Aimard/ Gürzenich Orchestra/Roth:.‘Alleyn Freyheit: Eine Beethoven-Séance’ – Mundry, Beethoven, Lachenmann, Filidei, and Zimmermann, 10 February 2020

Philharmonie, Cologne

Images: Holger Talinski

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne

François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

All music once was new: uncontroversial statement, one might have thought, however much one sometimes imagines having heard its particular strains before. ‘Es klang so alt und war doch so neu!’ as Hans Sachs muses to Walther of the latter’s melody. New music needs, after all, to be performed if not as if it were old music, then with at least as much commitment and understanding, both ‘in itself’ and of whence it has come. A celebrated concert, entirely Beethoven’s music, with no fewer than four world premieres, took place on 22 December 1808 at the Theater an der Wien, Beethoven both playing and conducting. How might we have heard it? We can never know – and probably should not want to, not least on account of what seems, given but a single rehearsal, to have been an unsurprisingly poor orchestral performance. We faint-hearted would-be-modernists can only marvel, however, at a programme that ran: Symphony no.6 (premiere); Ah, perfido; Mass in C major, ‘Gloria’; Piano Concerto no.4 (premiere); Symphony no.5 (premiere); Mass in C major, ‘Sanctus and Benedictus’; solo piano improvisation; Choral Fantasia (premiere).

There have been occasional repetitions of the programme of this particular ‘academy concert’, which experience will of course be entirely different from that of its first audience. Cologne, however, has presented something quite different for the composer’s anniversary year, a ‘new Beethoven Academy’, entitled ‘Alleyn Freyheit: Eine Beethoven-Séance’. The city’s Gürzenich Orchestra, Pierre-Laurent-Aimard, and François-Xavier Roth, invited us to this séance of freedom with what, through the offices of infidelity, may actually have proved in some senses a more faithful or at least imaginative recreation of its spirit. We were told nothing of the music to be performed other than its composers – and that pieces by Isabel Mundry and Francesco Filidel would receive their first performances. What we had heard would be revealed to us only at the end, on a programme insert to be collected as we left the hall. With that in mind, I have uniquely placed details at the close rather than the opening of this review, following not only that chronology but also that of Debussy in naming his piano Préludes. The impatient or merely curious are of course free to skip the following paragraphs, but I thought it might be more valuable to record my impressions as they came to me rather than to edit with inevitable hindsight. I thus took notes during the performance and shall make do with as little editing as possible, doing little more than turn them into full sentences (usually). The reader will have to take my word for it that I correctly identified Beethoven’s scores and matched composers to music. works by Helmut Lachenmann’s and Bernd Alois Zimmermann I knew; the others I could not possibly. However, after a little metaphorical head-scratching, I worked out that Isabel Mundry’s music – orchestral fragments, as I learned later on – was interspersed with Beethoven and Lachenmann. For what it is worth, I have also refrained from reading interviews and notes in the actual programme, although I shall certainly take a look after posting this.

A large orchestra, soloist, and conductor having assembled onstage, it was perhaps surprising – although what here would qualify as unsurprising – for the concert to open to the strains of the Moonlight Sonata, yet from afar. It made sense, though, if this were to be a retrospective appreciation of the composer, for this was not only from afar. A second pianist and Aimard began to collaborate with what we had heard – recorded, or was it? and for the soloist as such to assume his proper role. Immediately memories, ears, the imagination started to play tricks – as did orchestral percussion. Musicians turning, bowing their heads, and so on acknowledged the billing of choreographer Jörg Weinöhl. The orchestra grew, though it took longer for relatively conventional – non-extended? – techniques to be employed. There was no doubting, however, the éclat of Lachenmann’s contribution, nor of the orchestra’s performance, gradation of attacks and resonance both precise and visceral, waves of sound passing across the orchestra so as to send shivers down the spine.

A change in lighting (Bernd Purkrabek) heralded something different: a new piece, so it seemed, although not for long. [This, to avoid confusion, was the second of Mundry’s Fragments, Lachenmann having followed Beethoven.] It used both pianos and orchestra, calling on six horns and two oboes to stand; at least the choreography did. Then suddenly, without warning came something familiar yet strange: the introduction to the first movement of Beethoven’s First Symphony. Or was it? So disoriented had my expectations become that I found myself asked the occasional question about Beethoven’s scoring. (‘Did he really write that phrase for the flute?’ is one I recall, and afterwards recall Beethoven having been criticised for supposedly excessive use of wind in this work.) I think I was wrong to have done so, but to be enabled to listen critically in that way concerning music I allegedly know so well was a fascinating experience in itself. It was an unfashionably large orchestra we heard for this symphony, or however much of it we were going to hear – and all the better for it: it had bite and heft, colour and…

… then the light changed, downward orchestral glissandi were heard, and Aimard and his page-turner solemnly left the stage. So too did a number of other musicians from the orchestra, those six horns and two oboes included. This mysterious Mundry (?) interlude – was it a continuation of what we had heard previously? – led us to another Beethoven introduction, that of the Fourth Symphony, darkly expectant. This time, it was my sense of pitch that I did not quite trust. Was it at modern pitch? A nagging doubt remained. After all, I told myself as the exposition progressed, context is all: this means something different here and now, if indeed it ‘means’ anything at all. Departed wind players reappeared on the balcony above to signal to us friends nicht dieser Töne, but something again unexpected: the transition to the finale of the Fifth; and then the opening of the portals of heaven itself. Those trombones! The rest of the orchestra too, of course, not least the excellent Cologne timpanist, but those trombones: what a thrilling Beethovenian moment it was once more, ‘authentic’ in the best sense. I could after all be excited by this music again when conducted by someone other than Furtwängler, Klemperer, or Barenboim. (There are others, I admit, but a list would be beside the point right here.) Moreover, I could do so without the tonal preparation of the rest of the symphony, which I should otherwise have insisted was necessary. How long, I wondered, would it go on? When would it be transformed into something else? The scherzo reprise came and went; heaven reopened. Wind were again especially prominent, hinting perhaps at the contemporary music – to Beethoven – of French Revolutionary processionals. Was I merely romanticising? If I were, why should I not, given a tradition dating back at least so far as ETA Hoffmann? On this occasion, at least, we reached the end, thus signalling the interval.

Upon returning to the hall, it was clear that some audience members had left. My initial reaction was to wonder why, but perhaps just as valid a question would be ‘why not?’ It is difficult, for whatever this may be worth, to imagine that some did not in 1808 – and their departure did no harm to anyone. It was not the full orchestra that was back on stage, although Aimard was back. The opening piece [the fifth and final of Mundry’s Fragments] played with piano and orchestral response. Cellists, percussionists, others shone in ways traditional and not. [Alas my memory deserts me here with regard to precisely what.]  We were invited, even compelled, to listen and indeed to watch. Was that Aimard playing a ‘light’ version of Beethoven? It took me a few seconds to realise that such lightness, as ever with the Bagatelles, was largely deceptive; hearing them at the same time as other music, seeing them at the same time as other actions was undeniably strange. The orchestra, intriguingly, seemed at times almost asleep and needed to be roused.

‘Warmer’ lighting signalled an impending change; as if by magic, we were part way through the first movement of the Emperor Concerto, somewhere in the development, leading us to the recapitulation. Aimard offered some delightful leaning into phrases, blinding clarity too, not least in trills reminiscent of Pollini in his prime. Once the movement had come to a close, a further dialogue between piano and orchestra began, piano seemingly querying the chordal responses it received, responses that nevertheless led it – and us – away from Beethoven, whether we liked it or not, initial memories disintegrating. This different voice fashioned music to metamorphose into a new concertante work: hectic, rhythmically insistent, playing on the ruins of tonality with a fine sense of the sardonic that occasionally brought Prokofiev to mind. Childhood and even childish memories, clockwork machinations, other, darker remembrances of things past or imagined fascinated in a veritable riot of invention, after which Aimard left the stage. The second movement of the Seventh Symphony followed, as compelling a processional as ever, after which Aimard and missing orchestral players returned. The orchestra stood and the lights went down. There was, notably, no applause, although it seemed like a moment when there might have been. What was Aimard, seated, about to play?

It was the final movement [ultimately only part of it] of the final piano sonata, op.111, exalted yet also strangely exultant. Oddly, given the elements of choreography throughout, I started to wonder about the silhouetted organist’s head, sometimes still, sometimes moving, I saw to the side of the stage. Was it, too, part of the performance? It was difficult to see how, yet once seen, I could never quite forget my wondering. The music led without a break into something new – and yet perhaps not quite so new. By this stage, I had forgotten that Zimmermann was on the programme, and it took me again a little while to realise that this music, with its unnervingly oscillating opening, an oscillation seemingly retained yet transformed into a dialectic between precision and vagueness, was indeed what it was. So this was why an organist had appeared: for the horrific fragments of musical remembrance – how apt! – of Photoptosis. Yet there was no ‘O Freunde…’ moment; the finale to the Ninth had been revoked, as in Mann’s Doctor Faustus, or at least averted. Truly this was a nightmare from which we might never awake. Parsifal, The Nutcracker, and, for some reason the most unsettling, Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy took their bows, but for what? Did they, did the Bach and plainchant, ‘mean’ anything any more? Do we not hear them all now in the shadow of Beethoven, which is to say of our construction(s) of ‘Beethoven’? Does not all music, old and new, Beethoven’s included, stand in that shadow? As if it had not been with us all along, darkness fell.

Isabel Mundry: Orchestral Fragments to Beethoven I-V (2020, world premiere), interspersed with (and on occasion played simultaneously with):

          Beethoven: Piano Sonata no.14 in C-sharp minor, op.27 no.2, 1^st movement (1801)

          Lachenmann: Tableau (1988/9)

          Beethoven: Symphony no.1 in C major, op.21, 1^st movement to bar 109 (1800); Symphony no.4 in B-flat major, op.60, 1^st movement to bar 333 (1806); Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67, 3^rd movement from bar 324 and 4^th movement (1804-8); Bagatelles, op.119: nos 7,9, 10, and 11 (1820-22); Piano Concerto no.5 in E-flat major, op.73, 1^st movement from bar 258 (1809-10)

Francesco Filidei: Quasi una bagatella, for piano and orchestra (2019, world premiere)

Beethoven: Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92, 2^nd movement (1811-12); Piano Sonata no.32 in C minor, op.111, 2^nd movement to Variation IV (1821-2)

Zimmermann: Photoptosis (1968)

Prom 48: Gürzenich Orchestra/Stenz, 22 August 2008

Royal Albert Hall

Mahler – Symphony no.5
Stockhausen – Punkte
Schubert (orch. David Matthews) – Ständchen, D921
Schubert (orch. Manfred Trojahn) – Bei dir allein, D866/2
Schubert (orch. Colin Matthews) – Nacht und Träume, D827
Schubert (orch. Detlev Glanert) – Das Lied im Grünen, D917
Beethoven – Overture: Leonore III, Op.72b

Angelika Kirchschlager (mezzo-soprano)
Apollo Voices
Gürzenich Orchestra, Cologne
Markus Stenz (conductor)

Once again, Roger Wright has displayed great flair in terms of programming: properly understood, one of the most difficult yet rewarding aspects of concert-planning, yet all too often dismally lacking in imagination or even thought. This was a ‘re-creation’ of the 1904 first performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony in Cologne, albeit with a couple of significant twists. Stockhausen’s Punkte, also premiered in Cologne, joined the programme on the composer’s eightieth birthday, and orchestrations of the four Schubert songs were commissioned. With the exception of Punkte, however, the performances did not really live up to this promise.

That of the Mahler symphony was not bad; I have heard far worse. Yet one needs rather more than that in Mahler, or ultimately in any great music. This, I think, is one of the most difficult of Mahler’s symphonies to bring off, not unlike Beethoven’s Fifth, which also this year was treated to imaginative programming and yet given an indifferent performance, considerably more so than the Mahler in fact. The opening Funeral March was taken at a swift initial tempo: more march than funereal. Unfortunately, the solo trumpet proved fallible, which seemed to induce a lack of confidence amongst the rest of the orchestra. A number of passages were not quite together and there were more slips than one can simply write off. There followed considerable flexibility and the stormy sections were taken quite fast indeed, but not too fast. There was a rather impressive sense of a nightmarish, ghostly procession of contrasts, reminding one of Mahler’s debts to Berlioz. I liked the second movement, completing the First Part of the symphony. Here there was the same quality of a nightmarish procession, with something of a ghostly puppet show too. There were some marvellously ominous passages of stillness, not least that with ’cellos and kettledrum. Leader Ursula Maria Berg proved a fine soloist. The chorale received a duly splendid statement and disintegrated in a fine, neurotic style that was too often missing from the rest of the symphony.

In the Scherzo (Part Two), the strings often lacked quite so full a tone as would have been desirable, although this may partly have been a consequence of the venue’s acoustic. More seriously, the opening section was taken not only too fast – Mahler writes nicht zu schnell (‘not too fast’) – but far too lightly. This is a scherzo, but it needs vigour; it should be kräftig (‘strong’ or ‘powerful’. If not quite Mahler as Delibes, the performance edged in that direction. The splendidly eerie woodwind provided some compensation and subsequent statements of the opening material had greater weight, profitably suggesting this movement’s transitional status. The scherzo hurtled to a thrilling and suitably ambiguous conclusion, although sadly too much damage had already been done.

The Adagietto was taken swiftly in the modern fashion, although it was in no sense unyielding. It was rather very much a love letter from Mahler to Alma, without a hint of world-weariness; death, let alone its Venetian variety, was not on the menu. The finale was attacked immediately, the ‘busy’ nature of its mock-Bachian counterpoint registering very well, even if it sometimes sounded a little too fast for its slightly pedantic quality to shine through. (It needs to have something of Die Meistersinger to it.) This counterpoint was wittily punctuated by strongly-taken brass interjections. The episodes were well characterised, although again they sometimes lacked the desirable fullness of orchestral tone. I worried when the chorale began at a strangely fast tempo, but it worked given the liveliness of the orchestral detail below. There was a sense of fun to the conclusion, but it did not sound hard won enough. As a whole, then, this reading of the symphony was pretty much all there structurally, save for the opening of the Scherzo, but it needed at least a little more horror, extremity, passion, and phantasmagoria.

Stockhausen’s Punkte received the finest performance of the evening, here in its final revision of 1993. It was visually and aurally striking to have two harps facing each other at the front of the orchestra. This and other spatial details were truly enabled to tell. One heard how the ‘points’ of the initial 1952 version became groups and even melodies. Stockhausen, Stenz, and the orchestra were ‘joining up the dots’, as it were, forming constellations from the original, pointillistic star music. There was much activity, counterbalanced by oases of sustained stillness. Some of the more ‘starry’ sounds, especially from strings and percussion, seemed to be straining towards the electronic means Stockhausen would soon adopt, although this remained very much a work for orchestra, or at least for large ensemble. The splendid brass climax for three trombones proved a far more overwhelming experience than anything in the Mahler. This was a performance of great intensity and drama, both in terms of its outbursts and the greater line. It is a pity, then, to report that much of the audience seemed rather restless. Having wildly applauded the Mahler, it once again displayed a lack of discernment.

The Schubert orchestrations, I am sad to report, proved a major disappointment, the single exception being that by Colin Matthews: Nacht und Träume. Matthews adopted a darker, more imaginative orchestral sound than his fellow composers, rather akin to Mahler or Wagner, especially Tristan: an interestingly Novalis-like take upon the night and dreams of Matthäus von Collin’s text. The important role for solo trumpet, often doubling the vocal line, was impressively sustained in a quite unsettling performance. Matthews’s brother David and Manfred Trojahn both adopted an early-ish-Romantic sounding orchestra, redolent of Mendelssohn or, at a push, Berlioz without the colour. David Matthews’s Ständchen relied a great deal – too much? – on pizzicato and woodwind. It had a more warmly Romantic postlude, with a touch of Wagner in the orchestration and harmony, although I am not sure that this attempt, as Matthews put it, ‘to move the song into a different world’, really worked. Trojahn’s orchestration lacked even this originality. Detlev Glanert’s Das Lied im Grünen was again rather conventional. It clearly aimed to impart a sense of the countryside, with woodwind solos aplenty, although some of it sounded oddly like the lighter Elgar. It was pretty enough but showed no particular insight. What we needed was a creative re-imagination along the lines of Hans Zender. Angelika Kirchshlager was an excellent soloist, her diction commendably clear and her musical line always carefully shaped. Apollo Voices worked well in their interplay with her in Ständchen. (What a pity, then, that the BBC printed the text to the wrong Ständchen in the programme: Rellstab rather than Grillparzer. Anyone can make mistakes, but someone really should have checked and picked up on this.)

Beethoven’s third Leonore overture received the weakest performance of the night. I do not think that this should be attributed principally to tiredness, although there were signs of that in a number of technical errors; Stenz’s conception that was to blame. The overture began with a distinctly ‘authenticke’ lack of vibrato in the strings and soon burst forth far too fast. Throughout, it sounded unduly sectional, with little sense of a greater symphonic whole: this for the work in which Beethoven went beyond the operatic overture to create a self-standing symphonic poem. The brass blared crudely and the trumpet solo from above was far too loud. Like the rest of the performance, it utterly lacked mystery or any sense of the metaphysical. We were subjected to a vulgar dash to the finishing line, even though we were as yet nowhere near that line. And so, there was a massive slowing before a repeated dash. Again, the audience appeared to love the performance, but I cannot for the life of me understand why. As an encore, we had a much better performance of a bleeding chunk from Parsifal’s Transformation Music. The orchestra as a whole was in superior form, and Stenz delineated the excerpt’s form – I realise that this edges towards a contradiction – with commendable clarity. Whether Wagner’s music benefits from thus being torn out of context is at best debatable, but the putative debate must surely be put behind us when, owing to the lack of bells, the arrangement began repeating earlier music over and over again, as if Wagner were a godfather of American minimalism.

Edinburgh Festival: Strauss, Zimmermann, Schumann, 31 August 2007

Usher Hall

Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel
Zimmermann: Photoptosis
Schumann: Symphony no.3 in E flat major, Op.97, 'Rhenish'
Strauss: Das Rosenband, Op.36 no.1
Strauss: Morgen! Op.27 no.4
Strauss: Cäcilie, Op.27 no.2

Gabriele Fontana (soprano)
Cologne Gürzenich Orchestra
Markus Stenz (conductor)

The Gürzenich orchestra has much of this music in its blood; indeed, it gave the first performance, in 1895, of Till Eulenspiegel. This performance evinced a great warmth of tone, and never fell prey to the harshness that can sometimes disfigure ostensibly distinguished accounts. Especially memorable were the violas, percussion, the solo trumpet, and those most Straussian of instruments (save for the soprano voice), the horns. Markus Stenz imparted an impressive sense of narrative and characterisation, shaping a fine example of true programme music, with no sacrifice to perception of its classical rondo form. The influence of Berlioz upon Strauss's orchestration was clearly felt, never more so than in the kettledrums of excecution, which brought to mind the 'March to the Scaffold' from the Symphonie fantastique. Till Eulenspiegel is a splendid opportunity for a fine orchestra to shine, not just technically but musically too, and in both cases this orchestra passed with flying colours.

Zimmermann's Photoptosis does much the same, albeit in a very different voice. The audience was greatly assisted in its prospects of affording a sympathetic hearing to the work by Stenz's spoken introduction. His enthusiasm was so genuine, so winning, that it must have helped win a few converts, or at least open minds, to a cause that has never really caught on, at least in this country. The ravishing beauty of the 'blue' canvas, inspired by Yves Klein's monochrome wall panels in the Musiktheater im Revier, shone brightly as we, the spectators, approached. Here was narrative of a different kind to that of Till Eulenspiegel, but narrative nevertheless. We were drawn in to the drama of a single colour, a single colour in whose variation according to perspective the whole orchestra enthusiastically participated. This was Klangfarbenmelodie, not quite of Schoenberg's variety, but Klangfarbenmelodie nevertheless. The second, collage section enabled many of the quotations to be readily discerned - Stenz was surely being unduly modest in claiming only to have perceived one of them upon his first hearing of the piece - yet never at the expense of their place within the greater whole. And the orchestral virtuosity displayed during the great crescendo of the final section made for a fine marriage between the twin earlier threads of narrative and Klangfarbenmelodie. Zimmermann could hardly have wished for better advocates than Stenz and his orchestra.

After that, the Schumann symphony was less impressive. There was a noticeable vernal freshness to the performance, but it sometimes lacked gravity. This is often the way with modern, pseudo-'authentic' Schumann performances, I know, but I did not feel that the relatively small size of the orchestra, especially with regard to the strings, provided the strongest advocacy for his still-derided - at least in some quarters - orchestration. Conductors as different as Furtwängler, Kubelik, Karajan, Sawallisch, and Kubelík managed perfectly well - indeed, much better than perfectly well - without cutting the strings, and thereby reminded us what truly Romantic music this is. The strings' articulation added to a somewhat short-breathed impression, which unhelpfully highlighted Schumann's penchant for two- and four-bar phrasing. On the other hand, this became less troublesome as time went on, Stenz appearing less hidebound by the dubious pronouncements of musical 'authenticity'. The woodwind and brass sounded resplendent throughout, although a real sense of mystery was not inappropriately reserved for the opening of the 'Cologne Cathedral' movement. The tricky gear changes of the final movement, which have tripped up some very illustrious names indeed, were surely navigated, to drive the piece to a satisfying if hardly rip-roaring conclusion.

The three Strauss songs were late, 'surprise' additions, and most welcome they were too, possessing something of a less pressurised 'encore' character. Gabriele Fontana made all of the words tell, and shaped Strauss's soaring phrases with real musicianship, although the hushed quality Morgen! demands was never quite achieved. By contrast, Torsten Janicke's violin solo was heartbreaking in its melting tone. Fontana reversed the personal pronouns in Das Rosenband. Whilst hardly a matter of fundamental importance, is this any longer necessary in an age that has known - and loved - Brigitte Fassbaender's stunning Winterreise, or which, alternatively, might even amongst the ladies of Morningside accept the possibility of love between two persons of the same sex? No matter: Cäcilie provided a resplendent conclusion. The orchestra was immediately given its head, providing a fitting contrast with the restraint of Morgen! And Fontana was well placed to ride its waves. This, undoubtedly, was the finest performance of the three songs.

Edinburgh Festival: Capriccio, 28 August 2007

Edinburgh Festival Theatre

Countess - Gabriele Fontana; Count - Ashley Holland; Flamand - Hauke Möller; Olivier - Johannes Beck; La Roche - Michael Eder; Clairon - Dalia Schaechter; M. Taupe - Johannes Preissinger; Italian soprano - Katharina Leyhe; Italian tenor - Ray M. Wade, Jr; Major-Domo - Ulrich Hielscher; Dancer - Luisa Sancho Escanero

Christian von Götz (director); Cologne Opera; Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne; Markus Stenz (conductor)

Is there a more violently controversial composer than Richard Strauss? The answer would surely be yes: Wagner at the very least is, as for very different reasons is Schoenberg. However, I am not so sure that this should be the case. Strauss leads us to ask very difficult questions; or rather, we ought to ask such questions: aesthetic, political, and moral. Wagner, on the other hand, is often made to answer for questions based upon misrepresentation. Stravinsky levelled the charge that Strauss 'didn't give a damn', and one can certainly end up feeling manipulated by a composer who might just be note-spinning, who cynically appears to know which buttons to press rather than 'believing' in what he is doing. Henze has gone further, writing: 'Beethoven regarded his whole enterprise as a contribution to human progress. As with Marxism, his goal is not God but Man, whereas there are other artists who have never given a thought to the moral function of their work; for instance Richard Strauss, who is for me – perhaps I’m going too far – something like a court composer to Kaiser Wilhelm II.' The charge comes to seem even more serious when one considers Strauss's later career, and the fraught, unavoidable question of his relationship towards the Third Reich. This does not mean that it is our place to put him on trial, still less to transform him into a hero along the lines of Schoenberg or Furtwängler. It remains, however, a legitimate, indeed necessary, question to ask what it might mean to pen an apparently escapist conversation piece such as Capriccio in the darkness of 1942.

The reality, as producer Christian von Götz so ably demonstrated, is that Capriccio is intimately connected with political reality, and this heightens rather than detracts from the aesthetic disputes at its core. In one of the archetypal operas about the making of an opera, it is more than usually appropriate to add another narrative layer, in which the era of the making of Capriccio itself features. Our first sight, disturbingly set against a beautiful reading of the opening string sextet, was of the Wehrmacht marching down the Champs-Elysées. The opera therefore remained in France, somewhere outside Paris. And the bulk of the action, Capriccio's creation of an opera as opposed to the production's creation of Capriccio, took place in eighteenth-century costume: a final house party, in which the coming of the Gestapo might be put out of mind for a couple of hours. Is this what Strauss himself was doing? Perhaps, although more on that anon. There were from time to time reminders of approaching fate, which grew more numerous in the second act. (This was Joseph Keilberth's two-act adaptation.) Every aspect of the production, be it 'political' or 'aesthetic', showed the dichotomy to be false and worked inexorably towards the denouement: the Count's preparation of a cyanide capsule, the last vain attempt to answer the vexed question of words or music, and perhaps most chillingly of all, the prompter, Monsieur Taupe, replete with his yellow star, being left behind by the departure of the main party and offered his own carriage 'home'.

The final scene thus depicted the Countess saying farewell. Who knew when or indeed whether she would ever return after being escorted to the railway station? And yet, there was another, equally important side to what was going on. Radiantly sung by Gabriele Fontana, who had made an extraordinary recovery from a less than impressive first act, Strauss's music offered some sense of hope, 'utopian' in a sense Ernst Bloch might have understood, against this terrible backdrop. Whether the hope were vain or even irresponsible remained unanswered, at least explicitly. Yet just as surely as music always wins out against the words - witness the glory of the closing music as against the banality of the Major-Domo's announcement that supper is served - so here did art, the entirety of its enterprise, including music, words, and theatre, against its surrounding evil. This was not to speak of an unequivocal victory, which would be illusory and would therefore ultimately prove to be nothing more than capitulation to the horrors of fascism: monopoly capitalism's emergency strategy. Yet the music of the final scene, some of the most heartrending Strauss ever wrote - for here, as in Metamorphosen, and a few other works, the mask does seem to drop to reveal the real human being - becomes all the more moving when it confronts rather than retreats from evil.

This production understood that dialectical truth only too well - unlike a woman whom I heard leaving the theatre asking 'How was the opera supposed to be connected to National Socialism?' She exhibited either extraordinary stupidity or outrageous disingenuousness, but was not, I suspect, untypical of the largely bourgeois audience that would have wished only to be 'entertained'. Thankfully, the artists involved worked together to honour La Roche's pledge to 'serve the eternal requirements of the theatre,' to grant it 'neue Gesetze - neuen Inhalt!', in the search for the 'genialischen Werke unserer Zeit'. Michael Eder's performance of La Roche's great justification of the theatre was impressively handled, as were all of the varied contributions to the difficult second act, full of virtuoso ensemble writing. For whilst few of the vocal performances, individually taken, would sear themselves onto one's memory, there was a true, heartening sense of collective effort, of a fine company.

At the very heart of this, of course, stood the orchestra, which played finely throughout, and justly proved itself the most important 'character' of all. Markus Stenz conjured an echt-Straussian glow from the strings, nobility from the brass, and wonderfully piquant contributions from the woodwind, never more so than in the Rosenkavalier-recollections of the final scene (another layer of ironic memory). The clarity, propulsion, and overall coherence of the ensembles, not least the celebrated octet, reminded us that Così fan tutte was Strauss's favourite Mozart opera, and heightened the pervading sense of elegy. Edinburgh and Cologne served Strauss well, which is to say truthfully and without evasion.