Jake Arditti/Arditti Quartet - Sciarrino, Hurel, and Andre, 12 March 2018

Wigmore Hall

Salvatore Sciarrino: Sei quartetti brevi (1967-92)

Philippe Hurel: Entre les lignes (2017, UK premiere)
Mark Andre: iv 13 (Twelve miniatures) (2014-17, UK premiere)
Sciarrino: Cosa resta (2016, UK premiere)

Jake Arditti (countertenor)

Irvine Arditti Ashot Sarkissian (violins)

Ralf Ehlers (viola)

Lucas Fels (cello)

 

First, some early music – certainly by the Arditti Quartet’s standards: Sciarrino’s Sei quartetti brevi, the first of which was written in 1967, dedicated to Franco Evengelisti, added to with five further pieces in 1991 and 1992. Perhaps such a conception inevitably brings to mind Webern, at least for those of us with a centre of gravity in still earlier music, but it was only really in the second piece (that which was written first, in 1967) that he came strongly to mind in musical terms, at least in performances such as these, typically free of nostalgia. That intimate post-Webern riot – if you cannot imagine such a thing, just listen – was preceded by an opening movement of bowed whispers, transforming over its course, febrile yet always with a sense of a ground from which to take flight, into a language, perhaps even a world, of its own. A focused yet variegated – dialectics aplenty here! – third movement, suggestive at times almost of electronic sounds had in that respect much in common with the fifth piece, its short-wave radio intimations charmingly reminiscent of Stockhausen, even if only coincidentally. The ghostly swarming between of the fourth piece in between seemed in retrospect, again if only coincidentally, to prepare the way for a final movement in which I sensed something sung, somehow ‘behind’ the harmonics, and yet which was imaginatively recreated by them. Perhaps we had reached the air of ‘another other planet’.

 

At the close of the recital, we turned or returned to some early music refracted – or so, on occasion, it seemed, the air of the Italian Renaissance both palpable and yet not. In Sciarrino’s Cosa resta, Jake Arditti’s countertenor, finely balanced between the unearthly and the earthly, led us through the inventory of Andrea di Sarto, as accounted for after his widow’s death in 1570: first straightforwardly so, reminding me – doubtless only because I had just heard it from English Touring Opera – a little of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, then more playfully, mysteriously, broken and prolonged, as if cleansed and invigorated by the air of the post-war avant garde. Recitative, almost, followed by arioso, almost, eventually blooming into something quite different: there was a true impression of back and forth, not only between eras but within the text, verbal and musical. Instruments would sigh, imitating and developing ideas from the voice, from the words. At other times, especially towards the close, something intriguingly mechanistic emerged; perhaps significantly, that came perhaps as resistance to something more ‘sung’, less ‘spoken’. Performances from all concerned, not least Jake Arditti, were as engaging as the work itself. I look forward to hearing the items for soprano and mixed octet that surround this piece to form Sciarrino’s Immagina il deserto. There was certainly much scope for imagination, of the desert and beyond, here.

 

In between, we heard works by Philippe Hurel and Mark Andre. Hurel’s Entre les lignes, like the first Sciarriano and the Andre, a UK premiere, was forestalled for a minute or so by an electronic contribution from an unwitting audience member. No harm was done and a little amusement afforded when Irvine Arditti asked: ‘Is that a Sciarrino telephone? If so, I want one.’ Contrast with the Sei quartetti brevi proved considerable, not least in terms of initial volume and directness of attack, which would surely have more than drowned out any audience contribution. The other thing that immediately struck me was that Hurel seemed to be working very much more within the generally accepted tradition of string quartet playing: the sound, if not the language, of Schoenberg and Bartók, for instance. (I was then gratified later to see his words quoted in the programme: ‘I made no attempt to explore string techniques; those I have used belong to the familiar vocabulary.’) Had I not known better, I might have believed the intensity of polyphony arose from more than four instruments. The relationship between harmony and counterpoint again seemed to spring from tradition, without being reduced to it. And yet, ultimately, the programming also spoke of possible connections to, or at least similarities with, the preceding Sciarrino work. Dialectical contrast between often clearly demarcated sections, and in internal, cumulative narrative played against one another. A highly dramatic work and performance seemed to grow out of the physical and intellectual nature and potentialities of the instruments.

 

Andre’s ‘iv 13 (Twelve miniatures)’ belongs to a ‘long series of solo instrumental and chamber pieces, iv,’ on which the composer has been working since 2007. These pieces were composed between 2014 and 2017, and given their first performance by the Arditti Quartet last year. The soundworld, at least at times, seemed to me closer to Sciarrino than to Hurel. Sometimes towards, if not quite at, the edge of audibility, they seemed occasionally to hint (not necessarily a case of influence) at Nono too, perhaps also, as Paul Griffiths suggested in his note, at Lachenmann. Extended techniques were certainly the order of the day here: bowing on wooden dampers, retuning and ‘mistunings’ (Griffiths), col legno playing, and so forth conspiring to create, in the composer’s words, ‘a music of disappearance’. Its ‘presented compositional spaces breathe, disappear, and leave behind shadows, traces, which is how this intimate piece works musically and eschatologically.’ Whispered confidences certainly spoke of a kinship, if only in this particular programming context, with Sei quartetti brevi. It seemed both to bring various tendencies in the programme together and yet also to question them – just as one might have expected from the ever-excellent Arditti Quartet.  

 

Cardillac, Vienna State Opera, 22 June 2015

Cardillac (Tomasz Konieczny)
Images: Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn

Cardillac – Tomasz Konieczny
Daughter – Angela Denoke
Officer – Herbert Lippert
Gold Dealer – Wolfgang Bankl
Cavalier – Matthias Klink
Lady – Olga Bezsmertna
Police Officer – Alexandru Moisiuc

Sven-Eric Bechtolf (director)

Rolf Glittenberg (set designs)
Marianne Glittenberg (costumes)
Jürgen Hoffmann (lighting)

 

Is there at present any more unfashionable composer than Hindemith? Tippett perhaps runs him close, but I can think of no one else. Little has changed in that respect since I lamented this situation upon the Paris Opéra’s 2008 revival of Cardillac by André Engel. It is all the more welcome, then, that Vienna should not only stage but keep in its repertoire this wonderful opera, here given, as seems generally now to be the case, in its original, three-act form rather than Hindemith’s 1952 four-act revision for Zurich. (We miss, then, the performance within a performance of numbers from Lully’s Phaëton and the greater, post-Mathis der Maler sympathy accorded to Cardillac as artist.)

Daughter (Angela Denoke) and
Officer (Herbert Lippert)

Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s staging is probably the best I have seen from him. I opened my Paris review – bear in mind this was still the Gérard Mortier era of blessed memory – by saying, ‘Perhaps only Paris could turn in so stylish a production of the terminally unfashionable Hindemith.’ Bechtolf does not do so badly either, his stylisation fitting and lightly questioning the work too. The crowd scenes in particular benefit from carefully clockwork choreography, as if responding to the large timepiece (surely a more general nod to ETA Hoffmann, author of the original short story, Das Fräulein von Scuderi), and the black-and-white, top-hatted designs. The crowd both acts as a mob and retains, perhaps intensifies, its weirdness: not inappropriate for a Neue Sachlichkeit treatment of a German Romantic story. Sexual congress is again both plausible and stylishly removed from the merely representational. The realm of the master goldsmith himself offers powerful visual contrast – gold as much the order of the day here as in a later Schoenbergian orgy – and yet retains quirky, choreographed connection, as the action passes between different worlds. The work of Rolf and Marianne Gilttenberg as designers is very well fitted as frame and incitement to the exaggerated and musically-conceived, or at the very least musically-consistent, movement that ensues.  

For Hindemith’s motoric, extremely anti-Romantic conceptions of Bach – think of the Kammermusik transformed into opera – rightly came to the forefront here of our musico-dramatic attention. There were times, especially during the first act – all three acts were given, wisely, without an interval – when I missed the final degree of dry precision from the orchestral playing, but in general, Michael Boder’s conducting impressed, especially his handling – and the orchestra’s execution – of climaxes. Moreover, a relative relaxation of anti-Romanticism arguably held its own rewards, in preparing the way for the Officer’s compassion and, perhaps, whetting the appetite for a hearing of that later Zurich version. The Vienna State Opera Chorus’s contribution was excellent throughout, a credit to its chorus master, Thomas Lang.

Lady (Olga Bezsmertna)

 

 

Tomasz Konieczny offered a properly complex portrayal of Cardillac, permitting us to be torn between horror at his murderous narcissism, unable to permit his masterpiece to be owned by another, and his strange, increasing dignity as a craftsman. Vocal and stage presence were communicated as one. Angela Denoke, also Cardillac’s daughter in that Paris revival, gave quite the best performance I have heard from her in some time: lyrical and ever-meaningful verbally. As ever, she acted the role with passion and commitment. Herbert Lippert’s Officer struggled a little too often with Hindemith’s demands, but shared that sense of dramatic commitment. Olga Bezsmertna’s Lady showed true star quality. A member of the Vienna ensemble, she had me wishing her role offered more for her to sing. Wolfgang Bankl, Matthias Klink, and Alexandru Moisiuc all convinced in their roles. More Hindemith, then, please – in Vienna, but elsewhere too.

 

 

 

Cardillac, Opéra National de Paris, 29 January 2008

Opéra Bastille

Cardillac – Franz Grundheber
The Daughter – Angela Denoke
The Officer – Christopher Ventris
The Lady – Hannah Esther Minutillo
The Cavalier – Charles Workman
The Gold Dealer – Roland Bracht
Leader of the Prévôté – David Bizic

Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris

Kazushi Ono (conductor)

Winfried Maczewski (chorus master)

André Engel (producer)
Nicky Rieti (designer)
Chantel de La Coste Messelière (costumes)
André Diot (lighting)
Frédérique Chauveaux and Françoise Grès (choreographers)

Perhaps only Paris could turn in so stylish a production of the terminally unfashionable Hindemith. When I saw this in 2006, I thought that the Opéra National de Paris had a hit on its hands, and I have no reason to revise my judgement upon its revival. Cardillac, based on Das Fräulein von Scuderi, a short story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, is a work imbued with Neue Sachlichkeit. It nevertheless looks forward to the chief preoccupation of works such as Mathis der Maler and Die Harmonie der Welt, namely the artist’s role in society. The musical style, however, remains very much of the 1920s: for the most part resolutely anti-sentimental and with a duly ‘objective’ instrumental polyphony characteristic, perhaps misconceived but genuinely held, of that age’s conception of Bach.

Kazushi Ono seemed very much on Hindemith’s wavelength in this respect. Anxious to relieve music of its subservience to the text Hindemith – somewhat like Busoni and even Berg in this respect – insisted upon small closed instrumental forms, following their own musical imperatives. Whilst not dissociated from what was going on onstage, Ono ensured that the motorised rhythms and the manifold polyphonic strands were possessed of their own motivation. His reading may not have evinced throughout quite the rhythmic drive – there were a few occasions when the tension sagged ever so slightly – brought to the score by Kent Nagano during the original production, but this is a minor criticism. The orchestra responded superbly: incisive and possessed of just the right wind- and percussion-dominated sound. (The strings, especially violins, are very few in number, to impart an almost Weill-like quality to the music.) A sure command of idiom was unfailingly apparent.

Franz Grundheber proved a charismatic Cardillac. His tone, his attention to the text, and equally importantly, bearing on stage were all exemplary. For the drama to be of consequence, one needs to believe in his tortured, Jekyll-and-Hyde conflict between his work and everything else, his daughter included. One certainly did in this case. Angela Denoke was every bit as impressive as his daughter; it is difficult to imagine her command of line and tone in this role bettered. As her suitor, Christopher Ventris also impressed – more so in the second than in the third act – although he was arguably outshone by Charles Workman in the smaller tenor role of the dashing Cavalier. The stage and vocal chemistry between the latter and the alluring Hannah Esther Minutillo as the Lady was an object lesson in such matters. One could all too well understand why he felt compelled to follow her fateful entreaty to procure for her ‘the finest object Cardillac ever produced,’ and why she in her turn was only too eager to await him in her bedroom. The chorus, attentively directed and choreographed, was every bit as impressive in its vocal blend and diction. It plays a crucial role – partly a homage to Bach’s Passions and Handel’s oratorios? – both at the opening and during the final scene, thus framing the action within a broader social context. It was no mean achievement for almost every word to be distinguishable, all the more impressive given the fullness of choral tone and the quantity of stage business.

The production was, as I have already mentioned, extremely stylish. The updating – to roughly the time of composition – worked well enough, although there were occasions, such as the beginning of the third act, when it became a little confusing. Nevertheless, the general impression of gold-fuelled opulence was most persuasive, as were all aspects of the Personenregie. The sets and costumes were lavish, which seemed not an extravagance but a necessary attribute of the action. A welcome aspect of the production was that it helped to remove any lingering prejudices one might have entertained about dryness or worthiness on the composer’s part. This was splendid musical theatre and must be accounted a triumph for Gérard Mortier’s house and company.