LSO/Rattle - Weill, 28 April 2022

Barbican Hall

Kleine Dreigroschenmusik
Vom Tod im Wald, op.23
Street Scene: ‘Lonely House’
Four Whitman Songs: ‘Beat! Beat! Drums!’ and ‘Dirge for Two Veterans’
Die Sieben Todsünden

Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano)

Andrew Staples, Alessandro Fisher (tenors)

Ross Ramgobin (baritone)

Florian Boesch (bass-baritone)

London Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

The opening of Kurt Weill’s Kleine Dreigroschenmusik struck a properly anti-Romantic note, the Overture clearly growing out of 1920s’ Neue Sachlichkeit, the ‘Anstatt-dass Song’ likewise wearing its post-Busoni-and-Hindemith constructivism wisely on its sleeve, a hard edge supplied by banjo and piano. In between, the ‘Ballad of Mackie Messer’ showed something a little more yielding, rapport between saxophone and piano especially noteworthy. At times, it perhaps felt a little too conducted, but there is a difficult balance to strike here. An intimate, inward account of ‘Polly’s Lied’ and a surprisingly fast—if only in context—‘Kanonen-Song’ worked well in tandem. Simon Rattle tied things up nicely in the Finale, whose temporary ghostliness trod a thin yet necessary line between alienation and something that might just have been pathos. In the excellent hands of the LSO brass, its Chorale proved properly inscrutable. 

We remained with wind band for the little ballad-like cantata, Vom Told im Wald, for which Rattle, his players, and Florian Boesch gave a compelling, sepulchral performance which, like the rest of the programme, never exaggerated, without quite straying into the world of understatement. Those who like Weill to go to extremes may have been disappointed, but there was much to be said for an approach, especially in the concert hall, that underlined his more ‘purely’ musical qualities, as well as the more traditional side to his acuity of verbal response. Weill’s flirtation with less tonal realms contrasted strongly with ‘Lonely House’ from Street Scene (Andrew Staples), its ‘American’ style well captured, now with the luxury of a full complement of LSO strings, idiomatic without cloying. Two of the Four Walt Whitman Songs, more interesting to me, were shared between Ross Ramgobin and Staples. The vivid quality of Ramgobin’s ‘Beat! Beat! Drums!’ had us see as well as hear the bugles and drums. ‘Dirge for Four Veterans’ proved nicely ambiguous in its military response. 

For the ballet-chanté, The Seven Deadly Sins, Rattle conducted the LSO without a score. Strikingly dressed and coiffured in ‘Weimar’ style, Magdalena Kožená navigated the demands of song and speech alike with typical excellence, her German outstanding in clarity as well as idiom. Rattle kept the action moving, though it never sounded remotely hard-driven. This is clearly a score he knows, understands, and loves; the LSO and his cast responded in kind. That tightrope between alienation and something more sympathetic was once more intelligently trod. Well shaped and paced, it almost sounded over before it had begun. A fine conspectus of Weill, then, though it was perhaps a pity not to hear any of his early concert music: to my ears, generally showing the composer at his finest.

 

Salzburg Festival (1) – Boesch/Martineau: Schubert, Mahler, and Krenek, 20 August 2018

Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Schubert: Der Wanderer, D 649; Der Wanderer an den Mond, D 870; An den Mond, SD 259

Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Krenek: Reisebuch aus den österrichischen Alpen, op.62


Florian Boesch (baritone)
Malcolm Martineau (piano)

There are many ways to wander, not least with one foot in the soil of German Romanticism. Many of us will think of the paintings of Friedrich – now, alas, almost too well known – and of Wotan in Siegfried. Need there be such metaphysical implications? Perhaps, perhaps not; it would be difficult to avoid them completely in a Liederabend. That is not to say, however, that they might not be played with, questioned, even satirised. As Florian Boesch admits, in a booklet interview, it is not easy to know how to programme Ernst Krenek’s Reisebuch aus den österrichischen Alpen. Schubert and Mahler here offered complementary, even dialectical standpoints from which to approach Krenek’s song-cycle.

 

The three opening Schubert songs were well chosen, even their titles making the connection clear: Der Wanderer, Der Wanderer an den Mond, and An den Mond. Boesch’s crystal clear diction, never an end in itself but a crucial guide to meaning, was apparent from the start. The different register chosen for the moon’s encouragement – ‘Folge true dem alten Gliese, wähler keine Heimat nicht’, or should that be discouragement? – made its point without exaggeration. Likewise the quiet ecstasy of ‘schein’, of appearance, of reflection, on ‘Seh’ ich mild im Widerscheine’ told us all we needed to know. Both Boesch and Malcolm Martineau, perhaps a little reticent in these songs, used the form of Schubert’s second and third songs to chart a wandering of their own: similar yet different throughout their stanzas. Already, it was clear that this was to be a performance of a very ‘Austrian’ baritone, at times tenor-like, in the line of Wolfgang Holzmair, although certainly not merely to be identified with him.

 

Martineau turned far more interventionist – as, indeed, did Boesch – in Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer. Fair enough: there is no un-mediated Mahler, certainly not here. Sometimes, though, less is more, or at least it can be. I could not help but find the very heavy piano accents in ‘Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht’ a little much, perhaps also Boesch’s underlining of words. His heavy sarcasm in the following ‘Ging heut’ morgen über’s Feld’ ensured that what may sometimes be lost was not. At what price, though? Expressionistic anger, Wozzeck-like, made a powerful case for such an approach in ‘Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer’, although intonation sometimes went a little awry. Uneasy repose, in a very slow ‘Die zweu blauen Augen von meinem Schatz’ suggested a dark dreamworld indeed, responding perhaps to the Schubert of Winterreise, not least in the frozen quality to Martineau’s piano part.

 

Krenek’s cycle thus emerged, both as work and performance, as some sort of mediated response to those two extremes (extremes which, of course, retained something of each other within). The expectancy of the opening ‘Motiv’, together with its slightly doubting harmonies, nicely pointed by Martineau, set the scene – without, quite rightly, our yet knowing how it and its action would develop. As James Parsons put it in his 2010 Austrian Studies article on the work, Krenek is, to an extent at least, ‘reversing the associative connotations of the Lied as a medium suited to withdrawing from the cares of the world, and, in place of that, taking up the genre as the means by which to actively work through life’s larger concerns’. Which may, of course, as we heard here, entail dealing with issues of withdrawal; indeed, it almost certainly will. To follow such a song with ‘Verkehr’, a song playing with pictorialism and Neue Sachlichkeit just as it plays with the mountain railway that is its ostensible subject, takes us further – and so it did here, Boesch’s irony less exaggerated and in many ways more telling than in Mahler. Is ‘scenery’ lighter? Perhaps, as in the following ‘Kloster in den Alpen’, but there are echoes here of Romanticism; consciously or otherwise, Boesch and Martineau seemed to point – or at least I heard them doing so – to Schumann’s Im Rhein. Or is that a pointless diversion? ‘Abends dann beim Wein im Klosterkeller magst du nachdenken, was für ein sinnlos Leben du fuhrst.’ Schubert is the more obvious model, of course, and, I think, the more obvious focus of rebellion. In ‘Traurige Stunde’, we were asked to participate in an act of false or at least fallible remembrance, even before the explicit act thereof in ‘Unser Wein (Dem Andenken Franz Schuberts)’.

 

For memory is a strange thing. Its ambivalence and ambiguity had been prepared in the preceding ‘Regentag’, not least by further suggestion of musical ‘autonomy’ in the piano part. More than once such thoughts came to mind, unsettling and yet expanding ideas of what this music, these words, their alchemy (or not) might be ‘about’. A journey was underfoot, towards dodecaphony, through quasi-Schoenbergian procedures in ‘Auf und ab’, itself questioned by the grandeur of external display in the succeeding ‘Albenbewohner (Folkloristisches Potpourri)’. The post-expressionism of ‘Gewitter’, again not entirely unlike the Schoenberg of the 1920s, although certainly never to be confused with him, told us how gloriously untrue that song’s final major chord must be. If there were a decision (‘Entscheidung’), it seemed to relate to reinforcement of those ambiguities, ambivalences, autonomies. We citizens of nowhere, we rootless cosmopolitans know no home; we no longer want one. Or do we?

LSO/Rattle - Haydn, Die Jahreszeiten, 17 April 2016

Barbican Hall

 

Monika Eder (soprano)

Andrew Staples (tenor)

Florian Boesch (baritone)
 

London Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)

London Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

Talk about a hard act to follow: Sir Colin Davis’s final performance of The Seasons, available for all of us to hear on LSO Live (I had to miss the performance on account of a wedding), a clear first-choice recommendation on disc. Did Sir Colin’s knighted LSO successor-to-be have a chance? Of sounding like that, no? But then that is not what Simon Rattle was trying to do. Whilst I am more in sympathy, to put it mildly, with Davis’s approach, that should not preclude me, or indeed anyone else, from finding much of worth in Rattle’s Haydn. Whereas I have found his Mozart and Beethoven well-nigh unbearably mannered, he has long seemed closer to Haydn’s spirit and his advocacy of the composer – who, incredibly, still desperately needs such advocacy – is gratefully received. I enjoyed this performance greatly, and had the sense that my enjoyment was shared in the rest of the audience.

‘Spring’ opened in the anticipated low- yet certainly not no-vibrato fashion. Rattle seemed eager to draw from the LSO, and how, a keen sense of the sheer strangeness of Haydn’s orchestral colours, even suggesting a kinship – perhaps via Haydn’s experience of the Concert spirituel? – with Rameau. Split violins definitely helped the sense of back and forth between firsts and seconds, but there were times when a longer string line would have been, to my ears at least, desirable. The care over orchestral detail, which rarely descended into fussiness, persisted into Simon’s recitative, the orchestral crescendo following ‘Ihm folgt auf seinen Ruf’ beautifully handled, keenly dramatic. All three voices in this opening number, Florian Boesch, Andrew Staples, and Monika Eder, were shown to be well contrasted and their contributions well characterised. The London Symphony Chorus, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, was on magnificent form, offering verbal clarity and meaning, as well as great character, from its opening ‘Komm, holder Lenz!’ onwards. Dynamic contrasts and concern for phrasing were to the fore, without exaggeration; here, the LSO strings offered great polish. Simon’s aria, ‘Schon eilet froh der Ackermann’, offered smiles in both the vocal line and the orchestra. Rattle might not have sounded ‘like’ Beecham, but perhaps there was a little of his spirit here nevertheless? Staples’s Tamino-like tenor was welcome in the Farmer’s Prayer and much that we heard after too; the blend between his Lucas, Boesch’s Simon, and Eder’s Hannah, was here heard to near perfection. So was the sheer goodness of Haydn – as man and as composer. Hannah sounded nicely in ‘character’, or at least in ‘type’, in the ‘Song of Joy’, likewise ‘her’ Lucas; although the voices are different, there was more than a hint of Adam and Eve from The Creation, or Papageno and Papagena. Boesch’s reference to the breath of the Creator reminded us splendidly of the particular theology of this work.

 

Summer likewise opened with very little lower string vibrato: fair enough, for Lucas tells us of the morning light being veiled in grey mist. There was all the more contrast to be heard then with the lustig singing of Boesch in ‘Der munt’re Hirt’, and some lovely horn playing there too. The chorus did not disappoint in its hymn to the sun, although I was a little surprised by the Karajan-like metal Rattle imparted to ‘Die Segen, o wer zählet sie?’ He is certainly not predictable, which is mostly to the good. I greatly enjoyed the way the LSO and Staples (and Rattle) polished Lucas’s Cavatina, ‘Dem Druck erlieget der Natur’, a jewel, and here it sounded as such, of Webern-like quality. Olivier Stankiewicz’s oboe solos in Hannah’s recitative and aria were as delectable as anyone might ever dream of, perhaps more so, the LSO strings buzzing with properly insect-like quality in the former number. The calm before the storm was unnervingly apparent, not only in string pizzicato, but in Eder’s apprehension. When it came, choral and orchestral terror had nothing to fear from Beethovenian, even Wagnerian, comparisons. One could still hear, moreover, Haydn’s part-writing from the LSC; this was no mere ‘effect’. (For all that I love Karl Böhm’s VSO recording, the singing of the Wiener Singverein can be a bit of a trial.) Either one loves the animals in the Trio and Chorus, ‘Die düst’ren Wolken’, or one does not; even Haydn professed not to do so. Dare I suggest that he was wrong, or that he might have changed his mind about ‘frenchified trash’, had he heard the LSO players? And yes, the evening bell tolled surely, above all lovingly. The closing chorus could have made an avowed city-boy such as yours truly think twice about rejecting rural life out of hand.

 

The Introduction to ‘Autumn’ was not a high-point for me; I could not really understand why Rattle was so keen to play down the LSO strings. One can certainly have prominent woodwind without doing so; ask Davis, or Klemperer. Anyway, the Chorus in praise of industry benefited greatly from Boesch’s easy Austrian way with the text. It got the second half of the concert off to a rollicking start, rasping brass (clearly Rattle’s choice) notwithstanding. The Magic Flute came to mind once again in the Duet between Hannah and Lucas, although so did Schubert in one especially ‘special’ modulation. Rachel Gough’s bassoon solo was a delight in the neo-Handelian ‘Seht auf die breiten Wiesen hin!’ As for the Hunting Chorus, now as politically correct as Monostatos, the four horns and the men of the LSC performed it for all it was worth (a great deal!) The drunken chorus thereafter was despatched with due revelry: far more theatrical than with Davis, but none the worse for it.

The grave beauty of the Introduction to ‘Winter’ set it quite apart from anything we had heard previously; again, it was The Magic Flute, this time its trials, that seemed closest, although the sadness to be heard as the movement progressed was closer (and not just harmonically) to Tristan und Isolde. Boesch’s dignity here was greatly valued. Eder seemed to come into her own in the Spinning Chorus, presenting it as a cousin to its opposite number in The Flying Dutchman. The following solo song with chorus, quite rightly, sounded closer still to Weber, Der Freischütz in particular. Boesch’s way with that wonderful final aria, ‘Erblicke hier, betörter Mensch,’ presented an almost Sachs-like (Wahn monologue), psychoanalytical clearing of the mists. And finally, the great trio and double chorus, harking back not only to The Magic Flute but also to Israel in Egypt: what a joyous farewell, especially from the LSC, we heard to the eighteenth century!

 

The concert was recorded for broadcast in early May by Sky Arts.

LSO/Rattle - Schumann, Das Paradies und die Peri, 11 January 2015

Barbican Hall

Peri – Sally Matthews

Narrator – Mark Padmore
Kate Royal (soprano)
Bernarda Fink (contralto)
Andrew Staples (tenor)
Florian Boesch (bass)
Francesca Chiejina, Eliszabeth Skinner, Bianca Andrew, Emily Kyte (vocal quartet: Peris)
London Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

 

Simon Rattle clearly has a soft spot for Das Paradies und die Peri, having conducted it with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as having chosen it as a Desert Island Disc. Each to his own, I suppose. There is some wonderful music here and the work has clearly been treated unfairly; there is certainly no reason to feel anything but gratitude for this rare outing and fine performance. However, I cannot imagine any conceivable circumstances in which I might prefer it over the St Matthew Passion, Tristan, or a host of other works. Thank goodness, though, that Schumann set a text in German some way ‘after’ Thomas Moore, rather than Moore’s own ghastly Lalla Rookh. To describe the latter as ‘flowery’ would be so much of an understatement as to mislead; indeed, when, on occasion, my eye wandered across the programme booklet page to see the English version of the text, it swiftly turned back to the German, far more readily comprehensible, let alone palatable. Even in the German, moreover, it is difficult to bring oneself to care about the rather trite moralism. This is no Tannhäuser, let alone Parsifal, although, to be fair, the poem never sinks to the level of poor Weber’s Euryanthe, let alone Oberon. Fortunately, however, I soon found myself (more or less) able to enjoy the musical setting without troubling oneself too much about the words either way.

Rattle’s direction of his forces was generally astute, the reservations I felt pertaining to points of detail – this conductor’s over-emphasis upon certain ‘interesting’ details so often his Achilles heel – rather than to anything more fundamental. The LSO, as so often, was on excellent form, the dramatic tension of the performance so clearly founded here, just as it should have been. For instance, the orchestral throbbing heard, cellos surely echoing Der Freischütz, in the Angel’s ‘Dir, Kind des Stamms’ proved both attractive and dramatically telling in itself, but also an incitement for what was to come. Flexibility in the Peri’s following ‘Wo find’ich sie?’ was highly commendable too. Echoes of Berlioz were to be heard in the chorus, ‘Doch seine Ströme sind jetzt tot’, reminding us of the orchestra’s second-to-none pedigree in that composer’s music under Colin Davis. (Indeed, I could not help but wonder what Davis might have made of this oratorio; Rattle’s occasional fussiness would surely have been avoided.) I wish that Rattle had not driven so hard in the final number of Part One, especially when the chorus was singing; he proved far more considerate, as has often been his way, as an ‘accompanist’ to the solo singers. But the orchestral playing and the singing of the London Symphony Chorus was outstanding, putting me in mind of the close to the first part of The Creation, another work these forces performed with such distinction under Sir Colin. Brahms, too, seemed to beckon.

 

A point of ‘detail’ in which Rattle’s approach was most welcome was the darkness of the orchestral interlude in the Narration, no.12, following ‘Kein sterblich Aug’ hat je/Ein Land gesehn voll höh’rer Pracht!’ The darkness of the words to come, so strongly in contrast, was tellingly foretold. There was great charm to the chorus with which the third part opens; it came across in a similar vein to spinning choruses such as those in Haydn, Weber, and Wagner. Wagner again, this time Das Rheingold, sounded clearly prefigured following the bass solo, ‘Mit ihrer Schwestern Worten’. It is a sad commentary upon our ‘authenticke’ times that the extraordinary neo-Bachian solo at the opening of Peris’ ‘Es fällt ein Tropfen aus Land’ was met with what was surely Rattle’s conception of minimising, though thankfully not eliminating vibrato; as if what mattered about Bach, let alone about Schumann’s response to him, were some alien form of puritanism. But that did not last long, strings warming as the number progressed. The sharpness of the general ‘dramatic’ trajectory, insofar as the poem permits there to be one, certainly seemed greater as the work progressed, although Rattle again, in the final ‘Chorus of the Blessed Spirits’, seemed to confuse driving hard with ‘drama’ as such. Speeding up throughout the number sounded a little too much like having misunderstood Furtwängler’s lessons. Still, the LSO and Chorus remained on scintillating form.

 

Most of the solo singing was excellent too. The only real exception was Kate Royal, her Maiden as dull and featureless as her disengaged countenance. Many of the words were quite incomprehensible, and her tone proved surprisingly squally. The orchestra, however, remained full of Romantic wonder. Otherwise, there were few grounds for complaint. If, at times earlier on, Mark Padmore’s Narrator sounded a little ‘old’, there was no gainsaying the intelligence of his way with the words. And by the time we had come to his solo just before the end of the second part, ‘Sie wankt – sie sinkt,’ his style seemed to have adjusted, sounding spot on for Schumann. His contributions in the third part were ‘narration’ in the best sense: emphatic, but certainly not overly so. I heard some people complain about Sally Matthews’s diction, but have to say that was not a problem for me. (These things can often be partly a matter of where one is seated.) The sincerity of her contribution and the musicality of her response to the words were for me quite enchanting: certainly the best performance I have heard from her. Bernarda Fink’s Angel solo in the Third Part was almost worth the price of admission on its own, her opening ‘Noch nicht!’ poised and pivotal: putting me in mind a little of the crucial turning-point, albeit given to soprano, in Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony. (That was far from the only point at which Mendelssohn sprang to mind, both that work and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the second part’s opening number.) Andrew Staples was on fine form, his tenor wonderfully sappy, every inch a Tamino. Florian Boesch, if sometimes a little dry of tone, offered undoubted intelligence in his response to words and music alike. The mixed vocal quartet of the first part brought welcome echoes of The Magic Flute. Last but certainly not least, the female quartet from the Guildhall revealed four singers – Francesca Chiejina, Eliszabeth Skinner, Bianca Andrew, Emily Kyte – full of character, every one of them vastly superior to the bafflingly ubiquitous Royal. I should not be surprised to hear more in the coming years from all of them.

Boesch/Martineau - Schubert, Wolf, Zemlinsky, and Krenek, 18 May 2010

Wigmore Hall

Schubert – Prometheus, D 674
Schubert – Gesänge des Harfners, D 478-80
Wolf – Three Michelangelo Lieder
Wolf – Prometheus
Zemlinsky – Die Schlanke Wasserlilie
Zemlinsky – In die Ferne
Zemlinsky – Wandl’ich in dem Wald des Abends
Zemlinsky – Waldgespräch
Krenek – Seven Songs from Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen, op.62

Florian Boesch (baritone)
Malcolm Martineau (piano)

An enterprising programme, but did it come off? I found myself rather in two minds, at least with respect to Florian Boesch, for Malcolm Martineau’s piano contribution was uniformly excellent. Boesch is an unconventional Lieder-singer: not for the purist, given an approach that often proved frankly operatic. I mean this not in the sense of placing line and tone over words, quite the opposite, but in terms of an overtly physical presentation with a great deal of stage movement and gesture.
Schubert’s Goethe setting, Prometheus, thus opened the programme with a virile piano introduction, fully matched by Boesch’s entry and recitative-like delivery. It was not beautiful but angry, prophetic perhaps of Wagner’s Dutchman. And the final stanza – ‘Hier sitz ich, former Menschen/Nach meinem Bilde …’ (Here I sit, fashioning men/after my own image) – possessed Beethovenian humanistic purpose. The following Gesänge des Harfners, Goethe again, were properly scaled down, sharply characterised. Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergibt projected the bleakness of enforced solitude, Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen aß weary resignation with one’s earthly lot, and An die Türen an almost ghostly presence. Did the latter, though, verge too close to Sprechgesang?

Doubts resurfaced in the Wolf Michelangelo-Lieder. Martineau provided quasi-orchestral colour in the introduction to Wohl denk’ich oft, Boesch responding in musico-dramatic style. But Alles endet, was entstehet proved a case of commitment to verbal meaning at the expense of intonation and tonal production, though pianistic darkness was no less than an object lesson. I liked the apt sense of quickening in Fühlt meine Seele, but when returning to Goethe’s Prometheus, for Wolf’s setting, physical expression combined with hectoring to suggest that less might have been more.

Repertoire in the second half was more unusual. Four Zemlinsky songs turned us instantly to a fin-de-siècle world, though we do not hear the composer here at his most adventurous. A highlight was the Heine setting, Wandl’ich in dem Wald des Abends, nicely poised, with a Schumannesque delicacy that would be echoed in the Schumann encore. Boesch’s response was full of interesting detail, for instance the crescendo and diminuendo upon the final word, ‘einher’. (Whether that were in the score, I do not know: if so, it was respected; if not, it was an imaginative touch.) The Eichendorff setting, Waldgespräch, benefited from the full musico-dramatic treatment, revealing a Zemlinsky successor to Erlkönig.

Finally came a selection from Krenek’s Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen. I had awaited this keenly, if only for the welcome opportunity to hear repertoire from off the beaten track, but I was less convinced about its intrinsic quality. Perhaps I should have paid closer heed to the date: 1929, for this musical travel diary pre-dates the twelve-note Karl V. I could find little to unite the musical style beyond a certain anonymity and the texts, the composer’s own, are rather wordy. Boesch and Martineau nevertheless relished the opportunity of performance, whether in raindrop word-painting during Wetter – ‘Weather’, a singularly uninspiring title! – and Regentag, or the theatricality of Alpine collapse (‘einstürzen’) in Friedhof im Gebirgsdorf. Boesch, in Regentag, showed a seductive quality not readily evident during the first half, whilst his unmistakeably Austrian style and pronunciation paid off handsomely in Unser Wein (Dem Andenken Franz Schuberts). Alpenbewohner witnessed the adoption of a cabaret-like style of delivery, not inappropriate to the text, the song emerging as a demented successor to Schoenberg’s Brettl-Lieder, albeit without the mastery of form. There was much food for thought then, even if certain reservations persisted.

Salzburg Festival (2): Così fan tutte - VPO/Fischer, 7 August 2009

Images © Monika Rittershaus

Haus für Mozart

Fiordiligi – Miah Persson
Isabel Leonard – Dorabella
Topi Lehttipuu – Ferrando
Florian Boesch – Guglielmo
Patricia Petibon – Despina
Bo Skovhus – Don Alfonso

Claus Guth (director)
Christian Schmidt (scenery)
Anna Sofie Tuma (costumes)
Andri Hardmeier (dramaturge)
Olaf Winter (lighting)
Alex Buresch, Kai Ehlers (video)
Ramses Sigl (choreography

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera (chorus master: Thomas Lang)
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Ádám Fischer (conductor)

My expectations were extremely high, following Claus Guth’s extraordinary transformation of Le nozze di Figaro, which I saw at Salzburg in 2007. At the time (click here for the full review), I enthused:

Had anyone described it to me, I should have recoiled in horror. Somehow, this anti-Figaro provided a truly compelling dramatic experience. ... Claus Guth presented one of the best examples of Regietheater I have ever seen. What sounds perverse, to say the least, was thought through to the end. ... the most fizzingly champagne-like of operas was transformed into a harrowing, even sadistic drama, which came closer to the devastating hyper-realism of Così fan tutte.

Reference to the previous production – unfortunately, I have yet to see last year’s Don Giovanni, though I hope for a revival – might help to explain why my impressions were more mixed upon this occasion. Così might, I suppose, be convincingly transformed into its opposite, but I suspect that this would be a task even more difficult than that for Figaro and it does not happen here. What I find it hard to imagine it convincingly shedding is the artificiality lying at its heart, an artificiality that permits the unsparing realism with which Mozart – and it is far more he than Lorenzo da Ponte – lays bare the illusions of romantic love. Here instead we have a production somewhat realistic in the ordinary sense, a path which simply makes for a rather unconvincing plot. I am the last person to insist upon some kind of eighteenth-century fetishism, upon period costumes and a clear view of the Bay of Naples. But equally, it does not seem to me that transferring the action to what appears to be a modern apartment and turning the characters into modern characters who drink more than is good for them in themselves make for convincing drama. The aspects when such up-to-date references were pushed further merely distracted. For instance, it is a rare production that ensures Despina will not irritate. This production merely has her irritate in a different way, irrelevantly emphasising her identity as what would seem to be an Eastern European cleaner. Many of the audience – somewhat dubiously or even chillingly – seemed to find this hilarious. But should anything in Così be hilarious?

There are promising aspects to the production, but another problem, again in contrast to Guth’s Figaro, is that they were not always carried through. For instance, I was intrigued by how what appeared to be an original take upon the matter of the male disguises would develop. Ferrando and Guglielmo first wear masks, which seems full of potential in terms of the connection to Greek tragedy. Is it with masks that one might be able to bear the most horrific drama? They soon lost the masks, however. Then the reason for the girls failing to recognise their lovers is that they are blindfolded. Again, interesting: perhaps there will be a series of such reasons. This seems to be borne out by the subsequent positioning of men and women on different levels of the stage. However, following Despina’s appearance as the doctor – a most odd portrayal, involving (African?) fetishism and incantation of the word Mesmer, which broke up the account of the score – any pretence at disguise or an alternative thereto is discontinued. Either the problem has been forgotten, which seems almost incredible, it is considered irrelevant, which seems highly dubious, implying an ordinary-realistic tale of loose women who simply carry on with each others’ boyfriends, or Despina’s act – itself carried out without visual disguise – has changed everything in a way that remains obscure, or at least remained obscure to this audience member.

Where Guth scores very highly, however, is in the determination to place Così as the final work in a trilogy. He makes connections with Figaro – and, I think, Don Giovanni, certainly on the evidence of production photographs I have seen, the wood there increasingly protruding into the location of Così. The most striking visual connection is that of dress and nervous behaviour between Don Alfonso and the sinister Cupid figure – and if you listen to Da Ponte’s libretto, you will hear Cupid invoked repeatedly – of that anti-Figaro. Both create (necessary?) mischief, which might conceivably help us to confront harsh realities. The falling of feathers connected to both creates a further bond, mystifying yet perhaps also provoking the other characters.

Musically there was much to admire in this performance. I had been a little wary of the prospect of Ádám Fischer, having found much of his previous Salzburg direction of the work (2005) rushed and unyielding. Such was certainly not the case on this occasion, however. There was considerable variation of pace, generally well integrated into a broader tonal and dramatic framework. I could hardly believe that this was the same conductor, not least since recent fashions have tended to propel Mozart interpreters in the opposite direction. Whilst I might have preferred a larger body of strings, there were few instances in which this was much of a problem. The acoustic of the Haus für Mozart, formerly the Kleines Festspielhaus, compensated admirably, as did the renowned sheen of the Vienna Philharmonic strings. It was the woodwind section, however, which truly took the palm. These musicians were truly beyond compare, ravishing as perhaps only they and certainly only Mozart can. That cruelty which, despite the director’s efforts, was so often absent from the production was readily apparent in the savagery of such tonal beauty. As for those Viennese horns of cuckoldry... It was all the more unforgivable, then, that on more than one occasion such Elysian delights were disrupted by the ringing of mobile telephones. That is a form of cruelty adding no more to the drama than the incessant conversation of certain selfish members of the audience, or indeed the applause not only between acts but, more than once, within numbers. There were many people in the house for whom a life prohibition concerning Mozart would be too kind.

The cast was good, if not unforgettable. Perhaps the most consistently strong vocal performance came from Miah Persson as Fiordiligi, handling her coloratura with aplomb and possessed of a winning, attractive tone. Like every member of the case, moreover, she could act. Isabel Leonard’s Dorabella became more differentiated as a character with time, which is, I suppose, how it should be. Topi Lehtipuu at first proved somewhat variable as Ferrando, often impressing more in the recitatives than elsewhere. However, his character too developed in leaps and bounds, and the pain elicited by friction between him and Florian Boesch’s Guglielmo was a credit to both artists. Lehtipuu was allotted both of his second act arias, not the only case of music restored that is almost always cut. I was very happy to hear all of it. Boesch in the second act presented a more complex Guglielmo than is often the case: to be thoroughly disliked in his arrogance but then learning from his bitter experience and seeming the most disillusioned of all. Patricia Petibon was an audience favourite. She certainly acted well and sang well too, but her voice is rather plain. I was frankly perplexed at the mismatch between my reaction and that of most others. Rather to my surprise, Bo Skovhus sometimes sounded a little woolly, and fell short of the Alfonso gold standard presented by my various hearings of Sir Thomas Allen in this role. Nevertheless, Skovhus acted very well and at least as often employed his voice to good advantage.

If the musicians could not take my mind off some of the production’s shortcomings, that is not their fault. Even Sir Colin Davis, giving, a couple of years ago, the performance of his life at Covent Garden, could not do that, faced, admittedly, with a far more objectionable production. Disappointment here was relative and there were very considerable musical rewards.