Liszt Discovery Day, Wigmore Hall, 8 October 2011

Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth, S 382
La lugubre gondola, S 134
Die drei Zigeuner, S 383
La notte, S 377a
Tristia - Vallée d’Obermann, S 723
Hungarian Rhapsody no.9, ‘Le carnaval de Pesth,’ S 379

Pax vobiscum! S 64
Cinq Chœurs, S 18
Salve Regina, S 66
Psalm 116, S 11/33
Das deutsche Vaterland II, S 74b
Es war einmal ein König, S 73
Weimars Volkslied, S 87/2b
Magyar királyi-dal, S 93b

Six Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano duet, S 621
Zwei Episoden aus Lenaus ’Faust’, S 599
Hungarian Rhapsodies S622/2, S623a
Rákócsi-Marsch, S 608


As many of us have lamented (for instance, here and here), Liszt still cries out for advocacy. There are still anti-Wagnerians, anti-Brahmsians even, yet no one takes such people seriously. Many who should know better nevertheless continue to denigrate Liszt, recycling puritanical platitudes about showmanship, even womanising, doubtless incredulous that someone who, despite the lack of recordings, is almost universally considered to be the greatest pianist of all time could also be a great composer – all the more bewilderingly when one considers the testimony of composers from Wagner through Schoenberg, Bartók, Debussy, even Stravinsky, to Boulez and beyond. When Liszt’s works are performed, choices tend to be drawn from a narrow repertoire. This anniversary year should surely have brought forth London performances of his two completed oratorios (ideally St Stanislaus too), yet the silence has been deafening. Some musicians and venues have done their bit. We heard the two concertos from the dream team of Boulez, the Staatskapelle Berlin, and Barenboim (now recorded). Amongst other offerings, the Wigmore Hall’s programming of Liszt song has been especially welcome. One can understand, however, why Lisztians would wish to point to unsung aspects of the composer’s œuvre, and Leslie Howard, curating this Liszt Discovery Day, certainly took full advantage, in programming recitals of chamber music, small-scale choral music, and music for piano duet. Alas, the results, especially following the excellent chamber recital, were mixed, and seem unlikely to have won Liszt many converts. He would benefit from a more nuanced approach, which both advocates the neglected and yet also recognises that not everything is of equal interest, for Liszt, more inclined to create another version or another piece than to destroy something that perhaps does not work, is certainly not a cruel self-critic in the mode of Brahms. Moreover, entirely to omit solo piano music was arguably self-defeating: a top-flight pianist (and musician) is surely what one needs to dispel doubts.

Let us start with the best: two works apiece for cello and piano, violin and piano, and piano trio. Rarely if ever does one hear Liszt’s chamber music, doubtless partly a consequence of general hostility, but also, I suspect, a matter of unfounded suspicion concerning its provenance. None of the chamber works is ‘original’ in the sense that they all existed in earlier versions for other forces. Yet that need not matter at all, especially when dealing with an inveterate arranger and transformer, and in most cases, it does not here. Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth, despite its origins in a song of 1841, at times, especially in the piano introduction, sounds very much of the date of its rewriting: c.1883. Tristan Lee provided a rapt account of the piano part. Joris van den Berg captured the right note of ecstasy, though his tone could be a little wiry and was not always ideally centred in terms of intonation. That may, however, have been a matter of nerves, for La lugubre gondola emerged as stronger in performance. La lugubre gondola, one of Liszt’s many Wagner tributes, sounds more vocal in this version than in either of its piano incarnations, the opening in particular sounding still closer to recitative. Had I to choose, I should unhesitatingly opt for the darker solo piano, but I do not. The cellist’s fast vibrato will not have been to all tastes, yet I think it is a matter of taste rather than hard and fast judgement. Eva Thorarinsdottir proved an excellent violinist, one of whom I should like to hear much more. Both she and Lee exhibited impressive virtuosity in Die drei Zigeuner, another recomposition of a song (this time by Nikolaus Lenau). There was a fine display of rhythmic freedom, especially from the violinist, who throughout beguiled with rich, generous tone. This, rightly, was treated as ‘concert’ music but nevertheless laid idiomatic claim to a helping of ‘gypsy’ charisma. Lee’s piano tone was splendidly full for La notte, derived from the second of the Trois Odes funèbres, and ultimately from ‘Il penseroso,’ from the second book of the Années de pèlerinage. We heard here a fine account of the latter work, dignified and moving, with the violin ‘accompaniment’ adding menace, as well as splendid advocacy for the new and transformed material Liszt subsequently provided. If the central section is more conventional, a little too littered with ‘Hungarianisms’ (whatever Bartók et al. might have said of them), it is attractive enough and was attractively performed. Tristia – La Vallée d’Obermann also, as one might expect, has its birth in the Années de pèlerinage, though the first, Swiss book. It received a heartfelt, warmly Romantic performance from all three musicians, a winning vocal quality imparted to both violin and cello parts: songful and soulful. I should be keen to hear the piece again in this unexpected guise. Le carnival de Pesth was a little disappointing, plodding at times: as if, understandably, it were slowed in order to fit in the multitude of piano notes. It is a much less interesting piece than La Vallée d’Obermann, whose memory lingered welcomely.

The BBC Singers and David Hill, joined by Coady Green on piano, presented a true programme of rarities, to be broadcast across Europe on 23 October as part of the EBU Liszt Day. I could not help but think that it was too much of a not very good thing: larger choral pieces, other works by Liszt, or indeed by contemporaries, predecessors, or successors, might have leavened the load. The opening Pax vobiscum! would probably make a reasonable grace for a College feast or some such occasion, but is not the most interesting of pieces. At least it does not outstay its welcome, however, unlike the following Cinq Chœurs. The first of the choruses has some mildly Berlioz-like writing – reminiscent of, or rather foretelling, L’Enfance du Christ – but the monotony of much of the subsequent strophic writing was unfortunate. I suspect the music is more interesting to sing than to listen to; the BBC Singers certainly made a good job of it, with an impressive standard of French diction. Entered for a competition in 1845, I am not entirely surprised, however, that the pieces did not win Liszt a prize. The 1885 Salve Regina, S 66, would make a good addition to a cappella repertoires: generally simple, but with some intriguing chromaticism, not least in the bass line, and some moments in which tonality veers towards the suspended. That and Es war einmal ein König, a setting for baritone, four-part male voice choir and piano of the ‘Flea Song’ from Faust, were the musical highlights, the latter’s baritone solo well taken, if a little on the camp side. It was a relief, though, to hear proper Lisztian piano writing after the orchestral reduction – the full orchestra part no longer exists – of the vocal score version of Liszt’s setting of a text by the nationalist writer, Ernst Moritz Arndt, is barely more distinguished than the frankly appalling verse, which goes on and on and on in a vein that ought to have been intolerable in 1848 but certainly is now. Here is the first stanza (of nine, each set in essentially strophic form):

Was ist des deutschen Vaterland?
Ist’s Preußenland, ist’s Schwabenland?
Ist’s, wo am Rhein die Rebe blüht?
Ist’s, wo am Belt die Möwe zieht?
O nein! nein! nein!
Sein Vaterland muß größer sein.

It does not get any better. The BBC Singers sounded little more engaged than I felt, their performance sometimes veering towards unmusical shouting, and some of the solo lines sounding under strain, a tenor towards the end especially prominent in that respect. Desperately casting around for something of interest, I wondered whether there might be a little hint of Lohengrin in the seventh stanza, but it would surely have been better for Liszt’s reputation had vocal and orchestral score been lost. The two closing anthems were well sung, and less dull. Weimars Volkslied actually proved quite catchy, helped by a lively performance, whilst the Magyar Király-dal offered a more varied response to its text.

Sadly, the three talks of the day were still less likely to help the Lisztian cause. Howard’s own introductory address was an exception: generalised, but well delivered, with a palpable enthusiasm for the composer. Meirion Hughes on ‘Liszt the politician’ did not really address the subject, but gave a naïve sketch of nineteenth-century nationalism, into which Liszt was awkwardly shoehorned; the talk would not have passed muster from an undergraduate, let alone an alleged expert in the field. It was, moreover, disingenuous to omit without comment an anti-Semitic remark from a Liszt quotation. Imagine if someone had done the same with Wagner! Nevertheless, there remained a gulf between mere incompetence and the standard attained by the final talk, Michael Short’s ‘Liszt as conductor’. Having heard a considerable number of lectures, papers, presentations, seminars, etc., in a variety of contexts and venues, I can say that this was unquestionably the most hapless of my experience. If delivery were not the speaker’s strength, nor were ideas and argument. An audience, visibly restless, was treated to a mere listing, apparently read out word for word from a laptop screen, of programmes Liszt had conducted, along with monotonous readings, most of the material entirely irrelevant, from a few letters. Given the plethora of interesting, animated, and well-informed scholars and performers who could have contributed productively to such an event, the selection of speakers mystified.

Sadly, the programme of music for piano duet would have been unlikely to win over any Liszt-sceptics. It seems a funny way to persuade people to take Liszt seriously to programme six Hungarian Rhapsodies in a row (plus a couple more in the second half). This must be some of the least interesting, most meretricious, music he ever wrote. What might dazzle as a solo piece in isolation merely numbs the mind when performed in succession as here. Had Liszt himself been at the piano, one can imagine wishing to hear still more, but Howard’s pianism turned out to be still more ploddingly heavy-handed than his performance at a solo recital from the beginning of the year. There were a few glaring slips too, one repeatedly so in the first, F minor piece. At best, Howard’s performance was reliably mechanical, at worst bludgeoning. His partner, Bobby Chen, was in a different league, lighter of touch, though certainly not without power, and effortlessly superior in his shaping of phrases. The Two Episodes from Lenau’s ‘Faust’ were much better, largely because the music is so much better, though the difference between Chen and Howard was still highly audible. I am afraid I had to miss the final Rákócsi-Marsch, a transcription from the orchestral version, but could not help but notice the earlier departure of a good few non-coughing members of the audience, the bronchially challenged seemingly determined to stay until the bitter end. Results, then, were mixed, but I was delighted to have heard both the chamber recital and the musicians who performed in it. I also hope to hear Chen on another occasion, as a soloist.

Total Immersion: Stockhausen Day, 17 January 2009

Barbican Centre and Jerwood Hall, LSO St Luke’s

Tuning In (Omnibus film by Barrie Gavin, introduced by Barrie Gavin)
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Stockhausen – Adieu, for wind quintet
Stockhausen – Klavierstücke, nos. I-IV, VII, and IX
Stockhausen – Kontra-Punkte
Stockhausen – Choral
Stockhausen – Chöre für Doris
Stockhausen – Litanei 97

Nicolas Hodges (piano)
Emma Tring (soprano)
Guildhall New Music Ensemble
BBC Singers
Richard Baker (conductor)
David Hill (conductor)
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Stockhausen – Inori

Kathinka Pasveer (dancer-mime)
Alain Louafi (dancer-mime)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
David Robertson (conductor)
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Stockhausen – Hymnen


The first of three BBC Symphony Orchestra ‘Total Immersion’ days was devoted to Karlheinz Stockhausen. Last year’s Stockhausen Day at the Proms and the KLANG Festival at the Southbank would have provided an ideal context for many although, given the size of the ferociously hard-working composer’s œuvre, there remains much more music to be discovered. Barrie Gavin’s 1978 Omnibus film on the composer provided a stimulating appetiser, the director proving a diverting speaker in his introduction to this introduction. Centred around excerpts from a Songcircle performance of Stimmung and from Stockhausen’s fascinating lecture at the Oxford Union, it was sad to reflect – as Gavin did – that it would be inconceivable for such a film to be made today, let alone shown on BBC One. It might, he joked, just about make it onto a putative BBC Thirty-two at midnight. What most surprised me was how witty a speaker the composer proved to be. In my experience, his music, whatever its other virtues, is singularly lacking in humour; yet here, he was able to employ that very quality not for its own sake, not as a dubious means of acquiring popularity, but to grant insights into his music.

The first of the day’s three concerts was to my mind the most rewarding in ‘purely’ musical terms, the presence of some interesting but hardly representative juvenilia notwithstanding. LSO St Luke’s Jerwood Hall provided the setting, whilst the two evening concerts would take place in the Barbican Hall. Adieu (1966) was one of the few non-electronic works Stockhausen wrote during the 1960s, prompted by a request from the oboist Wilhelm Meyer for a memorial to his son, Wolfgang Christian. I had never heard the piece before but was instantly taken by how well Stockhausen wrote for wind quintet (flute/piccolo, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon). For a composer who was often most keen of all his contemporaries to forge ahead, apparently to sever links with tradition, there was a surprising degree of Mozartian reference or at least consonance, albeit with a typical fearlessness in creating something quite new. An opening cadence hinted at what was to come, sounding like a Mozartian objet trouvé, followed by mesmerising airborne material, which put me in mind of Ligeti’s Lontano. Such a pattern would continue throughout the piece, with a more ‘traditional’ gesture, always conducted, followed by freer, exploratory material, often of a similar nature to that mentioned, although one episode displayed considerable violence. Paul Griffiths’s helpful notes explained that the durations of events were given by the Fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144) and that ordered increase, both in composition and in performance, was palpable: something more stratified, hierarchical even than, for instance, the fantasy of Boulezian proliferation. The ending, when it came, was charming, almost Classical. Richard Baker and members of the Guildhall New Music Ensemble proved excellent guides in this initial exploration.

Next were six of Stockhausen’s seminal Klavierstücke, expertly performed by Nicolas Hodges. I-IV were performed as a group, followed by V, then VII. It was a while since I had heard any of Stockhausen’s piano music in concert, the previous occasion having been a spellbinding recital by Maurizio Pollini, when, heard in the context of Brahms, Webern, and subsequently Beethoven, my ears had readily related Stockhausen’s music to German tradition. I suspected that this would be less the case in an all-Stockhausen concert but, for whatever reason, I was mistaken, probably a sign that this music is now truly taking its place in the repertoire but also surely a sign of the pianist’s genuine musical artistry. Written in 1952 and 1953, the first four pieces fit very well together; when performed in this way, as Griffiths noted, we can hear them almost as four brief sonata movements. I also thought of the single-movement/four movement duality of the Liszt B minor piano sonata or the Schoenberg Chamber Symphony no.1. The first piece displayed a gleaming, crystalline sound: neo-Bauhaus, if you like. Hodges’ performance drew attention to the crucial importance – as signalled by the composer himself – of the duration of pauses in relation to the serialised dynamic contrasts. Everything sounded – as indeed it is – both fantastical and absolutely logical. The same could be said for the other three pieces, the flowing, Andante-like second ‘movement’, the ‘scherzo’ of Webernesque concision, and the pointillistic ‘finale’, in which one could almost see the stars from which Stockhausen would soon draw such inspiration – and indeed descent. In the fifth piece (1954), some chords – which were most definitely heard as chords – could have come straight out of a set of Schoenberg Klavierstücke. Hodges imparted a true sense of continuity and seemed to refer back to the ‘cascade of gestures’ (Griffiths) that had characterised the first piece. Indeed, I heard the fifth almost as an expansion of the possibilities of the first, not least in the clearly audible demonstration of serialised dynamics as an integral part of composition, dynamic contrasts no longer being relegated to the realm of ‘expression’ of some higher-level material. The composer’s exploration of different registers of the piano, with different consequences for sustaining and ‘natural’ resonance was expertly projected here and in the seventh piece, although the latter certainly presented its own character, ‘personality’ even: more abrupt, more austere, yet spun with a similar musical line. There was violence too, all the more telling given that it followed such attention to detail in making every one of the repeated sounds different in its attack and dynamic projection. Intervals, pauses, and the relations between them were anything but hermetic abstractions. Stockhausen had a narrative to tell and Hodges told it. Something one often forgets – or perhaps never knew in the first place – about Stockhausen is that, whilst working in the Norwestdeutscher Rundfunk’s Studio for Electronic Music, he pursued doctoral studies in phonetics and communication theory, subsequently describing his supervisor, Werner Meyer-Eppler as the best teacher he ever had. Stockhausen may have been an intrepid explorer but always in the service of communication.

For Kontra-Punkte (1952, revised 1953), Baker and the Guildhall New Music Ensemble (here flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, piano, harp, violin, and ’cello) returned. Widely considered to be his ‘breakthrough piece’ – the composer himself made it ‘no.1’ in his cataloguing system – it has lost none of its lustre. It was most interesting to hear it with memories of Punkte, the piece ‘against’ which it is to some extent written, not yet faded from the Gürzenich Orchestra’s Proms performance last year (albeit in the last of the composer’s heavily revised versions). Baker and his players imparted not only a ‘technical’ musical sense of points giving way to groups – Stockhausen’s work is partly a commentary, intentional or otherwise, upon the progression of his own compositional technique – but also a poetic sense of how this might be understood as blossoming. I was impressed by the way in which each instrument retained, arguably acquired, its own character, again rather like a star in the night sky, whilst forming part of a greater constellation. There is another shift within the work, towards predominance of the piano part, somewhat helped by the similar tones of the harp, but largely the product of a Herculean effort on the part of the ensemble’s pianist. Here, Richard Uttley’s effort was not in vain, helping Baker to shape the dramatic trajectory of this wonderful work. No wonder that the notoriously demanding Boulez entertains no reservations about it.

The second half opened with the early Choral, from just two years earlier, 1950. It certainly does what it says on the tine, the line-by-line treatment standing in direct descent from Bach, albeit without any sense of compositional originality. David Hill shaped the BBC Singers’ mellifluous response to the text very well, including a telling pause between stanzas. I fancied that I heard something of another of Stockhausen’s teachers, Frank Martin, as I also did in the following Chöre für Doris, settings in translation of Verlaine, also from 1950. Three contrasting choruses, ‘Die Nachtigall’, ‘Armer junger Hirt’, and ‘Agnus Dei’, again displayed considerable aplomb in the handling of choral forces and again seemed singularly lacking in intimations of what was to come. I was, however, rather taken with the way in which different vocal parts displayed different vocal characters – in more senses than one – in the middle number, telling of a poor young shepherd and his love. The line, in which Verlaine, in Rilke’s translation, beseeches the Lamb of God to grant us peace, not war, was aptly imploring, both in composition and in performance.

Hodges then returned with the ninth of the Klavierstücke (1954-5, revised 1961). He was fully equal to the implacable opening with its long diminuendo of repeated and almost-repeated notes. Once heard, this cannot be forgotten, certainly not whilst the rest of the piece vainly attempts to break free of its oppressive shadow – not unlike the horrendous discord towards the end of the first movement of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony – and certainly not in this fine performance. Except, of course, it is not merely a memory, for it recurs, foreshortened and punctuated, until finally some provisional escape is attained. Once again, Hodges conveyed not only the musical but also the dramatic substance of Stockhausen’s vision.

Finally, we heard the extraordinary Litanei 97, Stockhausen’s 1997 reworking of ‘Litanei’, one of the ‘text compositions’ making up the 1968 Aus den sieben Tagen. Here the composer sets his original text, for speaking chorus and Japanese rin (bowl-shaped gongs from temple rituals, here struck by the conductor). This is ritual and difficult to judge in musical terms, but the spectacle, replete with blue and silver robes, was captivating. The singers formed a circle with the priestly conductor in the centre, the circle – later two concentric circles – sometimes rotating, eventually turning outwards and dispersing. Bells added both a haunting sound in themselves and a resonant punctuation. Members of the choir rather than the conductor intoned; I was not quite sure why this was the case, but it did no particular harm. There were two unfortunate interventions, one from a member of the audience in the balcony, who dropped a programme from on high, and the other from David Hill, who knocked over one of the bowls. It is, of course, easy to mock, but the question of the purpose of music in a modern, all-too-secular world is of crucial importance, and one Stockhausen, unlike so many others, was not afraid to address.

This nicely set the scene for the first of the evening performances, that of Inori (1973-4). Stockhausen’s decisive return to the ‘formula’-melodic method of composition, first broached in Mantra, was admirably described in David Robertson’s clear yet far from patronising spoken introduction. In these ‘adorations’, the basic elements of music – rhythm, dynamics, melody, harmony, and polyphony – are brought into being, one by one, each of the five sections devoted to one of the five sections of the composer’s generative formula. The mime-dancers, acting according to Stockhausen’s precise instructions, mirror – or do they lead? – the musical development and once again impart an undeniable sense of ritual to the unfolding proceedings. Certainly the basic, primæval opening aptly presented the ‘invocation’ of the work’s title. Oddly enough, the monotone G, pervading almost the entire work, is not ‘monotonous’ in the popular sense, although it proved impossible to shift it from my memory at the end of the performance. This is process music but not minimalism, as ultra-serialist as anything Stockhausen wrote during his Darmstadt years, both maddening and beguiling in its inexorable simplicity. Robertson and the BBC Symphony Orchestra could not, I suspect, have been bettered as advocates, understanding all of this perfectly. Their handling of the several crucial echoes was especially impressive, quite magical. It was unfortunate that, occasionally, the mime-dancers fell a little out of sync, a failing that drew attention away from the ritual. As the work became louder and the orchestra was given its head, there were sounds which, taken in isolation, would not have been totally out of place in Mahler, but context is all, or almost all. We were being led, visually as well as musically, towards an entrance into a mysterious temple. Applause was, I suppose, inevitable at the end, but I found the experience unsettling. Either this was a ritual of quite a different nature from conventional concert-going, in which case the reaction seemed inappropriate, or, given the supreme lack of irony, it was charlatanry, in which case...

But on to the final performance, returning to the mid-sixties for the internationalist tape-work, Hymnen (1966-7). There are actually two versions for musicians too, yet it was the ‘pure’ original we heard here. Hymnen is quite a testament to Stockhausen’s unique imagination, a montage of four ‘regions’ – I to IV, dedicated respectively to Boulez, Pousseur, Cage, and Berio – in which we hear various national anthems, shortwave radio signals, voices, crowds, aircraft, Stockhausen in discussion with his assistant, and so on, until finally reaching some sort of peace with the composer’s breathing. There is much that is of great interest – and, as ever with Stockhausen, it never seems that the concept is more important than the result. The distortions, intersections, and juxtapositions are genuinely compelling. Yet I could not help but wonder whether it needed to last two hours (one might answer, ‘but why should it not?); or, if it did, whether the Barbican Hall without lights was really the place for such a ‘performance’. No use was really made of the space, in sharp contrast, say, with the imaginative deployment of the Royal Albert Hall for last year’s British premiere of COSMIC PULSES. Yet in suggesting to us that a conventional concert hall may not really be an appropriate setting for his music, in disturbing our ideas about what a ‘concert’ might be, Stockhausen is doubtless performing a great service. That he is not merely doing that but is creating something utterly new elevates him from the merely Cageian.