Musikfest Berlin (5) - Klangforum Wien/Pomàrico: Saunders and Aperghis, 4 September 2020

Philharmonie


Rebecca Saunders: Flesh, for solo accordion with recitation (2018)
Sole, Trio in F-sharp for mobile accordion, percussion, and piano (2019)
to an utterance – study, for solo piano (2020, world premiere)
Scar, for 15 soloists and conductor (2018/19)

Georges Aperghis: Der Lauf des Lebens, for 6 voices and ensemble (2019, world premiere)

Joonas Ahonen (piano)

Krassimir Sterev (accordion)

Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart

Klangforum Wien

Emilio Pomàrico (conductor)

Two concerts from Klangforum Wien: one a world premiere, the other including a world premiere and its ‘early music’ coming from 2018. New music indeed, then, however distant 2018—Theresa May: remember her?—may seem to those of us bewildered and exhausted by the current plague. I hope I shall be forgiven for any errors I might make, confronted with such a wealth of new sounds and their organisation, without so much as a programme note, coronavirus precluding such, let alone a score. Is that not, however, an ideal way for us to approach new music, whether ‘New Music’ or not? It was certainly welcome exercise for ears starved of such experience over the preceding months.


First, we heard works by Rebecca Saunders: not only one of the most important composers of her generation, but also one of my favourites. It certainly seems another world since I flew to Munich last June to see and hear her receive the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. Indeed, some of the music we heard had then yet to be written. The opening Flesh, however, had. We hear much about embodiment nowadays, but here the physicality of Saunders’s work and Krassimir Sterev’s astounding performance as accordionist and reciter could not have been more physical: quite erasing, like Molly Bloom’s monologue itself, any thought of dualism between mind and matter. This is not ‘programme music’, certainly not in the sense of mere portrayal, but it was difficult not to think or rather to experience the piece’s progress in extremely direct as well as more indirect terms. Squeezing, shuddering, rattling, shouting, screaming: this was a musical performance of musical material.


Sole for accordion, percussion, and piano was taken attacca, its predecessor necessarily influencing our reception, yet beautifully setting the scene, the next piece stealing in to our consciousness in the after-glow or -shock of Flesh. Resonance and even ritual—perhaps closer to Stockhausen than I might have expected—enabled pitch to be heard both ‘in itself’ and as the key to transformation of other parameters, such as timbre, rhythm, and dynamics. Put another way, post-Debussy and post-Webern tendencies united, without ever remotely sounding like Boulez or any other such forerunners. There were no electronics; yet, as so often in Saunders’s work, I could have sworn I heard them.


Next, Joonas Ahonen gave the first performance of to an utterance – study, for solo piano. Its opening pitted bass resonances, later spreading across the instrument, against glissandi and similar devices: some more scampering, some more furious, again in a not entirely un-Debussyan fabric (at least to my ears). Listening, one created and dissolved new aural hierarchies; and yet again, the sheer physicality of an outstanding performance proved just as crucial to one’s experience. Ahonen’s commanding virtuosity left one in no doubt one was hearing what one should be. Chases were as furious, perhaps even more so, as or than anything in the previous night’s Rihm Jagden und Formen. Ultimately, the piece seemed to me very much to take its part in the distinguished line of (extended) piano studies, growing into something emotionally and intellectually more all-encompassing. Were ‘symphonic’ not so obviously clichéd a misnomer, I might have been tempted to use it with less caution.


The opening of Scar, with its opening soft drum tattoos, dark pitched sounds emerging therefrom, put me in mind of Berg’s Op.6 Pieces. The tricks one’s ears and such resourceful writing can play, not to mention the ensemble performance under Emilio Pomàrico, convinced me at one point I had heard a voice. Slides, dark flashes, an aural landscape in their shadows, a liminal zone between tearing and torn: this was certainly the world of scars. Flights of fancy or of flesh took wing in a process of persistent metamorphosis, leading to dazzling climax and return to the opening material, transformed by our experience of listening.


In the second concert, the ensemble and Pomàrico were joined by the six voices of Neuevocalisten Stuttgart, for the premiere of Georges Aperghis’s Der Lauf des Lebens. Words, at least my words, are still more problematic an approximation here than usual, but I sensed something of a distinction between the dramatic use to which words were put in Saunders and a more ‘purely musical’—to resurrect a choice vintage chestnut—approach to their qualities from Aperghis. Accordion at the opening (the indefatigable Sterev) made for a nice link between the two worlds, but Klangforum Wien and the (initially) female Stuttgart voices immediately took our experience in a very different direction. A riot of sound, not without resonances from jazz, raucous riffs and all, put me a little in mind of Berio at times; that, however, was just me finding my bearings, for this was exuberance very much on its own terms. Vocal parts, sung and spoken, solo and ensemble, may or may not have made ‘verbal’ sense, yet who cared? Both work and performance offered a strong sense of a greater whole over an hour-long span, despite or perhaps on account of a host of mood swings and other transformations. In such winning superfluity, the overriding, most welcome sense was of fun, even of Alice in Wonderland-like wonder. 

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (4) - Philippe Boesmans, Pinocchio, 14 July 2017

Images: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2017 © Patrick Berger / artcompress
Father: Vincent Le Texier

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Director of the Troupe, First Crook, Second Murderer, Circus Director – Stéphane Degout

Father, Third Murderer, Schoolmaster – Vincent Le Texier
Puppet – Chloé Briot
Second Crook, Cabaret Director, Judge, First Murderer, Donkey Salesman – Yann Beuron
Cabaret Singer, Bad Pupil – Julie Boulianne
Fairy – Marie-Eve Munger
Troupe Musicians – Fabrizio Cassol (saxophone, improvisation coordination), Philippe
Thuriot (accordion), Tcha Limberger (violin tzigane)
 

Joël Pommerat (director)

Éric Soyer (set designs, lighting)
Isabelle Deffin (costumes)
Renaud Rubiano (video)

Klangforum Wien

Emilio Pomarico (conductor)

 

As the third of my four Aix operas this year, I saw the Festival’s new commission: Pinocchio, with music by Philippe Boesmans, to a libretto by Joël Pommerat, after his own play (itself, of course, in some sense ‘after’ Carlo Collodi). I wish I could be more enthusiastic about what I heard, but I was very much left with a feeling of something that had fallen between (at least) two stools. Is this a ‘children’s opera’, whatever that might be? There were certainly some children in the audience, although not that many: perhaps hardly surprisingly, for a performance that started at 8 p.m. and finished at 10.40. (There were, though, two performances out of the six that started earlier, at 5 p.m., on Sundays.) I could not help but think that if it were ‘for’ children, it might usefully have been about half the length. Indeed, pacing seems a bit odd more generally: lingering somewhat earlier on, perhaps with room for a cut or two.

 

Is it, then, a work about childhood, or some other form of work ‘for’ adults, using a children’s story as its basis? Again, I am not sure. For Boesman’s musical language and the use to which he put it seem determined to accommodate: somewhat at odds, I think, with what struck me as a rather more interesting libretto and indeed staging by Pommerat. Perhaps we should leave arguments concerning whether children need assistance into the world of opera by tonality until another day; for me, that is actually part of the problem, making post-tonal music – more than a hundred years on! – something to grow into, even to fear. So-called popular culture, more usually mass culture (quite a different, exploitative thing) has a great deal to answer for – in every respect, as any good, or even bad, Adornian would tell you. I was a little surprised, in any case, not only by the frankly tonal language employed throughout, but also by the almost childish – or should that be childlike? – simplicity of the score. A few motifs of reminiscence will certainly help anyone gain his or her bearings; a few references to other operas might appeal to people who like that sort of thing; a few more ‘with it’ moments may or may not grant a degree of ‘street’ relevance. (I suspect you can guess what I think.) However, whereas Pommerat’s libretto and the (literal) darkness of his production seem very keen lightly to explore the darker side of the fable, to open up philosophical questions concerning existence, a lack of justice in the world and so on, the score almost sounds as if it were intended for a children’s television programme. Nothing wrong with that, you might say, and perhaps not, but there seems neither to be genuine, productive conflict between different impulses and possibilities, nor the true collaboration of which the Festival’s outgoing director, Bernard Foccroulle, speaks in the programme: more a bit of a mismatch.

Director of the Troupe: Stéphane Degout

In performative terms, it all looked and sounded tremendous. No one could accuse the Festival of having done anything other than wholeheartedly supported the project. The Puppet, as he is always called, looked anything but cuddly, instead almost horror-movie fodder. Chloé Briot’s spirted performance stood much more in a line of offering fruitful dramatic conflict. Stéphane Degout proved a towering presence onstage, not least in the largely spoken narrative role of the Director of the Troupe. It seemed a bit of a waste of his talents, though, to have him devote so much of his time to speaking, and when singing, to lavish such vocal beauty and verbal acuity on so musically facile a part. Vincent Le Texier's seemingly wise, certainly compassionate Father impressed too. Marie-Eve Munger stood out in the high-lying part of the Fairy, whose lack of straightforwardness (on Pommerat’s part) certainly intrigued. Klangforum Wien under Emilio Pomarico offered truly luxurious orchestral support; I cannot imagine they have often, if ever, played anything quite like this. Again, though, it did seem to me somewhat to squander the talents of one of the finest new music ensembles in the world. Last month, Répons in Vienna; this month, well, this.

Fairy (Marie-Eve Munger)

It is certainly not that I am against ambiguity concerning audience, or broader appeal; far from it. This, however, gives the impression – or at least did so to me – that, perhaps like Pinocchio himself, it does not know quite what it wants to be. Or perhaps the problem lies with me, and I do not know what I want things to be. At any rate, whilst I was happy enough to have seen the opera, I cannot imagine wanting to do so again; for me, at least, the Festival’s offerings of The Rake’s Progress and Carmen proved infinitely more dramatically satisfying. Now, one Cavalli opera, Erismena, to go…

London Sinfonietta/ Pomàrico - Haas, in vain, 6 December 2013

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Georg Friedrich Haas – in vain (London premiere)

London Sinfonietta

Emilio Pomàrico (conductor)

 

It has taken quite a while for Georg Friedrich Haas’s in vain to receive a performance in the United Kingdom. The London Sinfonietta under Emilio Pomàrico – valiantly, brilliantly standing in for an indisposed André de Ridder – gave this country’s premiere in Huddersfield, before bringing the work to the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the final weekend of the Southbank Centre’s Rest is Noise festival. Audience numbers are far from everything. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing in front of a couple of enthusiasts, or indeed simply for its own sake in front of no one at all: for the glory of God, as any mediæval composer would have understood. Yet the claim that contemporary music is of limited interest, that what audiences want is a generic programme of overture-concerto-symphony – a perfectly reasonable formation if done for a good reason rather than out of laziness – was once again belied by a sell-out for a more than hour-long ensemble work by a sixty-year-old Austrian composer. This is not the churned-out pandering of minimalism, ‘holy’ or otherwise, but substantial, substantive, music, which both requires effort and rewards it. Such in any case was my first experience of a work whose renown has steadily grown over the past few years, not least thanks to the advocacy of figures such as Sir Simon Rattle and Alex Ross. An introduction by Rattle, given before a Berlin performance earlier this year, was reprinted in the programme. I am glad I only read it afterwards, since it enabled me to hear the performance without any preconceptions, not knowing at all what to expect, but I should recommend the enthusiasm and intelligence of Rattle’s words to anyone remotely curious.

 

One thing that struck me about a performance, whose length was not so very far off that of a Mahler symphony, was how compelling the experience was, in the sense that not only I, but seemingly 99% of the audience, had no difficulty whatsoever in concentrating throughout; the impression was of an audience gripped. In a situation such as this, one inevitably tends to make references to other works and composers, sometimes more revealingly than others: not only as a reference point, but also simply in an attempt to find verbal approximations. I do not mean, then, necessary to imply ‘influence’, let alone derivation, but simply to offer a few descriptive signposts of my own experience, itself derived only from hearing a performance rather than from having seen the score.  

 

Ligeti came to mind, not that the opening string scurryings sounded quite ‘like’ him, let alone the ‘harsher’ soundworld of, say, Xenakis, but as a starting-point, not only for my own orientation, but for appreciation of Haas’s sheer inventiveness, one could probably have done worse. (I saw afterwards that Rattle had also invoked Ligeti, so perhaps I was not being entirely fanciful.) There is theatre, of course, even if one did not know that Haas composed the work partly as an expression of dismay at the rise of the Freedom Party in Austria’s 1999 elections. (He grew up in Voralberg, later reflecting upon his experience: ‘However impressive the landscape might have been … life there in the 1950s and 1960s was largely cut off from the cultural developments in the world outside.’ This was no sentimental rural idyll, then, for him, but a disturbingly reactionary environment in need of response.) Periods of total darkness enable one to listen all the more closely: what extraordinary skill on the part of the musicians! And the dawning of light upon the stage more often than not proves – yes, in vain. Ceremonial contributes to that sense of theatre, brass perhaps recalling the great aequale of Austrian tradition: archaic almost, and yet very much of the present, just like the trombones in Don Giovanni or Beethoven’s Missa solemnis.

 

For it was the ghosts of German Romanticism that most haunted my experience of the work. Perhaps that is simply a matter of personal preoccupation, but it is not, I think, entirely so. Battle and curious confluence between ‘natural’ and modern, tempered tuning take place; again, Ligeti inevitably came to mind. (Is it that contest that makes the music 'microtonal', or is it the microtones that suggest to Haas the contest? Does it matter?) But the sense of trying to recreate a ‘natural’ world both necessary and yet, in some senses, out of our grasp, born of major triads, the arpeggios of, say, Das Rheingold, and the heart-rending horn echoes both of Wagner and of Der Freischütz, Schumann too, summons up the ‘in-vain-ness’ not only of musical works but the landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich. Those paintings may have been over-exposed in recent years, tarnished by base commercialism; so has Romanticism itself, many times over. The specific and the generic will nevertheless survive. Ghosts will adapt; indeed, we may doubt whether they are ghosts at all. There were indeed a good few times in which memories that great ‘farewell’ that is not really a farewell to Austro-German tradition, Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, insinuated themselves. I have heard many people express surprise that Helmut Lachenmann, that most avid, intrepid examiner and re-inventor of this tradition, should so admire Strauss’s work; that must reflect on their misunderstanding of Strauss. Lachenmann ‘gets’ Strauss; so, I suspect, does Haas.

 

The inexorable downward scalic passages of the closing ten minutes or so are as mesmerising as anything I have heard in ‘new music’ for quite some time. Tension mounting, doubtless at least as much through the Sinfonietta’s superlative performance as through the work itself, these apparently generative passages lead nowhere – but it is, of course, nowhere, nothing, something negative, in vain, that is being generated. Attempts to break free of what Rattle illuminatingly describes as ‘music … [getting] stuck on  … [an] extraordinary Escher staircase’ seem to involve both reversion, that is to scales themselves, and also neo-Lisztian innovation. My memory drew parallels with the introduction to Liszt’s B minor sonata, to the astonishing scales that most undervalued, most farsighted of nineteenth-century masters offers as material for more or less the entirety of that indisputable masterpiece. And the disconcerting, even frightening stop to which the music suddenly came: that, I thought, could only be Wozzeck. Rattle, I discovered, thought so too, adding Erwartung to the mix as well.

 

Performances, insofar as I could tell, were exemplary throughout. The London Sinfonietta are past masters at such challenges, yet we should celebrate that achievement rather than take it for granted. Pomàrico, making his London debut, clearly needs to visit these shores again soon. So does Haas. The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 Hear and Now, on Saturday 18 January 2014.