weber writing straightforwardly in the style of Monteverdi, minus the content. It went on for too long simply to be a throwaway encore.

As for Kodály’s Dances of Galánta, they have their fans; I remain uncertain quite why. At any rate, they seem dangerous to programme alongside a Bartók masterpiece. Camerata Salzburg’s playing was again beyond reproach, impeccable in balance and blend, heft and subtlety. Viotti responded well to the needs of characterisation. I am not sure his habit of pulling them around did them any favours either, nor his placing emphasis so strongly on the ‘Romantic’ side. They are what they are, though, and the audience clearly enjoyed them, as it did the encore: a swashbuckling account of Brahms’s Hungarian Dance no.1 in G minor.

Salzburg Festival (4) - Kajtazi/Camerata Salzburg/Prior - Nørgard, Mozart, Sibelius, and Prokofiev, 7 August 2016

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Per Nørgard – Dream Play

Mozart – Vado, ma dove? oh Dei!, KV 583
Sibelius – Suite: Pelleas and Melisande, op.46
Prokofiev – Symphony no.1 in D major, op.25, ‘Classical’

Elbenita Kajtazi (soprano)

Camerata Salzburg

Alexander Prior (conductor)

This was a curiously assembled programme, but since it was one of four concerts to be conducted by Nestlé and Salzburg Young Conductor prize winners, there may have been any number of practical reasons for that. Alexander Prior certainly knew what he was doing and how to get what he wanted from the Camerata Salzburg.

 

Per Nørgard’s Dream Symphony, not a work with which I was previously familiar, opened the programme. The opening was surefooted and colourful, the Salzburg woodwind especially fruity. Strings offered an added touch of overt late Romanticism, despite the work having been written in 1975, and a good few ‘wrong’ notes to spice up the harmony. There was great clarity to the performance, allied to a strong sense of forward momentum (at least where the piece permitted). The gorgeous acoustic of the Mozarteum’s Grosser Saal helped, and so did excellent playing, but Prior deserves a good deal of credit; he was clearly enjoying himself too.

 

Mozart’s insertion aria, Vado, ma dove? oh Dei!, benefited equally from warm, crisp orchestral playing (thankfully not a hint of the dread Roger Norrington’s tenure). Elbenita Kajtazi’s singing and the performance in general were operatic in a good sense: one could well imagine the piece doing – very well – what it was designed to do, lifting the work of a lesser composer (Martín y Soler). Kajtazi’s stylish, often thrilling performance left one longing for more. I certainly hope to hear more from her.

 

Sibelius’s smaller works have often proved more attractive to me than his (dreary) symphonies. Not really on this occasion, I am afraid, although again the performances were excellent. It was a long time since I had heard his incidental music for Pelleas and Melisande; he comes a long, long way behind Debussy and Schoenberg, Fauré too. The audience generally seemed enthralled, though, and there was no doubting Prior’s commitment. The opening number was rich of tone, yet stark, clearly suggestive of the dark castle. The English horn soloist shone in his various solos, and there was a gloriously full orchestral sound to be heard from what, after all, is a chamber orchestra. The penultimate movement definitely had a ‘pastoral’ quality to it, prior to a duly grave conclusion.

 

I was a little puzzled by Prior’s rather deliberate direction of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, especially during the first movement, which dragged somewhat, at least to my ears. (I am not one generally to dislike slower tempi.) The Larghetto emerged better, sounding graceful, yet always retaining a sense of the longer line. I rather liked the held-back quality to the Gavotta too, which prepared a still greater contrast with the fleet virtuosity of the finale. There was no doubting here the aural glimpses (!) of the ballet composer to come.

Salzburg Mozartwoche (1): Melnikov/Camerata Salzburg/Langrée - Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Dutilleux, 30 January 2016

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Mozart – Symphony no.1 in E-flat major, KV 16

Mendelssohn, Piano Concerto no.1 in G minor, op.25
Dutilleux – Mystère de l’instant
Mozart – Symphony no.39 in E-flat major, KV 543

Alexander Melnikov (piano)

Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra

Louis Langrée (conductor)

 

This year’s Salzburg Mozartwoche has allotted a special place to Mendelssohn, present in three of the five concerts I have attended or will. The centenary of Henri Dutilleux’s birth was also celebrated in this concert from the Mozarteum Orchestra and Louis Langrée. His Mystère de l’instant (1986, revised 1989), for twenty-four strings, cimbalom, and percussion – a clear echo of Bartók, unsurprisingly given its status as a Sacher work – received what seemed to me an impressive performance. I have rarely proved responsive to Dutilleux’s music, rather to my disappointment, given the number of people I know who admire it greatly. This, however, proved an exception. In ten (very) short movements, we experienced a vividly pictorial, albeit not only pictorial, drama-in-miniature. Balances were well judged throughout, all of the solos (be they cimbalom, percussion, or string) well taken. Rhythms were not only precise, but propulsive. The appearance of the SACHER cipher in the tenth movement, ‘Métamorphoses’, inevitably put me in mind of another, slightly younger French composer, whose music I know much better.

 

Alexander Melnikov had joined the orchestra for Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto. It is not a work I feel wild about, yet I have heard more compelling performances than this, especially from the soloist. A turbulent opening to the first movement had promised well. If very fast indeed, pretty hard-driven, the score arguably suggests that. Melnikov’s approach, however, seemed curiously static, a series of episodes that did not lead anywhere. His tone was a strange mixture of grand, old-style Romanticism, and inconsequential skating across the keys. I should have preferred everyone to calm down a little, but it was the lack of direction from the soloist that especially troubled me. That said, Melnikov handled the transition to the second movement well, although his strange detachment soon again had the upper hand. The Salzburg cellos, however, sounded gorgeous. The finale was even more po-faced, at least so far as the pianist was concerned. He efficiently despatched everything, with considerable tonal variegation; I was never moved, though, in a performance that seemed serious in the wrong way.

No one would claim Mozart’s First Symphony to be a masterpiece, but by virtue of being his first symphony, it holds an undeniable interest for many of us. This was a less warm performance than Karl Böhm used to give, but anyone would surely have expected that. It pulsed with life, the highly contrasting figures of the first movement given their due. Langrée’s smiles suggested he was enjoying himself. The slow movement was well-shaped, its textures well-balanced. What it lacks above all is melodic genius, but that is no one’s fault. A joyful and ebullient performance of the finale brought this first item on the programme to an impressive close, the movement over in the twinkling of an eye.

 

Anyone, however, who did not consider Mozart’s final E-flat major Symphony to be a masterpiece would be well-advised to give up on music completely. The opening E-flat chords inevitably brought The Magic Flute to mind, although equally, the development thereafter reminded us this was a very different work. The first-movement exposition clearly grew out of the introduction. (That should, but alas does not, go without saying.) Langrée had a few rather irritating agogic touches (especially upon repetition), but nothing too grievous. For the most part, direction was clear, the concision of the development section truly a thing of wonder. The concluding bars did what they should: properly triumphant, thematically integrative, resounding with an inevitability that would surely have made Haydn proud. The slow movement was well-shaped, taken at a relatively swift tempo, the minor mode episodes making a strong impression. Langrée was sometimes prone to exaggerated tapering off of phrases, but I have heard far worse. A graceful yet vigorous minuet made a strong case for being taken one-to-a-bar. Orchestral detail was always finely etched. The trio flowed nicely, whilst offering proper relief. Langrée’s tempo for the finale sounded effortlessly right, allowing everything to slot into place (which is not, of course, to minimise the achievement of that happening). It was full of Haydnesque purpose, whilst, in its characterisation and sheer drama, never permitting us to forget that this was the composer of the Da Ponte operas. I could find no fault whatsoever in this delightful finale.

Benedetti/Camerata Salzburg/Gernon - Bartók, Bruckner, and Mozart, 11 March 2015

Cadogan Hall

Bartók – Divertimento, Sz 113

Mozart – Violin Concerto no.5 in A major, KV 219

Mozart – Rondo in C major, KV 373

Bruckner (arr. Stanislaw Skrowaczewski) – ‘Adagio’ from String Quintet in F major

Mozart – Symphony no.29 in A major, KV 201/186a

Nicola Benedetti (violin)

Camerata Salzburg

Ben Gernon (conductor)

 

A disappointing concert, I am afraid, for which much of the responsibility lay with the conductor, Ben Gernon. I was initially intrigued by the decidedly unusual performance of Bartók’s Divertimento. To his credit, Gernon observed the ‘non troppo’ from Bartók’s ‘Allegro non troppo’ marking to the first movement, though perhaps he observed it a little ‘troppo’. It certainly felt like the slowest account I had heard. The playing of the Camerata Salzburg was in its way impressive, the strings really digging in, but offering a sound that was more generally mitteleuropäisch than Hungarian. That I did not mind, though my companion was less impressed; however, as the work progressed, what might at first have seemed refreshingly different merely sounded inappropriate. The lack of a greater intensity from and/or a greater body of strings was felt strongly during the slow movement. It was not that that greater intensity could not be summoned up; it just needed to be done so more often. When the finale began, I again wondered whether something less frenetic than usual might actually prove revealing. Despite some fine solo playing, however, the movement and the work as a whole remained earthbound.

Nicola Benedetti joined the orchestra for Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto and, as a sort of written-in encore, the C major Rondo for Violin and Orchestra. The first movement of the concerto announced a better sense of style. One would, of course, hope so with this orchestra, although one hardly knows what to expect post-Norringtonisation. Vibrato, at least, was not eschewed, although it might have been employed more freely. Benedetti’s Adagio entry properly disoriented, almost as if an operatic character had awoken. I was less sure about what followed. At its best, Benedetti’s violin tone was characterful, whether silvery or bright. However, there were numerous surprising intonational slips and, more worrying, strange bulgings of phrasing. The movement never really settled down, and never sounded effortless. Its successor, the Adagio, would have benefited from warmer orchestra playing; perhaps the Camerata still has ghosts of dated ‘authenticity’ to lay. Both soloist and orchestra had an unfortunate tendency of progressing from beat to beat, with little sense of a longer line. The music plodded rather than flowed. More successful was the finale, which proved both warmer of tone and more connected. A sensible tempo was adopted and, perhaps surprisingly, given the movement’s structure, there was, if only at times, a greater sense of dramatic development. The ‘Turkish’ music offered welcome contrast, though not too much. However, some tricky corners ought to have been more smoothly handled. The C major Rondo was played with grace, functioning well as an encore, although there was nothing to challenge players such as Arthur Grumiaux here either.

In this rather oddly conceived programme, the second half followed with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski’s arrangement for string orchestra of the Adagio from Bruckner’s String Quintet. A somewhat bizarre programme note engaged in ill-expressed special pleading. (A taste: ‘The work was composed between the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and so is an example of Bruckner at full maturity and the Adagio is one of his greatest symphonic movements and it would be a pity indeed if it languished unperformed because of purist concerns about playing a single movement out of its context.’) Again, Gernon conveyed little of the longer line, a failing as damaging to Bruckner as it is to Mozart. The music progressed from note to note, with the unfortunate consequence that I began to fear that it would never end. There is no reason at all why performance of this arrangement should require special pleading; it just needs a Skrowaczewski to bring it to life, and ideally, a larger body of strings.

String tone, if not aggressively ‘period’, was thinner in the A major Symphony than it had been in the works with violin. (Had, perhaps, inclinations been tempered for Benedetti’s benefit?) The first movement set the tone for what followed, proving ‘light’ in a meagre rather than spirited sense. One had a reasonable idea of how it hung together, but there was little beyond that to the performance. Thinness of tone was even more of a problem in the slow movement, which at least was not taken so absurdly fast as has recently become fashionable; as an Andante, it was well judged. Playing was generally alert, though occasionally scrappy, in the Minuet. The Trio, however, less relaxed than slumped. It was not a matter of speed, but of lack of tension. Encouragingly, the finale began in rigorous fashion, with not a little swagger. Alas, it lost its way soon enough. Mozart remains the sternest test for any conductor – or orchestra, or soloist. No one passed with flying colours on this occasion.

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (4) - Orphée aux enfers, 9 July 2009

(Images copyright: Elisabeth Carecchio)

Théâtre de l’Archevêché

Eurydice – Pauline Courtin
Orphée – Julien Behr
Aristée/Pluton – Mathias Vidal
Jupiter – Francis Bouyer
L’Opinion Publique – Marie Gautrot
John Styx – Jérôme Billy
Mercure – Paul Cremazy
Cupidon – Emmanuelle de Negri
Diane – Soula Parassidis
Vénus – Marie Kalinine
Minerve – Estelle Kaique
Junon – Sabine Revault d’Allonnes

Yves Beaunesne (director)
Damien Caille-Perret (designs)
Patrice Cauchetier (costumes)
Joël Hourbeigt (lighting)

Chœur du Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (chorus master: Nicolas Krüger)
Camerata Salzburg
Alain Altinoglu (conductor)

Götterdämmerung would have been a struggle to put on in the courtyard of Aix’s archepiscopal palace. Torchlight procession echoes of the Eumenides notwithstanding, it was doubtless wise to reserve Wagner’s drama for the splendid new Grand Théâtre de Provence. The Théâtre de l’Archevêché remains, however, the traditional heart of the festival, and it was here, as dusk fell, that I saw and heard my final performance, a satyr play almost, from this year’s programme. Orphée aux enfers does not have much in common with Götterdämmerung, although both came under the umbrella of the festival heading, opera and myth. This was really too general a heading to be of value – the Orpheus myth itself might have been more manageable, whilst still offering a plethora of choices – but no matter. Offenbach’s opéra bouffe provided an enjoyable contrast.

The production, for the Aix Festival and the Académie européene de musique, subsequently transferring to co-production partners in Toulon and Dijon, had its problems. Yves Beaunesne seemed unable to decide what he was trying to accomplish. According to an interview in the programme booklet, he sees Offenbach as having had two targets in mind for his satire: political and social matters on the one hand and myth on the other. Beaunesne then makes the questionable assertion that, ‘in order to find once again the original radicalism’ of the work, one should invert the proportions of the original targets, concentrating on political and social satire, since ‘mythology no longer belongs to our [frame of] references’. Perhaps not to his, though he might be wiser only to speak for himself in that respect. More importantly, this claim, whether accurate or otherwise, does not seem to be carried through into what we witness on stage. In the first scene, which, like the rest of the production, seems to be set vaguely in the 1920s, mythology seems barely present. Orpheus and Eurydice are just a musician and his wife, though, given the downplaying of the satire on myth, there does not seem to be anything amusing about this. Thereafter, however, we seem to be vaguely in the world of myth, albeit in vaguely 1920s guise. None of this is of supreme importance, but I cannot understand what is gained. Had the proposition been that updating to the present was necessary, it might have been incomprehensible, but an interwar setting does not seem especially more relevant to the early twenty-first century than a production set at the time of composition, or indeed at almost any other time. A case, of course, might have been made, but I am not sure that it was.

What we had, instead, were some intermittently pretty sets and some splendid costumes (Patrice Cauchetier) and a few puzzling interpolations, such as Pluto, in his initial guise as Aristaeus, arriving upon stage on roller-skates – handled with great aplomb, I might add. Insofar as I could trace an idea, it seemed to be that Eurydice was a social climber, seduced by a picture of a film star (?), who whisked her off; she became bored and ended up being whisked off by someone (Jupiter) more influential. The problem was less the idea than that it was weakly presented. The gods’ banquet in the second scene – this was the original, two-act version, with some additions from 1874 – seemed just a bit old-fashioned, redolent yet not emphatically so of the Second Empire, whereas I had imagined we might have had a real taste of Hollywood. Public Opinion, after all, seemed to be a busybody reporter, forever taking photographs. Enjoyable – yes; coherent – no.

Alain Altinoglu, however, provided a fizzing account of the score, for which much praise should also be given to the Camerata Salzburg. Hardly their core repertoire, one would have thought, but Altinoglu’s direction provided drive and tenderness, though never deathly sentimentality, and a welcome opportunity to hear the ample soloistic opportunities Offenbach grants various instruments. Chief of these, of course, is Orpheus’s violin, in the hands of the excellent leader, Roman Simovic, but there are many more, all of which were well taken here.

The young cast, drawn from the ranks of the Académie européene de musique, generally made the most of its opportunities too. Chief amongst them must surely be ranked Mathias Vidal’s Pluto, sweet of tone in a classically French manner, and a good actor too. Francis Bouyer attracted a somewhat lukewarm reception as Jupiter, but I thought him rather good too, with a fine swagger, both vocal and visual, though he seemed to tire a little during the second act. Julien Behr’s Orpheus was sweetly sung and convincingly portrayed. Pauline Courtin generally handled well the demands of her part as Eurydice, albeit not without a certain tendency for her voice to harden during vocal display. I was enchanted by Emmanuelle de Negri’s splendidly boyish Cupid, whilst Jérôme Billy did an excellent job as John Styx, though he was not at all assisted by the production, which, under the guise of amusement, really made the character outstay his welcome. The smaller parts were also generally well taken, not least in terms of stage presence. I do not doubt that we shall be hearing from some of these singers again.

Festival d'Aix en Provence: Zaide, 5 July 2008

(Images - copyright: Elisabeth Carecchio)

Théâtre de l’Archevêché

Zaide – Ekaterina Lekhina
Gomatz – Sean Panikkar
Allazim – Alfred Walker
Sultan Soliman – Russell Thomas
Osmin – Morris Robinson

Peter Sellars (director)
Georges Tsypin (designs)
Gabriel Berry (costumes)
James F. Ingalls (lighting)

Ibn Zaydoun Chorus (director: Moneim Adwan)
Camerata Salzburg
Louis Langrée (conductor)

I had been looking forward to this: my first Zaide in the theatre, a controversial but undeniably talented director, and the open air of the courtyard to the archepiscopal palace in Aix. What unfolded was the stuff of nightmares: a production as crass as – if doubtless more well-meaning than – Jonathan Miller’s appalling travesty of Così fan tutte for the Royal Opera, albeit without the extraordinary musical redemption of Sir Colin Davis and his superlative cast.

That Zaide is a problem piece, no one would deny. The music is far too good to lie unperformed but it is frustratingly incomplete: something clearly must be done. It seems to me that there are three principal paths one could take. One could make a virtue of the incomplete nature of the ‘work’ as it stands, either by taking up and developing the theme of fragmentation. One might commission some new music and either provide it with a companion-piece (as the Salzburg Festival in 2006 did) or transform it into a new work. Or one could attempt to make it cohere as it stands, perhaps by adding further music by Mozart. The incidental music to Thamos, King of Egypt is a favoured candidate for this approach, and this is what happened here. Except that it did not. There was at root a glaring contradiction, perhaps resolvable or perhaps not, but certainly not resolved in this particular case, between a quasi-traditional path of Mozartian completion and Sellars’s understanding of the work.

There is nothing wrong in principle with providing a work with a new or modified message, although it needs to be done well – and rarely is. Sellars, however, actually seems to believe that Zaide itself is about what he decided to put on stage. I can say this with some confidence by virtue of his comments in the programme. Take the following extract from his ‘synopsis’, informing us what is going on in that most celebrated of the work’s arias, ‘Ruhe sanft’: ‘From her sewing machine above, Zaide (a Muslim) hears Gomatz struggle. She sings a lullaby to ease his pain and lowers his ID card to him, hoping her picture will bring him comfort and strength…’ Or this commentary on Osmin’s ‘Wer hungrig bei der Tafel sitzt’: ‘This escape is not a problem for Osmin. As a slave trader, his speciality is outsourcing and there is an endless supply of desperate people who will work under any conditions. From his point of view, Soliman is behaving like one big fool. Modern management techniques offer a huge profit from a disposable work force. The lesson is: if there is food, eat your fill.’ For Mozart, Sellars tells us, ‘belonged to a generation of artists, activists, intellectuals, and religious leaders who dedicated an important part of their œuvre to the abolition of slavery.’ This, apparently, is what the Enlightenment was about. Except it was not – and nor is Mozart’s unfinished Singspiel. Mozart was not the egalitarian Sellars explicitly calls him. A little while after composing the music to Zaide, Mozart dismissively reported to his father of Joseph II’s inclusion of the ‘Viennese rabble’ (Pöbel) at a Schönbrunn ball. Such rabble, he wrote, would always remain just that. This does not place Mozart at odds with the Enlightenment; it places him at its heart, along with Voltaire’s plea to his guests not to discuss the non-existence of God in front of the servants, lest the latter should forget their place. And as for the American plantations… The Enlightenment in general and Mozart in particular are far more complex than a modern, liberal American mind – or at least this one – appears able to comprehend. Hierarchy is sometimes undermined in Mozart’s operas but never to the extent of threatening the social order. Le nozze di Figaro is, after all, but a ‘folle journée’, from which most of Beaumarchais’s menacing rhetoric has been expunged.

It gets worse however, when Sellars comes to staging this misunderstanding. (Some misunderstandings can be fruitful, but not this.) Zaide takes place in a modern sweatshop, replete with the ‘ID cards’, ‘modern management techniques’, and so on, which I quoted above. Somehow the issue of Palestinian liberation becomes embroiled in this issue and that more broadly of modern slavery; it is all about ‘freedom’, I suppose. I hope that it should not need saying that I abhor all forms of slavery, ancient and modern, including the repression of Palestine, but that does not in itself make the issue relevant to an unfinished work which is about something quite different, nor to a production which, through its generally ‘right-on’ contradictions, could not make up its mind what it was really about. We therefore had a ‘chorus’ of six modern slaves traipse on to stage following the appropriated ‘overture’, for an oud – I think – to strike up by way of introduction to the harmless little song they presented. Mozart was then permitted to return, providing different music to what I believe were the same words. We never heard again from the Ibn Zaydoun chorus, associated with the admirable organisation Esclavage Tolérance Zéro, nor from the chorus’s director, Moneim Adwan. Their inclusion was offensively tokenistic and added nothing to the botched drama on stage; they sang well enough in an amateur fashion. The Aix audience was made to suffer ever so slightly by the turning on of glaring strobe lighting at the ends of musical numbers: irritating enough to be discourteous, and obscene if the suggestion were that we could in any sense thereby participate in the very real agonies of modern slavery, be it in a sweatshop or the Gaza Strip. East-West tension might fruitfully have been addressed in a work such as this, but here it was not.

Camerata Salzburg sounded as it generally does nowadays, post-Norrington. Sándor Végh would turn in his grave to hear the low-vibrato, short-bowed, small-in-number (7.6.5.4.2) string contribution, although there were moments when the section was allowed greater musical freedom. The opening bar confronted us with the perversely rasping sound of natural brass and with the ‘authentic’ bashing of hard sticks upon kettledrums. It was left to the superlative woodwind section to provide Mozartian consolation. Louis Langrée drove the score quite hard, sometimes with dramatic flair, often with a harshness that has no place in Mozart. He was able, however, to provide considerable dramatic continuity both within and between numbers. Perhaps surprisingly, the Thamos items often fared better.

There were some promising young voices on stage, although they had a tendency to present excessively broad-brushed, unshaded interpretations – and were sometimes just far too loud. Sean Panikkar possesses a winningly ardent tenor, which impressed more in the first than in the second act. Thankfully he had more to do in the first. Alfred Walker was dignified earlier on but subsequently unfocused. What were we to make of Ekaterina Lekhina in the title role? She delivered her second act arias rather well, but was all over the place in ‘Ruhe sanft’: tremulous and out-of-tune in an almost caricatured ‘operatic’ fashion. More worryingly, why was she, a Russian soprano, included in what was otherwise clearly a purposely-selected non-white cast? I cannot for one moment imagine that this was the intention, but I almost had the impression that here was a white woman, threatened and surrounded by coloured men. Whatever the actual intention was, I am afraid that it entirely eluded me. The impression of abject incoherence was nevertheless intensified still further. I think that I have now said enough.