Gewandhaus/Pinnock - Haydn, The Seasons, 28 April 2017

Grosser Saal, Leipzig Gewandhaus

Christina Landshamer (soprano)

Daniel Behle (tenor)

Michael Nagy (baritone)

Gewandhaus Choir, Dresden Chamber Choir (chorus master: Edwards Caswell)

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

Trevor Pinnock (conductor)

 

A much discussed – and much praised – recent recording of The Seasons has been that from Paul McCreesh and his Gabrieli forces. I have not heard it yet, although I wrote the booklet note; a copy is, I believe, awaiting me on a brief return to the United (sic) Kingdom next month. However, I know that it is sung in English, and on the grandest – authentic in the proper sense – scale. Trevor Pinnock’s Leipzig Gewandhaus performance was, naturally, sung in German, and with small forces: strings 10.8.7.4.4, and two small choirs coming together to make one chorus. What may occasionally have been lost in grandeur, though – this was definitely more Marriner than Karajan – offered compensations in terms of intimacy (not, of course, that we should fall for the canard that such need be lacking in larger-scale performances).

 

What perhaps surprised me was that Pinnock’s way with Haydn’s score was often somewhat Romantic (in the more popular sense, rather than necessarily having anything much to do with the nineteenth century). Tempi were rarely rushed, if anything, slightly – occasionally more than slightly – on the slower side, with more than a little lingering in certain cases. For instance, relaxation in the first number, during the orchestral interlude between Lukas’s and Hanne’s words, was greater than I can recall hearing, but convincing, even delightful. Pinnock generally, as, for example, in the following chorus, ‘Komm, holder Lenz!’ shaped the music nicely, without moulding it unduly. Rhythms could be perky, well sprung, when called for too, as in ‘Schon eilet froh der Ackermann’, which also benefited from some ear-catching piccolo playing ( Alexander Koval, a member of the orchestra’s Mendelssohn Orchestra Academy). Indeed, woodwind colour was very much to the fore throughout, solo flautist, Sébastian Jacot and solo oboist, Philippe Tondre time and time again delighting the ear and heightening one’s musical perception. In the Spinning Song, woodwind solos sounded unusually present, as ‘relief’, against the darker, proto-Weberian, even proto–Wagnerian, whirring of the wheel. The pictorial elements were vivid, self-explanatory, so much so that, at times, one almost need not have listened to the words, but not at the expense of line and flow. What a relief, moreover, it was to have intelligent, interesting continuo playing (Michael Schönheit, the Gewandhausorganist, on fortepiano) that was not of the exhibitionistic ‘look at me’ school. (Let us hope that that fad passes soon.)

 

There were a very few occasions when the string tone was a little thinner than might have been ideal; Simon’s aria at the beginning of Summer was one, following a finely veiled (vibrato withdrawn) introduction. More often than not, though, the litheness we heard in the very opening number proved far from antithetical to warmth and cultivation. Perhaps Pinnock’s concentration, or communication thereof, was nodding a little in those early minutes of Summer, for the soloists’ lead-up to Sun’s full majesty was a little sluggish. Thereafter, though, in that Trio and Chorus, majesty and thrills were in full supply. Timpanist Mathias Müller, chose his sticks and general approach carefully: this was anything but a one-size-fits-all approach, as befits so vividly colourful, temporally (and climatically) transforming a score. the distant thunder in Simon’s recitative, ‘O seht! Es steiget in der schwülen Luft’ a case in point. I loved the general uncanniness in that calm before the storm, which then came, if not quite de profundis, then certainly out of the dark. The way, moreover, in which the music picked itself up, as it were, with Lukas’s ‘Die düst’ren Wolken trennen sich’ was spot on: credit both to Daniel Behle, orchestra, and conductor. When tempi were swifter than ‘traditional’, as in the Chorus in Praise of Industry, the result was light of foot rather than uncomfortably driven.

 

Behle’s relatively light tenor did not lack depth or seriousness when called upon. It matched well Christina Landsamer’s soprano, possessed of equal clarity and cleanness of line, although sometimes a little unclear of diction. Both are undoubtedly intelligent, musical artists. Michael Nagy’s baritone was for me the vocal highlight, its richness never an end in itself, but the foundation for a wide variety indeed of tonal variegation. At one extreme would be the splendidly grey monotone (if that should not be a complete contradiction in terms) on ‘steht er, unbewegt, der Stein,’ as befitted the words. His sadness at the beginning of Winter – Pinnock’s very slow tempi offering striking contrast with Lukas’s Aria, ‘Hier steht der Wand’rer nun’ – approached hopelessness yet did not capitulate. Even in that relative pallor of tone, there was beauty: Winter indeed, one might say. Choral singing offered many of the same virtues, clear throughout, weightier at the ‘big’ moments, ably supported by resplendent brass (and the rest of the orchestra, of course). If I had my doubts about Pinnock’s brisk, even martial beginning to the final number, more contrast, it seemed, than climax, the stereophony of Haydn’s eight-part choral writing, a question-and-answer cross between The Magic Flute and Israel in Egypt, banished them as swiftly as it did those winter clouds of old age.

VSO/Harding - Schumann, Scenes from Goethe's Faust, 22 November 2015

Konzerthaus, Vienna

Szenen aus Goethes Faust, WoO 3

Faust, Pater Seraphicus, Dr Marianus – Christian Gerhaher

Gretchen, Una poenitentum – Christiane Karg
Mephistopheles, Böser Geist – Alastair Miles
Marthe, Sorge, Magna Peccatrix – Christina Landshamer
Mangel, Maria Aegyptica, Mater Gloriosa – Gerhild Romberger
Noth, Mulier Samaritana – Jennifer Johnston
Schuld – Anna Huntley
Ariel, Pater Exstaticus – Andrew Staples
Pater Profundus – Franz-Josef Selig
Eine Büßerin – Elisabeth Erhenfellner
Chorus soloist – Michael Sachsenmaier

 Vienna State Opera Youth Chorus (chorus master: Johannes Mertl)

Wiener Singakademie (chorus master: Heinz Ferlesch)

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Daniel Harding (conductor)

 

I have had to wait a long time to hear Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust ‘live’, since, as an undergraduate, buying a second-hand copy of Britten’s recording. Perhaps there has been a London performance since I have become a regular concert-goer; if so, I have not noticed it. Quite why is baffling. It is, by any standards, a fine work, perhaps not so ‘individual’ as the Schumann we know from the piano music and songs, although perhaps that is as much a matter of our conception of ‘individuality’ as anything else. There is certainly ‘originality’ – that most Romantic of constructs, but a construct to which we all, if we are honest and not absurdly modish, remain rightly in thrall – in much of the orchestral writing, which whatever its kinship with the work of other composers, could hardly ever, perhaps could never, have been written by anyone else. Yes, it requires a good few soloists and a chorus, but so do many other works. And if Goethe notoriously told Eckermann that Mozart would have had to compose his Faust, then Goethe was notoriously wrong about all manner of things musical.

Comparisons more odious than usual presented themselves early on, given that I had heard Bernard Haitink and the Chamber of Orchestra just two nights earlier. Nevertheless, if Daniel Harding’s brisk way with the Overture, at least initially, was not how I hear it in my head, it had its own justification, and he showed himself perfectly willing to yield, rather beautifully, for the more ‘feminine’ – forgive the gendered language, but it is surely apt in this of all cases – music. A contrast between Faust and Gretchen was clearly being set up, both in work and in performance, and yet something in common too: in typically nineteenth-century terms, Eve was created from Adam’s rib. I need not labour the point by saying too  much about Robert and Clara. In any case, female voices are far from neglected as the work proceeds, Schumann almost careless in his requirements. And so, after that rather Harnoncourt-like opening, I had no quarrel, or even query, with Harding’s tempi. There was plenty of ebb and flow, and if there might sometimes have been more colour in the Vienna Symphony Orchestra’s response – not to mention a few too many fluffs in the brass department – there was good playing throughout, excellent in the more vigorous sections and often beguiling in the more ‘poetic’, sensitive passages. Choral singing was excellent throughout, too, both from the Wiener Singakademie, large in numbers yet lithe and lively, and from the young singers from the Opernschule der Wiener Staatsoper, winningly seraphic. The Dies irae passages properly chilled, yet without melodrama; musical values were always to the fore.

The solo singing was for me the highlight. Since he had the lion’s share of it, it is hardly surprising that I should mention Christian Gerhaher first and foremost. The beauty of his vocal delivery was matched to a tee by the acuity of his verbal response. These were clearly words that meant a great deal to him – they do, surely, to any German – but nothing was taken for granted. Gerhaher was not ‘just’ singing Goethe; he was singing Schumann’s Goethe. His shading and phrasing were such as one might have expected in a performance of Dichterliebe. There was, moreover, Faustian defiance, when called for; and drama worthy of the stage – if unstageable – in Faust’s death. Gerhaher’s roles in the Third Part were carefully differentiated; now he was one soloist among many. And those other soloists were an impressive bunch too; there was not a weak link in the cast. Christiane Karg offered a well-judged match of vocal refulgence and drama, again always founded in the text. Andrew Staples sounded every inch a Tamino in his roles, Schumann’s fantastic writing for Ariel benefiting from a meltingly Romantic evocation in vocal and instrumental terms. Alastair Miles proved a stentorian Mephistopheles, and Christina Landshamer a perky, intelligent soprano. Franz-Josef Selig sounded as his usual, beneficent self: always more than welcome. Ensemble writing was always well attended to, balances permitting Schumann’s lines to tell both contrapuntally and harmonically.

 

 

This is a work we need to hear far more often, but this was a good occasion on which to start. Like many, I really have not the slightest idea what Goethe meant by his ‘ewig-Weibliche’ panacea, and probably should rather keep it that way, but Schumann’s unexpectedly – even when one knows it – non-soaring conclusion offers, if not a solution, then, after the splendidly blazingly writing beforehand, a welcome deflection. That, moreover, was how it sounded here.

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