Hardenberger/Kopatchinskaja/LSO/Roth - Järventausta, Strauss, Grime, and Coll, 3 April 2022

Barbican Hall

Joel Järventausta: Sunfall (world premiere)
Strauss: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, op.28
Helen Grime: Trumpet Concerto (world premiere)
Francisco Coll: Violin Concerto (UK premiere)
Strauss: Tod und Verklärung, op.24

Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin)

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)

London Symphony Orchestra

François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

Three premieres, two of them world premieres, and a couple of Strauss tone poems. Add concerto soloists of the calibre of Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Håkan Hardenberger to the formidable team of the London Symphony Orchestra and François-Xavier Roth, and what is not to like? Nothing here, I think. Joel Järventausta’s Sunfall, apparently rooted in the composer’s synaesthetic response to the colour orange, made for an impressive opening piece, subdued first chords swiftly, rudely interrupted by a cataclysmic orchestral clap. That and other such contrasts in material were worked out in an atmosphere of unease and natural-world majesty. A keen ear for matching timbre and harmony, and for lone, fragile melodic against that atmospheric backdrop imparted a sense of the ultimate amorality of the sun and its light: it can give life, but it can also take it away. Increasing animation, even frenzy, returned us to a transformed wilderness. Chatter at its close—musical, yet speech—enhanced the enigma, but also the unapproachability of that giant fireball now departed.

I do not think it would do Sunfall any disservice to call it a contemporary tone-poem. At any rate, it was followed by the first of two supreme masterpieces of the genre. Till Eulenspiegel emerged in Roth and the LSO’s capable hands flexible, colourful, and wry as ever. It shared with its predecessor a clear sense of narrative, full of incident and clear of structure, though it was certainly not to be reduced to its programme. There was an idiomatic swing where called for, not so very far from Strauss’s waltz-king namesake. Throughout, Roth showed that, like the best Strauss conductors, he could ‘play’ the orchestra with ease. 

Helen Grime’s new Trumpet Concerto opened darkly, yet with a host of orchestral colours, harmonic and timbral, not entirely un-Bergian. From that, the trumpet emerged magically, before sinking once more into an orchestral cauldron that was itself home both to echoes and pre-echoes of Hardenberger’s wondrously spun solo thread. Motivic threads were knit tightly together in a way I am tempted to call Classical, though I do not wish to imply something backward-looking. And in truth, the method probably had little to do with such distant forebears, though the movement of particular lines more than once recalled to me the late music of Boulez. Fantastic descending orchestral spirals, scurrying, and more would surely have interested, even delighted, him. Hardenberger’s lightly worn virtuosity became all the more apparent, incited by magnificently idiomatic writing for the instrument. There was, moreover an ebbing and flowing melancholy to the trumpet, not remotely sentimental, but which rather seemed to bear witness, perhaps even to the troubled time in which it was written (and first performed). 

The opening éclat of Francisco Coll’s Violin Concerto, more angular rhythmically, heralded a kinship that may only have been of chance, but which in context spoke of twin conceptions of instrumental and orchestral fantasy, replete in this case with punctuating percussion. At any rate, we heard the music of two composers by now fully mature, even contemporary masters. (For me, it has been quite a thing to acquaint myself with their musical journeys over the past decade or so.) Kopatchinskaja’s explosive, full-blown virtuosity led the way towards a lyrical blooming that was not so much ‘traditional’, whatever that may mean, as intriguingly and, yes, movingly haunted by some of tradition’s ghosts. The first movement (‘Atomised’) close, with high-lying, silvery orchestral violins heightened a kinship I had already felt with Prokofiev: not ‘influence’, nor a model, but perhaps simply a sense that the two composers, mediated by Kopatchinskaja, might have something to say to one another. 

There was certainly a sense of magic, drawing one in, to the second movement ‘Hyperhymnia’ and its lyricism, both uneasy and (almost) easy, harmonic development propelling its motion. Indeed, the expressive nature of Coll’s harmonic language, never to be reduced to that of anything or anyone else, proved at times quite breathtaking. A section of almost neo-Mahlerian climaxes, not in language, but in preparation and spacing, led to a true cadenza of true, musical virtuosity, which in turn led us into a finale (‘Phase’) of great invention (for instance, a passage setting violin against double basses) and intensity. Passages of (relative) stasis and movement, of shifting colours, transformational rhythms, and ghosts in the machine, seemed as inspired by Kopatchinskaja’s playing as she by Coll’s writing.

Both concertos, indeed all the works so far heard, had been journeys of transformation. So too, of course, was Tod und Verklärung. Its ominous opening heart-beats, vividly pictorial and crucial to subsequent, motivic development, heightened rather than dignified the magic of life (and beyond). There was high-operatic drama, presented with polish, precision, and grand sweep. There were light and shade, including colours I had never fancied were there. There was harmonic richness too, all revealed in a full-bodied orchestral performance, with none of the thinness one sometimes hears in this work. The glow of final transfiguration was echt-Straussian and intensely moving.

Hardenberger/Gewandhaus/Nelsons - Zimmermann and Mahler, 8 October 2018

Royal Festival Hall

Zimmermann: Trumpet Concerto, ‘Nobody knows de trouble I see’

Mahler: Symphony no.5

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

Andris Nelsons (conductor)

Images: Southbank Centre/Mark Allan

One can only be grateful for the performances that Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s centenary year has occasioned. This was my second hearing this year of his Trumpet Concerto, ‘Nobody knows de trouble I see’, the first also having been from Håkan Hardenberger, albeit in Vienna, with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under John Storgårds. One fears that 2019 will bring nothing at all, but then, as things stand, 2019 seems destined to bring catastrophes far worse than that. We should, I suppose, enjoy the visits of fellow European orchestras whilst we can; soon enough it will be wall-to-wall Vera Lynn tribute acts, a spot of scavenging at the local rubbish dump, and the occasional rat thrown our way by hedge-fund billionaires for gastronomic delectation.

The Zimmermann was certainly the more successful performance on the programme, not only for Hardenberger, but also for the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and, especially, its new Kapellmeister, Andris Nelsons. Its opening was taut, full of suspense, germinative – and not just the opening. Hardenberger, virtuoso musician that he is, played his part as the repertoire work it is for him and should be the rest for us. Both the pleasure and the difficulty of giving birth to the full chorale/spiritual tune were apparent and, crucially, felt. The menace of dark jazz sounds and the fantasy of ballet, and vice versa, paved the way for a full-scale riot of orchestral polystylism, tensions boiling over into chaos somewhat beyond the ‘Ed Miliband variety’, if perhaps less alien, alas, to those of us remaining, as it were, in the land of Theresa May and her multiple hostile environments. Zimmermann’s instrumental doublings, triplings, and so forth sounded more revelatory than I can recall, every bit as integral to work and performance as if they had come from Bach or Bartók. Swing rhythms did their work, of course, but so too did quite magnificent control of the orchestral volume, as if he were twisting the dial on a hi-fi system, by Nelsons. There was something uncanny to that evocation of both ‘real’ and the ‘recorded’ things: a positioning of ourselves and our music in what Zimmermann would later call the ‘sphericity of time’. Hardenberger’s final statement of the spiritual in full bore witness, as it must. But who in our time, any more than in Zimermann’s, will listen, truly listen?

The Nelsons way with Mahler’s Fifth Symphony proved remarkably popular with the audience, many of whom rose to their feet at the close. I could not help but recall Thomas Beecham’s quip that the English do not like music, but rather the noise that it makes. It had some wonderful moments, even passages, but I struggled in vain to hear a sense of irony, a sense of Vienna, even, for some of the time, much sense of coherence. This is an extraordinarily difficult symphony to bring off convincingly; not the least of the conductors I have heard fall considerably short here has been Daniel Barenboim. Of the many intimations of the Second Viennese School, I heard nothing.

Nelsons, not unlike Barenboim, seemed determined to turn it into something that is not, albeit in this case something stranded between a generic nineteenth-century symphony and Shostakovich.

The first movement perhaps fared worst. Insofar as there were a basic tempo at all, it felt incredibly slow: quite a trudge, yet it was never clear to what end. Then suddenly, an eruptive first episode went to the other extreme, contrast entirely supplanting connection. Symphonic thread, what symphonic thread? Nelsons seemed intent on micromanaged moulding of phrases too, reminiscent of Simon Rattle over the past few years. Conductors as different as Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez have shown that there are many ways to have this music work as a symphony; Nelsons, apparently, had other ideas. That said, a few liminal passages – a magical timpani solo, for instance – truly told: in themselves, though, without necessary context. The second movement proved similarly contrast, except back to front in terms of material, which is as it should be; it also proved more coherent, if still less so than one would have hoped. Again, it was Mahler at his most introverted who convinced most. Nelsons’s brutalising, proto-Shostakovich sound of a brass-led orchestra at full throttle simply sounded mistaken to my ears.

Nelsons certainly grasped, however, the structural role of the third movement, the symphony’s second ‘part’, its ambiguity relished. Even here, however, a tendency to hold back phrases to no particular end sounded indulgent and, frankly, irritating. The movement’s closing bars, taken hell for leather without evident preparation, proved merely bizarre, however well played.

The Adagietto was taken at an unfashionably slow speed, or so it felt. (I have never been one to consult my watch on such matters.) Nelsons seemed determined to make a meal out of it, often entirely losing its sense, however illusory, of loving simplicity. However gorgeous its final climax may have sounded, I could not help but suspect he might have preferred it to have been by Bruckner. The skies well and truly lifted for the finale, the problem being that there had been almost no preparation in the preceding movement. The Gewandhaus Orchestra relished the controlled abandon of Mahler’s neo-Bachian counterpoint, his good humour – or perhaps his impression thereof. Best of all, the movement unfolded without mannerism. Did the performance add up to more than the sum of its parts, though? At that, as perhaps at our present, seemingly hopeless worldly condition, Mahler laughed. He, after all, knew what it was to be, in that celebrated anti-Semitic phrase, a ‘citizen of nowhere’.

Hardenberger/ORF SO/Storgårds: Schuller, Zimmermann, and Dvořák, 6 April 2018

Musikverein

Gunther Schuller: Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee

Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Trumpet Concerto, ‘Nobody knows de trouble I see’
Dvořák: Symphony no.9 in E minor, op.95, ‘From the New World’

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

John Storgårds (conductor)

 

Much – not all, but much – of the United States’s Western art music tradition is (Austro-)German in origin. ‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’ might come the reply to someone awaiting publication of his Schoenberg biography. And yes, I suppose I should – yet not only on that count. Consider the (new) worlds of performance, composition, musicology, musical institutions: less so, now, of course, and rightly so; their roots, however, will often be found embedded in Teutonic soil. To appreciate that, one only need consider the childish, often downright bizarre anti-German sentiment encountered today amongst certain anti-modernist composers and musicologists alike. ‘I’m so daring to write/analyse a tune; Wagner/Schoenberg/Adorno/Stockhausen would never have let me do that.’ ‘Yes, neoliberalism has no tunes; you truly cannot move for total serialism in the world of the Culture Industry…’

 

Not that the traffic has ever been one-way, of course; more complex interchanges have deep roots too. George Whitefield Chadwick, trained in Leipzig and subsequently director of the New England Conservatory, which he re-organised on European lines, for instance instituting an opera workshop, pre-empted Dvořák’s use in his ‘New World’ Symphony of ‘negro’ pentatonic melodies in the Scherzo to his Second (1883-5) Symphony. Interestingly, however, Boston audiences reacted far less favourably than New York to Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, the critic William Apthorp notoriously decrying its use of ‘barbaric’ plantation songs and native American melodies, resulting in a ‘mere apotheosis of ugliness, distorted forms, and barbarous expressions’, He might have been a typical Viennese critic ten years later, fulminating against Schoenberg; racism, after all, is common to both attacks.

 

Here in Vienna’s hallowed Musikverein, home to more than one such attack in the past, we had a splendid opportunity to hear some of that more complex interchange. Gunther Schuller, born in Queens, to German parents, has always struck me, albeit from a position of relative ignorance, as an especially interesting example of a musician, both performing and compositional, able to straddle ‘jazz’ and ‘classical’ divides; not, of course, that such a ‘divide’ has ever been so clear as many, for varying, even opposed, ideological reasons, might have claimed. In the work heard here, moreover, he turned to Paul Klee (a Swiss painter, of course, whom many of us are fond, sometimes all too fond, of comparing to Webern). Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee was heard for the first time at the Proms three years ago (almost), under Oliver Knussen. It was a joy to reacquaint myself with the music, and not only to find my admiration for it undimmed, in so fine a performance as this, from the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and John Storgårds, but also to observe it so warmly received in the hall which, just over a century earlier, had played host to the notorious Skandalkonzert, at which anti-modernist protests against the Second Viennese School had landed some of the participants in court. (Would that… No, I had better stop there.)

 

The first movement, ‘Antique Harmonies’, certainly had an air of the undefinable antique to it. That can cover a multitude of sins and virtues, ranging from Debussy to Birtwistle; there is little point in attempting definition of such a ‘mood’ or ‘air’. Fineness of orchestral balance surely helped, though. The following ‘Abstract Trio’ seemed almost to take us from Schoenberg to Stravinsky; I even fancied that I heard premonitions of the later work of Boulez in its motivic working. Coincidence, doubtless, if indeed that, but intriguing nevertheless, for this Old World listener. The cool jazz of ‘Little Blue Devil’ seemed almost as distilled as Mahler does in Webern; it was also just as recognisable. Muted trumpet set up a connection with the Bernd Alois Zimmermann work to come. Febrile, seething, yes, ‘The Twittering-machine’ indeed, came next, with perhaps a little touch of post-Webern Klangfarbenmelodie. A flute solo from above (rather than off-stage in the conventional, unseen sense) beguiled in ‘Arab Village’: simple, yet never predictable, with a true sense of narrative, almost as in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. ‘An Eerie Moment’ lived up to its name too, Webern perhaps distilling Stravinsky’s Rite, prior to the unsettling – did it or did it not unify what had gone before? – ‘Pastorale’, which again benefited from expert orchestral balancing by Storgårds and his players.

 

Zimmermann’s hundredth anniversary falls this year. (Click here for my feature on the composer in the New York Times.) There is jazz inspiration to his trumpet concerto too, of course, as well as that of the spiritual, ‘Nobody knows de trouble I see’. Zimmermann was adamant that the work, originally entitled ‘darkey’s darkness’ – thank goodness, from our twenty-first standpoint, that that was ditched – played with elements of progressive rather than ‘commercial’ jazz. I think that may be adjudged a perfectly reasonable claim. (We should always remain on our guard concerning what composers say their music may or may not ‘be’. Why might they be making such a claim?) So, at any rate, it sounded here, Håkan Hardenberger – who else? – joining the orchestra.

 

Varying ‘atmosphere’, almost as varying as that of the Schuller Studies, suffused this outstanding performance – played as the repertory work it almost is, and certainly should be. The long line, both for Hardenberger’s trumpet arabesques and for the orchestra, somewhere between ‘jazz’ and ‘symphonic’, was effortlessly maintained, or so it seemed – until, that is, it was no longer required. Controlled riot might then be the order of the day – or something else. Zimmermann’s later, more overt polystilism was almost there, already; perhaps it actually was instantiated, right there, right then. Rightly, neither score nor performance could be pinned down. And yet, there was ultimately, just as rightly, an almost Nono-like sense of bearing witness – even if one were never quite sure who, or what, the ‘subject’ might be. A hushed close did not comfort, nor should it have done.

 

And so, for the second half, we returned to the ‘New World’ Symphony, bastion of many a more conservative concert programme – despite its rocky initial reception in Boston. There was no routine comfort, however, to Storgårds’s performance. One really had the sense, as the cliché has it, that every note had been rethought – and it probably had. The introduction to the first movement sounded unusually dark, almost as if from Weber’s Freischütz Bohemian Woods. So did much of the rest of the movement, although the symphonic dialectic necessitating contrast, even at times negation, was not only observed but dramatised. Ultimately, a good deal of Brahms was revealed beneath the surface, although much that was not him, even opposed to him, too. Indeed, the contrast between first and second groups proved so great, especially in the exposition, as to sound almost Mahlerian. None of that was achieved at the expense of traditional lilt, which propelled rather than inhibited new worlds to come.

 

The second movement’s celebrated, all-too-celebrated cor anglais solo was taken beautifully, yet never just beautifully, likewise other solos. That Largo had all the time in the world to unfold, yet not a second more than necessary. It never forsook the quality of song, of Europeanised spiritual. Fast, insistent, almost brutally so, the Scherzo proved exhilarating, brought into still greater relief by (relative) woodland relaxation and charm. The finale proved a finale in the emphatic sense, as it must, with fury not only in the first but the second group too. Sometimes it can relax a little too much, but not here. Its dynamic telos was maintained until the end, as terse as the first movement, and yet, crucially, utterly different too. Brahms, again, remained, if never without ambiguity. This was a fine conclusion indeed, to an outstanding ORF concert. More soon, please!

 

Proms Saturday Matinee no.2 – Hardenberger/Lapland CO/Storgårds: C.P.E. Bach, Birtwistle, Honegger, Davies, and Sibelius, 9 August 2014

Cadogan Hall

C.P.E. Bach – Symphony in B minor, Wq 182 no.5

Birtwistle – Endless Parade

Honegger – Pastorale d’été

Davies – Sinfonia

Sibelius - Rakastava

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)

Lapland Chamber Orchestra

John Storgårds (conductor)

 

A principal theme of this year’s Proms has been the greater-than-ever variety of ensembles from across the world, many of them making their debuts here, whether at Cadogan Hall or a short walk away at the Royal Albert Hall. This Saturday Matinee offered the Proms debut of the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, the most northerly orchestra in the European Union, conducted by its Artistic Director, John Storgårds, with trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger joining for Birtwistle’s Endless Parade.

 

To hear an orchestral work – or indeed any work – by C.P.E. Bach is a rare treat. Unfortunately, the performance of his ‘Hamburg’ Symphony in B minor, Wq 182 no.5 (a Proms first), was not the most ingratiating; indeed, the first movement proved downright abrasive, and not only on account of some dodgy intonation. The strangeness of Emanuel Bach’s orchestral tessitura registered, as did the disjunctures – a canny programming presentiment of Birtwistle? – but there is more to the composer than that. A slightly fuller tone was permitted to the small orchestra (4.4.3.2.1, expanded for the following works) in the slow movement, and the finale was frenetic in a good sense. Still, it is sad to reflect that, on the few occasions when modern orchestras feel able to perform this music, they nevertheless so often feel constrained to ape ‘period’ mannerisms. If you have modern strings, make use of them!

 

Birtwistle’s Endless Parade offered what the composer, in a brief conversation with Clemency Burton-Hill, called a ‘piece of permanent discontinuity’, after Cubism, and more particularly after Picasso. The orchestra now sounded more at home, doubtless helped by the virtuosity and musical understanding of Hardenberger. Indeed, it would be little exaggeration to speak of ‘supreme command’ in his case. The piece was played as chamber music writ large, material tossed between soloist and various orchestral instruments. In its syncopation, it even approached ‘swing’, though jazz enthusiasts would probably beg to differ. It is, of course, a typically perspectival work, but I was struck – as was my companion, new to Birtwistle’s music – at the continuity that yet dialectically emerged from discontinuity. As Birtwistle commented, Beethoven is a true master in such matters, working, however, with the disadvantage (!) of tonality. Birtwistle’s language, technique, and for much of his career, eschewal of goal-orientation might seem to make him and Beethoven odd bed-fellows, but the comparison is well worth reflecting upon. As ever, of course, there was a keen sense not only of drama and landscape, but of drama through landscape, and of landscape through drama.

 

Another great English musical knight, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, was represented by his early (1962) Sinfonia, one of the works he wrote after – in one sense or another – Monteverdi’s Vespers, which, in a performance under Walter Goehr, had so inspired him and many others. (What a pity no recording seems to exist of any of Goehr’s performances! If anyone knows differently, I should be delighted to hear.) Davies admitted that he had not heard the piece since having conducted it during the 1980s with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and that he would take a red pencil to it now. I was interested to hear it, but should not necessarily rush to do so again. The opening clarinet solo was properly ‘recitando’, the first movement being marked ‘Lento recitando’, and that movement as a whole was full of expectant energy. None of the piece, though, seemed especially characteristic. The slow onward tread of the last of the four short movements came across very well in performance.

 

I could not bring myself to become excited about the other two pieces on the programme. Honegger’s Pastorale d’été ideally needs a greater cushion of strings than was available here. However, the essence of the music was well conveyed, greatly helped by steadiness in the rocking movement upon which it rests. Woodwind playing especially impressed – as indeed it had in Birtwistle. Sibelius’s Rakastava, the third of the pieces receiving its first Proms performance (Sinfonia having been the second) received an idiomatic, committed performance, if with smaller forces than it would doubtless often receive. (In this hall, it did not seem to matter.) Despite the characterful muted playing in the second movement, and especially fine solo cello playing throughout from Lauri Angervo, it remained for me a largely bland work. The encore, a Romance by Nils-Eric Fougstedt, was pleasant enough in a generic film-music sort of way.